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[Question] [ In a far future humanity has advanced in the fields of A.I./robotics and genetics. Every household has an A.I. and robots/androids serving them, but strangely the humans prefer mindless clones to realistic androids. Humans usually use them as for variety of things, both nefarious and good. It's understandable that a small percentage of humanity would fear, dislike and outright hate the machines. It seems, however, that nearly 60% of humanity own them and it's even legal. Which doesn't makes sense, since androids can do better jobs and other things than those clones in every possible ways. They have no physiological needs and are even more economical. So, why would clones be popular among humans and even legal? I want a good excuse why. Footnote, to clarify two things: 1. Mindless clones are not brain dead but they don't have any free will at all, and you can customize their personality. 2. Killing a clone is illegal but doesn't count as murder. You just have to pay a fee to the original owner. [Answer] The mindless clones are used as "friends with benefits" by their owners, and for those kind of benefits no android or robot can compete with the real thing. Of course this is not something publicly spoken of, but is mutually understood that the clones satisfy all the needs of their owners. That is accepted as lesser evil than having real humans perform those kind of activities, for which the demand has never fallen. [Answer] Well OF COURSE you want your ~~Spare Parts storage~~ clones to be mindless. We all want to live forever, or a good imitation thereof. So it is a very good idea to have a spare body hanging around, one that is 100.0000% genetically and structurally compatible with your own. But.. The ethics and morality of killing another person just to replace that arm you misplaced in your hover-bungee accident can be an obstacle. You want the best matching spare part, so of course it has to be a clone. But you mindwipe the clone before it realizes it's alive, thus you can kill it to harvest the spare parts with a clear conscience. P.S. Mindless exact body doubles would also come in handy for various less-than-polite activities, like: * Meet the man/woman of your dreams, but don't know if you are sexually compatible? Now you can eliminate all of the guesswork, without the social awkwardness if it does not work out. * You have actors. Actors have stunt doubles, but they often do not look very convincing. Clones make supreme stunt doubled, and as a bonus their mindless status allows for a much greater risk factor in stunts, with no lawsuits from bereaved family! * A clone can make for a really convincing alibi! "No yer honor, I was in hospital having my tonsils extracted, I could not possibly have blown up that schoolbus in the next state over" * Onanism can be so much more satisfying with the assistance of a clone of yourself. * Medical tests: So Mr. Parker. This drug will either cure your genetically malformed liver, or kill you. Do you consent to taking the risk? "HEck no!! Have Pete here test it for me!!!" [Answer] People don't really trust the androids The [uncanny valley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley) is a thing, and this reason only would put the android at a disadvantage against a clone: the idea that 60% of people who would choose a human being against a realistic android, even if more expensive, sounds like a very plausible scenario to me. Moreover, many people think that the android mind is a technology that still has to be fully understood, and fear that they could become dangerous, while having a clone - exactly because they are more expensive - is also considered a kind of status symbol. [Answer] Maybe they aren't as economical as you claim they are. They might be more economical in the sense that in 1 hour of work they can do almost any task better than a clone. However they are mechanical androids, they are going to need maintenance, parts, high-tech cirquits and likely many rare earth elements. Imagine if like today the risk of a chip shortage could reduce the amount of androids available? Similarly their energy or fuel requirements might also create problems down the line. Now clones, clones are easy. Without free will they'll eat anything as long as it sustains them, so the cheapest but nourishing food is enough along with some clean water and basic waste management already available to you. They self-repair so you don't need to bring them to the shop unless the damage is extensive, they don't need complicated systems to simulate a realistic feeling of a human being, they are excellent for when you get an accident and need spare parts quickly allowing the hospital to take your clone apart and save your life or restore that liver you've been abusing with a bad lifestyle. [Answer] ## Dumb technology is SMART technology Everything an android sees is liable to be accessed by lawyers with subpoenas, companies sharing "advertising" information, hackers, scammers ... when you want to actually relax, rather than being on tenterhooks that half a sentence you said might be used to destroy your reputation, you want a good, dumb, human clone servant. ## They're YOUR organs - they should be useful! The clones are mostly medical backups. Which makes more sense - paying a distant institution to feed them (probably with pollution-based garbage that is reducing your future life expectancy)? Or keeping them safe, in your home, under your watch, serving your needs, up until the point they need to make the ultimate sacrifice for the cause? ## Humans do it better The clones are certified "mindless", but they still walk around somehow. They have a human touch, even if few admit it. If you let an android walk your dog, well, before you know it, it gets a notion from somewhere that it should pet your dog. The dog freaks out, the android has a legal duty to control the dog, one thing leads to another and you're calling the cloning company for a fresh copy of the dog. Skip all that trouble and use your human clone to begin with. [Answer] Because 300 years ago someone hacked the code of early androids and made them attack people. It was really bad. Modern androids have better security, but the stories and distrust never completely faded. (Most other reasons named in the answers are based on subtle differences between humans and androids. The question however seems to assume those differences are not present. Otherwise, many reasons can apply and can be combined) [Answer] ## Good Stuff: These are all good reasons. I'd add a few. There may be partial overlap, but I've tried to make them distinctive: * Workaday world: A well-made clone with good programming can stand in for you at work on those days you want to sneak out and go to the game. Your co-workers might even come to appreciate those days when you are extra-nice and endlessly helpful. * Genetic diseases: If you have a genetic illness, you can have a clone made without it, and have the clone father your children - it's all in the family, right? Once your health condition (and years) advances, replace your entire body with the younger, genetically clean version (brain swap). * Twisted Fidelity: You and the wife are bored with your sex life, so you each get a clone of the other. Each of you has a younger version of their spouse, and that's not really cheating, right? Clone wife listens and never complains. Clone husband never forgets your birthday. Threesomes and foursomes are easy, and it's a whole different definition of voyeurism. And if your spouse dies, then you have a replacement ready, so it doesn't hurt so much to lose your spouse when your spouse is there to make you feel better about it (say that three times fast). * Human aggression: Beating an android feels like breaking a vacuum cleaner. Evil people like hurting human beings. If you can clone people you dislike, then you can abuse, torture, or kill them with (more or less) impunity. It's also a child molester's paradise, since they thrive on power and control. This is like The Purge, but without the collateral damage. People can convince themselves it's not morally reprehensible. [Answer] Legally, AI & androids have free will (though clones do not). Early in the days of general artificial intelligence, adaptive AI systems became sophisticated enough that there was a bunch of debate about whether the were conscious or not, and what legal rights they had. This culminated in a lawsuit where an AI filed a suit to be legally recognized as being equal to a person. There was a bunch of complex legal maneuvering, but in the end the AI partially won its legal challenge, hinging in large part on the fact that the AI itself was the one who initiated the lawsuit. Following this, there was a flurry of legal challenges in the courts and new laws in the legislature, but when the dust settled it ended up that (effectively) any AI sophisticated enough to run a house or control an android was granted a legal status that, while not necessarily rising to full personhood equal to a natural-born human, was still granted the benefit of "free will" under the legal system. But the catch was this status is complex and has layers, edge cases and loopholes. For example, if you move an AI to a different machine, is it still the same individual? It was under this framework the clones were created - deliberately to fit in a loophole. According to the law developed for AI, the particular way the mindless clones are made means that it's not legally a separate person - it's effectively a body part, like hair or a kidney or blood plasma. So legally, people are free to sell them to others to be used as an object. Certainly, there's people out there advocating for clone rights. But the legal framework for free will is grounded on the concept of being able to petition for the state yourself. As of yet, none of the mindless clones have brought their own suit. (Such lawsuits have always been their owners commanding them to file, which legally negates the concept that they had free will enough to choose.) As such, it's easier/cheaper to get a mindless clone for some things. AI & androids (at least the sophisticated ones) are effectively employees, and you have to be careful to respect their legal rights of free will. Mindless clones are (legally) just property, and you can do with them as you wish. [Answer] There exists a nation of free androids. They engage in some trade with the humans. Mostly they keep to themselves and mind their own business. And that business is no business of the humans. Humans are not involved or informed about the doings of the androids. Humans are not welcome or unwelcome in the nation of free androids. Humans are inherently suspicious of the Other. Among the humans, politicians drum up support from the people by invoking the Android Menace. The free androids in their nation are speculated to have underground human baby farms, or cyborg armies, or occult war machines. They are speculated to be in league with Satan, or aliens, or both. It is easy to persuade people to overlook wealth dichotomies in their own society by diverting their attention to the scary Other. Politicians use this, as they always have. You can fool some of the people all of the time. Because of this, what few household androids exist are looked upon with suspicion. Persons owning such androids are looked on with suspicion. The military would like to use androids but political pressure prevents it. It is therefore rare to encounter an android and usually this is in circumstances where the android's role brings it into contact with as few people as possible. [Answer] Science cannot yet make an android's body feel the same as a human's body and people prefer to touch a mindless human than touch an android. A mindless human can be programmed to be the perfect girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife or domestic servant. People in wealthy societies like pets. Mindless humans could be kept as pets. [Answer] There probably is not a single reason. For some people, the androids still fall under "uncanny valley." They come close enough to human to be creepy in their failure. Other people object to beings as intelligent as they are, or more so, in a servile role for fear of revolt, or possibly just because it makes them feel inferior. Still others regard the whole maintenance and refueling of androids an infernal nuisance. Clones need nothing that the human inhabitants don't need. [Answer] If you ask 100 people why they would prefer a mindless clone to an android, then you would likely get 100 answers. Sure some will be variations of each other, but everyone's reasons will be their own. ## Clone Ingenuity Part of it will be if the mindless clones can still do things that a pre-programmed AI cannot. If that spark of, for a lack of a better term, human ingenuity is there, then it is likely that the clones will still have use in things where raw numbers and calculations cut it. At the end of the day, an AI is programmed. While it can learn, unless it is explicitly that type, it will be unable to learn things that are outside its programming. As one example, an android can cook a mean to mechanical perfection, knowing that Ingredients A, B, and C cooked at temperature N for T minutes will make a dish. The AI may be programmed to know how to substitute certain things in the event that there is not the inventory in the kitchen. It could also just say the dish is unavailable due to a lack of ingredients. A clone with the Chef Pack v12 could do something about it. Sure, it might not be the exact thing ordered, but the substitutions work great and were outside the scope of thing the AI would consider. A chef clone could also know the intricacies of certain dishes -- knowing how to handle them while they are in process. While yes, an AI can be programmed to pay attention during the process, their meal work is already choreographed. ## Extreme Work > > Killing a clone is illegal but doesn't count as murder. You just have to pay a fee to the original owner. > > > Picture a movie studio shooting a film and a character has to die as part of the movie. Yes, they could use a stunt double for the filming and do what they have done for generations. But a film executive gets an idea: Why not use a clone? While expensive, the lack of free will and the fact that the studio would likely own it means that it should be perfectly legal to do. You get to see your favourite actor bleed out with a knife in their heart and it's so realistic, you'd think it's real! But it can't be because they are still alive. Try not to think about how many deaths now are real deaths, even if they are clones. If this becomes the norm, expect contracts to stipulate how many clones can be made from the actors and for what purposed they can be used for. ## The Threshold Code Another reason I've not seen mentioned yet is that there are people that know just enough on the topic to be wary, or they learned about AIs and androids when they were starting to emerge and not as fully stable as they are now. While not necessarily amateur programmers, they are the people that know enough about computer code and building applications to be wary of an AI. This wariness could be built on misconceptions and incomplete knowledge. For a parallel, consider online shopping. Many trust it and do it on a daily basis. Then there are those that don't do it because they don't trust it. Sure it can be encrypted to high heck but it won't matter to somebody that's already made a decision about it. That and the intermittent news of data breaches where information is stolen does not help. [Answer] Nobody can organize a legislative majority necessary to restrict zombie clones. Because semi-sentient and non-sentient clones make reliable party-line voters, easily channeled into directed mob violence, easily pacified and controlled with propaganda (and other means). Some centuries prior, governments and corporations secretly produced a large number of bio-zombies for combat and low-wage labor. Natural, autonomous humans never saw it coming and had their real wages and living standards significantly reduced within just a few short decades. And because nobody could tell each other apart, zombie humans interbred with natural humans and produced more semi-sentient humans, easily swayed (although incompletely) with remote mindwipe technology. A very small, secretive clique of autonomous humans and extra-terrestrials planned these events unfolding; they control the communication networks, electronic and space-based surveillance, AI weapons, all the resources of hard power. They have access to quantum computing, anti-gravity transport, zero-point energy, tech that violates the known laws of classical physics; ordinary humans still believe in the conservation of energy and object permanence. The clique has fully automated the production and maintenance of their secret tech. They also control the formal institutions of power and prestige - and they will never, ever appoint or hire an ordinary human or zombie into a managerial role or allow them to win public office, much less have access to venture capital to become successful entrepreneurs. They believe that the ordinary humans deserve to be poor and powerless. [Answer] Mindless clones ("doubles") are described, as a minor plot element, in the 1965 science fantasy novel [Monday begins on Saturday](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_Begins_on_Saturday) by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Wizards in the novel create such clones of themselves to perform simple, menial tasks, such as waiting in line instead of their "owners" or lifting and moving heavy equipment. Being single-task creatures they have very simple organisation and as such are easy to create and not too expensive to destroy after they fulfill their role or malfunction. Similarly, in your world such mindless clones are popular because they are cost-effective and reliable for performing simple tasks. They don't need to be programmed; one's clone can receive any bit of knowledge or skill one possesses, therefore making a perfect helper in trades and household chores. [Answer] Everyone wants a couple of clones of themselves around for use as spare parts if needed, and you might as well make other uses of them since you’ve got to have them anyway. If you have an accident or a heart attack or whatever, there won’t be time to clone you a replacement organ — you need to have them available at all times in a walking spare parts repository. [Answer] The human clones would probably feel more real to their owners from a psychological standpoint. They could also be used as a source of organs, blood, and other body parts for transplants and such. [Answer] Many living things like the companionship of other living things. The Android may be better at most tasks but, it's not alive. For many people, it could just be a more advanced pet that you may have grown up with. It's legally permitted because the state doesn't make that style of moral judgements and the clones are not necessarily hard for the state to manage. The state may in fact prefer that people have clones as it does a better job at keeping them occupied. [Answer] As smart as the AI's have gotten you can still get them confused with statements like 'This statement is false'. The mindless clones however just keep looking in the distance doing what ever it is they where last tasked with, without worrying about the paradox. Particularly mischievous children therefore have found ways to skip out on their AI babysitter by getting the AI to try to reason about a paradox while the mindless clones just ignore the children. [Answer] Because in future humans would be relying on robotics, Tech, and AI. And the work is now on it's full capacity to make the world better. So Making human clones "mindless" will do their work and also for many other purposes such as soldier and for fighting laboring. and the higher minds would be controlling them. [Answer] A sense of power and status. Many people have a deep-seated psychological need to wield power over their fellow humans. Throughout history, people in power have owned slaves instead of simply paying employees, have made servants do things they could easily do for themselves, have humiliated others for the sake of their own status. Owning a robot servant does not fulfil this need. Owning pseudo-human servant, on the other hand, makes you feel important in a way that most people today can only dream of. ]
[Question] [ The castle is under siege. The inhabitants are running out of food but have plenty of gold. The attackers have food supplies but need money to keep them coming. Does it make sense for the attackers to sell food to the castle-dwellers at inflated prices in order to get all their gold rather than simply starving them out at the beginning? If this is so then why has no-one ever done it? --- I think perhaps I should say something about why I think it's a good idea. If you simply starve the castle-dwellers from the start then they will likely bury all their valuables in the hope of recovering them later. They will also start eating valuable animals such as horses. If you give them food in exchange for their valuables of all kinds then you have both the gold and the valuables. Once they no longer have anything worthwhile to pay you with, then you can start to starve them out. [Answer] It makes no sense, as the attackers will obtain all the gold of the besieged anyway, as soon as the defense has fallen. Selling food to the defenders is the worst possible action, as it increases the losses of the attackers who need to resupply, keep their troops healthy and motivated without being able to do much. Time is essential in a Siege. The longer it takes, the higher the risk of winter, reinforcements, changing alignments breaking the siege. And hunger is your best weapon, breaking your enemies' resolve, morale and ability to fight most reliably and within a reasonable amount of time. [Answer] In tribal warfare trading with the enemy is normal, even in the modern age in conflicts like the [ongoing Syrian war](http://jusoor.co/details/War%20Economy%20in%20Syria/457/en). The factions were trading fuel and weapons, even though those same weapons would likely be turned against them. So the concept itself is not entirely irrational. It's very much a matter of the sort of war you're having. However, half the purpose of a siege is to starve the castle out, so you're not going to be trading them food. Once the castle runs out of food you've won, so you're not going to act in a way that extends the siege beyond the minimum necessary, regardless of any other potential returns. If you're worried about them burying the gold, simply force them to ransom themselves. They have to give you the gold in exchange for free passage out. [Answer] This would be a good thing for a story. In general, those in charge who are directing a siege want to starve out the occupants of the city under siege. This is because the besieged site for whatever reason cannot be taken by direct military action. The troops who are actually conducting the siege might have very different motivations. These commoners might have been drafted to fight, compelled to stay by force or stay in the hope of getting loot when the city falls. Individuals among these common soldiers might very well surreptitiously take the chance of selling food to persons in the city under siege. These individuals make some profit in the short term - which makes sense if maybe the city is not going to fall or for some reason they are not going to get any loot. If someone catches one of these opportunists, that person might be in trouble - or might just have to hand over half the gold... [Blockade runners](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_runner) could be considered an example of this. A naval blockade is a type of siege. A port city dependent on resupply by sea is prevented from resupply by the blockading naval force. The blockade runners evade the blockade to resupply to city. Could the blockade runners be members of the same navy that is doing the blockade? A wily captain might try to butter his bread on both sides this way. [Answer] It's a genius idea, if you're the attacker. Poison the food, sell the food. Get the gold and the castle after a few days only. In all seriousness, if you're undersiege you should be very wary of anything the attacker would give you. I don't think accepting food from it is very smart. And from the attacker point of view, giving food without poisoning it will prolong the siege and it isn't something you want. * If your army is here, it isn't somewhere else defending your towns and forts which are open for an attack from another army. * The defenders may be waiting on reinforcements to break the siege. [Answer] # Negotiate their surrender If the besieged are starting to feel so hungry that they are ready to trade valuables for food, it's a bit like a partial surrender. Before that, their point was that they could protect their valuable from you. Now they need your goodwill to keep them safe. Then you know it's a good time to start negotiating their full surrender instead. After all, surrender is this: give us what we want and we'll give you what we want in return. So you can offer: > > Give us your gold, horses, access to your castle, head of your king > why not, etc. And we will give you some food, you stay alive and we > reduce the military presence at your door a bit. From now on you pay > taxes to us and your military serves us or die. > > > Instead of only offering some food for some gold. [Answer] This only makes sense if the gold is what the attackers want If the attackers are looking for land or political influence, then this doesn't make sense at all. Why prolong the engagement if the gold isn't the #1 reason you're there? Why risk your people and your own supplies? If the gold is what you want, selling food until you have all the gold is a dandy solution. If the gold isn't the single most important reason you're there, this is a remarkably foolish tactic. [Answer] The 'gold' would need to be something the defenders can easily get but the attackers cannot. Whether it's elves and mana, molepeople and minerals, or whatever, it needs to be something that the attackers wouldn't be able to (easily) get once they kill all the defenders. It costs a lot more to enact a siege than to be the one being besieged, and the main advantage is that resources aren't coming in to the besieged. So for them to draw out the siege (by feeding the defenders), it would have to be something worth a lot to the attackers, enough to be willing to draw out an expensive siege, and something they can't access themselves once inside the walls. [Answer] No besieged castle will ever buy food off the besiegers for the fear of poison or disease no matter the cost. All it takes is a tainted batch of food and suddenly you start to lose your defending force and weakening the rest. [Answer] ### This is Normal First of all, this is the case in so many other contexts as well. "Your money or your life" If the armed robber is really ready to kill someone, they won't even ask the question. They do ask the question because they don't really want to kill someone, they just want the money. But they are ready to kill if that's the only way to get the money. Similarly, the attackers don't really want to kill people, or have them die of starvation. They'd rather get the money, the castle and slaves. So they are perfectly content to get the gold and wait on the castle. The people willing to trade rather than starve are the same people who will, in the end, rather surrender and become slaves than die defending the castle. Well, the leaders will probably get killed anyway, as leaders tend not to make great slaves, but most of the people in the castle were effectively slaves to the owners of the castle anyway, so they'll gladly become slaves of the other side instead of dying of starvation if that is an option. Where do the attackers get the food? From the peasants surrounding the castle who have already been beaten into submission. So they don't actually spend the gold on food, they spend it on luxuries and send part of it (reportedly "all") home to their king. For those who say that they would never do such a thing, keep in mind that a common way of managing far-flung lands was to have them pay tribute (a.k.a. exorbitant taxes), so getting a steady income stream from the castle was really just a prelude to the long-term situation. (Until the revolt...) [Answer] What would be much more likely to happen in real life would be that the city would give the attackers the gold in return for their going away. [Historynet.com](http://www.historynet.com/medieval-warfare-how-to-capture-a-castle-with-siegecraft.htm) says that > > The most satisfying way to successfully conclude a battle was without fighting. Indeed, many more sieges were settled by negotiation, bribery, or forms of intimidation than open warfare. > > > This works if the attackers are in it mainly for the money. Once they're paid, they've gotten what they wanted, and the city does not have much gold left, so continuing the siege for the remaining gold would cost more money than could possibly be gained. And if the attackers are not in it just for the money, then if they feed the besieged city, it is going to take much longer for them to surrender. And once the city is conquered, they are very likely to get the gold anyway. [Answer] This seems like something that could happen under very specific circumstances, but it's not particularly likely. It would mean that both the attacker and the defender planned their actions terribly. In the case of the attacker they embarked on a siege attempt without making sure they had enough money available to complete it and had no more-reasonable contingency plans. In the case of the defender they had a big pile of money that they should have spent on larger storehouses and more provisions before anyone came to besiege the city. However, if both of those miscalculations happened, then... maybe? For example, if the attacker is short on funds to make payroll and morale is low enough that the only options are sell food to the city for gold to pay their troops or go home, the attacker might well make the offer. If the city is nearly starving but knows that reinforcements will be arriving shortly to break the siege if they can just hold out a little longer they might accept such an offer. Of course, the attacker would have to not know about the reinforcements or they'd be likely to just pack up and leave, and the city would be highly suspicious that the offer was either some kind of trick, or evidence that the attacker was about to run out of money and would be gone if they just hold out a bit longer... Diplomacy is complicated. Of course, if the attacker is solely in it for the money they will probably just demand some form of ransom payment ("danegeld") in exchange for lifting the siege and going away. If they have a good reputation for actually going away when paid the city would be quite likely to take them up on such an offer if it weren't too expensive. [Answer] Generally, this doesn't make sense. However, there are a few cases in which this could work: The most plausible example comes from history, where castles were sieged for gold. The castle would sometimes pay a massive sum for the siege to end. This is, in a sense, buying food. Another example would involve a plan to poison the food and then sell it to the castle. Obviously, the defenders would be stupid to buy poisoned food. However, such an attack could be massively more successful if the attackers first sold a smaller portion of non-poisoned food to build up trust or if the poison was slow acting. In a final case, if the attacking army has individuals who are greedy and not loyal, those individuals could secretly obtain and sell some food to the defenders in exchange for gold, which they would personally keep and profit from. Obviously, the certain penalty if they were caught would be death. I can't think of any other ways this would work. [Answer] It really depends on the reason for the seige. "starve them out" isn't the only reason to seige. Another is resource denial, e.g. if the result of the seige is that you cut the supply line of a third party, e.g. your enemy in a larger war, or another kingdom you want to weaken. Or keeping the denizens of that city from traveling to another place to petition a king, do an election or census. It also may be impracticable for the enemy to pinch off the food supply due to their inability to control smuggling. There is plenty of precedent for humanitarian aid to the enemy, ranging from the Japanese "give salt to the enemy" to [Hoover's food aid for the Communists](https://www.cornellcollege.edu/history/courses/stewart/his260-3-2006/01%20one/ru.htm) to [Operation Chowhound](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_Manna_and_Chowhound) during World War II/Great Patriotic War. [Answer] No one has ever done it because it would be self-defeating and probably unnecessary. For the defenders, a castle could have a year's supply of food and its own well. On the attacking side, a castle siege wasn't something you would enter into lightly. It took a great deal of preparation and planning and time was typically on the side of the defenders for several reasons: * A medieval army didn't have a supply line as a modern army would. They would raid the local area for supplies. After a time they might not actually have that much food themselves, especially if the loyal local peasants have implemented a scorched earth policy, killed all the livestock, burned the fields and run away. * Medieval armies take time to put together and to travel anywhere. The longer the defenders can hold out the more time their side has to send more and better help. * Noblemen typically would be held to give their king/next person up in the hierarchy a certain number of fighting days each year. Once those days are up, they'll want to go home and they probably will. As a defender, if you can hold out long enough the besieging army might just dissipate before your eyes. * A medieval army is very vulnerable to disease. Imagine a mobile village with very limited sanitary facilities and no meaningful medicine. Dysentery was rife and anything infectious could and did rip armies apart. The larger the force and the longer it sits in one place, the more vulnerable it is. The defenders don't want to die and the attackers don't want to die. So, in practice, what would often happen is that the siege would be a negotiated affair. The besiegers would offer a deal like, "if you're not relieved in 30 days then give us the castle and you can go free". Honour would be satisfied on both sides (with no repercussions) and each would have a way out without everyone getting killed. That would also give the defenders time to contact their superiors and find out what they want them to do. So there you are. You're a medieval commander, you know you're on a clock, and the castle defenders send out a messenger to ask you to trade for food so they can hold out for a bit longer. Do you trade or do you get a few of your less healthy looking men to defecate into the largest pot they can fill and catapult it into the middle of the castle along with the severed head of the fool messenger they sent out? [Answer] "The enemy" isn't a single body with a single mind. There are power-hungry generals, corrupt captains, opportunistic corporals, etc. All occupying military powers I can think of, had issues with black market deals. My family was saved because someone paid a corrupt Nazi general with creates of gold for their lives. Your food-for-gold deal doesn't have to be negotiated by the leaders of the opposing sides. The deal can be struck between a shady banker (or a mobster, a thief, a benevolent merchant, whatever), and a corrupt general (or supplies officer, or a driver, etc.) Self interest always wins. [Answer] Tactically it's a very bad idea. As mentioned in other answers, it only make the Siege harder. However, under certain strategic and political situation, this can be a plausible action. Let's first analyze the possible benefit of doing so for the siege side (considering the side under siege would accept the offer): 1. Possibly keep the army under siege where they are, so there won't be any unexpected activity (like trying to break the siege out of desperation) 2. Reducing the casualty in the castle, this can work in all different ways that I will elaborate below 3. Getting the gold right away So yes, as long as breaking into the fortress isn't your primary goal, we can imagine some scenarios that make this plausible: --- A token force trying to keep a fortress and its army in a strategically non-important place contained without paying too much casualty. Bonus if the local vassal also don't want to get involved in the larger scaled war but still have to show some level of resistance, then a hidden deal can be signed, the siege side maintain the siege, while also keep the fortress army well fed so they won't do anything unexpected. --- A war that near ending, yet there might be a key general under siege in a fortress, which can be a huge interruption for any future war effort for the attacking side. Thus attacker can lure the defender with a offer: provide the fortress with needed food for money. Trading with enemy during war time is a treasonous act, and can provide some serious political tempest inside the defenders, which might be even more efficient than just killing the general. A general killed in war is a hero; a general getting executed after war for politically reason though, with the generals supporters, can easily split or even destroy a country from inside. Or of course, you can always keep the truth as a timed bomb and keep the general's hand tied, or even better, create a puppet in the enemy military command system. --- Again a war is ending, and the fortress under siege is part of the truce deal, yes, the attacker side will be their new lord. Thus attacker may choose a softer act to avoid frictions in future rules, after all, it's very likely that the soldiers inside the fortress are just drafted from villages around it. --- The Great Khan is dead, and we are all going back home for the new Khan's election in two weeks. It's very unlikely we can force ourselves into the fortress in two weeks, not mentioning the casualty we have to take (soldiers are important resources considering the upcoming battle for the new Khan's throne). How about let's make a deal with the guys in the fortress for some gold that may be useful in future. ]
[Question] [ In my industrial-punk-with-airships setting, I think it would be cool to have ship-mounted and personal-use ranged weapons that shoot swords, axes, glaives, or other heavy melee weapons. I'd like this to be the kind of weapon that uses chemical energy rather than mechanical energy to fire, or at least doesn't need to be cocked by hand. Ergo, I think I'm looking for something like a gun that shoots swords. Some requirements: The weapon must be able to accurately launch a bladed weapon weighing roughly 5 pounds at a distance of 500 feet. Longer range, higher weight, and the ability to shoot multiple blades at once is better. The weapon must not require muscle power to fire. It's fine if it has to be manually reloaded, but no manual-crank-powered spring energy. The weapon should be small enough that several can fit on a sailing ship. No more than 2-3 times the size of a cannon. The weapon shouldn't use technology that couldn't be invented in an 1800s-era society. It's fine if it uses techniques or science that weren't known yet, as long as all the parts and materials were available at the time. It's fine if the weapon can only fire certain kinds of melee weapons, including ones built specifically for this purpose. The only hard requirement for what kind of weapon that it shoots is that, immediately after being fired (assuming the melee weapon isn't damaged in the process), the melee weapon can be picked up and used as a regular, effective melee weapon. For bonus points, I'd like to see a version that can be shrunk down far enough to be used as a personal defense weapon. It's fine if it's impractical, as long as it can be held and fired by a single person, and can accurately fire a blade up to 30 feet or so. This is not intended to be an effective weapon for a realistic military with a sane doctrine. This is intended to be more like a vanity weapon used to show off the designer's engineering skill, and the hubris of a combatant willing to use such an impractical weapon. I'd love it if the weapon met the basic requirements here, but "effective weapon for a real conflict" is not a requirement. [Answer] For propulsion, it's hard to beat explosives. You probably don't want to explode the actual weapon, so maybe you want a sealed-cylinder system. For instance, there are Russian pistols which shoot the SP-4 cartridge, which has an internal piston. The gunpowder explodes, and pushes the piston forward to launch the bullet, then the piston stops at the end of the cartridge - this stops any of the propellant gas escaping, making the round much quieter and eliminating any muzzle flash. For a much more 1800s-crazy version of this, Thomas Edison tested several variants on an early helicopter using an internal combustion engine powered by explosive guncotton! So let's say you have a system where you pile some guncotton (invented 1865), cordite (1889) or even black powder into a large piston, seal it up, then ignite it. You'd probably want some sort of complicated sealed ignition system to preserve cylinder pressure. Spark plugs were invented in 1839, so you could use one of those. Or use a percussion cap (1800), where the cap's body seals off the chamber. Propellant gases would push the piston forward, then you'd have some vents in the wall of the cylinder which were only exposed at the end of the stroke, allowing any remaining burning gas to vent. Or, as an alternative, you could use a giant steam cylinder like an aircraft carrier catapult. You could even use a steam engine to rotate a large flywheel, then use a clutch to tap off all that power to accelerate something from stationary to very fast in a short time. But steam is a lot less portable and needs much more time to warm up. So now you have propulsion. At this point, you could attach the piston to whatever you wanted! Perhaps your propulsion system is huge - six inches in diameter, reinforced with multiple layers of steel wire (modern steel invented 1855), attached via huge springs and chains to a catapult that hurls a bucket of swords, axes and knives onto the battlefield. The springs would stop the initial shock load from destroying the catapult, spreading the impulse over the course of half a second rather than a few milliseconds. (Not so important with steam or black powder, much more important with high-explosive cordite or guncotton.) Maybe you have a steam system to hurl your weaponry, and you tap a little bit of the steam to power a rotating wheel, attached to a sled, attached to the steam launcher. You load the wheel with a double-headed axe, specially weighted with a heavy pommel so that the center of mass is somewhere slightly towards the bottom of the handle. The wheel spins the axe at a terrifying speed until you trigger the launcher, which sends the sled, wheel and axe flying forward. When it hits the end of its travel, a lever on the sled pulls the wheel away from the axe, sending it flying unpredictably onto the battlefield. Or maybe you want to have something smaller, more like the size of a medium mortar. At this point you probably want to ditch the piston idea, and just push a single item of weaponry directly. At this scale, swords, knives, or maces are probably the most practical items to fling. Surround your weapon in a sabot - nowadays we'd use plastic, but a light wood like balsa would work, or even cardboard - so that it's the same diameter as the barrel. Put a large explosive charge behind it, then stick the end of the mortar into the ground and fire. Modern mortars can fling a 3.2-inch 10lb projectile up to 16,000 feet, so mass shouldn't be too much of an issue, although aerodynamics would probably reduce the range rather severely. The problem with a mortar is that you can only fire it indirectly, as you need to have the end in the ground to deal with the not inconsiderable recoil. (Assuming you don't hold it against a tree or a large rock.) If you want your sword-mortar to be capable of direct fire, you probably either want it to be used by really, really strong fantasy beings, or you want a recoilless system. The latter would look spectacular: you'd have to fire enough propellant or reaction mass out of the back to balance your 5lb weapon coming out the front. Let's hope there's nobody standing within a few hundred feet behind you. Having said all of the above, of course, since rockets have been around since China a thousand years ago, you could just tie rockets to your weapons! Let's talk about the actual weapons, too. Most weaponry is designed to be used for a long time, and carefully taken care of outside battle. It's heavy, it's designed to be comfortable in the hand, and it's not particularly going to like being flung 500 feet onto a stony battlefield. But if you're in the 1800s, you've got access to production-line metalworking technology - steam- or water-powered die forging and stamping presses, sharpening wheels, etc. I could see your weaponry being more rough-and-ready - designed to be manufactured en masse, flung once, picked up and used once, then discarded. Think a sword which is just a long blade, with a rudimentary knurled metal handle and a guard which sticks out only an inch to either side, and which doubles as stabilising fins. Or an axe along the same vein: two broad heads with the middles stamped out to save weight, and a spike on both ends so that it can hit end-on and still do damage. All in all, I thoroughly enjoy this idea. [Answer] So, you basically want a [Harpoon Cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpoon_cannon). > > A harpoon cannon is a whaling implement developed in the late 19th century and most used in the 20th century. It would be mounted on the bow of a whale catcher, where it could be easily aimed with a wide field of view at the target. Powered by black powder and later, smokeless powder, it would generally fire a large steel harpoon, either solid steel (cold harpoon) or fitted with an exploding black powder, or later, penthrite (PETN) grenade. > > > Just explain that the cannon is made to fit whatever weapon you want to shoot. And don't spears count as melee weapons? It would make everything easier. [Answer] Cool it may be, and to a degree you can do it, but it's a hair unrealistic. Might make good Manga, though. OK, for the record, bullets are cheap. So are arrows, bolts, spears, javelins, and just about anything else that's designed to fly through the air without spinning. Launchers for such objects are, for the most part, also cheap. Please keep this in mind. Yeah, it may be cool — but if you're ever forced to defend the decision, it'll be unlikely that you can justify it. Having said that, allow me to introduce you to the over-hand lever-action baseball launcher (image courtesy ingrams.com). [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GUAVp.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GUAVp.jpg) Now, there are reasons 99.9% of the pitching machines aren't made this way anymore. That's because baseballs, like bullets, arrows, etc., can be launched more efficiently in almost any way but this one. Why it was the first type of pitching machine to be built is beyond me. Unless the designers just couldn't get the image of a pitcher's arm out of their heads. Nevertheless... now you need to think "throwing knives." [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ze2MLm.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ze2MLm.jpg) Image courtesy GettyImages.com. And I'm convinced the hat makes a difference. the goal here is to throw the weapon with an intentional spin (in the hope of some accuracy). So, what you're building is an automatic knife-throwing machine that happens to have fittings for swords, axes, etc. It'll take a ton of energy to give it any distance, you'll be constantly maintaining and repairing the overly complex solution, your aim outside of, oh, 25 feet will stink magnificently, but the sight of having sword after sword thrown at you would scare the snot out of me. Throw them fast enough and I won't have time to pick up a souvenir. And Agrajag and VLAZ are absolutely right... as cool as this may be, what you're really doing is arming your enemy. Remember, bullets, arrows, etc.... are cheap. Oh, bonus points... No can do on the machine shrinky. Newton's third law (equal and opposite reaction...) makes this idea a non-starter. You need a machine that can provide all the force and leverage necessary to launch the weapon. Most of us can't do that with a single sword or battle axe with our own hands (it looks cool, have you ever actually tried it? the idea makes my wrists ache) — much less with a machine strapped to our arms. So, you'll be towing your personal machine (see image above) behind you. Unless you want to launch those little plastic swords some shops use to keep hamburgers closed. You could do that from your wrist. :-) [Answer] This concept is extremely silly. It wouldn't work in any RPG setting remotely serious. That said, I love silly stuff. So let me chime in with my own ridiculous invention. --- A small, water-stained paper flyer finds its way to your hands. There is a strange, spiked cannon-like contraption on it that looks like the unholy cross between a mortar and a cover for a heavy metal album depicted on it. By its side, there is a medieval-looking flail depicted with a rather large spiked steel ball and a single, smooth cannonball. > > THE ADVANCED FLAILMASTER PRO 3000‚Ñ¢ > > > Are you tired of the logistics needed to supply your troops with melee weapons while they are in the middle of a heated battle? Are you fed up with those complaints about the poor quality of the equipment you're providing to your grunts? Are your ACME swords always breaking? > > > We have the solution. > > > The Advanced Flailmaster Pro 3000‚Ñ¢ by NotMad Industrial‚Ñ¢ uses the incredible power of BLACK POWDER and SPRINGS to deliver a very dangerous load on the heads of your enemies and ~~quality~~ usable weaponry for your troops! > > > Its special cannonballs are actually a very smart, spring powered device that unfolds itself into a heavy spiked flail upon launch. The spikes, chain and handle are held inside the shell of the cannonball by a delicate set of glass switches and powerful springs. With the power of the launch from the cannon body, the switches break, releasing the spikes and deploying the handle mid-air. When the weapon lands it inflicts not only heavy damage from the heavy iron object falling from the sky but also provides your army with bashing weapons to continue the fight. > > > And don't worry! The ADVANCED FLAILMASTER PRO 3000‚Ñ¢ comes with a special Terms of Service agreement that forbids its deployed weapons to be used by your enemies! If one of them decides to use the deployed weaponry against you, you are entitled to sue them back!\* > > > \Not actually guaranteed to work against barbarian lawless hordes and murderhobo adventurers. Or lawyers. Or, anyone, really. Just don't rely on this. > > > [Answer] Ok, so first you design the ammo. Easiest would be to make something like ballistic knife. [![ballistic knife](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZPGU5.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZPGU5.jpg) It's not only great projectile on it's own (because even if it won't open it's still a bullet) BUT the spring give it flexibility (try to drop a regular knife from 30 feet and see if it usable) needed for later use. The point of a ballistic knife is to LAUNCH a blade from the barrel. You can modify it so if won't open it can still be picked up and spring can be released manually. How do you launch it? Pneumatic cannon. You have ship, you have steam, you have energy that can be used. Potato launcher but you change the potato with a cylinder that have blade hidden inside. (which can be used as a personal weapon but it's counter productive AS you have weapons on you already in the form of the knifes). [Answer] ## Early bayonet. Simple as that. Just don't even bother solving* the "being able to shoot without removing bayonet" problem. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7eHYQ.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7eHYQ.png) This fit down the barrel of the musket. Which means you could not fire the gun with the bayonet attached. This was a big pain on the battlefield, because you had to make the "gun to bayonet" transition while the enemy was charging at your line. If you got all fumble fingers, you could find yourself holding a discharged gun and a weird dagger. They were in a big hurry to fix that. We're not, we're gonna use it*. Meet the grenade launcher. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1MKWd.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1MKWd.png) See the family resemblance?* The deal with these things is you load a "blank" round into the rifle (full propellant charge, no bullet) and the propellant launches the grenade. That's a rather straightforward operation for a muzzle-loading musket; just don't load the bullet. Although if we are already using shells, you can simply use a ["bullet trap" aka "shoot-through"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle_grenade#%22Shoot-through%22_type) grenade launcher which adds the bullet to the kinetic energy of the launcher. Those are prevalent today and not technologically difficult. ## So instead of the grenade, we shoot the dagger. Just like that. Final answer! [Answer] Your question didn't make it entirely clear, but assuming that black powder is allowed: A spear/harpoon gun would be my first choice. It fits the projectile weight and range requirements and appears to also be a viable [infantry weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarmann_harpoon_rifle), if maybe a little clunky. I'd advise against firing multiple projectiles, the cost in complexity and accuracy is just too high at your tech level. However, modifications that allow for a faster reload, e.g. with a "magazine" of spears and pre-packaged powder charges, seem feasible. A [glaive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaive) is essentially a fancy spear and should work just as well, as long as you don't make it too top heavy. I can't see a way of making axes work, but [flechette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flechette)-like swords or kinves with a well designed [sabot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabot) might be within the ability of your engineers and work more or less the same way. Last but not least, if you're going after personnel, sails or other "soft" targets: [Shrapnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cannon_projectiles) was invented in the late 1700s, and grapeshot/canister shot were known before that. A bundle of short, broad knives might serve this purpose reasonably well, although there'll always have to be a compromise between their usefulness as a projectile vs. as a melee weapon. This might be your only viable option if you want to fire multiple weapons at once. [Answer] <https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a19905/rifled-slingshot-gun-joerg-sprave/> This link is about a hobbyist who created a pump action slingshot that fires spinning throwing knives. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ptAlY.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ptAlY.png) It isn't all that accurate and the knives then to tumble, but it's intimidating. [Answer] ## Cannon with Sabot I don‚Äôt know why everyone is overthinking this. You specified that you don‚Äôt want it to be more than two times the size of a cannon, so just use a cannon. It‚Äôs trivial to make a 12 inch cannon with the tech level you have specified, and that is more than enough bore diameter to fit any practical melee weapon. Once you have the cannon, prepare specialized sabots for whatever you want to shoot. If airships are fighting, shrapnel shot is already gonna be popular and effective, so instead of a lightweight sabot designed to drop away, build it out of frangible matetial. At this point, you actually have a relatively practical weapon. The presence of a melee weapon among the shrapnel is not necessarily detrimental, even if it isn‚Äôt beneficial, and while it increases the cost of each projectile, it won‚Äôt be by a ludicrous amount. [Answer] Fire them in the sheath with the hilt projecting from the gun barrel. On firing, the sheath is pushed out of the barrel by the usual cotton wad. The sword and sheath turn in mid-air because of the extra drag on the hilt. The air resistance on the hilt slows the sword slightly and unsheathes it like a two-stage rocket. The sheath flies ahead spinning wildly and causing chaotic injuries, immediately followed by the blade flying like an arrow towards the target. [Answer] Langrage shot. <http://www.zarkonnen.com/airships/types_of_shot> [![langrage shot](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lf9C0.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lf9C0.jpg) In this image, spikes are standing in for swords. Formula: 1. Load cannon with powder. Load wadding. 2. Wrap swords up in a cylinder. Cylinder should be smaller in diameter than cannon barrel. If diameter is bigger, wrap cylinder tighter. 3. Place cylinder in cannon barrel. 4. Fire cannon. I take it that the use of Langrage shot was born of desperation. There is no reason a person willing to fire spikes would not just as easily fire swords if they were handy. I could totally see the gunners gathering up anything metal off of the many fallen soldiers around them, wrapping the haul up in some dead guy's pants, and shooting it. [Answer] You can do it, but it's not going to be pretty. There are two problems: recoil and accuracy. Propelling a 5-lb projectile 200 yards has a major, easily-calculated cost:muzzle velocity. At a minimum (using about a 45 degree launch angle), you're talking about 44 m/sec. Just to indicate how difficult it would be to use, the maximum altitude of the projectile would be 50 meters and time of flight would be on the order of 7 seconds. If nothing else, targets could simply dodge it. If we go to something more reasonable (in terms of accuracy), you might accept a launch elevation of 10 degrees, and this will require a muzzle velocity of about 340 m/sec. This is just about pistol bullet velocity, with a projectile mass (3 kg or so) which is roughly 200 times that of a .45 caliber bullet. It's pretty much guaranteed to knock you off your feet and break your shoulder. So, you'll have to go to a shoulder-fired recoilless rifle similar to the old US 90 mm or the modern Carl Gustav. Both of which have a considerable back-blast zone which will kill your comrades if you're not very careful. I wouldn't want to try this with black powder propellants, but that doesn't mean it's actually impossible. Once you have launched your melee weapon, most of them will have horrendous accuracy, since they are not remotely stable aerodynamically. A sword, for instance, will have no stability at all, and will quickly tumble and go wildly astray. I'd guess that your best bet would be either a one-handed ball-and-chain flail (with a very short handle) or a set of nunchucks. These would behave in flight rather like chain shot. Accuracy is still bad, but the idea seems cool. [Answer] There is a fundamental issue in your request. Humans are pretty puny and we have very poor natural offensive and defensive capabilities (no claws, soft skin, weak teeth). So, we developed armour to defend us, and weapons to augment our offensive attacks. Let's take the example of a human vs human. Without weapons humans have to punch, scratch, kick, and bite. If you add armour into the mix (any kind, chain mail, plate armour, kevlar, tree bark, leather, etc...) punching and kicking quickly becomes dangerous for the attacker (you don't want to punch chail mail, or those Gothic style suits of armour with all those nasty spikes). Also, some humans were better at fighting than others. So, humans made weapons that increased thir offensive abilities.. Clubs, knives, and swords are great but they are close range weapons and gave an advantage to martially more talented humans. Throwing knives at people doesn't work very well, especially if they're armoured. Axes, maces, and warhammers require much less finesse but greater strength, although you still have the issue of having to get super close to an enemy to attack them. Spears increased offensive range. Ranged weapons like arrows, ballistae, and such, changed the game forever. Now, if you really think about the development of weapons, especially ranged weapons, you have knives that became swords (in order to attack at a greater distance), which became spears (in order to attack at a greater distance), which became arrows (in order to attack at a greater distance). Eventually, arrows became cannonballs, since they deliver much greater energy to the target at a much further range, although those were hard to carry around and aim accurately, so they became bullets. Bullets are essentially a tiny version of arrows and arrows are essentially tiny knives that are really good at flying through the air. Now, why would you want to throw a weapon that is really good at close range? It would be like using a gun to chop up your salad veggies, or asking how to use a nuclear reactor to grill your meat. Yes, it's hot enough to cook, but it's incredibly silly to try to reduce the extremely high temperatures to one that wouldn't burn your steak to a crisp. Use the specially desisgned grill you bought at Home Depot instead! Similiarly, don't throw swords at people. Instead, throw the tiny swords commonly called "arrows" or "bullets". They are cheaper, lighter, more accurate, more reliable, and you won't have to bend over backwards to invent a new mechanic. If you want some interesting "throwy thing" check out the Hwacha or Chinese Repeating Crossbow (Chonuku?). Also, apparently, people used to stuff random projectiles (literal garbage) into the muzzle of blunderbusses if they ran out of ammo, although that might just be a myth. (In the historical documentary "The Pirates Of The Caribbean, there is a scene where an immortal pirate/skeleton gets a fork stuck in his eye during such a display) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwacha> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow> P.S This does not necessarily accurately reflect te development of weapons in human history (sharp wooden stick, aka spears, were probably used before swords. This is just a theoretical exercise in weapon methodology. ]
[Question] [ I am imagining a small country with a relatively small population; say around five million people, where by law everyone living there needs to be a millionaire or a multimillionaire/billionaire. So since everyone living in my fictional country is rich, what could the average price for basic needs such as food, energy, basic clothing, hygiene products, etc. be, compared to the average prices in real life? I might be wrong but my reasoning is that if everyone in a certain location can afford to have a very high standard of living then everything will be much more expensive than the average but maybe not. I don't know much about economics. [Answer] . . . YEN! [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hgVnK.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hgVnK.png) Such a country already exists my friend. One of the most populous and powerful countries on the planet. May I introduce the Mysterious Island Nation of Japan (Nippon) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mExq1.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mExq1.png) Average monthly rent is about 50,000¥ per person. That means 600,000¥ per year. And that's just for rent. I suspect most people spend that again on groceries, utilities, medicine, clothes, and leisure activities. That comes to at least 1,200,000¥ per person. Japan is full of millionaires. [Answer] If only millionaires are allowed to live there, then either they heat their own microwave dinner, or the cooks have a hell of a commute. That would be thinkable for a place like [Monaco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco), if it wanted to try, but perhaps not for a country of 5 million. So the logical approach would be that only millionaires are allowed to live there in their own right, or become citizens. Non-millionaires are only allowed in if they are in service to the millionaires, or other jobs which cannot be outsourced. In that case, one might assume that workers are paid slightly more than in their home society, to make up for the aggravation of working in a country that will deport them as soon as they become unemployed, or retire, and that might not even allow their family to come. Young professionals might work there as expats for a few years, save much of their salary, and then return home to start their own business, or raise a family. But then Germany had an idea like that, and guess what, the workers wanted to stay and raise their family in the host country. [Gastarbeiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter) became immigrants, many of them without resolving the citizenship issues. Senior professionals would have to be paid a lot to leave their family at home. Enough to afford regular commutes. Or the family members get make-work jobs to allow them in. [Answer] Nowadays it is common that if you wish to immigrate to a country, you need to either have a job offer or, in lieu of that, a proof of funds so that you can support yourself for at least one year on your own. So, for comparison, a country like Canada currently requires most immigrants applying for permanent residence to demonstrate that they have [a minimum of 13,213.00 CAD in 2022](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/express-entry/documents/proof-funds.html). That's about 10,551.16 USD right now and is supposed to last you for a whole year. As someone who lives there, I can tell you that being able to live for a year with that amount is a complete and utter [redacted], unless you are willing to share accommodations with wild animals and hunt for your own food. At least it's Canada, so even the bears are somewhat nice. With that said, Monaco requires you to [deposit around half a million Euros in a Monegasque bank](https://residencies.io/residency/monaco/temporary-residency/mc1) before you can even apply for residency. You read that right, half a million Euros. That is about 552,250.00 USD right now. However, some banks will require double that amount to open an account for a foreigner. That is supposed to last you one year, but I suspect even so the local folk would still look down on you for being cheap. So yeah, just look at the general conditions of living in Monaco and you should have an idea of what it is to live in a filthy rich place. By the way, many people manage to live in Monaco on a job offer. Say you want to be someone's butler, supposedly you can live on [11,000 USD a month](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Monaco&displayCurrency=USD) (about 62 USD/hour on most months), but that is really Spartan and you won't be a permanent resident. [Answer] To put things slightly differently, you may have a country where the citizens are required to be super rich compared to the rest of the world's population... but they'll still need servants, lackeys, chauffeurs, minions, gofers and the like, who won't necessarily be citizens even though they might be residents. The other thing about rich people is that they don't get to be rich by spending money. They might invest their money, but they tend to either not spend as much, or not stay rich. If you don't consider this to be a thing, consider the footwear economy (originally proposed by Terry Pratchett). My wife buys 30 dollar shoes every few months, and wears them until they wear out, then buys another pair. Over 20 years, she might have bought 60 pairs for 1800 dollars. I wear 500 dollar R.M. Williams boots... but a pair lasts me 10-20 years, so I might buy 1 or 2 pairs in that time. So over that time, who has spent less on footwear, the person who buys cheap footwear, or the person who buys expensive footwear? So, considering that rich people (who stay rich) don't need/want to spend a lot more money long term than the rest of us, and won't want to be spending any more than necessary on their employees, it can be argued that the cost of living won't be significantly different to that of living in any other places with the same standard of living, otherwise not many rich people will want to live there. [Answer] Inflation, can cause the value of money to go down so far that the value of a million units becomes a pittance. This process, hyperinflation, can make millionaires out of everybody, and yes, it is more likely to happen in countries without infrastructure to guard against it, like small nations. See [Weimar Republic, Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic#Hyperinflation) [Answer] # Wealthy, but somewhat ordinary A million $ sounds like a lot of money, but thanks to inflation isn't as it may have been in the past. A good example of this is Australia, where the median wealth is ~$238,000 USD - it's a wealthy society with strong social safety nets, but otherwise resembles many other countries. Not exactly the OP scenario, but not far off. The claims that somehow there wouldn't be any service staff seem gross exaggerations - a wealthy populace still needs service staff, so such roles would be paid enough to attract workers. # Or is it? What is more interesting is how this would be implemented, and the societal attitudes. For example, how would immigration be handled? Would non-millionares be denied entry? Similarly, what if you lose wealth, and become a non-millionaire? Would you be imprisoned? Most importantly how would society justify these actions to themselves, and what kind of culture would it create? Is this a risk-averse society, only for the reasonably wealthy? Or is this a place where risks are taken and losers are exiled to make their fortune before returning? Are government services exemplary, or extremely limited relying on the private sector? This will be far more interesting, than the exact wealth of individuals. [Answer] The end of NPSF3000's answer is basically the same questions I'd be asking. You say "only millionaires are allowed to live here"... so what happens if a citizen becomes a non-millionaire? Do they get deported, or killed, or otherwise very-bad-consequences? If so, then I wonder how different this would be from the real world, in which (I vaguely, viscerally, believe; and I don't think I'm alone in believing) there are bad consequences for letting your net worth reach \$0? In other words, is this world isomorphic to our world except that every citizen at birth stuffs \$1 million cash into their mattress and then lives the same life they would have had otherwise? However, in the real world, there really aren't terribly terrible consequences for hitting \$0 net worth. For one thing, you can always get a loan, if your credit is good. If I have only $900,000 in my mattress, but I also have a \$200,000 bank loan (or the capability to get one), will your country still count me as a millionaire? How do you even measure net worth? Right now my (real-world) bank reports that my net worth is negative, because I have more large loans outstanding than (they believe) I currently have assets-on-hand. But I also have a job with income, so my credit is good. I also have a certain amount of equity in a house, which the bank doesn't care to track as part of my "net worth": would your country count a house or a job as part of the net worth that goes into "being a millionaire"? Would your government outsource the tracking of net worth to some kind of credit bureau, or would the government try to track net worth itself, or what? Actually, you know who frequently has a net worth in the deep negative numbers? Children. Would you need a rule that nobody's allowed to have kids until they and their spouse have a combined net worth of \$3 million, so that they could put $1 million into the kid's trust fund at birth? What happens if a couple with net worth \$3.5 million accidentally end up with twins? Does this country have a functioning government? (It must, right? or who'd enforce this specific rule?) If so, then the bookkeeping would become a lot simpler if the government just decreed that every citizen would henceforth "own" \$1 million from the government's own vaults — sort of like ["40 acres and a mule"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_acres_and_a_mule) crossed with the elevator pitch for [Tether](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_(cryptocurrency)). Then no citizen would ever be in danger of becoming not-a-millionaire, and everyone could just go about their business as usual. In short, this whole idea seems like it needs a lot of details fleshed out; it's very complicated to implement. And because it's so complicated to implement, it raises the important question of why — why does your country work this way? What's the benefit? Why would anyone go to all this trouble? Figure out the why (in-universe), and you might get a lot further along in answering the rest of the how. [Answer] Unfortunately, the answer here depends heavily on your definition of 'living there'. For this answer, I took 'millionaires' to just mean 'people with large wealth relative to the rest of the world' If you define 'living there' by citizenship, then it would be very similar to many current countries. Except that anyone who isn't a citizen would lack the ability to be active in government or have other rights and privilege's of citizenship. In the US, many people live just fine without having citizenship. If you define 'living there' by some duration of stay, then the answer would change drastically based off of how long that duration is and the size of the country, how open or closed the borders are, how available and efficient transportation is. Imagine the US only allowed millionaires to spend more than 24 hours in the country, then you may still have individuals commuting into the US for work, but only around the borders. In fact, some people already commute into the US for work. However the further inland you go, the bigger the changes would be to current reality. If you were 10+ hours traveling time away from a border, nearly no one would live there. The cost of living would be insane... the only people you could hire would be other millionaires who also would have to be paid a rate to justify them living and working in the middle of the country instead of living an easy life near a border where they could say... go to starbucks with a barista who is not a millionaire commutes in daily. Those are basically the two extremes, with your world being somewhere between the two depending on your definition of 'living there'. If you extend the duration of time a non-millionaire could be living in the country up from 1 day, you approach the other answer where non-millionaires live in the country permanently just don't have the privilege's of citizenship. If you make the country smaller and smaller, with efficient and open borders and transportation, then you have a world that drifts from the towards the non-millionaires living as semi-permanent residents just without citizenship. They would merely spend 15 minutes commuting into the country (if it were small enough.) [Answer] ### Think Quality of Life, not Wealth Others have mentioned that being a "millionaire" is simply a question of how money is denominated, and a simple law re-denominating the local currency can make anyone with even a single cent into a millionaire. I'll assume that you don't mean this, but are actually referring to "rich" or "wealthy" people. The reality is that "wealth" is defined as a measure of disparity. Someone is wealthy if they have significantly more resources than others in their community. If everyone in your country is able to afford the latest Xbox, gourmet coffee machine, sports car, and a house in the suburbs, but nobody can afford a private helicopter, you don't have a country where everyone is wealthy, but a country with a decent [quality of life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_life). I will guess that you are probably thinking more of quality of life measures, so look into that. Earth on Star Trek is probably one of the best fictional examples of a society with a very high quality of life (nobody has to work if they don't want to, everyone gets free healthcare, food, and college, nobody is stuck living on the streets, doctors hand out organ-regenerating pills like it was candy, etc.), but where nobody really qualifies as rich because money isn't a thing anymore. By contrast, a hypothetical lower quality of life medieval-like society in which only the super-rich can afford indoor plumbing would mean that indoor plumbing, and not sports cars or Malibu condos, would be the prominent status symbol of wealth. The fact that sports cars wouldn't exist in the setting doesn't negate the idea that some citizens are wealthy and some are not, because the measure is one of disparity. The difference between them and us is that their quality of life is much lower, not their wealth. So, think high quality of life in your society, not wealth. In your society, everyone can afford a personal helicopter, yacht, homes on both coasts, and a sports car for each day of the week. Only some people in your society can afford one of those 100 billion super yachts or one of those 500 billion private spaceships that your society's nascent space industry is starting to market. Those are your "rich" people. [Answer] Let's assume that the statement "everybody is rich" means rich compared to other countries when you convert the currencies. (Another definition of "rich" could be how much of a given basic subsistence item like flour and oil one can buy from a month's income or the median wealth, but you are, I think, asking about that price.) Examples are basically all industrial nations compared to less developed countries, or Switzerland compared to the rest of Europe. The effects are clearly visible: Wages as well as the cost of living (e.g. in Switzerland) are higher than in the poorer countries (e.g. Germany). Average Western incomes can sustain a [more luxurious life](https://smartasset.com/retirement/how-to-retire-in-thailand) in many African or Asian countries. There is no reason to assume that the effect would not continue if the wealth is driven to a greater extreme. Prices rise partly together with wages in the inflation that [Daron's tongue-in-cheek answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/227666/2374) describes; but it is only partly so because imports still are cheap. Simple items like basic foods will be somewhat more expensive than in other countries because higher costs for transportation and wages inland result in a surcharge. But basic items will still be cheaper relative to incomes than in other countries. Prices for limited resources will react stronger to rich buyers, as can be seen in the housing market of the U.S. bay area. There is only so much area but a steadily growing income and population, resulting in extreme real estate price hikes. ]
[Question] [ A group of individuals from a technologically advanced alien race have been found to be intellectual dissidents by their peers and exiled to Earth as a consequence. Earth was selected as the location of their sentence as it happens to be hospitable for their species and the convicts have been given some technologies (detailed below) to help them make a new life for themselves on earth. These aliens are not humanoid. They cannot disguise themselves as people. Furthermore they do not want to reveal themselves to humanity at large, thus they must stay hidden from the general population. They are however willing, if not terribly keen, on interacting with small groups (such as government officials) as long as they believe their existance will not be divulged publically. The aliens are essentially entirely carnivorous and the entire group requires about 60,000 kilograms of meat to sustain itself per day. They were not given technologies to synthesize artificial meat, nor were they given herds of animals to farm. Furthermore because of certain ethical and cultural considerations, they wish to live in harmony with their habitat and thus they greatly prefer to kill/farm/consume species which they deem as "invasive/"unchecked", species which are causing untold havoc to the ecosystem. This (unfortunately for us) happens to be, according to them, humans. So the question remains, how will this group of aliens harvest and ship 60,000 kilograms of human meat (when you account for all the non-meat part of humans beings that adds up to about 2000 individuals, by the way) per day to the hidden central location where they all live? --- Additional information: * They have settled in a large underground cavern which they themselves created located in Nevada, USA. * The technologies they possess include advanced computers capable of translating mostly accurately any human language, hacking any website/online service with low to medium level security and running calculations dozens of times faster than Earth super-computers. * In addition they have extremely advanced batteries which should be able to fuel their small-society for centuries and the ability to manufacture dozens of androids which can be customised to exactly copy the likeness/speech of any human and which possess the software needed to engage in basic inter-personal interactions. * They can create bioweapons and artificial viruses. * The aliens have rather extensive knowledge on physics (FTL travel, wormhole creation) and engineering (fusion reactors, robotics). * They would prefer to eat healthy human beings (no eating sick or elderly if at all possible; extra credit to answers which do not require them to do so). * These aliens have no qualms with majorly distorting the status quo. They can use their influence to topple governments, inflict worldwide/nationwide plagues, etc... [Answer] I'm going to go with "can't be done." 2,000 people a day (I'm assuming adults based on your offered statistics) or 730,000 people a year would be beyond noticable, even if you're harvesting planet-wide. Approximately 55 million people die each year ([source](http://www.ecology.com/birth-death-rates/)). You're talking about one out of every 75 people. The collaborating government would need to come up with some way to convince people the deaths were natural, the cremations were expected, and that the lack of a body between last-breath and first-flame wasn't a big deal. Facebook would be glowing hot with conspiracy theories within a month. As mentioned in your comments, corpses might be a solution... but we're back to swapping them out somehow. The consipiracy would be enormous --- and it's difficult to believe. Sorry, mate. But while people may come up with some clever ideas, you need to seriously reduce that number for any of them to be believable. It would be easier to explain the dissapearance of 200 winos a day by colluding with the city governments of some big cities than 2000 people generally. Unfortunately, there aren't enough winos and homeless people for that number to not be noticed very quickly. EDIT: I'm not even going to go with 200 winos — because even that is per-day. If you spread it out among the 100 largest cities in the world, maybe... but now you're talking about a massive shipping conspiracy to get the people to the dinner table. Having said this. Take the time to look into how the Nazis were shipping and killing the Jews during WWII. It's a morbid subject and an utterly distasteful (if not downright insulting) reason to use the historical context, but it's the closest you'll get to the complexities of genocidal behavior. And at the quantities you're proposing, it's genocidal behavior. EDIT: A coment by @Ando-Jurai suggests a solution. Given that our enterprising aliens have a decent storage technology, they could periodically manipulate the world to war to hide harvesting. If they have the ability to generate earthquakes, they could do the same. I'm still worried about the numbers involved. You'd have to devestate very high populated areas to hide the take. But, maybe... [Answer] These aliens would not foment chaos and war. What they want is large numbers of humans having large numbers of babies, eating well, living through reproductive age and long enough to help with the rearing of grandchildren, with the main reason for non accidental mortality being the harvest of the aged for meat. The aliens would therefore use their tech and act behind the scenes to 1: Promote sustainable intensive agriculture. This means irrigation, erosion control, synthetic fertilizer, aquaculture. 2: Promote vegetarianism. It is a more efficient use of land resources. 3: Promote peace. War causes disruption, decreases agricultural output, increases mortality rates, and reduces available humans (and their meatiness). 4: Eradicate disease. This means mass vaccinations, clean water, safe childbirth, effective medicines. 5: Encourage large families. One way to do this is to keep people agrarian with a need for much man / woman power. 6: Promote obesity. The obese have more caloric value. Interestingly, some vegetarian populations ( I am thinking of Indians) do have a tendency to be large - it is possible that a high carbohydrate diet can push metabolism that way. The aliens might also alter the human fecal biome to this end. 6: Harvest. Ideally this would not be some surprise to the people involved - that again makes fear and chaos. It would an orderly end of life. In the Burroughs Mars books, old people voluntarily take a trip down the river to the promised land (where, as it turns, out they are eaten by apes) but the process is voluntary. Similarly in Soylent Green, tired old people report to recycling centers for a peaceable death (and, it turns out... well, watch the movie you youngsters. It is good). All in all having people lead a productive, full bellied, disease free life with their large families and check out at age 60 to become food seems like a pretty decent trade: certainly a better quality of life for a large proportion of the populace who today live hungry, scared and sick. We would not be farmed. We would be tended. [Answer] A new company LifeStore Inc. has taken up the challenge of harvesting flesh at an early age and storing it for use in later life medical care as needed. The game is up if you don't actually offer the promised improved health care, but such a thing should not be a problem for the ETs (BTW, be sure to pronounce ETs as eaties). Surprisingly, (and most convenient), it turns out that the necessary amount to be harvested is 0.25 kilograms of mostly muscle preferable at age 16 (including choice meat cuts). While this amount is quite a bit and requires some recovery time after the muscle is removed, you recover full function in relatively short order. Since over 100 million people reach age 16 each year, you can harvest over 25 million kg per year, which is equal to about 68,500 kg/day. All the meat the ETs want with spare capacity. You even have a variety of cuts; well-marbled Americans may be a popular choice. Even low-tech humans could do this minor surgery and freeze the product for shipping to Nevada. This is not a problem in 3rd-world countries if you supply the liquid nitrogen and make some basic medical supplies available for free at the LifeStore clinics. LifeStore would also make life-saving tech available for these 3rd world nations for humanitarian reasons (well, an ET meat supply reason at least) Initial harvest can actually take place at up to age 60, though the results are not as good, and would be considered worthless if you already contracted the disease you are trying to fix (to preserve the illusion of harvesting being necessary). This also allows for quick build of the initial inventory, though the quality is not as prime as that harvested at age 16. If you fail to submit to harvesting, you will not be able to get the new advanced health care options for treating cancer, heart disease, etc., and since LifeStore inc, plans for the long term, there is no charge for the initial harvesting (to maximize compliance). Social conventions will take care of the slow adopters (You mean you would let your kids die because you would not allow the harvest?) There would be pro-harvest movies, music and television of course. Of course, cheaper cuts for lab-grown human flesh would certainly be available, but all ETs will much prefer the natural meat, because otherwise they would simply do this themselves. This would be non-disruptive to humans except for the effects of things like curing cancer, and supplies all of the meat for the ETs without revealing their presence. A false front that looks like a real medical center for all of the goodies would satisfy skeptics when the medical miracles happen as promised. Note that the medical benefits do not actually have to depend on using the samples at all. If you doubt muscle can be regrown, [we have already done it](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/health/research/human-muscle-regenerated-with-animal-help.html), and you can bet that the ETs could do it better. --- @Veehot does raise the issue of regulatory compliance and the fact that the fraud of the Harvest will be identified as such, an oversight on my part. I do not doubt that this would be an issue in the early years, but when other countries allow LifeStore to cure cancer, strokes, heart-attacks, etc. that are otherwise hopeless, I have no doubt the regulatory agencies will fail to discourage the public demand for LifeStore, and governments will respond in kind -- otherwise riots and medical tourism will prevail until the government concedes. Consider the case of saccharine, the FDA was on the path the regulate it out of existence, but due to public outcry, they eventually settled on just a warning on the label. On a similar note, I see that the US congress is still toying with allowing incandescent light bulbs, even now that LED bulbs are a great replacement in most cases. Scientists that insist there is no medical need for Harvesting will be ignored as long as the cures are real. The social pressure to allow LifeStore to do exactly as they plan will override all obstacles in fairly short order once the cures are recognized as the real deal. [Answer] North Korea Don't settle in the US, settle in the most totalitarian corner of the globe. While I'm pretty sure that North Korean people would notice that many people missing, what exactly are they going to do about it? Who can they complain to, who can they ask questions of? If the aliens control the government, any indication that you think something's wrong will just get you shipped off to the farm as well. The same total lack of free communications will also mean that a lot of the defectors out of North Korea would simply not be aware of the problem, and those that do might not initially be believed. And even if the rest of the world starts suspecting there's something quite wrong, what can they really do? Maaaaaybe they can get some spies there and find out the truth, but in the current state of nuclear affairs, an invasion is out of the question. [Answer] ## Open a funeral home Or, more realistically, a chain of them. More than enough people die on a daily basis from accidents or from causes that don't significantly damage the body, like heart attacks or strokes. All that your aliens need to do is to harvest meat from humans that have already died of suitable causes, and then cremate the rest of the remains. Close to a million people die of heart disease, accidents, or strokes in a given year in the US alone. Around 150k of those are accidents, so if the other causes aren't acceptable for the aliens, they'll have to incorporate some foreign countries, as well. About half of those people are cremated. Cremations offer the best chance at covertly harvesting humans as food. They're done out of sight of the general populace, and most people don't really have a good idea of how much ash they should produce. Muscle comprises 30-40% of a person's weight, so most people probably wouldn't realize that their loved ones were butchered at the funeral home. Unlike something like thousands of people going missing, nobody would notice a trend in significantly reduced cremation rates, especially if the aliens doctor national databases (if those exist) to hide that trend. This would work better in a country like China, of course, due to its higher population and higher cremation rate. ## Encourage drug consumption If the aliens need more humans to die from accidents, this is the easiest way to do it. Use wormhole technology and advanced science to produce and distribute drugs. The spike in deaths from both accidents and overdose will be noticed, of course, as will the rising crime rates, but people will blame those things on moral decay, not on aliens. Meanwhile, all of those bodies will head to the funeral homes for processing, ensuring a healthy food supply for hungry aliens. [Answer] JBH is right in pointing out that it would be noticeable. But who would notice, and what would they do about it? * Rational and scientific-minded people would discount "[anecdotal evidence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence)" and look at the statistics. So one of the first steps of the aliens would be to discredit scientific inquiry. Make it acceptable or at least common to pick your own alternative facts. Make the majority distrust those "elites" who would come up with statistical evidence. * The conspiracy would have to find someone or something to blame. Most "missing persons" are not dead after all, they just broke of communications. Find some talking heads who raise the problem of deadbeat dads who disappear rather than pay child support. Have the report peppered with anecdotal evidence (see above) rather than solid statistics. The report isn't there to convince serious journalists, the summary gets tweeted directly to the general population. * The conspiracy could make large parts of the population fear the cops and other authorities, and encourage them [not to file](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreported_missing) missing person reports. Have some illegal immigrants who inquire about missing persons arrested and deported, for instance. * At the same time, make border protection ineffective so that more and more illegal immigrants come in through a "revolving door" -- they come, work for a couple of months, get deported, come back. This constant reshuffle erases traces. Of course it would fail in the long run, but that's plot points for your story. --- Follow-Up: As Yakk pointed out, we are talking about very large numbers. However, the number is roughly comparable to the annual illegal immigration into the US. Your fictional conspiracy controlling the US government and legislatures should be able to cause a five-fold increase in illegal immigration. And having one quarter of those disappear without much of trace would be difficult, but many citizens would be willing to ignore it. * The required numbers would be considerably less than the population growth of South and Central America. * Of course there would be observers who realize that lots of victims are disappearing. They would complain. They would be just one more group complaining about something, from vaccination to teaching evolution to climate change. Muddle the waters. * Come up with regulations to encourage illegal immigrants to shuffle about. Perhaps strict (and strictly enforced) laws which require employers to check the residency status of their workers, unless they were hired from out-of-state for less than one week. [Answer] One single method would not be sufficient. After all, 2,000 people a day is quite a number of people to hide. Since there are 196 countries in this world, 2000 people per day averages to about 10.2 people per country per day (2000/196 = 10.2.) The number of people from each nation would be proportional to their population. For example, assuming 7.3 billion people, China would contribute 375 people, India 345, USA 89, and Indonesia 70. North Korea, at 25 million, would contribute 7 people. Servant class The first few decades of their exile, the aliens would be consuming the feedstocks that their people left them, as they developed their food sources while they researched humanity. Rather quickly, they realized that they needed a corp of trusted intermediaries to carry out their plans. So they covertly kidnap a few hundred young children. They are raised to worship and serve the aliens. After these children grow up, they can interact with 'wild' humans. While Captive-bred humans would not typically be used as food. Third-World Prisons There is plenty of people in prisons worldwide. In developing nations, political and economic forces conspire to cause high mortality rates and lax oversight. Servant class members could negotiate off-the-book 'transfers' for a few dozen from each prison every month without notice. Industrial Accidents Working in developing nations can be dangerous. In China, for example, [66,000 people died in 2016](http://indianexpress.com/article/world/66000-workplace-deaths-in-china-last-year-report-4440205/) in workplace accidents. If a worker now-and-then were to 'die' and require a closed coffin, who would notice? Ethnic Cleansing/war zones If a regional conflict involves ethnic cleansing, genocide, and barbarism, any missing towns or villages would be attirubted to the general violence rather than carniverouis aliens. Drug addicts/drunks/Homeless There are classes of people in every country whose disappearance would not be notice (or actually welcomed.) There are also criminal enterprises (read gangs) who would willingly harvest said people for a price. Feedlots Since a lot of their stock will be coming from areas with poor nutrition or unhealthy conditions, I would assume that the people would be transported to a [feedlot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot), where they are cleaned up (gotten off drugs, treated for diseases, etc) and fattened up before slaughter. [Answer] You don't say much about the aliens, but 60t of meat each day sure is a big figure. Either they are individually very massive or there is crowd of them. Most likely both. That and the insane amount of people that have to be abducted, managed, shipped, received and prepared on a daily basis makes the question of them staying hidden a matter of months, if not weeks. Moreover, the wording of your question makes it clear that you designed that question so that it has to be humans that these aliens are fed, thus I assume it's your intent that these aliens eat humans and you chose the circumstances to suit that intent. What strikes me, instead, is that your conditions actually don't force these aliens to eat humans. With very little - if any - help from humans, they could build food factories. You state that they were given no technology to synthesize meat, but synthetising meat is quite easy, that's called animal life. By breeding insects or even microbes, in modular factories - something that actually is done by humans - they could produce vast quantities of animal food with a way higher rate of protein, less fat and overall better for health than wild human flesh. Moreover, their activities would be tremendously easier to hide. So much easier that in fact it could be possible to achieve the numbers you ask for without being noticed while having them to consume food that is way healthier than healthy adult human meat, which is what you asked for. Another inconsistency in your question : > > because of certain ethical and cultural considerations, they wish to > live in harmony with their habitat and thus they greatly prefer to > kill/farm/consume species which they deem as "invasive/"unchecked", > species which are causing untold havoc to the ecosystem. This > (unfortunately for us) happens to be, according to them, humans. > > > You could have directly stated that they somehow won't eat anything but humans. But your reason for that, once again, is flawed. Why would they believe that ? They are strictly carnivorous. Such a species would be unlikely to develop such ethics, and if they did, given their technological advance, they would have come up with means to practice it. That these particular aliens, exiled on another planet with all these batteries and stuff and all that knowledge, would be unable to reproduce these processes while being willing to apply those ethics seems dubious. Another point is that while they are unwilling to be uncovered, they > > have no qualms with majorly distorting the status quo > > > That looks like uncovering their existence. I believe you should review the base of your story, what you want to have in it and more importantly why, so that you can properly craft it. Make no mistake, I like the ideas you bring up, or else I wouldn't have answered. But it seems to me that you brought up the elements in the wrong order, giving them only one leg to stand on. Take also into account the realism. Hard science isn't the goal, but some realism is needed. If you insist on having aliens relying on the abduction of more than 2,000 healthy and adult humans a day to subsist, you should be prepared that your story will be about how humans resist to these aliens, because it seems dubious that thousands of actively working people could be daily shipped to Nevada and disappear without raising some eyebrows. Good luck with your world building ! [Answer] Alien creates a bio-nano-mech virus/parasite that spreads across the human race. This virus causes a unique, controllable form of cancer that causes a harvestable meaty organ to grow inside the infected human. Once the cancerous organ is fully grown the robotic portion of the virus aids in creating a micro wormhole inside the person harvest (most likely while the person is sleeping ... possibly induced into catatonic state). If discovered it would simply look like the person was affected by some random form of cancer ... the human would remain otherwise healthy. ``` grape = 5.1 grams 5 gram per week per person 5 x 7 x 200 x 60,000 req 420 mil infected ~1 bil people affected by a cold virus per year 7.4 bil people on earth ``` [Answer] This will be a brutal process and is likely doomed to failure. The average human weighs 57.6 kg.So you're talking about eating about 1042 people per day, on average. This means no one single tactic is going to feed your group. You must attack the problem (pun intended) from several angles. ## 1. Split the party. If your aliens stay grouped together in any one area/city, the rapid drop in population will be noticed. So your aliens must split up. There's no way they can stay together. The more they can spread out the better, so no one group of people is the focus of their hunger. ## 2. Look for the unseen. The easiest targets for consumption, unfortunately, are going to be the people no one notices, no one cares about, or that no one wants. These are the ones that, even if they go "missing," won't get reported. And the reports will go unsolved. This means hitting cities with large homeless populations. Or large populations who live "off the grid," or below the radar. In the USA, this means minorities in inner cities, homeless, etc. In other areas the demographics will be different. But the aliens have to figure out who the unwanted are. (I am not saying no one wants these people. I am saying that, systemically, these people are the easiest to remove from society. And that society as a whole is least likely to react quickly and with determination when these groups have problems.) ## 3. Be flexible. Hay (sorry, last pun), sometimes humans aren't the issue. Our livestock also cause methane emissions. The global impact is disputed, but there is an impact. So maybe they sometimes switch up and eat some [cattle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_mutilation). ## 4. Be mobile. If they stay in the same spot for too long, eventually someone will take notice and begin investigations. They need to stay mobile, moving from human herd, er, city, to city. They need to coordinate their movements so they all don't end up in the same city. But this way their feed stock can [repopulate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-field_system). ## 5. Sow chaos; reap the benefits. War zones. Natural disasters. Political destabilization. Anywhere these things are happening, there's less response to claims of missing persons. Tsunami washes ashore and a thousand people vanish. Everyone chalks it up to the water, never realizing the aliens had a quick dine-and-dash. Several countries in [Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Africa) are in civil war. No one will notice if a few villages vanish in the midst of this human-induced chaos. Your aliens have to be aware of the global news cycles, so they can chase these sometimes-short-lived [feeding frenzy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_frenzy) opportunities. ## 6. Self-policing. They have to maintain law and order within their own. If one of the aliens goes [off the reservation](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/go_off_the_reservation) (see meanings 2 and 3), the other aliens must re-establish control immediately. I mean, history shows that humans are endlessly obsessed with large groups of people being murdered or disappearing in short time spans. See [Jonestown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown), [Roanoke Colony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony), and other stories. Sure, [once](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_ship) or maybe twice this can be handled. But it cannot become a daily habit. ## 7. Slavery. They may need to keep humans as cattle. Perhaps set up a large [reservation](https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/destinations/) where people can be kept, and where their absence won't be noticed or will be difficult to investigate. With careful planning and management, entire towns could become isolated breeding grounds where people never leave. But this is risky. Especially in modern times where global communications are so easy for us humans. ## 8. Future planning The aliens need to either plan for [permanent life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_people#Urban_folklore) here, so begin building procedures to hide within our midst forever, or they need to find a way off this rock, before they are discovered. Without planning, they will be discovered, eventually. Maybe even a dual-pronged planning attack, with a committee focused on long-term earth survival and another focused on escape. [Answer] > > * They can create bioweapons and artificial viruses. > * These aliens have no qualms with majorly distorting the status quo. > > > Okay, then it can be done quite easily. Develop and diffuse - using androids and flying bots - a plague that targets human intelligence. One month later, human civilization collapses and most cities become death traps, incidentally supplying all the meat the aliens might need for an extensive period. At that point they can harvest a sufficient quantity of humans to set up human husbandry (through droids). You need around 750,000 new individuals per year; assuming you harvest them at age 20, that should work at around 20 million healthy (but quite dim-witted) humans. You could do that with less. Task zero is to cripple any accidental nuclear option which might be triggered by the plague. The first task is to harvest and store enough food to tide the human cattle over the first months. This includes livestock, grain storage, supermarkets, army depots and so on. Having the capability of penetrating networks would provide enough intelligence to know where (and when) to strike. Your second task, in parallel to the first, is to harvest 20 million humans from everywhere suitable and gather them in the pens. If the biotechnology required to inactivate prions exists, for a while they can be self-sustaining - you harvest more than needed for reproduction, cull the weak and slaughter them to feed the rest. If this is not possible, they will need to be fed out of harvested resources. However, throughout the operations, enough humans will remain uninfected to be able to self-sustain until they're harvested and infected in due course. You might decide to not infect large undeveloped, low-tech areas as a plan B. At the end of year 1, you have your 20 million human cattle stowed away in pens, and start moving toward a sustainable diet: > > It is realistic to suppose that the absolute minimum of arable land to > support one person is a mere 0.07 of a hectare–and this assumes a > largely vegetarian diet, no land degradation or water shortages, > virtually no post-harvest waste, and farmers who know precisely when > and how to plant, fertilize, irrigate, etc. [FAO, 1993] > > > So you also need, say, two million hectares of reasonably fertile land overall. Androids and bots tend to the humans. You immunize your domesticated humans, then release a second, much deadlier plague over the whole Earth, which is then left to lie fallow. [Answer] Depending on the capacity of their technology, use their wormholes to firstly abduct victims and replace the victims with androids. If they have sufficiently advanced robotics the robots can run the wormhole capture systems and manage the manufacture of the androids and ensure the androids are effective duplicates of the harvested humans. Someone should notify the galactic equivalent of the United Nations Organization about the technologically advanced species dumping their dissidents on a planet where the local intelligent species is being preyed upon the illegal imprisonment. To be legal, this process needs the appropriate sanction and acceptance by the authorities of the native population, in this case, humans. Strangely enough, humans might not be enraptured at the prospect of becoming an alien's lunch. [Answer] I think that with unlimited resources and logistics, with a good tech advantage, it is not impossible. But even if not revealing themselves, they will drastically change the current state of the world, as a cover up. I do believe that with enough technology and politics, you could basically get a WWIII. Then, drafts would be organized and represent your whole food income. But you would need to prevent use of mass destruction weapons, which would basically spoil the "food". So this would be by itself a really high skill diplomacy maneuver. Some world wide guerilla style fights would keep the "creation of available food" at an acceptable level. Now you need to harvest the corps. Maybe being some part of the red cross or anything that would be able to cover up for constant intervention on field. But in many countries, we culturally attach to bringing back the corpse to the family, so some explanations would be necessary on this part too. Probably that guerilla style fights also intercept military flights transporting corpses, so after a few events like this governments would stop using resources to get corpses back. Even an easier solution would be to create any world scale catastrophe that will cover up abductions. If a zombie apocalypse start, you can easily pick survivors without nobody noticing, you will just need to manage a bit so enough healthy people remain to reproduce. You need some more, just send a tsunami on a random beach and harvest what you want from the water. Sudden destruction of a big building by a terrorist act can cover up the abduction of the people inside, if you splatter enough blood and members to make it look like they where crushed by the remains. sometimes, make a plane disappear. Spread a local virus and make the government burn the area. Create a sect and push people to reproduce and to give themselves up to god at age 40, in some third world country. Give free energy to the corrupt military head of the state for full support. There is many other thing that can come to mind. The main points are : - Make people care about some other catastrophic stuff: war, apocalypse, etc.. - Think of the way you will collect, transport and keep fresh your "meat" - Keep enough lifestock to get sustaining population, even with the huge toll you will take. [Answer] I don't want to be a buzzkill, but I feel there are two major flaws in your premise. 1. You say your aliens are essentially carnivorous, which means they basically only eat meat and very little plant matter, yet they have a high regard for nature and wish to live in harmony with their habitat. If the (presumably, though you don't specify) small number of aliens on Earth need to eat 2000 humans a day, what exactly do their brethren back on the homeworld eat? How does a carnivorous species evolve to a point where they are unwilling to procure the sustenance necessary to survive? Veganism and vegetarianism can be explained in humans because we can survive quite happily on plant matter, but the way you phrase your question suggests this is not the case for these aliens. Without farming or hunting animals they could not exist. The idea of living in harmony with nature (which involves not farming or hunting) and being entirely carnivorous are mutually exclusive as far as I can see. 2. You say the aliens view us as an invasive species that has grown unchecked and that is why they are willing to harvest us, and also that they are happy to disrupt the status quo and topple governments etc. but that they do not want to reveal themselves. This doesn't really make sense. If humanity is seen as a pest then why don't they just use their superior technology to annihilate us (or conquer and farm us). They apparently have the capability to wipe is out or damage us enough to then enslave us, so staying hidden (and trying to remain so) seems a bizarre choice. In fact giving any kind of consideration to what we think or feel would be like humans trying to make mosquitoes unaware of our existence and undisturbed by our attempts to eradicate them... So I would say the answer to your question is that the aliens wipe out humanity using their superior technology (and feast on the dead while doing so) and then allow the planet to return to some kind of balance / harmony where they then practice whatever method of procuring food they would have used on their homeworld (which I would presume would be some kind of sustainable farming or hunting as it's the closest fit to what you've described) [Answer] 1) Put up a legitimate front or two. Something which gets money - a bank? - something showy which awes people and makes them respect you - rocket ships, sports cars. 2) Use your technology to promote automated self driving cars, use your influence to promote tunnel systems. A "Hyperloop", automated people, tunnels. 3) Start a really innocent [boring company](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5V_VzRrSBI). It's going to be really hard to march the streets of big cities and take homeless people and ship thousands per day to your secret location. But what if the population of the cities actively wanted to get into a self-driving pod where they weren't paying attention, if it was normal to vanish underground into a warren of disorienting tunnels with no GPS service? To the point where the desire lead to connecting every city with every city? Homeless people would naturally head for the shelter of the tunnels as well, and they would be harder to notice there than in subways where people are walking. When your self-driving taxi turns up, are you really sure it's the right one? 4) Encourage a service where people get into one of your self-driving cars for a surprise destination adventure. When you have tunnels connecting all the major metropolitan areas of the planet, and tunnels connecting into it going back to your lair, and millions of journeys per day, siphoning off a few people, automated collection of people, will be a small matter. 5) Build up a great set piece with an exotic name, e.g. 'Mars', somewhere people can "go" to "live" with your "help", but nobody can go and check on them, because it's remote and expensive and has unreliable communications links. 6) If you use your Alien engineering skills to make the tunnels deep enough, some of the food could be [delivered cooked](http://www.idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm), but you'd have to pay special attention to [making the vehicles head resistant enough](https://seekingalpha.com/article/3983572-teslas-model-3-will-use-liquid-cooling). [Answer] 1. Partner with an existing totalitarian state, where, by definition, the government does things without having to explain why. 2. Forbid technology transfer and wealth transfer to outside. 3. Use technology to elevate standard of living of every citizen way beyond the global average, and to reduce working hours to three or four a week. 4. Forbid more than one child per woman. 5. Allow free immigration for anyone in the world, and pay for their safe, comfortable transport, with one caveat: a lottery will select 2000 incoming immigrants per day, to die and disappear. Promise anesthesia and a humane ending, you may as well deliver on the promise. Their ultimate fate is obscure, but everything else is transparent. Allow families and other groups to face the lottery as a group, such that each individual's chance to go remains the same, but either they all go, or none of them goes. 6. If absolutely necessary, ship the meat to the U.S.A. disguised as animal meat. But consider relocating to the partner country. 7. Monitor the outside world population. If it starts shrinking too much, you may have to limit immigration to a large amount. [Answer] ### Fake plague 1. Create a real plague. It's quite communicable, so dead bodies have to be cremated. Second, create a method that will successfully combat the plague in around half of all cases. The method should require isolation in such a way that it's easiest to group the sick in one area. For example, perhaps exposure to sunlight and fresh air in a low humidity environment works. So they have to get the sick to an isolated and dry location. Perhaps in the Nevada desert? The cure does not have to work as described; they just have to make it look like it works by healing 50% of the people who try it. 2. Create a fake plague with the same early symptoms. Then people will be sent to the place for the cure. Let it wear off. Announce that 50% died and were cremated. Eat them instead. Possibly the real plague and the fake plague are the same thing. Just there's a hundred percent cure that they only apply at all in the one location. Because there's a hundred percent cure, they never eat sick people. They cure them first, after updating them as dead in the computer system. Because they are at a hospital, the aliens can give their androids bulky suits and move around at night. Insomniac patient? Sedative injection and a place on the dinner menu. The plague can be spread by fake (android) mosquitoes or similar. So outbreaks can be scheduled and targeted. Everyone will know that something is happening, but there is an easy explanation there. They will never look the extra step beyond the obvious explanation. Except perhaps for the occasional Fox Mulder type. [Answer] EDIT: A solution to the problem is to create a socially-acceptable method of collecting bodies such as cyronics. People disappear with no near-term expectation of reappearing. An example of advertising/PR that the aliens could take advantage of is below. It uses an existing company (Google's Calico) as the basis of the example. --- [Calico](https://www.calicolabs.com/), Google's life extension company, finally takes off. And is free for everyone. Wish you could live longer? What about your loved ones? In Calico, we are building the biggest [Cryonics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics) facility in the world. The best part? Is free for everyone. As a Google-founded company, we share the same mission: to make the world a better place to live. That's why we don't charge users for using our services. How does it work? It's pretty simple. Once you sign up for using our services, you will receive a tag and a chip that states your ID number. Doctors arriving the scene have clear instructions to not to try to resurrect you, but to call Calico. Once a Calico doctor arrives, she will begin the process of preparing your body to be frozen, instead of harming it using conventional resurrection techniques. You will be placed on stasis, and translated to our huge underground facility under the vast Nevada desert. Fear not, our facility is completely isolated with the most rigorous security that you can expect from Google. Years in the future, when science and medicine advances to help cure your cause of clinical death, you will be de-frozen and given a second chance to live. How is this free? You may be exposed to advertisement from our trusted partners during your state of stasis. This is completely optional, you can opt-out before signing up. --- Nevada News. Millions of people are signing up to the new Calico service from Google. In an unprecedented way, the promise of longer lifespan combined with Google expertise, are making the cryonics generation a reality. The extravagant newly appointed CEO of Calico, say this: "We are very happy to be helping the humanity on reaching a new level of happiness. And they help us in turn". We are still not sure what does the last sentence mean, but the world furor on freezing their bodies before death doesn't seem to care much about that. [Answer] According to Moore, Carole. The Last Place You’d Look: True Stories of Missing Persons and the People Who Search for Them. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011. > > Approximately 2,300 Americans are reported missing—every day. This includes both children and adults. This does not include Americans who have vanished in other countries, individuals who disappear and are never reported, or the homeless and their children > > > A number higher than your 2000. You could add people from Mexico, include those homeless ones (government can scan and check them at shelters and send healthy ones "for additional tests"). The question is do they need to have slaughter house on site or can get frozen or preserved meat? If first then their Nevada location would be good as no one would notice intoxicated, lost or buses full of people going around and out of Las Vegas. If the second then it's even better because no one would notice Pizza Hut and McDonalds trucks. [Answer] Influence the government to mandate all dead bodies be "donated to science" Approximately 1 person in 50,000 die each day. To have 2,000 bodies per day, you would need a country with a population of at least 100 million to satisfy the requirement. Assuming daily variations, some dying of sickness, and some people refusing to "donate", lets assume we need three times this amount to meet the requirement. The US has a population of over 300 million. Have the aliens influence the US government to mandate that all citizens donate all dead bodies to science. Create some fake reason(s), such as: * Metals buildup in the body combined with a scarcity of a specific metal * Cancer rates are soaring and research must be done - soaring rates are caused by the aliens * Public told that cryogenic research has perfected human storage [Answer] It's been done, essentially, in John Norman's Gor novels. Though the numbers required there weren't mentioned, the aliens involved were eating not just humans but any meat, and avid and feared hunters as well as warriors. They employed humans to act as slavers for them, capturing and buying (on legitimate slave markets) humans for transportation to their location (in this case an artificial moon in orbit around the planet). There these humans would be used as cattle, and bred, as well as employed as traditional slave labour and as pets. The humans thus farmed were trained to obedience and fattened for slaughter, then driven to mostly automated slaughter houses. While the level of technology is higher than what your aliens are likely to have available, the concept might well remain. Though Nevada is a bad location because of the absence of a large scale slave trade in the modern USA (you need to go to Africa or the Arabian peninsula for that) human trafficking in illegal aliens can probably substitute. Mexicans promised a better life in the USA by human traffickers are instead delivered to your alien enclave, there to be either ate on the spot or used as livestock in their breeding operation. They could even organise hunting parties in the scrublands along the Mexican border, though on earth, more civilised then JNs Gor, the evidence that'd leave behind is likely to cause trouble quickly. [Answer] Do what my people are already doing. Step one: Kidnap one healthy human. Step two: Take his muscle cells. Breed them in alien equivalent of petry dishes. Exercise them with electric shocks. Step three: You now have as much meat as you want. Keep human alive for extra resources so you do not get Cloning Blues from making a copy of a copy. Always copy an original again after harvest /200 cell generations. Step four: Kidnap another human once this one dies. [Answer] There are very good reasons why humans pick beef/chicken/turkey as a primary meat source, rather than crocodile/lion/piranha. 1. Nutrition: Herbivores have more fat as a rule than carnivores, meaning more calories per kill 2. Risk: Falling into a pen of chicken vs falling into a pool of piranha's 3. Cost: To feed the carnivores, one would have to first breed the meat they need to eat; making the process just that more expensive. This would mean that to bread humans for meat, one would ultimately bin the idea of feeding them animal products, (other than waste) in the same way we feed chickens which would actually happily eat anything on the floor they can scavange. If one is attempting to do this secretly, the first step would be to try and make everyone a vegetarian, or pick a location where they are already. The other requirement would be a location where life is cheap. The cheaper the life, and the more common death to various illnesses or abuse, then the more likely you'll be able to get away with it. Also these populations are more likely to have a high birth rate; essential to your high output. Putting these requirements together, I'd consider India as a likely candidate; performing 200 abductions / day in the poor regions is probably going to be largely unnoticed, and at the very least unrecorded. [Answer] Sounds like the aliens have more than sufficient technology to farm humans at the bottom of the ocean. Just need to dedicate enough power to farm some form of vegetables to feed the humans and then you'd just need maybe 2,000,000 humans on a farm and then you can kill 0.1% per day and it would be fully sustainable. [Answer] 60,000 kilograms is about 1,000 people. In 2015 there were [11.3 million illegal immigrants entering into the US](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/). In 2014, [414,000 illegal immigrants were deported](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/31/u-s-immigrant-deportations-declined-in-2014-but-remain-near-record-high/). That is more than 1,000 per day. With the technology you describe, these aliens should have no problem tracking groups of immigrants and intercepting them in isolated areas with a wormhole that dumps them in their holding pens. They would only have to catch 1 out of every 30 illegal immigrants to come up 1000 per day. They can also convince the government to contract them (using their humanoid robots) to be the company that deports illegal immigrants. Using some of those to cover any shortfalls in their captures. This makes for a horrific story, yet with hooks all over today's discourse (or lack thereof) on immigration. [Answer] Nevada is probably a bad choice due to population density. It has Las Vegas where you could get prostitutes, homeless, and etc reasonable easy. If you could teleport, or otherwise get an agreement with the government you might be able to get prisoners. Otherwise Nevada is sparsely populated. Note: To augment the numbers of people do the following: If you have wormhole tech steal people from North Korea, nobody will care what they think. Just make sure it can't be tracked back to the US. Also illegal immigrants aren't a bad idea especially if they have criminal records. Maybe if the aliens can take over sanitation they can get food from garbage trucks, landfills, and maybe even human waste from our sewers. Think how much meat slaughter houses and butcher shops discard each day. Assuming they have advanced food sanitisers they can clean the food we as humans discard every day for consumption either by them or their breeding stock. They probably just extract the nutrients and inject it into their breeding stock. The aliens will have to have food to sustain them on their long journey. They are going to need to bring enough extra to setup a breeding farm of humans. Long term, you need to hide a population of humans for the sole reason of breading. You don't want to educate anyone or they will know they are slaves or captives and try to escape. They only need to have each woman pregnant with as many babies as her body can handle, over and over again. 30 \9 months =240 days \2000 = 540,000 babies in 9 months. I don't know how your going to sustain that. Say it takes 13 years for the woman to be able to get pregnant. That is 4745 day \* 2000 or 9.5 million people dead before they get the first round adult babies. The aliens will have to have advanced pregnancy tech including artificial wombs. Now if the aliens can go around to people and get genetic samples from a wide variety of people, and turn those into babies back at HQ then it would be significantly easier. Say with a hand held scanner they steal eggs and sperm from random people as they walk by without them noticing. Go to stadiums with 10,20,or etc thousand people harvest 100 or 1000 sperm/eggs each and you have a lot of future people. Only enough humans would have to go missing to feed themselves during the growth cycle. You will need to have a tremendous under ground cave to hold enough for regular harvesting, plus a good safety margin. I get Nevada is the place to hide that. [Answer] With such advanced knowledge in biology and physics, the aliens should figure out how to clone humans. This will drastically reduce the number required abductions to a reasonable one. If for the sake of the story you can't abduct only one human and clone him infinitely, you may introduce the idea that the cloning process slowly sickens the human and makes him poisonous after being cloned X times. [Answer] I like this topic as there is so much to say. Nevada is not a bad place as it would help drowning observations of UFOs into the urban legends and actual military flights observations. With their tech, they could even stay undetectable to military. As for targeted populations, I would not take developed countries for starters, or at least not their advanced areas. And that leaves a large part of the world (rural china, russia and europe, northern countries during the prolonged night periods, south africa and desertic north africa). I would also take on touristic areas (thaïland, small islands) or keep them as backup in case things get awry. You can also attack cruise ships (6000 persons on some ships, 3 days worth of stocks). I would vary with plane abductions, and town obliteration in aforementionned areas, preferably in war zones. I could even use large scale massacre from human to take a pause from killing myself. Drones and all would be of great help. I would use androids to substitute to key people (investigators, heads of departments, high level techs) to be able to inform from them and act according to my plans (keeping them as trump cards for twarting any counteroffensive or discovery of my lair). I would use the human satellites to get infos and would spoof their signals to say everything is ok. this would delay discovery. One interrogation is the scale they can use droids and drones, and if their wormhole tech is transportable enough for these to be deployed without some kind of base ship to transport them in the hole first... But using the wormhole tech could help mislead people, for example showing abducting spacecraft to originate and to shuttle to some country, then disappearing, helping for example to start a war between neighbouring countries, helping dissimulate the abduction into the chaos. Then could even go for obliteration of large cities by using their tech to phase communication (or whole cities) out, then abduct all people (tempus fugit style, or in real time hunt for your prey style), then destroy the cities with tech that would make think outside world about a large scale attack (-nuclear- bombing?) [Answer] Wormhole tech is the important factor here, that gives you instant access to anywhere in the world. That means you can hunt, kill, and remove people from anywhere in the world at any time and take home the meat. Assuming that you have good disposal systems for the leftovers, which you do because you can use a wormhole to dump it at the bottom of the ocean trench of your choice, you can kill any number of people without any inconvenient evidence coming to light. There are a number of authors (Jim Butcher for one) who have pointed out for one reason or another that large numbers of people disappear on a daily basis across the globe and of many, if not most, of them no trace is ever found. With Robotic servants the XTs need never leave home but with good wormhole tech they could go out hunting themselves as long as they made sure to get their target, and eat anyone else who might spot them. Your XTs wouldn't even need government co-operation to keep themselves feed. [Answer] Since they have access to wormholes, they could kidnap enough humans (slowly growing the number until they have what they need for harvesting 2K per day) and wormhole them to some other planet, creating a human farm outside any possibility of humanity learning about it. Another answer said it would require around 15million humans in order for the population to reproduce at a sustainable rate. Not very much, if divided by some larger groups/camps. On a plus side, since they are predators they maybe would sometimes like to hunt those humans instead of just processing them -- so they would have some sort of nature preserve. They could create robotic oversight, so that the kidnapped humans don't get ideas about organizing resistance, but basically, once the initial generation would be eaten, the next one would be without any knowledge. So, let's say 100 settlements with 150'000 humans divided evenly across some planet, in places where they can thrive and be reasonable self-sufficient; robotic killers/guards to make sure everything stays in these limits, and the processing plants. If anything goes wrong with the population there (epidemic, earthquake, meteor strike), they would just resupply some more from Earth. All that said, I find the initial premise of them choosing "species which are causing untold havoc to the ecosystem" laughable. This such a human-centric view. Any sane alien couldn't care less about our current ecosystem, as the only creatures to whom it matters, are us. All that Gaia crap presumes nature having a balance, which we can upset. Guess what. There is no balance, there is just something which WE like, and which we can destroy and which will regrow into something different that WE maybe don't like/can't survive, but which will be GRAND for the new species that used the hole we provided. ]
[Question] [ We have two opposing forces: the Democrats and the Imperialists. Each one can field an armada of ships numbering millions in their fleets, supported by trillions- to a quadrillion person strong super supply lines just to support the war effort, both in space and land. Heck, they even have mobile fortress worlds (Planetoids) as their fleet headquarters. You, an aspiring young noble from the Imperial faction, want to be in command of a fleet of these mighty warships and lay waste to their planets. However, your enemies also have mighty warships and want to lay waste to your planets. With your resources, manufacturing capability and support capability, your fleet is capped at 1350 ships. With this pitiful amount, you won't get anywhere against the enemy's millions stronger individual fleets. Neither the Democrats nor the Imperialists have any knowledge of carrier doctrines. Doctrines that you discovered from the ancient libraries of Earth... You have continued developing this idea and technology further. Bombers and fighter bombers will be unmanned and have active cloaking technology to ensure you deliver your bombs and get out relatively unscathed. However, you don't have any idea what kind of bomb would ensure maximum damage while ensuring that you don't suffer any consequences. You'll be bombing the following types of targets. Note that the armor will be as strong as diamond but twice denser than lead. They don't have energy shielding. "Shields are for cowards," so they say. All ships are big guns except corvettes. They don't have AA as they didn't know that space shuttles can be used to bomb them * Super Dreadnoughts (28 km long, 14 km wide, 8 km depth) 14 meters of armor * Dreadnoughts (17 km long 6 km width 4km depth) 10 meters of armor * Super battleships (14 km long 7 km width 3km depth) 8 meters of armor * Battleships (12 km long 5km width 3km depth) 7 meters of armor * Capital cruisers (10 km long 3.5km width 2.5km depth) 6 meters of armor * Heavy Cruisers (7 km long 4km width 2km depth) 4 meters of armor * Cruiser (5 km long 2.5km width, 900m depth) 2 meters of armor Anything below 5 km is too little for your taste and conventional anti ship missiles launched from several hundred bombers can kill them. The question is: what kind of bomb can you use against these capitals ships to take them down with the least amount of bombs? Your 1350 space ships can support 25,000 bombers at any moment. 150 of those ships are 5 km long carriers holding 170 bombers each. A self-evolving AI is in command of the bomber wings from the carrier. Command and control is taken care of with FTL Communication arrays onboard all bombers. The covert communication array is only good within 5 light years away so the carrier won't be too far from the bombers. Deep Space Bomber specifications [![What you deep space bomber really is](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uAM59.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uAM59.jpg) Length: 64 metres (210 ft) Width:75 metres (246 ft) Height/depth: 12.9 metres (42.3 ft) Engine unit(s):Twin fusion reactors Hull: Titanium alloy Equipment: Covert Warp Drive Stealth coating Active Cloaking FTL Covert/Standard Communications array I need a bomb(Theoretical or proven) that can vaporize/destroy capital ships shielded or w.out shield with least possible amount of bombs. [Answer] # TL;DR: Singularity Bomb # Honorable Mentions: The Little Doctor & Warp Bomb WOAH WOAH WOAH. I (the noble) have: 1. 1350 spaceships (total). 2. 150 5km carriers 3. 170 bombers *with self-evolving* AI 4. Covert FTL communication (How?) with a 5 LY broadcast range. 5. Active cloaking technology. 6. Covert Warp Drive And I am expected to go up against 1. Armadas numbering in the millions 2. Supported by Trillions to Quadrillions of support personell 3. Super Supply lines 4. Mobile Planetoid Fortress Worlds 5. With armor as hard as Diamond, but twice as dense as lead. 6. They do not have energy shielding. # Modern/Theoretical Why don't we begin with modern/theoretical science that we may discover within the > > ancient libraries of earth > > > ### Soviet RDS-220 (Tsar Bomba, Ivan, Vanya) Predicted maximum yield: 100 PetaJoules (1E17J) ### Antimatter Predicted maximum yield: 1.8E14 Joules per gram*. Hmm. We have AI, warp, cloaking, and FTL Technolgy. Furthermore, we can construct ships up to 28km long and transform planetoids (Dwarf planets) into ships. Mind you, planetoids can go up to a diameters up to 2372km (pluto) or (if OP meant asteroids) 975km (Ceres). In that case, I (the noble) have the technology to construct particle accelerators that would dwarf CERN's LHC on the ancient earth. Furthermore, CERN had already successfully trapped antimatter in those ancient times[1](https://home.cern/about/engineering/storing-antimatter)[2](http://press.cern/press-releases/2011/06/cern-experiment-traps-antimatter-atoms-1000-seconds) and was nearly detonated [3](http://angelsanddemons.web.cern.ch/faq/how-is-antimatter-contained)! Oh, and best of all, that ancient machine was not very efficient at generating antimatter; but, I can build it BIGGER and BETTER with our technology. Thus, it shouldn't be too difficult to produce 1 kilogram of antimatter, let alone 10kg - 1Mg. In order, they'd have an effective yield of: ``` 1 kg: 1.8E17 J 10 kg: 1.8E18 J 1 Mg: 1.8E20 J ``` Eeek. That seems to be the limit of what actually generated in those ancient times. But times has changed. Perhaps the imperium and democrats regularly generate and use antimatter, but in [missile form](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Photon_torpedo). # Science-Fiction Let's move forward to what has been proposed in science fiction! I'll use [this list](https://www.fatwallet.com/blog/top-sci-fi-weapons) for simplicity. ### Akira's Orbital Laser (6.3E16J) No Energy shields? Satellite based orbital laser? Sounds promising; but, we're looking for BOMBS* not awesome repeatable weapons we can attack to a cloaked fighter. Or are we? ### Photon Torpedoes (2.7E17J) Really just a high-tech antimatter torpedo. ### [Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator](http://looneytunes.wikia.com/wiki/Illudium_Q-36_Explosive_Space_Modulator) (2.2E32 J) Created by [Marvin The Martian](http://looneytunes.wikia.com/wiki/Marvin_The_Martian_(character)) of the infamous ancient [Looney Tunes](http://looneytunes.wikia.com/wiki/Looney_Tunes). ### Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (1.78E48 J) As a physicist and developer, I have no clue how they calculated this one. Nevertheless, the principle is sound: Wormholes/portals. Create a bomb that creates a portal upon impact. Always ensure that portal is connected to something such as ... a star and the temperatures will strip away the ship. Hook up the portal to a counterpart orbiting a black hole... and you'll wipe out the entire fleet. ### The Little Doctor (9.8E58 J) Ah, The Little Doctor from Ender's Game. Upon impact it causes a chain reaction that rips apart molecular bonds, spreading to all nearby matter. A single one of these may destroy fleets or [planets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXdbCU3Mt_c). ## Notable Mentions ### Singularity Bomb A popular [scifi](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnrealisticBlackHole) and [high-scifi](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerOfTheVoid) trope. Harness the power of a singularity (colloquially; black hole) into a weapon. Best example I can recall would be the [Red Matter](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Red_matter) from Star Trek which [annihilated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUsuuFNFq2w) a [planet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUsuuFNFq2w). Speaking more generally though, such a weapon, when detonated, would create a singularity. Immediately everything around it will be subjected to gravitational shearing and strength powerful enough to rip apart not only stars but neutron stars as well. Mind you, neutron stars have a density on the order of 1E17 kg/m^3 compared to the Imperium's and Democrat's 2.3E3 kg/m^3 armor. Suffice it to say that a single one of these will undoubtedly annihilate an entire fleet. ### Effectiveness: 1:1,000,000+ Oh. And I forgot to mention the [obscene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t096kPbwn4) [time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7OVqXm7_Pk) [dilation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orx0H9mBeXk), and the pillar of light that would be left in your [awesome wake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdSz12Glhlw). Who would dare to challenge thee? ### Warp Bomb You have warp drives. They expand and contract space to move your vessels across vast distances without accelerating them. More importantly, if your (my?) engineers were to construct a bomb that uses the same principles to chaotically warp space within a region around the bomb. This will generate shearing effects that rapidly expands and contracts space asymmetrically. Since spatial curvature produces the gravitational force and rapidly fluctuating spatial curvature generates gravitational waves it follows that this would create a rapidly fluctuating gravitational field that may be powerful enough to shear matter. Given it's gravitational in nature, no armor can resist or dilute the effect, only astronomical distances. Furthermore, given the strengths of your warp drives, and the intent for this weaponized use, we may easily leverage warp-physics to make the bomb more powerful than warp drives; after all, we don't care if it's unstable, in fact we'd prefer it that way. This gaurantees that it may destroy the target; but, even if we use unstable warp drives powerful enough to move planetoids (ignoring space and weight limits on our bombers), it's not enough to wipe out fleets of millions. # [Conclusion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvijW1MtMfM) The most powerful of these are The Little Doctor, The Singularity Bomb, and the Warp Bomb. The first two are capable of wiping out entire fleets whereas the last is guaranteed to eliminate capital ships. In my opinion I believe the Singularity Bomb to be the most effective. It causes the most destruction (wiping out entire fleets and/or planetoids) while also being the most plausible in your universe. I say this because I've studied [Alcubierre Warp Drives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive). Generating a warp bubble requires obscene amounts of matter and exotic matter (1E64 kg) to generate the field. Recent publications have theoretical shown that the this limit can be reduced dramatically; but, the warp speed is also reduced abysmally as well. Given your universe, I suspect either civilization is capable of working with a comparably obscene amount of matter. # Answer: Singularity Bomb. [Answer] # You need an Alcubierre Warp Missile. Let's take the theoretical route for this. Theoretically, as the missile goes into warp, the Alcubierre drive creates a bubble around the missile. The missile warps the fabric of spacetime as it travels to its destination (which should be set right in front of the target). The space behind the ship expands, the space in front compresses. Sounds simple, right? Except for the dangerous part; there are a ton of high energy particles shooting around in space. The farther the missile has to travel, the more of these particles it will encounter. These particles get stuck in the bubble around the missile, and when the missile finally arrives at its destination, the particles shoot out in a cone directly in front of your ship. With enough travel time, you could destroy planets. The target also literally won't even see it coming since it's a faster than light missile. Turns out the best bomb isn't even a bomb. It's a warp drive. --- Reference: <https://arxiv.org/abs/1202.5708> [Here's a link to the actual pdf of the research paper.](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1202.5708.pdf) [Answer] ## A block of Iron, or whatever element you like, heck, even wood While this sounds like a rather stupid answer, i will still try to explain AND be short: The correctness of this answer depends on how fast your Bombers + your Cruiser can go. I here assume that they can go very fast, since we have ftl communication. I also assume that they can accelerate to that speed quite fast. Here´s how it works: Built some blocks of... lets say 1 Ton each. Depending on what material you use, you can save yourself some space. So osmium (has a higher density) should be better than wood (not saying that wood wouldnt work). Now, depending on how many Tons your Bombers can carry (they are quite big), pack a few of those into your ships. I will just say they can take 5 here, you can calc your own amounts for your story. Here come´s the trick: You just accellerate your ships to the maximum speed they can go, probably something near the speed of light? Lets take 90% of it: 269.813.212 meters/second. now lets calculate the kinetic energy, a ton of mass with that speed would have: e= 1/2 \* m \* (v^2) Kinetic energy: 1/2 \* 1000kg \* (269.813.212)^2 = 3.6399585e+19 J so 1 of our Missiles would have an Energy of ~3.64e+19 Joule ( = 3.64\10^19) on one of our enemy ships. Now lets take this into perspective of what we earthly humans have achieved in terms of Energy (From wikipedia, Orders of Magnitude): Tsar Bomba: 2.1×10^17 J Estimated energy released by the eruption of the Indonesian volcano, Krakatoa, in 1883 : 8×10^17 J So this simple block of mass is getting quite higher in terms of destruction force that our yet best bomb and should be fine to destroy one of those biggies. Not confident enough?* Double the mass, double the destruction power (note that this is only about going from 1 ton to 2 tons, todays bombs are quite bigger, so increased mass should really be no problem). Speed is another thing. If you ships can go even faster, closer to the speed of light, the Energy increases in magnitude of 2. So double the speed, quadruple the energy. Relativity is becoming even more important here, the closer to the speed of light, the crazier the amount of energy goes, while reaching infinity at speed of light. ### In addition This is not my idea and it is not very new. Once you can reach high speed close to the speed of light, the most destructive forces are not Bombs or anything like that, mass itself becomes the killer of everything. There are even theories how to destroy whole planets, just buy putting a few tons of mass faar away from a planet, and let it "fall" into it, or accelerate it into it. The mass in addition with the speed becomes so powerfull, nothing comes close to those energies. Now your ships just drop of some of these loads on your enemies, either one by one or calculated to hit at the same time, you can destroy whole fleets with just one of those loads (again, here depending on mass-capacity and speed of your bombers). So all in all, one of your 25.000 Bombers can take out lets say up to 5 Biggies. resulting in 125.000 Dead biggies per run. But my guess here is that your Bombers can carry a lot of more weight, but i didnt want to overestimate. So maybe give some comment about speed and mass they can carry, to make more accurate guesses. ## Tldr Pack a ton of whatever into those ships, accellerate them towards your target, release the mass, return to base and get some more tons of whatever and repeat. Your enemies will think (the other ones, not the ones you hit) they got stuck in some kind space storm full of material while blowing up one after another, or all together) [Answer] # We could build the bomb with current tech There is no kill like overkill. We want to reduce diamond-double-lead to gas or plasma. How much? How about all of it. Take the largest ship. It has a surface of 28 km \* 14 km \* 8 km, times 15 meters. That is (28 km \* 14 km \* 2 + 14 km\8 km \ 2 + 8 km \* 28 km \* 2) \* 15 m = 2.2E13 liters. From <http://www.materialsdesign.com/appnote/cohesive-energy-diamond> we get that it takes about 18 eV to break one Carbon-Carbon bond in a diamond. Each Carbon in a diamond has 4 bonds, so it is 36 eV per Carbon atom. Lead is 11.34 g/cm3, so we have about 5.5E14 kg of armor here. We'll assume C-12, so every 12 grams has 6E23 atoms. 5.5E14 / 12 \* 6E23 \* 36eV is 1.5E20 Joules. 1 megatonne is 4E15 Joules. So to reduce the biggest ship to its constituent atoms you need to apply about 40,000 megatonnes (40 gigatonnes). The largest hydrogen bomb we have set off on Earth is about 50 megatonnes. So you just need something 1000 times more powerful. Assuming we explode it near the target, something like 75% of the energy will be wasted (go the wrong way). That is just another factor of 4. Peanuts. This just turns everything into free carbon atoms. Plasma would require also exciting the electrons to break free of the atom. From <http://www.chembio.uoguelph.ca/educmat/atomdata/bindener/grp14num.htm> we see that it is on the same order of magnitude (about 1/3?) as breaking the carbon-carbon bonds in diamond, so throw another factor of 2 at the nuke yield to finish the job. # How big a bomb? So simply apply a 320 gigatonne thermonuclear warhead on your weapon, and set it for a proximity explosion. Most of the ship should be reduced to plasma. There is no upper limit on the explosive power of a thermonuclear bomb. There where plans to build a 10 gigatonne bomb using current technology: <https://in.rbth.com/opinion/2016/01/05/nuclear-overkill-the-quest-for-the-10-gigaton-bomb_556351> -- a space fairing civilization should have no problems exceeding that. Note that these are ridiculous weapons, and you could probably succeed with smaller ones. A smaller bomb (say, 100 times smaller) would just penetrate the hull locally instead of evaporating the entire craft. We could today, with a modest engineering effort, put together a 1 gigatonne bomb and (if delivered) cripple or destroy one of the largest ships. You could also get fancy, like some kind of nuclear shaped-charge or penetrating round -- use a small nuke to knock a hole in the ship, then drop another nuke into that hole to cook the ship from the inside. # The fundamental problem here Chemical bonds are weak compared to nuclear energy levels. As your ship is defended by chemical bonds, it has no real durability. The near parts of the ship would become highly energized radiation and deposit the energy further in. The ship's matter itself would become the blast wave. The point I'm trying to make is that the ships you designed aren't that tough. The energy required to move Planetoids dwarfs the effort required to atomize these ships, making even the bombs I'm describing puny. You are describing impressive chemical-era weapons in an atomic era. Your ships, as impressive as they sound, are mild evolutions of someone carrying an volcanic-glass sword and wearing animal hides -- they are merely weapons based on electron bonds between atoms. We are currently in the atomic era, chemical bonds are not an effective defence against atomic era weapons. An interstellar civilization should have weapons that make our atomic and thermonuclear weapons look like toys, much like atomic bombs make obsidian swords look like toys. The energy required to travel between stars, move planetoids, etc is large. Ships designed with chemistry-based armor or weapons are not ships of war in such an era. At best they are police craft. [Answer] ## Self-replicating nanobots There is very little chance that a space faring species that can build ships that are bigger than any mountain in our solar system has not yet gone into atomic-scale engineering. Build something that turns the armour materials into more of itself, do hit and run attacks against the enemy fleet with suicide ships that just crash in the enemy ships. You just need to crash one ship per enemy ship (which can even be so small that they don't notice it on sensors, or can be disguised as an asteroid) and depending on how fast your nanobots are, the enemy ship will quickly be disabled or even eaten alive. As an additional benefit, the enemy cannot salvage whatever's left of the ship. [Answer] I'm with Burki here. A kinetic impactor is all that you need. Since your universe has engines capable of accelerating monstrous megaships kilometers long, with several meters thick armour, you can also accelerate a tiny ship in much less time and/or to a higher speed, depending if fuel is a conditionant or not - if it is not, speed of light should be the fastest non-warping speed your projectiles can achieve. You can make a light autonomous vehicle with a plutonium or uranium hollow nose and let it crash against the ship at several kilometers per second. The hollow nose is to make sure the uranium or plutonium is critically compressed on impact. Design the vehicles carefully to make the projectile to penetrate just about four or five meters in the hull, then the nuclear explosion will project the rest of the armour thickness as shrapnel into the ship. The thick armour will make this shrapnel to ricochet through the ship - maximum effect for bow or stern enfilades. With enough speed, as Burki said in the comment, you don't even need the fission part. Just any blunt, heavy object accelerated to nearly lightspeed will do. [Answer] # We called it the [Tsar Bomba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba) With a fireball 8 kilometers in diameter, this would put a serious dent in even your biggest ships. And this 50Mt design could scale to 100Mt just by changing the lead surround to uranium. The question of 'can we make bigger bombs' is already answered [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/60557/could-we-build-and-deploy-a-multi-gigaton-nuclear-bomb-with-todays-technology). Gigaton yields, that would turn your Super Dreadnoughts - and any escorts that were too near them - into scrap are entirely possible. Warp missiles are way cooler, though. Edit - it's also worth looking at '[Bunker Buster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunker_buster)' bomb designs. Even with WWII specs, these can go through several meters of reinforced concrete before exploding. With space battles, missiles can accelerate to much greater speeds. A bunker-buster design - with an extended delay fuse allowing it to penetrate deep into the target ship before exploding - would be even more damaging than a surface strike. There are also secondary explosions to consider. Battleships of WWI and WWII carried vast amounts of explosives, as the few surviving crew of the [Indefatigable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Indefatigable_(1909)), [Queen Mary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Queen_Mary), [Invincible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Invincible_(1907)), [Pommern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Pommern), [Hood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hood), [Barham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Barham_(04)), [Kongo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Kong%C5%8D), and [Yamato](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato) would attest - indeed, if your fighters can target penetrating missiles at the magazines of these Super-Dreadnoughts they don't need huge warheads, they just need to set off the warheads of the target. A standard technology of antimatter warheads would be VERY liable to go up in a firework display in an accident. [Answer] The answer is "Kinetic Energy" as mentioned by several other posters. At even interplanetary speeds, the amount of kinetic energy being delivered by the impact of an inert mass is astounding, and this only goes up (the ultimate example being a [RKKV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_kill_vehicle) moving at 90% of c, which can destroy a planet). Dumping the litterbox of the ships cat out the airlock could be a dangerous weapon under the right circumstances. Since arranging for a head on pass might not be a good tactic, and the ship's cat has ways of making its annoyance with people stealing its litter known, we need to find an alternative. Since you mentioned "bombs", the answer is actually using nuclear bombs to drive weapons effects. A spherical explosion is not very efficient, and since in the vacuum of space energy is only transmitted by radiation, a conventional nuclear bomb is not an efficient use of energy. Using clever technology to direct the energy of a nuclear device, you can create the analogues of shotguns, shaped charges, explosively formed projectiles and even working plasma weapons which focus the energy of the nuclear device in one direction and can deliver effects like driving pellets at 100km/sec (the "nuclear shotgun") to a spear of star hot plasma moving at @ 10% of the speed of light. Intermediate effects like nuclear shaped charges send streams of metal at the target as @ 3% of c. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aVdLN.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aVdLN.jpg) The basis of everything else: the nuclear energy is preferentially directed through the Channel filler in the microseconds before the device is vapourized There is an extended discussion of these sorts of weapons [here](http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-nuclear-spear-casaba-howitzer.html) and [here](http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2017/05/nuclear-efp-and-heat.html), as well as at the ever handy [Atomic Rockets](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/) website under [conventional weapons](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php). So in some sense, super massive spaceships the size of aircraft carriers and above are counterproductive, given the energies that can be deployed in space. To me, a fleet like that screams "Target!". [Answer] Fusion bomb-pumped laser to penetrate the armor. With a normal nuclear bomb, energy goes in all directions, so at least half of it goes wasted into outer space. Note that the effects of bombs in atmosphere are different - blast overpressure and heating of the atmosphere does most of the destruction. In space, you only benefit from the thermal effects, which amounts to about 35% of the bomb's energy. Then, if your bomb doesn't detonate directly next to the ship, even more gets thrown away into outer space. The energy of your nuclear bomb is better utilized concentrated into a single direction via a laser. The collimated beam of the laser will be more effective at penetrating thick armor and causing destruction once inside. You may want to check out David Weber's treatment of space battles if you're not already familiar. Also, diamond is not a strong material. It is very hard but breaks easily. [Answer] I think the nuke, kinetic, and anti-matter answers are all good and practical. Therefore I'll go plaid. I'd develop a gravity bomb. It is a warhead that for a few seconds generates an intense gravity well. The gravity well is intense though not so much that it would devour a ship; it isn't a black hole. The idea is that a sufficiently close "explosion" will apply a significant off-axis acceleration to the ship, or even one part of the ship. The sudden acceleration will cause the ship's own mass to tear itself apart. We see this, in a way, when large ships sink. When floating they are very strong. But as they sink bow or stern first, the other end will lift out of the water. They are not designed to support their own weight; they are designed for the water to support much of it. So the ship breaks in half. The Titanic sank this way. ``` They might have split up or they might have capsized They may have broke deep and took water ``` * The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordon Lightfoot What happens here is that a wave lifts the bow of the ship up, and the keel cannot support it. The ships breaks in two. EDIT #1 I cannot tell if you're writing a story or creating a game. If you're creating a game, the "gravity bomb" idea allows you to add "terrain" to otherwise empty or perhaps static (unchanging) space. Now with gravity bombs one can create peaks and valleys (if you also have anti-grav bombs... why not?) of gravity that service to destroy opponents, deflect them from strategic locations, or act as a "slingshot" for your own ships. If they are going to be used to "decorate" space, they probably should last longer than a few seconds. [Answer] Shoot cannon balls of anti-matter at them. Then their shielding won't matter and the mass of the canon ball can be quite low. The ships transporting them can thus be small. The mechanism for transporting and firing could be done using magnetism as direct contact is fatal. [Answer] I don't have many ideas about bombs but tactically, in the place of this noble, I wouldn't use carrier theory. Space battles are more likely to take place at ranges so great that ships will likely never see each other. This is the domain of Battleship theory which is all about guns and speed. Carrier is about mobility and defense (Carriers rarely go at full speed because they can out run their escorts, which is suicidal. Carrier Theory relies on escorts to protect the Mobil landing strip). You're correct in wanting to fight up close. Enemy seems geared for long range combat. Carriers here would no be ideal as the escorts would be inefficient defense to range combat and the carrier will be the largest target in play. Even if you stealth it, returning attack vehicles will give general location spread. Battleship theory is also better here as it's all about knowing not just where your target is, but where they will be when the bomb arrives. Instead, focus on submarine tactics, especially if you're limited and range rules the roost in tactics. The guns will likely be inefficient to target an enemy that's close, too prone to friendly fire to be operated, or both, if it's a difference between a few kilometers and a few light years. Both rely on getting close to ships without much point defense. A small one man fighter is a smaller loss than a sub, but you lose all if they return fire on the mothership. Stealth subs like ships have the ability to hit and run, line up critical shots, and confuse numbers (is it one side or one hundred?). A bomber might be less likely to hit, but a sub can at these size get just as close plus bring more things that go boom. It also puts your more valuable ships in a safety range. Your bombers are never more important than your carriers. Carrier tactics today work because Battleships can't hit a target in an airplanes flight range. But in space, and in your scale, you're dealing in ranges that make both on equal terms. The biggest threat are those that you don't see. With that in mind, I'd push for higher stealth and mobility especally if my fleet size is limited. Also it allows for tactics that don't destroy the ship, but leave it down. You can also get more bang for your buck not by getting a bigger bang but using a small bang in the right spot. A cherry bomb doesn't normally do enough damage to down a 747... but it can if you realize that the most vulnerable spot is under the pilot's seat. [Answer] In your universe, people can move planets. By nature of this being possible, you can build some AWESOME weapons. One I would suggest is the "planetary nutcracker" concept, where you move two planets on the opposite sides of a fleet or planet, and launch them towards each other. Given the size of the ships involved, and that they use fusion as power, the bombers themselves are effective weapons. You might be better off shooting a gutted one of those at the enemy. [Answer] Heres my Idea: If you contain about 20 grams of ionized hydrogen in a 1cm in diameter steel sphere, when the sphere breaks it creates a 1.5 megaton explosion due to the repulsive forces generated by the hydrogen ions. The hydrogen would burst forth in an expanding cloud of plasma that propagates at lightspeed and would shred everything. It would be environmentally friendly because it won't create toxic radiation. So you would just scale up the device as needed. To break the sphere you just surround it with a C-4 shaped charge and an oxygen tank designed to tear apart the shere from all directions. [Answer] I will stick to the mass+velocity solution. Plus i add that there is no practical need to distinguish ship from payload. Been unmanned, those bombers would actually be a set of engines for thrust, their fuel, the CPU and all the rest mass will be front armor and nothing else, to protect against some enemy fire(actually mostly against other object the bullet-ship will encounter before impact). Stealth is not needed. With a velocity of 0.9 c and the slightest ability to change direction it is a joke to talk for counter fire that will turn that ship-bullet to harmless dust. Hitting that large targets though is piece of cake. Depending at what type of mass is used, chances are that the ship bullet could even hit more than 1 targets if inline, or, if mass vaporizes while within the target, the effect will be that of a shotgun at 0 range. And the noble hero favorite quote: Welcome to the bullet-ship era! ]
[Question] [ In a Lil sci-fi universe I'm currently writing Humanity has reached the stars, quickly establishing an impromptu interstellar colonial empire made up of hundreds of star systems, puttering along the Milky Way on their ships on the backs of nuclear fission and fusion and traveling faster than light via warp drives that convert matter into energy and information and slip it through the space between universes to where they need to be, with a book 4-9 Expanse-style civilization and ship aesthetic, a vast internal interstellar economy regulated by a republic based on Earth, for Earth. basically, Humans are transiting from a type 0 to a type 1 civilization. However They're one of the last know sentient races to do so, the Milky Way is populated by dozens of other, more advanced races that have arisen and have done the same thing, only earlier. One of these is a race of Corvid-like humanoids from a world of lesser gravity and a thick atmosphere made of the same stuff Earth's atmosphere is but with more O2, they've advanced to the point of anti-gravity and full-on antimatter-based tech (reactors, propulsion, etc.) with a parliamentary monarchy government and were one of the first races Humanity met on their expansion into the Milky Way. But the question is, What does mankind have to offer that these other races don't have or do need? * Can't have to do with something like slave labor * Humans are trading for advanced technology or exotic resources * Safe to assume that these races have similar access to the same resources humans do * Human economy is mostly based on interstellar colonies sending materials back to Sol (our solar system) in exchange for needed supplies and funding * Other races are willing to trade for information, territory, passage through human space, or lifeforms [Answer] ## Art and Culture Somewhere (I was unable to find it) there is a sequence by Father Guido Sarducci, Gossip Columnist to the Vatican, about the People's Space Program. And he explains that when we meet aliens we can't trade tech with them. What are we going to give them, Drano? They heard already. But when we hit them with [Little Richard doing Good Golly Miss Molly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ6akiGRcL8) they will start to tap their feet. When we play [Carmina Burana](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRjyxr1ysKw) for them, we will have their attention. When we take them to The Louvre, they are going to be impressed. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wXdPx.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wXdPx.jpg) When we take them to a San Diego Comic Con, they're going to go home with merch. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cCt9P.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cCt9P.jpg) [Answer] ## Comparative Advantage [Comparative advantage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage) might sound a little like exploitation or slavery, but it isn't. Say a worker in the high-tech civilization can produce 10 gimmicks per day, or 10 doodads. A worker in the low-tech civilization has less effective tools, lower productivity overall, and produces 2 gimmicks or 4 doodads per day. Everybody needs one gimmick per day, and as many doodads as possible. * If the high-tech people produce their own gimmicks and doodads, they will each have 1 gimmick and 9 doodads. If the low-tech people produce their own gimmicks and doodads, they will each have 1 gimmick and 2 doodads. * If one low-tech person and one high-tech person team up, the high-tech person could produce 2 gimmicks and 8 doodads, and the low-tech person could produce 4 doodads. That would allow 1 gimmick for each of them and 12 doodads between them -- one more than before. They'll have to find a good exchange rate to find out who gets the extra doodad. The key here is that the high-tech people are not just more effective overall, their advantage has to differ between different technologies. [Answer] Food and raw materials (labor). Yes, the other races can produce these themselves, but why would they, if they can pay humans to do it for them? If you look at how trade relations work here on Earth, that's usually how it goes. The technologically forward nations sells technology (know-how) to less tech-having nations in exchange for food, raw materials and labor. (It gets complicated when much of this technology is produced in the labor-selling nations, but historically this was much more obvious.) It's entirely up to you how exploitative this relationship is. Historically on Earth it has been very exploitative (and still is), but this is not a given. [Answer] # Novel Experience Sometimes you just gotta go slumming. And when the advanced races log into the human BodyNet, they can feel what it feels likes to be a human going about their lower life-form day via a full-body sensory suit that broadcasts every nerve impulse to voyeuristic subscribers to A-Fans. This is like the "Art & Culture" answer, except that the humans aren't trying to create art, per se. Rather, they are the art. What human wouldn't like to experience a day in the life of a dolphin? Or a lemur? Or a peregrine falcon? It's kinda like a human safari, but from a first-person perspective! Of course, fans can tap into 3rd-person cams all around the city/countryside so they can live the life from any angle desired. If humans like to dress up as furries, who's to say that aliens don't like to dress up as nakies? # Black Market Of course, once you've had a taste of walking around in a people suit, some will want to indulge their darkest urges and take it to the logical conclusion: full bodily control. This requires special suits which not only broadcast sensory signals, but also impose motor signals onto the wearer, turning them into a literal skin puppet. Various Human Rights groups across the galaxy argue that this sick experience is beyond the virtues of upstanding aliens, but obviously not all aliens feel the same way. And nothing is particularly special about humans. The aliens do the same thing to every other life form on Earth. Nor do they respect the species boundaries that are deeply ingrained in human taboos...you can make this as dark as you like. # Test Subjects If the other species are DNA-based, then perhaps humans make good in vivo test subjects for drugs and medicines. We could be the literal lab rats for a higher civilization. They may even make Earth habitats which closely reflect some of their own communities so that humans living there would be as biologically similar to the aliens as possible. Of course, humans would always have to sign up for such experiments voluntarily, but the superior alien entertainments make this a trivial problem to solve. Humans and their sugar water have nothing on alien scientists. If the aliens are sufficiently advanced, they may be able to preserve human mental states, perform invasive/destructive experiments on humans, and then restore them to a pre-surgical state. They don't do this on themselves because there is a small risk of failure that they are not willing to assume. But the lower human castes accept this trade eagerly. # Travelling Zoo Why limit the human freak show to Earth? Plop a community of human "explorers" into an alien FTL ship and send them on a tour of planets for all the locals to gawk at. Humans get the road trip of a lifetime, and aliens don't have the leave the comfort of their home to get a look at the last uncontacted species in the galaxy. Compensation for the humans is trivial (equivalent to shiny baubles to the aliens), but the Circus Ringleaders make out like bandits. # Gofers Long-term the novelty will wear off for most aliens. Then what? Will humans be ignored? Neglected? Exterminated? Nope. They will be put to use. Aliens who have populated the entire galaxy know one thing extremely well: how to specialize into a niche. Every species exists in harmony because a balance has been achieved whereby every species contributes something useful to the galactic economy. Every species represents a tradeoff in size, strength, intelligence, resource demands, resilience, etc. And for each combination of attributes, there is some job, somewhere in the galaxy, where that is the optimal combination. For humans to exist in this galaxy long-term, they will have to split up into smaller bands and fill these niches on thousands of worlds, asteroids, and space stations, just as aliens will come to earth and colonize and fill niches there, crowding out the less efficient humans. There is no malice or dark overtones of wiping out the human race: just ruthless pragmatism and extreme demand for efficiency. Since humans aren't the smartest, strongest, biggest, smallest, or most durable of any species, they will tend to be a roving jack-of-all trades which specializes in helping out exactly in the time and place they are needed, and having the flexibility to do so competently (that is, better than the other species which are ruthlessly specialized to most of the existing niches). They won't be the best at anything, but they will be better than average by virtue of their lack of over-specialization. Which means they won't be wanted forever, but they will be wanted when a disaster or upheaval creates a local vacuum that can be filled by a particular roving band of humans. [Answer] Biological compounds Every planet has unique life forms, and some of those on earth produce chemicals or compounds that are either useful or just desirable on other planets, but only found on earth. Human scientists today study chemicals produced by obscure plants in the Amazon for their medical properties, and have had good results. Who knows what an advanced civilisation could do with skunk liquid or rose oil. [Answer] (Disclaimer: this list is almost entirely ripped off from Ringo's absolutely amazing [Live Free or Die](https://www.baen.com/live-free-or-die.html) with a dash of Niven's Known Space.) ### Folk Art Boba Fit already brushed on this, but art tends to cross boundaries well, if for no other reason than by being exotic and thus novel. Ideas are cheap and don't require much technology, and even if aliens can replicate the physical artifacts trivially, there's likely a market for hand-made goods. (Compare to certain "luxury" goods on Earth that are ludicrously overpriced compared to their cost of manufacture, simply because you are buying a brand name.) Also, depending on the aliens' civilization, there may be money to be made in licensing works for reproduction. (It may cost the aliens the equivalent of pennies to reproduce "Starry Night", but if their laws include a concept of exclusive rights to do so, there's still money to be made from buying those rights, especially if humans can arrange to sell said rights directly.) ### Foodstuffs ...because tea (camellia, hibiscus, or otherwise) grown on Earth just tastes better than tea grown anywhere else. Or maybe it can't grow anywhere else. This might be the case for any number of edible goods, some of which might be like ambrosia to aliens. (Even just on our single planet, the region of origin can make a big difference, especially when it comes to very high-end foodstuffs!) ### Raw materials Sure, our <insert mineral here> mining is inefficient, but all the major sources back home are claimed by mega-corporations, leaving the door open for some enterprising tramp to get a small market going. Factor in someone smart enough to invest (especially if the aliens' laws have safeguards against simply trampling over indigenous races) and you have a reason not only for trade, but for the more advanced civilization to uplift the less advanced one. ### Mercenaries Sure, your culture is technologically advanced, but that very advancement leads to decadence. Really, who wants to get their hands dirty fighting wars, or even just breaking up the occasional bar scuffle. That's what "aliens" (i.e. humans, for example; remember we're speaking from the aliens' perspective here) are for. Everyone knows violence is all those poor primitives know how to do, and they're really good at it, too! ...And they might come in real handy when it turns out the new neighbors are rowdy, aggressive conquerors that want to subjugate your race. (And, lucky for your aliens, humans aren't big fans of slavery and are less likely to turn around and subjugate you themselves. It will help if you're nice to them, though.) [Answer] We have a Planet The more advanced civilizations have been around for billions of years. Their home planet was swallowed up by their sun and they live in artificial habitats. Teraforming never took off since it was always cheaper to build new homes from scratch. As a result, all advanced peoples eat nutritional slurry, wear identical jumpsuits, are born from gestation pods, and have no word for the colour green. Some of them spend their whole lives in pressurized environments. Come to Earth. Eat our fruits and vegetables. Hike through our forests. Swim in our oceans. For an extra thousad Star Credits can take some seeds, a jar of salt water, or book of pressed leaves home with you. Drink our booze! Of course you have alcohol in space. But ours tastes different. We have over 890,000 strains of yeast. More than the 45 you Arked off your homeworld when the sun swallowed it. And you never know which one you will get! Every sip is an adventure! [Answer] Looking at earth, where such things happened regularly in the past, usually one or both of the following happen: 1. the less advanced society gets colonised by the more advanced one 2. the less advanced society trades their raw materials and/or agricultural output with the more advanced one for things like weapons and tools they can't produce themselves 3. the less advanced society becomes a tourist attraction I see no reason why this wouldn't be the case when meeting alien species in a Sci Fi setting. [Answer] ## Drugs I said, what I said. Get your tinfoil hat on, because I will use this question to share my own conspiracy theory. That's what we are selling to aliens right now! (Dun-dun-duuun!) Let's use Opium as example. For opium, you need poppy flowers and they, for whatever reason do not grow on alien planet. So, they need to be produced on Earth, exclusively. And that is why the kilogram definition [got changed recently](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram#Timeline_of_previous_definitions) - to trade with Aliens ;) [Answer] Synthetic Elements You said the aliens would have access to natural resources, but synthetic elements are made only in labs. Human-made synthetic elements would therefore be new to these species. Literature, Music, and Art While the aliens might have done better in using their resources for necessity, they will have to have used their resources for recreation differently. So our literature and art will be of value. Land Earth is a lush planet, and the aliens would likely value a piece of it. Historical Artifacts In the same vein as Literature, Music, and Art. DNA or Organisms Since they’re unique to Earth, the aliens would probably be interested in them. [Answer] How does it work on Earth? Cheap labor - we will literally work for chips! Their tech is 1000s of years more advanced than ours so we get rich working for a few years for them. "Natural" resources - they can reprocess our garbage for insanely useful materials and pay us next to nothing in our terms for it. Cultural viewpoints - we sell O'Henry style stories with illuminating commentary to them to provide them with novel solutions to social problems. Ditto for movies and other forms of entertainment. [Answer] The same thing that 3rd world countries in the world trade with 1st world countries for advanced equipment, Labor. Be it: Domestic helpers, retirement community assistance. Construction workers, welders... Any job that is 'low skill' (Time before the worker provides value is low) and probably boring, uncomfortable, or dangerous to perform. Also, could provide entertainment, arts, literature... Mineral rights ]
[Question] [ Architecture in the Western world used stone as the primary building material until the late 19th century. [![A Victorian era street with ornate stone buildings.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5kbEL.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5kbEL.jpg) Modern architecture uses much more glass and metal in construction compared to the architecture of that time period. [![An overview of a modern city with many glass and steel-frame buildings.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xxCut.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xxCut.jpg) Why would a modern civilization with more advanced technology continue to build many buildings out of stone rather than glass and metal? [Answer] Culture is enough to do that. The people do not like glass and metal, it's cheap, the glass isn't safe, it is wasteful of energy to heat and cool. Stone is "natural". Skyscrapers are more cheap-outs, and inaccessible for many. I can imagine a culture that disdains cheaping out on buildings, that thinks buildings are a form of art and not using stone, sculpture, highlights is ugly. After all, the old institutions we admire most are all stone; most city halls and government buildings are stone or concrete. We love and fantasize about castles, stone archways, stone forts, stone churches and cathedrals full of stone statues and stone gargoyles and lions protecting them. Stained glass is art, a window is ... just a window. The modern office building looks sterile and utilitarian, why would any self-respecting professional work in one? Do they care nothing about the aesthetic senses of their clients? Just build it into the culture. It's like dress: We could all, male and female, children to the elderly, wear the same gray shirts, pants, shoes, winter coats, underwear, etc. Dress could be meaningless. But in our culture, it is not. We are entertained by dress. Dress expresses our emotions, our sense of self, we use it to look attractive, we like variety in our dress and appreciate variety in the dress of others. We use it for formality, suits and tuxedoes, frilly and other impractical dresses serve absolutely no practical purpose, they are strictly art, custom and form. Stone buildings are a form of dress. The cultural expectation is you will NOT show us the equivalent of a T-shirt and jeans and sneakers -- Your place of business will be entertaining, it will be natural stone, with carvings, with sculptures, with marble columns, and statues or other stone art. Or nobody will frequent your business, or rent in your building, no matter how cheap you make it. Here's some kind of weird warehouse district, it's absolutely disgusting. It might as well be cardboard boxes! [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hvrN3.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hvrN3.png) [Answer] You mean like we do? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BmHrB.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BmHrB.jpg) Another word for concrete is "synthetic conglomerate". We use stone extensively for building; we just don't wait for geological processes to provide it and instead whip up a more flexible version ourselves. [Answer] # They build everything to last Forever: The basic philosophy of the society is that nothing should be done if it isn't done right. They want to build cities that will continue to be used for thousands of years, and recognizable as a civilization for 10's or hundreds of thousands of years. Modern materials are transient and pale imitations of the stone construction of the ancients. They build in stone, and MASSIVELY in stone - pyramids, roadways made of thousand ton slabs, the works. We have the technology today, and it's only getting better. Concrete is already essentially synthetic stone. Soon we'll be able to make materials that are synthetic stones, indistinguishable from stone and stronger and more durable than natural stone. If stone is the gold standard for lasting forever, and we can make stone even better than that, why wouldn't a society do so? [Answer] Ecology. They were once used to building with concrete (and steel, and glass, and plastic, etc...). They later found out that [cement has an impressive energy and waste footprint](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02612-5). They also [devastated some natural sources of sand](https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/11/15/131940/ghost-ships-crop-circles-and-soft-gold-a-gps-mystery-in-shanghai/). Steel is not better either. In order to reduce the cement use, they started to use natural stone. It is pretty much abundant and can be CNC-machined (once the needed industry is established). Steel reinforcement is reduced and inserted by boring. The waste of cutting and boring is engineered for particle size and used as a sand replacement. The cheaper form results in the usual [panel buildings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel_building). They just slice the rock in 20cm sheets. The more prestigious and expensive form uses the more traditional stone blocks that results in Ancient Greek / Ancient Roman / Medieval European architecture. Both processes are not really as labour intensive because of extended automation. The real labour is drawing first and fixing whatever goes wrong later. Both types of building blocks are efficiently recyclable and it is normal to see an downtown building transforming into a number of expensive suburban homes in the same style (e.g. Old Opera Park). [Answer] Taste for vintage style. During Neoclassicism building in the style of classic Greece were built, though the civilization was quite more advanced. Still today we see objects manufactured in the style and look of the '60s, though we have made some step forward with respect to those times. And don't forget practical reason: with your neighbor upstairs going commando the whole day, would you really want a glass ceiling in your condo? [Answer] ## TRADITION! ...and public perception. An old, long-established company may want to project a certain image to its customers, that they are concerned with traditional values and long-term stability, and building in an old-fashioned style projects that image. Even their new buildings look like they've been around for many years. Maybe such buildings cost a bit more time and money to build, but the extra time and money is advertising. Even certain recently-established companies that rely upon public perception and trust and want their customers to know that they will be there for the long haul may prefer old-style buildings for just the same reason. What sort of companies might want this sort of image? Banks, investment brokers, stock traders, governments and the like. To contrast, technology-based companies would likely favour modern-style glass and steel buildings, to project an image of being fresh, new and progressive. [Answer] Perhaps the world where the civilization evolved is low on metals and silica. What quantities of these materials which are available are needed for electrical/technological uses. [Answer] ### To be like Jerusalem From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_stone): > > Municipal laws in Jerusalem require that all buildings be faced with local Jerusalem stone. The ordinance dates back to the British Mandate and the governorship of Sir Ronald Storrs and was part of a master plan for the city drawn up in 1918 by Sir William McLean, then city engineer of Alexandria. > > > There are other places in the current world with strange rules. Homeowner associations where you have to paint your door a certain color. Cities with height limits so that no building is higher than one special building (whether governmental or religious in nature). But stone - just look at Jerusalem. [Answer] # They can grow stone In the modern day we often use concrete, a stone you can make, because it's cheap. But it's also ugly. This advanced civilization has a way to grow stones cheaply and effectively. As such, only very rich people can afford to use other inferior materials and most buildings are made of stones. [Answer] We might soon stop using glass in skyscrapers as they are not energy efficient. If you are after Victorian look not the construction technique, it can easily be justified as that is what people like. The buildings will be built like modern ones, with steel and probably concrete and then faced with stone to make it look good. If you want to do away with steel at all, they are advanced enough to grow special stone crystals which are extremely durable and thus they do not need any of our modern materials. It could very well be more cost effective, stronger and environmentally friendly at the same time. If you are after shorter buildings, we already have those kinds of restrictions in many places, you can simply extend it globally. [Answer] The planet has no earthquakes. One requirement for earthquake proofing buildings, especially large buildings, is using building materials with adequate ductility. Ductility describes how well a material can tolerate plastic deformation before it fails. Thus, materials with high ductility can absorb large amounts of energy without breaking. Structural steel is one of the most ductile materials, while brick and concrete are low-ductility materials. If a planet has no earthquakes, there wouldn't necessarily be a need to use other materials like steel in the first place. [Answer] ## The transition to glass happened later than you think it did The style of architecture you're referring to is called the International Style, and features steel (or sometimes reinforced concrete) frame construction with glass/aluminum curtain wall building envelopes and steel/concrete Q-deck type or concrete slab floor systems. However, that style is so commonly associated with skyscrapers that most people forget that skyscrapers were invented well before the International Style came to be, using multiwythe masonry for their curtain walls, and structural clay tile floor systems instead of the steel Q-deck we now use. As a result, in response to the increasing need to use valuable, highly serviced and amenitized urban land as efficiently as possible (which is what drives building heights up, and is a rather universal pressure -- the Romans had to limit apartment heights for safety reasons), they wouldn't eschew the skyscraper altogether, simply the glass curtainwall systems of the International Style. Instead, their buildings would be built like the skyscrapers of the 1900s through the 1920s were with some adaptations, mostly less reliance on steel alone for support. In particular, they'd use a reinforced concrete or masonry internal frame (instead of relying on relatively slender and light structural steel members), with structural clay tile floor form systems (a lost art ever since Q-deck was invented, sadly), and multiwythe reinforced brick masonry curtain walls, optionally faced with stone veneers. These buildings would be elegant, rugged, adaptable, and tall, much like the grand Art Deco skyscrapers that evoke fond memories to this day. [Answer] # [Fa√ßades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fa%C3%A7ade) This is an architectural concern, as well an engineering concern - engineering does care about the energy efficiency of the building, but for an architect, they also set the tone. Sometimes, the tone is related to the building it replaced in the past. This technologically advanced civilization likely went through intermediate stages before getting to be advanced, and thus, old building would be getting replaced with newer, better buildings. Well, better in terms of a building code, but architects do wish to sometimes pay homage to the previous building, or the nearby buildings, in some significant way. [![An angled view of the fa√ßade of the F5 building in Seattle, with a view of buildings directly nearby](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9OuGF.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9OuGF.png) As you can see from this Google Map Street View image, the F5 Tower here is mostly glass, and a look from it at [here](https://www.google.ca/maps/@47.6052596,-122.3306449,3a,75y,272.38h,126.83t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sv2MGZycJbHJQDtR-6jl8hw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en), it's a lot of glass further up - but crucially, there's a stone textured block appearing to hold up part of it, even with these more metal pillars appearing to hold the structure itself, with a crossing metal beam appearing to go across and up into the upper glass component of the building (From a cursory glance, that line appears to reference the the nearby I-5 Express entrance/exit, although as I didn't design this building, I can't say for certain that was the inspiration of it.) These decisions often aren't just made in a vacuum like other photos above have emphasized - sometimes they're in reference to nearby building, or in contrast to make their building stand out as specifically different, as [this other angle](https://www.google.ca/maps/@47.6054922,-122.3308653,3a,80y,253.47h,123.42t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOOXWeNHu41j17j7AYip4rA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en) shows it's not quite replicating the Sanctuary building next door. [![The F5 Tower from the opposite angle, showcasing its placement next to the Sanctuary building and a few other, distinctly different skyscrapers.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BL6Re.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BL6Re.jpg) As a result, each nearby building, despite looking the same from a bird's-eye view as heavily glass, is likely to be able to be find some way of distinguishing itself especially at the lower level, taking inspiration from past buildings in that same spot, or from the nearby infrastructure, to stand out upon closer viewing. [Answer] They were once a rich, advanced civilization but are now forced to live on a barren, mineral poor planet. Well, maybe not technically mineral poor. Rocks are made of minerals, and you can extract various metal from it. Perhaps poor in useful minerals, and one reason or another they do not have high quality mineral deposits and the cost of refining all building materials into metal is too high. It would be a barren planet that lacks soft dirt (clay buildings insulate heat better than stone) and plantlife (wood, hay, etc.) Hopefully a temperate if slightly cool climate as stone is a thermal material. Lack of these materials usually limits the civilization's ability for growth, that is why it is likelya postapocalyptic society that either lived in a changed world or are forced to migrate to a barren world. [Answer] Because they were "taught" to use stones by an ancient, advanced civilization before them. This species died out completely shortly after translations were established, and this is where a majority of your civilizations advancements came from for the first thousand years of their recorded history. What they didn't realize is they only met these last few survivors after their civilization had collapsed. The space stations they'd been living on in orbit were lost to the oceans when they tried to convert them to floating cities in the [great catastrophe] of [year]. The only buildings remaining on land were even more ancient stone structures - but your civilization always assumed stone was the only material worth building with, because the all-knowing, as they're memorialized, "only" built with stone. Those that question the use of strictly stone are labeled as fools who don't know history. [Answer] # The Sound Metal has a tinny sound and can reverberate sound in a way that is unpleasant. For privacy concerns amongst others, stone muffles sound. solid stone would conduct sound better but the thickness can manage how that happens. # Temperature management Metal changes temperature much easier than stone. Perhaps for retaining heat or slowing temperature changes from outdoors. (short days on the planet perhaps?) [Answer] # They dig. Well. The sonic disintegrator is a simple device which produces and monitors sound. It is able to project a sharply focused "wire" of sound anywhere in a mass of rock, shearing it to any desired shape internally. Blocks of stone can then be pulled out of the resulting tunnel, which is ready for service. This allowed the massive expansion of civilization underground, for safe bunkers and isolated ecological preserves and countless other reasons. This has left behind a whole lot of cut stone. With electric motors and regenerative braking available in practically every mode of transport, it is very cheap to simply move blocks of stone where needed nowadays. Stone blocks have the advantage of a natural beauty and established historical provenance. You can look at any block in a wall, and immediately find out where it was mined, what minerals it is made of, and, to the nearest year, when any given part of it was deposited. The structural qualities of the blocks are equally well known, making it completely unnecessary (and counterproductive) to grind them down to chunks or refine them into component compounds before using them in engineering. [Answer] Your aliens don't like to be too crowded. Modern (human) buildings go to glass and metal because this allows taller buildings, packing more people/space into a given land footprint. As long as nobody wants buildings taller than about 5 to 8 stories, stone works just fine, and there was little incentive to develop the steel-frame building characteristic of modern buildings. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/104378/edit). Closed 5 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/104378/edit) In my scifi world I would like space combat to frequently involve sending boarding parties to defeat the enemy ship. Perhaps the infiltrators can disable the enemy ship's shields so that they be more easily destroyed. Or perhaps they could kill the whole crew of the ship. However it raises the question; instead of teleportation or breaking into the ship. Why not just teleport an explosive into their ship? Or send a missile? It seems like this would be much more effective way of defeating the enemy ship. I appreciate that sometimes you would like to take prisoners, or take supplies, or take the ship itself, which is easier if you don't use explosives. But I would like boarding to be the easiest way to render an enemy ship inoperable. How can I achieve this? [Answer] Spaceships are sacred relics from the Ones-That-Came-Before The techniques of building warp engines have been lost centuries ago and now each of the surviving spaceships capable of FTL is a priceless relic. No one wants to destroy a spaceship, so combat will be more to take control of it then to destroy it. Alternatively: Wars are a thing of savages and barbarians. These days with the advanced sensors a ship can detect any enemy way ahead of time and blown it out of space with a swarm of nuclear missiles, but what happens when the catering team you hired to entertain your guests turns out to be space pirates? When spend trillions making a space battleship when you can hire a rag tag team of colorful and zany thieves and scoundrels to infiltrate and take over your enemy ships? [Answer] Actually, it could be as simple as debris. [Space is big](http://hitchhikersguidequotes.tumblr.com/post/13945214509/space-is-big-really-big-you-just-wont-believe) but that doesn't mean that it's all going to get traversed evenly. There are going to be transit lines between major star systems and even between planets in a single solar system. But wait! (I hear you say;) Planets are in orbits, so you're never going to use the same space to get between Earth and Mars, for instance. Not entirely true. The Hohmann Transfer windows for instance will commonly be used because they're efficient and fast, so provided your transit isn't time critical (and in many cases where it is) you'll just wait on Earth for the planets to be aligned properly to fly between them. So; given that you have the equivalent of shipping lanes, and that because space is big your ships have to travel really fast to get somewhere within a reasonable timeframe, the absolutely LAST thing you can afford is a bunch of debris right slap bang in the middle of your transit route. You already have a massive ice shield on the front of your ship to protect you from interstellar dust et al; imagine what would happen if you struck a two tonne jaggedly edged piece of Hardashellium that used to be part of a destroyer's hull? So; you could say by convention, but really it's enlightened self interest that stops you from attacking ships directly with weapons. You send in small assault shuttles that are designed to either burn through the hull and preserve the bits that you cut out, or just hack an airlock, and send your marines in. This keeps your shipping lines free of debris and allows your ships future safe passage. Besides; these things are hellishly expensive. Back in the 1800's, it was customary to try to take enemy supply ships and naval vessels as 'prizes' if possible; by doing so, you saved your country the resources and time required to build a new ship from scratch, and you denied your enemy the benefit of those invested resources. The same thing would be true in the future with space ships insofar as if there are only limited resources that can go into building them in the first place, capturing hostile ships instead of destroying them provides you a significant advantage in any conflict. [Answer] They want to take the crew alive. <http://deremilitari.org/2014/07/killing-or-clemency-ransom-chivalry-and-changing-attitudes-to-defeated-opponents-in-britain-and-northern-france-7-12th-centuries/> > > ... The battle was a resounding > victory for the Anglo-Normans, yet of the 900 or so knights engaged, > only three were killed.[2] The Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic > Vitalis, writing at the monastery of St Evroult in southern Normandy > and one of our finest sources for the nature of contemporary warfare, > offered his own explanation for this striking lack of casualties: > > > They were all clad in mail and spared each other on both sides, out of > fear of God and fellowship in arms (notitia contubernii); they were > more concerned to capture than kill the fugitives. As Christian > soldiers, they did not thirst for the blood of their brothers, but > rejoiced in a just victory given by God for the good of Holy Church > and the peace of the faithful. > > > There are several reasons why the victors might want the crew alive. 1. Chivalry. It is bad form to kill fellow beings if avoidable. It shows greater finesse / nobility / honor to the Creator to take your opponents alive and treat them well. 2. Ransom. Not completely incompatible with #1 - perhaps the crew have family or backers to whom they are worth something. Those people might be willing to pay ransom to have them returned. 3. You need crew. Sailing ships long practiced [impressment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment) - a sailor is a sailor and if you need some you can take them off of other ships you encounter. The crewmen on the captured ship might be working men with no particular deep loyalty who are glad to continue in their line of work as crewmen and so will go to work for the captor. That is especially true if you capture their ship intact - who is going to fly it for you? 4. Rules of war. Maybe your world operates under something like the Geneva convention or Kittamer accords. Blowing up a starship outright is a war crime like the use of poison gas or torture. Proper war conduct involves boarding opposing ships and fighting it out. Both sides adhere to these conventions because neither wants a return to the wasteful murderous bad old days. [Answer] Spaceships are expensive. Thus, it's cheaper to capture your enemy's ships and use them yourself (as done in the Age of Sail) than to blow them up while building even more of your own. [Answer] There's almost no good reason for this to be the case; for the same reason that if the goal is eliminating a (modern day) opponent's war-fighting capability, you don't need boots on the ground. Particularly in space combat, enormous transfer of energy is going to be the easiest way to stop anything. However, my best explanation: ## Spacecraft are Impossibly Tough Early in [Your Race's] exploration of space, they discovered Unperturbium. This mineral/element/whatzit allows construction of materials so tough that it requires enormous amounts of energy just to forge them, and once forged, even dropping them into a sun takes some time to destroy them. This has made fractional-C travel much easier, if somewhat noisy, as the hull is impervious to virtually any impactor. Gumming up their rocket nozzles or destroying their fragile sensors can blind or hamper a ship, but if you truly wish to defeat an Unperturbium-hulled ship in combat, it's seizure or nothing. [Answer] Are you familiar with the history of the Ford Pinto? It was a car sold in the 70s. If the vehicle was rear-ended, the gas tank tended to explode. Getting to your question - Space travel is a complicated engineering challenge. Engineers struggled for millenia on how to get an economically efficient engine able to power a spaceship at a reasonable rate of speed. It was eventually accomplished, but are still some design problems that haven’t been worked out yet. Those spaceship engines don’t like to be jostled. And when they are jostled, as they would be if someone was foolish enough to shoot at them, the results are...bad. When those engines go, it isn’t just bad news for that ship’s crew. Other nearby ships tend to suffer as well. It’s rumored that, hypothetically, a bad enough reaction could create a new black hole. So DON’T SHOOT THE SHIPS!!! addendum to address some of the excellent points raised below: I think a catastrophic failure could affect ships even if they were a million miles away. Ships won’t be sitting still while they’re being shot. They will be moving around. So all that mass is moving in one direction. The power core has enough juice to move all that mass at faster-than-light speeds. Perhaps, if an enemy laser knocks out the regulators on the power core BEFORE doing enough damage to the engines to render them inoperable, all that energy spikes through the engines. The ship (already damaged) suddenly gets pushed into an uncontrolled FTL speed. Catastrophic structure failure is likely. Then you have less of a ship and more of an FTL shotgun. That could plausibly have negative consequences to an enemy ship no matter how far away they were. Also, regarding the comments on the Ford Pinto being more of a hysteria problem, that’s a good point. Humans can get fixated on dramatic, spectacular negative outcomes even if they are extremely unlikely. Which adds to my point. It doesn’t matter if it is LIKELY that a catastrophic engine failure can wipe out another ship a million miles away. All that matters is it’s POSSIBLE. It will be on every crew’s mind every single time someone gives the order to fire. Which, in turn, makes boarding actions much more attractive. [Answer] A space "battleship" will likely operate more like an aircraft carrier or mobile fortress than a naval warship. As it is with current day navy ships their ability to dole out damage far exceeds their ability to take it and this is a trend that will likely continue into the future. So like the modern day carrier group a battleship is more of a staging ground and support facility than a frontline combatant, having smaller more agile craft do target acquisition while it sits a few AU outside the solar system, occasionally firing on the enemy from afar. When there's a carrier group off the coast you don't get into a HE shell slugging match because the best case scenario for that is mutual destruction, instead you might try to capture some of the landing craft and counterassault with boarding parties. It's a risky strategy but warfare is rarely symmetrical and in asymmetrical warfare if you're on the side without the big guns you want to attack the enemy in a way that prevents them using their firepower advantage against you. [Answer] ## It's the only way to take live prisoners Society has gotten to the point that even war, killing is not allowed. If some other country is attacking you, you are morally required to take them captive instead of killing them if possible. If you don't, you'll be classified as barbarians, and all the other countries are free to plunder/sanction you. So why not just attack them with a weak enough attack to stop the ship? The reason is because life-support technology is fragile. Any attack on the ship strong enough to disable it will also disable the life-support. So you would need to teleport not only a bomb, but a bunch of space suits as well (directly onto all of the enemy combatants). Otherwise, you would have their blood on your hands. The only other alternative is to teleport combatants onto their ship to take them captive. (An interesting plot point in this is if a country decides it doesn't care if the other countries call them barbarians, and just starts blowing up enemy ships.) [Answer] ## Defensive Teleportation A bomb can easily be teleported onto a ship, but the defending ship can just as easily teleport it off again. Ship teleportation systems are programmed to identify high energy reactions and teleport them as far away as possible. Unfortunately, this autonomous system only works because explosions have a 'loud' energy signature that the teleportation can lock on to. Human boarders cannot be as easily identified, and therefore have a chance to gain control of the ship without being spaced. [Answer] ## LOOTING! You need to get on the ship to gather up the booty efficiently, lest it all just scatter into space. It'd still be possible to collect in that state, but much more cumbersome. [Answer] Easy: ships are no-pun-intended astronomically expensive, so a siezed ship will more than pay for the cost of the torpedos, energy cells, and crew lives expended to capture it. A destroyed or irreparably damaged ship is such a net loss that you might tank your economy and be unable to recover from the bungled operation. [Answer] In history ship boarding was one of two weapons, the other being ramming. Why these were the tactics is because they were no reasonable stand off weapon that can kill a ship. In your world electromagnetic shields can make a ship unable to be harmed by energy weapons. Ships that go really really fast need physical shields from matter and would be enormous, able to takes a few nukes. (plenty of answers here pointing out the size of physical shields to go star to star). [Answer] You first have to figure out where to hit them. Building a spaceship is a massive project, and each spaceship is unique in its design and internal structure. From the outside not much of the internal structure is seen, and the shields block your scanners. Teleporting a bomb to a random position of the enemy ship is a game of luck. You have to get a recon squad to the other ship to spot critical components from up close. Additionally, this might open spy wars about spaceship data. If you have the construction plans of your enemy's ship, you don't have to guess. [Answer] Initial assumptions: your spaceships' cababilities don't include things like teleporting the entire ship, ignoring G-forces, effortless FTL travel. Ships are much smaller than, say, a planet. Tl;dr: You'll mostly be meeting your opponents around assets like planets and space stations, which affect the way battles are fought. Information warfare is central and requires physical access to ship systems. # Your objective determines the battlefield Space is big, mostly empty, and spaceships moving at relativistic speeds are hard to see coming and/or intercept in time. Battles would usually take place near planets, space stations, dyson swarms and other such points of interest, even if your target is specifically a spaceship. Other large objects in the vicinity (that you can't just vaporize because they're either very valuable or massive enough to withstand your fire for a while) will affect tactics. # Open space combat is deadly Whether you're zooming past your target at near light speed and dropping projectiles in their path or exchanging missile barrages from two light seconds away, the most likely outcome for roughly equal opponents is mutual destruction. If you intend to accomplish anything worthwhile in space combat, you need to use the "battlefield" to your advantage. # Scenario: Taking a planet A ship/fleet sent to conquer a planet or a large space station would probably need to be designed with that purpose in mind. They'd start firing at the target's stationary weapons and general vicinity far in advance of their arrival, hopefully hitting enough to be able to approach without being torn apart by counter fire. Defenders near the opposite side of the planet will be mostly unharmed, so the attacking force would be wise to take advantage of this cover as well. Maneuvering up and down the horizon and attempting to snipe one another with railguns is still an option, but guided missiles going around the planet don't require you to expose yourself. These, on the other hand, are slow enough to be targeted by all sorts of point defenses, the most powerful of which have been placed planetside or in low to medium orbit to avoid the initial barrage. Surviving forces on the planet and in orbit will easily outnumber ship crews, and with point defenses struggling to keep up with saturation bombardments, boarding parties have a decent chance of getting to their destination. # Intelligence is key Electronic warfare can turn a battle in an instant. Courses and tactics need to be communicated. Point defenses and targeting systems need split-second coordination. Turning one enemy railgun against their allies is a guaranteed kill. Broadcasting bogus telemetry can crush a fleet. But in an equal contest of wits and processing power, the defender always wins. You need physical access to their systems in order to hack them. Blowing up one of their 25 redundant processor banks won't accomplish much. Allowing a team of soldiers and technicians to plug into it will get the job done. And who knows what kinds of useful info they might find in the process? [Answer] Harry Harrison's matter transmitter stories. They are paired--if you capture one that gives you a portal to the enemy base. Sapper throws a two stage bomb, the initial charge is conventional--destroy the transmitter. Stage 2 is nuclear--you just blew up the enemy base, wherever it might be in the universe. [Answer] # Shields! Shields surround the ship. You mentioned teleportation in your question, so perhaps teleportation is limited by shields. Adding teleportation may however, make ships obsolete. My suggestion is to make them store valuable cargo, which is *extremely* volatile. Perhaps fuel. Maybe this fuel powers not only the ship, but shields, which are needed to protect from random teleportation attacks. (If you want another option to attacking that is harder, perhaps the fuel is able to be teleported, but at a high cost.) Adding to this, perhaps this fuel also powers blasters, teleporters, food fabrication (farming could be obsolete if you wanted), an AI that rules their empire (if you want the Singularity to have already passed), implants, etc. [Answer] 1) Like part of Will's answer, except rather than law it's convention/culture. If people find out you killed a ship, word gets around (faster-than-light communication, not unlike present-day gossip) and suddenly you can't dock/fuel anywhere, friendly or unfriendly. 2) A super powerful neutral nation supplies most/practically all of the non-combatant ship crew. They are the best, they are all that anyone would ever think of using. And they don't like it when their buddies are killed. And if they don't like you, they won't work for you, and your ships won't work [alternatively, they vaporize your home world]. They realize that you are going to fight each other, and they accept that. But you had better figure out a way to do it that doesn't hurt the noncombatant crew or you will not be able to get a crew. 3) Same as 2 but some kind of union/convention thing. Super-strict neutrality of engineering crew, with severe penalties for violations, whether that is the engineering crew participating in hostilities or being injured by them. [Answer] From a warfare standpoint most often than not actual ships ( water ones ) will hold a lot of information well worth taking the trouble to not completely sink it, code books to cipher enemy cryptography, charts, maps with enemy position, you name it. Now it seems to me that you are looking at boarding for a combat style reason, you want it to be the best way to take down a ship. There are several ways you can achieve that. Assuming we are talking about actual warfare where spacecrafts would have enough people to dispatch in smaller "infiltrators" and the conflict is in a big scale We could have: Starships were meant to fly Fast boarding ships could make for hard targets for those big cannons, making boarding an evasive approach, ironically... Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which I desire Maybe the same thing that fuels your shields, also fuels your guns and boy those guns are like a 80s Jeep running on a flat tire, making firing very delicate and exposing. Thus making boarding ships again an interesting approach Damn I have no lyrics for shield... Shields could need the sense of direction, instead of being just a bubble around the spacecraft, now boarding ships have to maneuver around the target. Thus rending "direct attacks" harder. Beam me up, Scotty Now its not clear to me if you though of teleport just as a possible solution or if you really wanna make it a major part of the boarding process you're going to need to lay down some restrictions on teleportation. It could need some sort of receiver on the other end, so you couldn't just teleport anything anywhere. So whilst a bomb could be teleported the enemy would have to hack through a receiver to do so, perhaps this is why boarding is so interesting, we board, steal ciphers and then tele-bomb away at the other ships. On small sized, transportation vessels it could just be that weapons are just too expensive to have and maintain. [Answer] If you board the other ship, and attack the others, it is possible you could take their ship as well. Even if your character does not take ships, it could be motivation for others to board. Also maybe a law could be passed to not blow up ships? It could prevent space junk from building up, so it isn't too outlandish. [Answer] Getting stuff into orbit is really expensive. Even if you have handwave-Drive(TM), your fuel consumption for going to orbit is considerable higher then going around in space. If you can believable explain that people can be sustained in space/orbit without any resource transfer to them, but some parts and or fuel cant be produced in space, suddenly you dont care how many lives you need to spend to get that nice new juicy starship [Answer] Bio-Matter teleportation The fields needed to teleport only work on living beings (possibly only sentients, see below) and only over a relatively short distance (otherwise there'd be no need for ships, you'd just teleport where-ever). A living body might allow a small amount clothing/gear to be transported as well. If everyone had to go through naked (as in Terminator) defense against board would probably be far too effective. Of course some psychopath would have the bright idea of sending bombs over "in" people or animals so maybe teleportation only works on a sentient being? [Answer] Boarding is probably the easiest, as you are going to need numbers. The crew of the enemy ship is going to actively resist you. Wait till your big ship gets up close, and SURPRISE grenade to the face. You don't want your big super expensive ship damaged by explosives hiding in the debris. The loss of shuttle pod is nothing compared to massive damage to your ship. Also they may have launch-able explosives that your ship is to big to avoid, but the shuttle pods can easily dodge. It is highly likely the enemy will have transporter jammers and/or scramblers. The ship could have many values to it. Obviously 1. the ship itself 2. resources aboard 3. crew for (crew, slaves, or etc) 4. enemies communication encryption keys 5. Trojan horse (before the enemies know its been taken) 6. particularly any technology you don't already have or their version of it is better than yours. 7. Dock at any enemy port, and steal,kill,capture everything. 8. Infiltration, hide your agents among the crew. (kill/capture and replace someone) 9. Communication logs, enemy intelligence(of course protected against remote download) The ship draws energy from an explosive or unstable force, blackhole, and if you damage the containment field the blackhole escapes and sucks you and them in with it. You may have disabled its engines, but it energy shield may still be in place elsewhere on the ship, so and your energy weapons may not penetrate it. Also you need to prevent the other ship from being self-destructed by it captain. So you need a team to attach their ship to the enemy hull, cut through, and take the ship before it can self destruct or have its computers wiped. Clearly any good ship will have the ability to turn off radio communications so you can't be hacked remotely. ]
[Question] [ One of the features of my story is a psychological examination of a certain person who lost his memory (found on a bench in a city park with complete amnesia) and after a short examination was taken to a special institution, where it was found that in terms of his intellectual abilities he was much more superior to our level with you. I will not say why he turned out to be smarter than other people, I will only say that if, for example, our average intelligence level corresponds to 100 IQ, then it should have been equal to 400 or more. But here there is a problem that I would like to talk about. So the IQ tests used today, in fact, are not an invariable unit of measurement of intelligence, assessing individual cognitive abilities, such as the ability to analyze a given situation or remember this or that information. So in fact, you can't even score 300 on most standard IQ tests. The IQ test only works within the specified deviation of your ability, how far you are from the average of the group for which the test was designed. This means that the average IQ will always be one hundred points, since this is how it is defined. Current certified IQ tests are accurate only for plus or minus two standard deviations, ranging from 70 to 130 points. Anything outside this range means that an IQ test is not appropriate for accurately measuring a subject's cognitive capabilities, and that is what needs to be addressed. The question is: if I can't use standard IQ tests to assess the intelligence of this smarter person than anything we've met before, how should I do it? [Answer] You're telling a story. Having a character take an IQ test is bland. Rather than have some scientist say, "we measured your IQ and it's really high!", have your character actually do something surprising and amazing with their intelligence: Have some complex procedure used to hold a lock shut, and have the character get into it. Have the character go and deduce some deeply held secret of one of their examiners using logic and observation. Have them build a complex machine with only the tools on hand in their psychiatric cell, even. The important thing here is their ability, not the number of their IQ. Show that off. [Answer] The reason why IQ tests and the like have an upper limit is because the people who design the tests don't know how to assess anyone with a greater ability to solve those puzzles... in some ways, being able to assess super-intelligence is one of the ways in which you could identify super-intelligence. Imagine giving a test designed for children to a clever adult... they'd likely find every question trivially obvious, they'd be able to spot any simplifications or errors, maybe they'd be able to finesse the answers or work out what the test was intended to test for and how they might subvert the expectations of the examiners. In your case, having the subject simply get a very high or perfect score on the IQ test they were set would be enough to establish them as someone who cannot be usefully ranked by an IQ test as anything other than better at IQ tests than pretty much everyone else. Note that someone who is substantially more clever than the meatbags around them will probably work out that the meatbags just aren't as smart and are trying to prise information out of the smarter person for unknown and possibly nefarious ends. The smart person may just end up playing dumb, either out of caution, boredom or malice. Intelligent children can certainly do this, if they aren't motivated to succeed (or are motivated not to succeed). So, yes. Show, don't tell. But please, don't just have them do a [Sherlock Scan](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SherlockScan) (CW: TvTropes). That's been overdone, and its easy to get silly and wrong. [Answer] Uncharted territory It is be very difficult to measure intelligence on very smart people. At least the "400 IQ" would be hard to be differentiated from a "200 IQ". The first hurdle is translating one's intelligence to a number. You can do that with [IQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient), however, note that it is a test built so that, if one measures a population, the result is(or should be close to) a [normal distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution) of with average 100 and standard deviation 15. A Normal distribution is concentrated around its average, it is symmetric: half of the population should have an IQ higher than 100. Furthermore, the proportion of people in a given interval is fixed, 15.8655% of a population should have some measure higher than the average plus 1 standard deviation. In our case, 15.8655% of the population should have an IQ higher than 115. You can consult a table [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_normal_table#Complementary_cumulative) that, among other things, says, for number of standard deviations(Wikipedia refers to it as z), the proportion of the population with an measurement higher than `avg + std * z`. According to Wikipedia(just googled "word population"), as of March 2020, there are around 7,800,000,000 people in the world, with that amount of people, there should be 7 or 8 geniuses in the world with an IQ higher than 190 - 6 standard deviations, so `9.86588E-10 * 7,800,000,000` is the expected value of people with IQ higher - note that the proportion under a region falls very fast as it gets farther from the average. The chance of someone having an IQ higher than 215 is 1.27981E-12, that is 770 times less likely, so it expected that 1 person in all people who have ever lived(estimates around 50-150 Billions). Note that 400 is 20 standard valuations, this is chance of that happening is 2.75362E-89. Even if every atom in the universe(estimates from 1E+78 to 1E+82) had an IQ that followed human distribution, it still would be hard(1E+82 \* 2.75362E-89 = 2.75362E-7) to find an atom with an IQ higher than 400. --- The best one can do If your guy has 400 IQ or more, the best thing one can do is to find a way compare them with the smartest people ever. Then they will know your guy's IQ is at least 190. Scored 190 while reading a novel and reading the test backwards Perhaps try handicapping: they could make the person try multiple "tests"(competitions with the best) at the same time, maybe try it in different languages(as suggested by other people), have the test be written backwards and make your character write it with inside-out alternating order(so 1,2,3,4,5 becomes 3, 4, 2, 5, 1), or some other ridiculous thing. [Answer] In addition to other answers, be aware that current research shows that exceedingly high ('profound') intelligence routinely manifests in entirely different ways than just being intellectually "smart". You might want to Google "profound IQ" for insight, but some ideas of traits reported in the literature: * Prodigiously good at empathy. Reading people, reading their emotions, empathising with their feelings, wanting to help. Not something the stereotype sherlock is associated with. * Often, exceedingly lonely. All the things that interest them were never obvious to others, the things they saw were rubbished by parents and teachers, the things their peers liked were simplistic and childish when young. (Imagine being 6 and finding solving world hunger or learning calculus the most fascinating things when your peers want a Disney doll). Or think of it this way - they have an IQ of 300, but the same need for peer relationships as any other child/adult - and not a single person to share it with in the country, let alone the community or school, who can act as a peer socially, share the same things, see things in common. Much of whats obvious to them will be derided or ignored with what they know is bad reasoning but unarguable, like being in a society of flat earthers; their insights will be worthless. And yet, because of empathy, they understand where others are at, and can't hate others for it, either. * Exceedingly self directed, the kind of person who knows their own truth and their own path, regardless what anyone tries to force into them. Which can be anything from a mixed blessing to traumatic, for a child, whose social role demands they ultimately accept "adults know best". * Being intelligent doesn't mean being experienced in life, or having maturity. Being bright but finding farting funny or having a poor control over pranks and childish behaviour isn't incompatible. Overall, exceedingly high intelligence is more like something that pervades everything and "just is". So it will pervade every part of your characters life, not as some bolt on, but as an integral mundane part of them - their perceptions, their learning, their feeling, their choices, what they see as important, everything. [Answer] Harrison Bergeron style In the near future SF story, persons with inherent abilities (intelligence, beauty, coordination) are handicapped with various devices so that they are the same as every one else. <http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html> > > "Yup," said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. > They weren't really very good-no better than anybody else would have > been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of > birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free > and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the > cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe > dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it > before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. > > > George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas. > > > Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask > George what the latest sound had been. > > > "Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer," > said George. > > > In your story, your guy breaks the IQ test. So they bust out the Sherlock Scan and he breaks that too, with prejudice. The scientists scratch their heads. So they give him an IQ test in French. Then in Albanian but he is wearing thick glasses from one of the scientists. Then a test in Punjabi, with the glasses and another pair of glasses on top and he must wear a CPAP attached to a bong. He does OK until he takes the Punjabi test with the glasses (both) and the bong in a nightclub because it is hard to dance and mark the right answers. The scientist conclude he has an IQ of 400 and is a better dancer than they thought he would be. It turns out though that when he is not stoned his dancing abilities are less, and that issue might come back to haunt him. [Answer] ### Go "Kobayashi Maru" - Give them "probably impossible" tasks and analyse what they do. I feel a better measure of intelligence isn't "can you solve this problem?", it's "How do you approach solving it?". The [Kobayashi Maru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru) test from Star Trek is an example: > > The approaching cadet crew must decide whether to attempt rescue of the Kobayashi Maru crew—endangering their own ship and lives—or leave the Kobayashi Maru to certain destruction. If the cadet chooses to attempt rescue, the simulation is designed to guarantee that the cadet's ship enters a situation that they will have absolutely no chance of winning, escaping, negotiating or even surviving > > .... > > The objective of the test is not for the cadet to outfight or outplan the opponent but rather to force the cadet into a no-win situation and simply observe how they react. > > > *I don't care whether you get the right answer; I care about the thinking process you used to get there!* The best application I've seen of this technique in the real world is actually in job interviews. My company will ask you technical (eg maths, computer science, or algorithm design) questions in the job interview, and we don't care if you get the answer right, we judge you on how you work towards that problem. We often include unsolved problems from accademia in there, an example which got asked last week: > > A irrational number to the power of another irrational number can sometimes make a rational number, for example $e^{i \pi} = -1$. e and $\pi$ are both irrational, -1 is an integer, which by definition is rational. > > > Is $\pi^{\pi^{\pi^\pi}}$ rational or irrational? > > > Now [this problem is unsolvable on current computer hardware](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHFLfv-ThQ&ab_channel=Stand-upMaths), let alone in someones head. How this is used for measuring superintelligence? the more intelligent you are: * The more progress you can make towards this problem. * The more insights you'll have on ways to approach the problem, or how to simplify it. + Also - the more *unique* insights you'll have. * The more parts of the problem you can solve, stepping stones or proofs of simpler cases than the full problem. * The faster you can do all of this. Repeat with [a few dozen problems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics). As intelligence increases, ones notable observations will be either quicker and/or more notable. Converting this to an "IQ" requires showing experts in the individual problems the interview and getting their (subjective) feedback. If nothing else you're measuring how far their jaw drops at what they're hearing. Averaging these responses out over several tests should help to minimise subjective biases and inaccuracies. This approach has one additional advantage over many of the others I've read in other answers - an "infinite IQ" or "off-scale high IQ" or "IQ in the trillions" can be detected as they'll able to solve or provide a proof disproving those tests which were previously unsolvable. The beauty of maths being a perfect and immutable truth is us idiots can verify their proofs as correct even if we had no way of generating it. [Answer] Intelligence tests are quite dependent on education and familiarity with specific cultural concepts. For example, the IQ tests used for contemporary English-speaking populations would be unable to provide reasonable IQ results for people living in impoverished regions of the world without universal education even if those tests are translated properly. Despite that, it would be wrong to say people in impoverished regions are less intelligent than the population of English-speaking countries. If your character suffers from complete amnesia (full loss of all memory) than the easiest way to estimate their intelligence is learning speed. A person with full amnesia will have to learn a lot of things from language to social norms. The faster they can assimilate knowledge and put it to practical use the more intelligent they are. This approach will not give you a specific number, but since your character is super-intelligent it would be impossible not to notice that they learn much faster. [Answer] There are good answers already, @Matheus Jahnke's as an example And on its basis, we can ask and have to answer another question, before we get back to the original one. > > Note that 400 is 20 standard valuations, this is the chance of that happening is 2.75362E-89. Even if every atom in the universe(estimates from 1E+78 to 1E+82) had an IQ that followed human distribution, it still would be hard(1E+82 \* 2.75362E-89 = 2.75362E-7) to find an atom with an IQ higher than 400 > > > Horrific number, but we should understand that rarity does not mean significant superiority. Let's say we talk about a human who will do all\any of your typical intellectual tasks 10 times faster than an average guy. Can it fit the role of that 2.75362E-89 chosen one? I would say, yeah, good enough. no? let's make him 100 faster - I bet there was no one that fast, in human history, for the last 4 billion years. Can such a person replace the intellectual work of millions of people over the last 100 years - no. Sure he will have certain advantages, besides the speed, if we think about his judgments, but. Another one, why 400 points maybe not so much when it is about rarity, how big is a difference between 200 and 400 ones - it may be not that big in absolute results in capacities to solve problems, probably there is some limit about calculation power for a human brain, just because of size of it and how it is build, the closer one is to such a limit rarer is the occurrence in nature/population. it is typical lim(smartness(to improbable)) = 10x as an example. So intelligence in one meatbag can be qualitative and quantitative. quantitative can easily be measured, there may be some problems in assigning an exact number, but it easily measurable, and more than that can be attributed faster neural activity and be natural or artificial. Can this guy outsmart you each and every time - not necessarily, will it be faster at everything than you - yes. Can it from scratch overnight reinvent the theory of general relativity - no. * there are suggestions of "show, do not tell" - those are not great recommendations for reason that author has to understand the difference of possible and impossible, so as to have some measuring stick for what his character can or can't do. Because without having one, they often fail miserably on that "show" part. qualitative superiority is harder to assess. But also if it is quantitative changes which in a combination become qualitative ones - like speed, memory, senses - then there is a chance to do some assessments. And I would say it quite a typical trope. * chimps can count to 9-10, distinguish that number of objects and do that faster than a human does, so as they do have some treats we have - social interactions, linguistic aspects, knowledge transfer, etc - not a surprise, relatives after all. They can fly in space, but we have sea ships and airplanes and the agriculture industry - they do not. 10 times of speed, 100 times of typical memory - those can be measured, especially when we talk about human-type intelligence. Speed and details of visual perception, pattern recognition. with pattern recognition, we can create some calculation difficulty measuring stick, as we can compare to not only humans, but to artificial algorithms as well, and thus assign some corresponding measurable value - i[FLOPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS) or something. Sooo, a character with everything is 10 times of usual norm. Can this guy outsmart you each and every time - probably, will it be faster at everything than you - yes. Can it from scratch overnight reinvent the theory of general relativity - no. * that general relativity stays no, and it will stay no for a very very high level of intelligence, despite it being invented by not so much out of ordinary(compared to the individual we discuss here) guy. layman example - let's go back to chimps - are we superior to them for the most time in therms of intelligence - yes, do we understand them fully - no, not a chance. we do understand them to some degree, but it is far from a full understanding and ease of manipulating them. one can build a sound comprehensive theory encompassing the whole universe but the number of such theories is more than one, probably, at least we have more than one spacetime theories and we not sure which one is the correct one, if any. Sitting in a building one can do observations(thing around that person - sunshine, the wind blows, grass grows, etc) and it helps build and sort out theories that are not related to this specific universe. it like finding a proper book that fits the universe in The Library of Babel. And there are things which you can't figure out just because you like to do so, you have to measure or to test, do experiments to figure out their relations with each other. At the same time, you have to be able to produce that or similar Library of Babel and somewhat keep many books which later you sort out as you may find them to be not correct. it requires way more than 10x, 100x human intelligence. this is the reason why one can't invent a super-duper wave gun sitting in a cell, to make an escape. Most likely escape strategy will be more mundane. Maybe smart, but not 400 IQ point smart, or you can't understand smart. higher the intelligence is, then fewer experiments it may need, and further one experiment propels that process of universe model building. Maybe a stretch, but we can imagine an intelligence that glances casual look at your city and identify the universe in that Library of Babel - one observation act and firm and correct conclusion. But human measuring stick won't fit that intelligence, we as collective as humankind - maybe but barely. There are examples of superior intelligence we know, as since not so long ago it became a perceivable reality, which you can touch and smell. one is [OpenAI Five](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS) - it plays Dota better than anyone on the planet another [AlphaGo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo) - plays Go better than anyone on the planet. Those are not general intelligence, obviously, but are they faster - yes they are, do they have a bigger memory, task-related - yes, they do. Do we understand what they do - yes, somewhat, as an afterthought, for those guys which do play those games. we have a hard time understanding how they come to the conclusion, what specifically did they noticed, we may miss bits and pieces, but our understanding isn't a total blank. So, to outsmart, your guy does not need to be magical, breaking crypto as one suggested, it just needs to be one step ahead - that is a typical trope with strong roots in a reality, not surprisingly, as there are plenty of humans who are smarter than other humans, so it is not that we do not have a taste of that medicine. impossible things stay impossible - if it is proven you need the energy of the whole universe to crack the encryption even with quantum computing, then it stays that way for 10x, 100x not matter what. Social engineering is a way much better way to fish things you need - passwords, money, pin codes, call to a president to request a nuke launch, messing with global politics - whatever you choose. * there are examples of prankers that did call higherups in political circles fooling the whole chain through which the call has to go, and representing themselves as other party higherups. So to wrap it up - distinguish impossible things and those which come from a better knowledge and ability to operate such to be a step ahead of situations, events, people, etc. And you measure things as usual - by decomposing elements which combined create that intelligence. So in your case, you do it not with a general test, but each aspect you can separate in a separate way, as we do tests for animals or humans. So just more tests that are focused on their own aspects and as a whole are broader more encompassing measure, as we do with animals in our attempts to understand their intelligence, shape and strength of their intelligence, not a synthetic test you typically do to get your's 120 free internet points. [Answer] You can compare him to hyper intelligent entities that exist in the real world today. The only things that exhibit that so far are groups of people working together (but maybe AI will compete soon). If you give an intelligence test to a corporation and allow the people in it to work together to answer it then most corporations would absolutely ace it, that's why trivia night is a lot easier with friends. Countries have also managed to single handedly invent nuclear bombs and go to the moon, feats that can not be accomplished by a single human today even if you pick the most intelligent of us. Unfortunately this technique has a few problems. First, is it the limitation of his body and his time the limiting factor? Second is that we're all standing on the shoulder of giants, so did any one country developed the tech to go to the moon or was it the cumulative conscience of all humans. The answer to your problem is really not easy, in fact [measuring intelligence](https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.01547) is an unsolved but active area of research. And given that loss and reward functions are a major component of AI systems today, developing an objective measure for intelligence would be half the battle towards general AI. Nevertheless in a story you could set up the conditions that allows for direct comparison between a single person and a huge group of people. Something that comes to mind is that the rovers currently exploring Mars are commanded by a large and intelligent group of people at NASA in order to effectively explore the planet. To control it though, the entire group distils its strategy into a small packet of information that is sent and used by a robot with limited capabilities and time. If this intelligent person somehow gets control of such a robot (let's say he revives one that NASA gave up on) and he can produce equally good results or better than the NASA controlled one, then you know he's got some spark in there. To go back to the paper I linked to. A key feature that Chollet requires of intelligence tests is novelty; because intelligence itself is a measure of how you approach new situations. This is also the reason why IQ tests use these unusual abstract patterns in them. I suspect it's also the reason why standard IQ tests are of very little real life use since these abstract patterns have now become common knowledge, and practicing on them makes it easy to game the test. It's possible there can never be a "standard" test, so embrace the unusual! [Answer] To be convincing, I would suggest that for the story that you take the time to describe how a number of other people engage in the very type of discussions and testing that are going on here in this thread with the result that not a single one of them succeeds in determining just how intelligent this person (?) is. Their reaction time is so fast that it's impossible to measure it accurately (reaction times are correlated with intelligence); they can calculate results immediately, including complex mathematical problems, statistical analyses, etc. of vast quantities of data as fast as it can be displayed, etc. Rather than giving an estimate, the conclusion should be that the psychologists and so on just cannot determine how to measure it regardless of what they do. Leave it at that. [Answer] What you illustrate doesn't show our inability to test for a score like 400, it shows the lack of meaning of such a score. 130 is a 1-in-20 score (95th percentile). 150 is a 1-in-1000 score. 175 is a 1-in-a-million score. 400 is a 1-in-10^88 score. That's a number bigger than we have SI prefixes for. It's a number bigger than the number of atoms in the observable universe. If an oracle came by and gave you a perfectly fair and accurate IQ test, and you were able to administer that test to the smartest human who lived, or will live, in ten millennia, they wouldn't get a 400, they'd get something like a 210. [Answer] ## Crypto. The psychologist's receptionist apologizes that he can't process the appointment, because his computer is showing a ransomware notice with the usual message to send Bitcoin before a deadline. He bought the Bitcoin for the doctor but can't figure out how to use it and the timer is running out. Your hero offers to help, so he quickly deduces the private key of the ransom account and transfers all their stolen money to the psychologist, then enters the key to the hard drive files. Cracking public key crypto could make him popular in all the wrong places. I anticipate drone attacks ... but he can work with that. [Answer] First time posting in this StackExchange, but we kind of have a basis for this in Computer Science.. We have pretty well-defined measures of the "difficulty" of problems. We know at least enough to be able to group problems that are "hard" in a way that if you solve one you can solve them all (this is a layman's explanation of NPC problems). This should allow you to (relatively) compare his time solving any of the NPC problems against anyone else (also, if he solves it proportional to any P problem he's proven P = NP). [Answer] I'd think more about the one with where he has to dance in the night club, attached to a bong wearing thick glasses. Now that's fucking hard. - Super interesting concept. Anyways, there are still a lot of aspects of intelligence I didn't see taken into account reading the other answers: Let the person be cautious and use game theory to determine their behaviour. Let them adapt their basic strategy to a more complex form every time they learn more about strategies of other humans. (For a introduction to game theory I recommend this video: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Oa4Lp5fLE>) You could make it so that most scientists he interacts with would be fooled by his likeable, average behavior, but the smartest of them would prove that the person is much smarter than they act. Most IQ tests have a time limit in which they have to be solved, even though it's generally more important to think correctly and deeply than to think fast. Instead of letting them solve stupid puzzles for an hour, rather make them play a strategy game for hundreds of hours and reward them for getting better at it. You could make them beat alpha zero or something like that. There are studies that say chess masters would burn three times as much energy as regular people a day when they are playing in tournaments. Make it so that the person constantly has low blood sugar and make them eat everything they give them immediately. Maybe they'd even eat things like insects, dust or candles out of hunger. Make them abnormal to make their abnormal intelligence feel more natural. Let them switch topics a hundred times in a minute, changing their minds while they are analyzing, thinking and talking at the same time. Make them uninterested in any cooperation, even when it's highly benefitial.'This lamp here is a 10.2, nice.' Let them masturbate and then try to commit suicide, after they see the world clearly again. Also, please don't note in your story how unlikely it is that somebody would have such a high IQ, because most aspects of human intelligence have little to nothing to do with IQ. We don't understand our brains in the slightest, so why would we try to rate their performance? I knew an autistic kid that had an IQ of 77 at age 16 and an IQ of 130 at age 19 at a different test, both done by an institution. He was probably distracted, depressed or couldn't understand the questions the first time. It's likely that he'd score even higher than 130 under different circumstances. [Answer] ## Off the charts You can't. IQ is a standardized test, which is the only way to get reproducible results. In order to standardize it, they tested it against many, many, many people, and then compared any new test takers to them to figure out where in the distribution they were. There is no one even remotely in the sample to compare him to. Therefore, what they will be saying is not that his IQ is 400, but that he is beyond index, broke the standard, or off the charts. They may be able to add such tidbits as he got a perfect score in fifteen minutes in a test where the subject gets four hours. After that, they can offer other anecdotal evidence of his brilliance. [Answer] ### Step One: Define Intelligence: Most of the answers had a different take on this, for this answer I will be defining intelligence as “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.” (The first defnition from oxford languages) ### Step Two: Measure Inteliigence: Make up some random thing that has never been seen before, and so utterly ridiculous that it is impossible that the ultra-intelligent person already knows it [(something like this)](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Geonosian_(language)). Other options are there, such as making an instrument using a [completely random number generator](https://www.idquantique.com/random-number-generation/overview/) (which also has the added bonus of being cool). Then measure how quickly an average person can learn this new thing (shouldn’t be too hard, just a normal scientific study), and compare it to your ultra-intelligent person. That covers aqquiring knowledge and skills. The other part is to test applying knowledge and skills, which is a bit harder. One idea I have here (though it is most likely far from perfect), is to make this person have a swordfight with an AI that learns from them. Make this AI x% stronger than the main charecter (what x is is up to you), and have the ultra-intelligent person duel the AI (which knows nothing other its supposed to hit its enemy with a sword, and that its supposed to learn from its enemy), and measure the amount of times the ultra-intelligent person can beat the AI before it beats them, then compare this to the average population (again, not too difficult, a simple scientific study should suffice). ### Other possibilities (aka things that might go wrong): The main charecter can find a way to “game the system” and somehow prove that they can beat the AI perpetually (second paragraph of step 2). The main charecter already knows the language, or has already played the instrument in the past, or maybe has played every possible instrument or learned every possible language in the past (first paragraph of step 2). ### Why this answers the question: This should be a way to measure intelligence relative to the general population, and it should also (hopefully) be fairly interesting for any reader. (After all, who doesn’t love swordfights and wierd new instruments/languages?). ]
[Question] [ I'm trying to figure out the challenges faced by a low-tech civilization mapping its world. They have access to roughly Renaissance level technology, plus some (not very abundant) magic. One question that occurs to me is mapping the edges of continental shelves. In a sailing ship, can you tell whether you are over the continental shelf or deep ocean? You can drop a weight on a rope, I suppose, though this is a relatively slow and awkward procedure. What sort of depth is it good for? I remember when I was in an airliner flying over the Atlantic, there was a visible difference in wave patterns, which I took to be very long waves building up on the ocean and then bunching up and becoming higher when they hit relatively shallow water. Would this be noticeable in a sailing ship? Are there any likely ways of doing it with the sort of magic you get from access to low-level D&D spells? They aren't going to have actual sonar. Are there other techniques I'm not thinking of? [Answer] You're right, dropping a weighted rope is indeed a possibility - as you might already know from historical records - but it can actually operate in deeper water than you might imagine. [Shallow water lead lines](https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20111110201502756) were used to depths of about 20 fathoms (~36.6m, or about 120 feet, as 1 fathom = 6 feet). This might not seem very helpful, as [the continental shelf ends, on average, at depths of about 200 feet](https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/continental-shelf/), though there's rather large variation - it can stretch up to around 300 feet in places. Fortunately, longer lead lines have also been used, reaching as long as 50 fathoms (~91.4m), or 300 feet. That should indeed be enough to map out most of the deeper regions of the continental shelf. Waves do [behave differently at different depths](https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfluidearth/physical/waves/wave-energy-and-wave-changes-depth); for instance, for a given wavelength, there's a particular depth beyond which a wave will not break. Sure, you could attempt to measure the average wavelength of nearby waves, and try to characterize them (breaking, swells, etc.), and from there estimate the depth of the water. However: * Waves are turbulent and travel in many different directions, leading to interference and complicated motion. * The ship itself is traveling through the water, and therefore affects the waves - your plane does not, presumably, unless it's essentially skimming the water. * Measuring wavelengths accurately is . . . not easy under even the best circumstances, let alone when you're on a rocking ship in the middle of the ocean. I think lead lines are honestly your best bet. Besides, they've been in use for centuries and centuries - I think the sailors might have gotten it right. . . [Answer] The easiest one would be to start talking to the dolphins and other marine mammals who already have an in-depth (pun intended) knowledge of sea bed topography. Or would that not suit your porpoise? [Answer] How about sonar? Obviously people in the age of sail did not have the technology in its modern form, and prior to the 17th century they didn't even have the basic physics to understand the principle. However, with hindsight, they could have done it, though it is pure speculation how well it'd work: In the keel of the ship you mount a large bell poking through the hull, shaped to focus a sonar ping downwards. Next to this is a conical trumpet, also pointing downwards into the water, with essentially an Edison phonograph pickup at the end. Instead of a needle, this is connected to an inked quill. The bell is struck and then immediately muffled, and the same action simultaneously releases a sandbag that causes a long strip of paper to be drawn past the quill at constant speed. So you have a chart recorder that will record the initial ping as a large mark, and its echo as a smaller mark, with the distance between them measuring the time taken and therefore the distance to the sea floor. The mechanics aren't beyond medieval engineering. The materials are no problem – brass works OK in seawater, and the membrane for the pickup could be mica or isinglass. The acoustical engineering of the bell seems to require some math that late-medieval people didn't have – but then, you could say that about bells in general, and they managed to figure it out by experimentation, without understanding any of the math. It's not a stretch to imagine that someone noticed how the length of an echo relates to distance. Would I bet money that this would work? No. But would I believe you if you told me Elizabethan ships had such devices? Probably! As Justin Thyme the Second points out, what sail-age people did not have was the ability to measure their position on the open ocean. On long voyages, they were lucky to hit the right continent. However, within sight of land, they could measure their position with very good accuracy – nearly as good as we have now – using trigonometric techniques known since antiquity. If you have a couple of ships just in sight of land, and a third ship further out taking readings from those ships, you could probably do this up to about 30km from the coast, or quite a bit further with the help of well-placed mountains or rockets. Generally, the continental shelf is more like hundreds of kilometers out, so I don't think you could accurately map where it is with this technology. But Wikipedia says it's only 140m deep, so you might at least be able to tell when you were above it. [Answer] Magic solutions like low-level D&D spells. Hmmm. # Soggy Rope trick "Rope Trick" is a 2nd level spell that makes a rope stand up to 60ft in the air and opens an extradimensional portal for an hour. It should be trivial to invent a similar spell that used a rope to determine precise water depth. Such a spell would be simpler (no interdimensional shenanigans) or at least last longer. # Conjure something wet and intelligent A tiny water elemental might intrinsically "know" how deep the water is, though I couldn't find the stats for anything but "large" water elementals. IIRC Giant sea otters have all-but-human intelligence (6 int according to one online source). # Send a person down Water breathing is a level 3 arcane spell. It'll keep them from drowning, but not necessarily from being eaten! # Make up a spell If all you really want to know is "how deep is the water", that's probably a cantrip, though I imagine it wouldn't be all that precise (say within 10% of actual depth). I can also imagine a cantrip that lets you see twice as far through obscurment (smoke, fog, water) for up to a minute, and one that lets you know the distance to anything you can see. # Magic navigation Given two magic beacons far enough apart, and a way to accurately point to both (and tell which is which), you could triangulate your position to a fair degree of accuracy. These beacons need not be man-made, they could be some "natural" phenomenon, like an intersection of lay lines for example. Combine that with a compass, and you've got an excellent idea of your position and heading. Accurate depth maps would result soon after. [Answer] Water color is actually a pretty good indicator of some hazardous conditions at sea. To a certain extent, seeing a change in water color is a warning of a depth change. In very clear water, it is more of an optical problem where the amount of light being reflected from the bottom changes, but there are often several reasons what can can be more than that. With shallow water you can have more sea-life and more sea growth, and also more particulates. That can provide more visual contrast. Due to more sea life, birds may be attracted to the area since schools of fish may be more likely to be in that area. There can be more particles and organic matter in the water from wave action or from biological activity. Near river mouths, water will be more brown due to silt, and perhaps more yellowish due to dissolved organic matter, and could be more green due to wash off of nutrients resulting in more plankton. If you have been to the deep ocean coming back to shore it there are noticeable changes in color from very clear blue to clear greenish color. Shoaling is the technical term for the wave height changing due to a change of depth. Usually it refers to the increase in wave height as you approach the shore. However if there is a change in depth, and the wave height is being disturbed that can change the surface "texture" or the pattern of the waves going over it. I think early sailors were very observant, and the navigators and captains to a certain extent kept records or describe these kinds of things to each other. Sounding to obtain the depth, is certainly a valid way to both know where you are and if you are approaching a hazard. This kind of information I believe was logged regularly as well as some other things like weather conditions and water temperature by whalers (might be a later time period than you are interested in) Using the sun and stars, works for location to a certain extent. Finding latitude is not that hard, but knowing your longitude typically requires knowing the time precisely, but in your era I think sectants were availible. Certainly, there was substantial knowledge of astronomy. Many cultures had knowledge of ocean currents and some form of celestial navigation in the pacific. The height of eye is important and determines the distance to the horizon. 1.17 times the square root of your height of eye = Distance to the horizon in nautical miles. If in sight of land - getting a fix off of landmarks is actually very accurate. But you can see from the height of eye equation you need to be relatively close to shore. Most likely, Dead Reckoning, is how a lot of ships away from shore would estimate their position. This is basically estimating your speed and course heading and keeping track of how long you are going in a direction. With a well trained crew, this actually worked fairly well until there was a storm. Traveling in groups, ships would keep separate dead reckoning logs and then compare their positions. So in addition to depth, knowing the speed is important, > > The term knot dates from the 17th century, when sailors measured the speed of their ship by using a device called a "common log." This device was a coil of rope with uniformly spaced knots, attached to a piece of wood shaped like a slice of pie. > > > The simplest piece of magic would be a very accurate time piece and "shooting the stars" to get a celestial fix to know your location. Other magic, could be a kind of sonar, where you detect how long it takes the magical energy to bounce off the bottom, if you know the speed of the magical pulse in water, you could "bottom sound". A strong ray of light could also be used to look into the water, but unless magic not that far in most water conditions, Blue-Green light, travels farther in sea water compared to yellow-red light. Of course light has been used to attract sea creatures, in our would fish being of interest, but who knows what a magical ray, or magical sonar might attract. By the way, the distance of the continental shelf is something that can very a lot. On the East coast of the US it extends much further than the west coast. Take a look at some undersea maps, and you can probably find some kind of undersea topography to fit your story. The shore line can sometimes give hint of what the shelf is like. In addition to the major oceans, the Mediterranean might be a good place to look at undersea topography. [Answer] It depends on where your civilization is located. If it is someplace similar to the Bahama Islands, the depth of the water is very visible. [![Bahamian Island Beach View](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nwozX.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nwozX.jpg) In this picture, the lightest green is shallow sand. The slightly darker green is a shallow reef. Past the reef the water gets progressively deeper until at the line depicted by the dark blue water, it drops off to several hundred feet. [Answer] In the early nineties, I did an analysis for an aerial surveillance company that wanted to proved to the Canadian Navy that you could accurately measure the depth of the Beaufort Sea from a helicopter with a device of some kind. The control measurements, deemed "ground truth" by the Navy, were soundings obtained by two men in a boat with a plumb line. In the 1990's, this was still the "correct way". The new method did indeed have a higher variance than the plumb line, but you got a lot more measurements more cheaply, hence the advantage. You don't need to be constantly sending out men in boats, since navigation charts contain this information and are the result of centuries of observations. [Answer] As noted in comments, depth measurement is necessary but not sufficient for making charts. You also need to know where you are horizontally to know where on the chart to record that depth mark! That's the hard part; unfortunately most of this answer covers depth-finding ideas. However, flying high in the air could give sight of land. That's possible with D&D 5e spells or for an 8th-level druid (Wild Shape into a flying animal). > > Are there any likely ways of doing it with the sort of magic you get from access to low-level D&D spells? > > > D&D doesn't have a lot of spells for mapping; the main navigation spell is 6th lvl [Find the Path](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Find%20the%20Path) which shows you how to get somewhere but not your own absolute location. There's also teleport to a known location. There are a few class features / skills for navigation on land (e.g. Ranger class stuff), but there are several spells for going underwater / talking to animals. Perhaps your best option would be a druid that can [Wild Shape](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Druid#toc_6) into an animal with echolocation, like a dolphin. If this allows accurate depth mapping like sonar tech, you're all set. With other magic, people on the ship can communicate with them in dolphin form to relay and record measurements. (e.g. the Message cantrip cast by someone on the ship, which allows a telepathic reply. Or maybe a Speak With Animals spell.) Or give the dolphin a board of numbers to point at. If we look at actual 5th edition D&D spells: First level spellcaster character get first-level spells, 3rd level character for 2nd level spells, `2n - 1` char level gets at least 1 spell slot of level `n`. (See [table for druids](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Druid) for example). And Cantrips are easy spells that can be cast an unlimited number of times per day, unlike higher level spells. But "most people" in a D&D setting aren't lvl1 of any class, and people of higher than 1st or 2nd level are rarer still. The official sourcebooks don't have a depth-measuring cantrip, but it would reasonable for a wizard to research a new cantrip that just measures the depth of water with some limit like 300 feet. Some damage cantrips like Firebolt or Eldritch Blast have ranges of 120 ft, also Message. (You could maybe use* such cantrips as range finders, to see if they reach the bottom...) A 1 mile limit would probably warrant being at least a 1st level spell, but could be something you could maintain concentration on for 10 minutes or an hour instead of just taking one depth sample in a single place. The lowest level D&D spells with more than 120 foot range are Earthbind (2nd; 300 ft), Skywrite (2nd, "Sight", i.e. any point in the sky you can see), and [Clairvoyance](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Clairvoyance) (3rd level, 1 mile). So it's rare for magic to affect or detect anything outside a pretty local area near you, until you get to higher level spells. But Clairvoyance actually lets you see or hear from that point for 10 minutes; a more specialized spell could trade more limitations for that range at a lower spell level. Or you could get cheesy and decide that the range is how far you can be from the point on the surface of the water, and the effect is telling you the water depth at that point. So the range doesn't have to reach to the bottom; that would be the area of effect of the spell. There are some "feats" like Magic Initiate that let someone learn a cantrip (and a 1st level spell) without being an official Wizard or other spellcasting class, so if you're modelling a world after D&D you could have sailors / oceanographers who know a depth cantrip but not other spells with a weaker version of this feat. Official pre-existing D&D spells let you communicate with animals (including aquatic ones), or go underwater yourself. Any of these can give you at least a rough idea of depth even without measuring equipment, or could help you use measuring equipment. If magic is highly available, it would be plausible that it gets used for this instead of just weighted sounding ropes, although ropes of known length do work well. * Cantrip: [Light](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Light) (Bard, Cleric, Sorcerer, Wizard) - make the weight at the end of your rope light up like a lantern ("bright light" in a 20ft radius), making it easy to visually see for some depth below the water. * 1st level [Find Familiar](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Find%20Familiar) (Wizard) - You gain the service of a familiar, a spirit that takes an animal form you choose: ... including fish (quipper) and sea horse. While your familiar is within 100 feet of you, you can communicate with it telepathically. So that gives you a precise 100 foot reference point to tell if water is shallower than 100 ft, or just a bit, or a lot, deeper. Or if you're not at water level, +- whatever. Additionally, as an action, you can see through your familiar’s eyes and hear what it hears until the start of your next turn, gaining the benefits of any special senses that the familiar has. * 1st level [Speak With Animals](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Speak%20with%20Animals) (Bard, Druid, Ranger) will let you ask fish or aquatic mammals about the depths, [as suggested by @David Hambling](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/176923/3532) . If necessary, [Animal Friendship](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Animal%20Friendship) is also 1st level, and will "[charm](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Conditions#toc_2)" an animal for 24h. (Also a Bard, Druid, or Ranger spell) * 2nd level [Alter Self](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Alter%20Self) (Sorcerer, Wizard) lasts 1 hour, and has an Aquatic Adaptation option: gills / webbing: underwater breathing and a swim speed = walking speed. Presumably also tolerance for cold water, although that's not mentioned because D&D 5e doesn't usually bother about that for the intrepid heros who will be casting these spells on themselves / each other. * 3rd level [Water Breathing](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Water%20Breathing) (Druid, Ranger, Sorcerer, Wizard) lasts 24h on up to 10 creatures, and can be cast as a [ritual](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Spells#toc_9) (not using up a spell slot but takes an extra 10 minutes to cast, plus the normal 1 Action ~= 1 round = 6 seconds). Repeated ritual castings of that could get whole crews of people able to descend a rope and swim / walk around on the bottom surveying. It doesn't help you swim better; if you don't have mundane fins + wetsuit you'd want 4th level [Freedom Of Movement](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Freedom%20of%20Movement) (Bard, Cleric, Druid, Ranger), lasts 1 hour. D&D also doesn't make a big deal out of cold water, but in many oceans you'd need some protection from the cold. ([Protection from Energy (Cold)](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Protection%20from%20Energy) is a 3rd level spell, single target and requires concentration.) * 4th level [Control Water](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Control%20Water) (Cleric, Druid, Wizard) would let you "part" the water and make a trench up to 100 ft deep (100 ft cube of no water for up to 10 minutes), giving you easy view of the bottom if it's shallower than that, or not much deeper. The precise depth limit of the spell could be a useful depth reference. But it takes a spell slot so you can only do it a few times per long rest (day), depending on character level. A [warlock](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Warlock#content) that gets this spell somehow could do it 2 times per short rest (1 hour break during a day), or more at higher levels. * 5th level [Commune With Nature](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Commune%20with%20Nature) (Druid, Ranger) can give you knowledge of "terrain and bodies of water"; arguably you could use it to map the ocean floor from a ship in a 3 mile radius. It costs a 5th level (or higher) spell slot so you can only do it a few times per day. (Once for a 9th level caster). This is not a low-level spell. --- Starting at 4nd level, a Druid's [Wild Shape](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Druid#toc_6) allows turning into an animal with a swim speed (for "a number of hours equal to half your druid level"). So you could become a dolphin, sea otter, shark, or other animal that's comfortable in the local water temperature. There's a tradeoff between having hands vs. needing to breathe air (aquatic mammal) or not having a very high sustained swim speed (octopus). You retain your mind so you could totally use this to check out the bottom, like maybe swimming along the bottom while holding one end of a rope and keeping it directly below a ship. People on the ship can count knots / marks on the rope to record depth without having to stop and reel the rope all the way in between depth soundings. IDK if this is much better than just normal depth soundings with a weighted rope. (Having a Wizard polymorph someone would be somewhat similar, although that replaces the person's physical and mental stats with the creature's stats for the duration. But if you only had a wizard, not a druid or ranger, it might be an option.) --- ## Other non-spell class abilities D&D also has lots of class abilities and features other than spells. One of the most relevant might be the Ranger's [Favored Terrain](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Ranger) / Natural Explorer feature, which they get at 1st level. If Coast applies to open water near the coast, this could be very valuable. Open ocean with its lack of landmarks is harder to justify as working with this feature, though; immunity to becoming lost is way too good. > > You are particularly familiar with one type of natural Environment and are adept at traveling and surviving in such regions. Choose one type of Favored terrain: Arctic, coast, Desert, Forest, Grassland, Mountain, swamp, or The Underdark. When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your Favored terrain, your Proficiency Bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you're proficient in. > > > While traveling for an hour or more in your Favored terrain, you gain the following benefits: > > > * Difficult Terrain doesn't slow your group's Travel. > * Your group can't become lost except by magical means. > * ... > > > --- I'm sure other classes have some other relevant features. [Answer] A nice simple and dignified magic way would be to drop some kind of object that a magic user could see through the water. You can drop it, travel a known distance, and then look back at it, using a sextant to measure the viewing angle between the horizon and the underwater object. From this angle you can calculate how deep it is. [Answer] Prior to the advent of sonar, mariners used lead lines to take systematic 'soundings' of the seafloor, which enabled them to produce early depth charts and bathymetric maps. A "Sounding Line" was a sunken lead weight. When the line began to float, it was pulled taught and let go again, this measurement of the length of rope determined the rough depth of a given position. By the 19th century they developed a new line measuring device , a mechanical one. A clock mechanism with a trigger lock was water proofed and incased, when it was placed in the water it sank, when it hit the bottom the trigger would Lock the mechanics so it would give a determination, the device was basically a vertical odometer. [Answer] Most vessels with a deep keel are larger vessels and would likely be commercial or militaristic in nature. Commercial vessels would likely keep to trade routes and military vessels would likely spend most of their time patrolling those routes. These well known routes would likely be well known and charted; the tricky bit is when your vessel gets further inland. Well traveled ports will have the bottoms dredged out; if they have the economic and technological means to do so. Otherwise ports would have been strategically placed in protected channels or inlets with good depth. Some ports would be shallower and trickier to navigate just like Boston's streets are narrower and busier than rural Montana's but this would be common knowledge to a professional sailor. Different hull shapes have also evolved to combat different environment. Also, breakers are a distinct (and scary) indication that you're likely a bit too close to land. Essentially, unless your crew are cartographers trying to find new passages or the first inhabitants of a new land and sea, most of the places you'd want to go would be mapped or known as a safe route; much the same as anywhere I want to go being able to be googled for directions. It's also worth noting that modern sailboats have completely different rigging (not square rigging) and self righting keels that pierce much deeper for stability reasons. A tender (rowboat or skiff) preforms the in between functions in both cases. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/107123/edit). Closed 5 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/107123/edit) My magic requires that the wielder performs the spell by reciting out loud. What if the tongue of a wizard was cut off? [Answer] ### Yes - if you let another Wizard create a magical tongue for him Basically you established a requirement for magic: "say something out loud" And then you want to know what happens if someone can't fulfill this requirement: "he can't say anything out loud (at least if it's important what kind of sounds come out of his mouth)" The only way to go around this is to find some loophole, such as using magic to create the sounds, using magic to restore the lost body part that is necessary through restorative magic, using mechanical devices or magic as a prothesis or for example by defining that the sounds are not the important part, but the way the wizard breathes in and out - it just so happens that people found a spell formula that perfectly simulates the pattern of breathing. But in the state of "not having a tongue" and "requiring a tongue" the wizard won't be able to cast any magic. [Answer] A person with no tongue can still make a lot of sounds with their mouth. Just for fun, trying speaking some words without moving your tongue. It will sound almost like a tongueless person. For example. If the incantation for each spell is the spell's very name, a tongueless wizard would not be able to use a fireball, chain lightning, or [Evan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion](http://oots.wikia.com/wiki/Evan%27s_Spiked_Tentacles_of_Forced_Intrusion). But they would probably still be able to cast heal, harm and summon (with an accent). Also notice that in some RPG's, wizards have abilities other than casting spells. [For example, they usually can identify magical items](http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0116.html). [![Haley using Varsuuvius as a divining rod](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XRbDt.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XRbDt.png) [Answer] Yes: While the wizard may not be able to use the spells by himself he may as well become a teacher to other scholars of the magic arts, having aquired lots of knowledge over the past years. And: If magic in your world requires any kind of (internal) power/mana your wizard may be tapped by other sorcerers to supply them (or their spells). He would probably also make an good sacrifice... But that's up to you... [Answer] You have answered your own question. You say the magic REQUIRES them to say the spell out loud. Unless they can speak magically or have some other way of making sounds recognizable as words, then no. There are certainly individuals in our world that don't have the ability speak but CAN communicate. Those folks use sign language. So it's really going to depend on if the sound has to come directly from them and their mouth (if there's tech, I'd use a recording to form the words, which you would not have if it's not a modern magical world) or if it just has to be a form of communication. The other way I'd do it is written on paper...you can write down most of the word, leave off a couple of letters, scribble them on when you need to release it. Or you can place the spell inside a folded paper, written down, and the activation is opening it up. That being said in magic systems such as D&D and in stories, there are always exceptions to the rule. In Harry Potter for example, saying the spell word out loud was a component to the spell, but as they got more advanced, they began talking about the ability to cast without speech. In D&D there's a feat for this. The upshot is that while most wizards might have to use words, this one might have learned not to. And most people would think of this person as harmless, except for advanced wizards who know it's possible. If this rule is absolute in your world, none of that will fly of course. [Answer] You can still make sounds without a tongue. The wizard may have developed his own set of spells (or even clones of existing spells) with what essentially comes down to spell aliases. Trying the alphabet right now, all vowels, as well as the sounds that are made just using the lips (B, F, H, M, P, V, W) are relatively easy to make without a tongue, especially if the wizard has trained on them. So maybe instead of saying "Fireball", He says Wooboom or something like that. [Answer] Maybe some sort of ventriloquism would help? I am not an expert in the subject but it seems ventriloquists still use their tongue but also pronounce some sounds with their throat muscles. Your wizard will have a bit greater freedom - he will be able to move cheek, jaw and lips. And another thing A trick ventriloquists do is that they substitute sounds that are hard to pronounce with ones that are not. You don't need your tongue for some sounds, so maybe there is still some magic you can do? [Answer] What about using a non-verbal spell to produce the sound required to cast another spell? Magic bootstrapping! [Answer] Yes the wizard would have use. Even if he cant use the spells he can still teach through scrolls and books and depending on how common magic is in your world (and whether it can be learned or it is pre-determined) an expert could come in handy. [Answer] Maybe if the wizard was powerful enough he could adapt the spells to be suitable for him. He could use sign language to cast spells and people would be like, "that's never happened before!" [Answer] He can have magic scrolls that read themselves or a grimoire. I see a nice story where the wizard has lost his powers by not being able to recite spells but somehow he finds a way and becomes a renown wizard, Merlin Tongueless or something. The gods see his struggles and offers him this grimoire that connects to his mind. He doesn't even have to open and search for the spell, the book is floating around him and casts whatever spells he thought of. He could write new spells in it and become even more powerful eventually finding a way to make more grimoires like his own and becomes a legend. You can do whatever you like with your wizard though. [Answer] "Is it possible a wizard with no tongue be of some use if the magic requires to say the spell out loud?" I, and I suspect a few others, first read this as "can ehe still cast the spell?". As it stands, can be be of some use? Asolutely: * At the very worst, he still knows the gestures, the ingredients & props necessary, the correct time & weather conditions for the spell, and a ton of other stuff, so he would make an excellent assistant. * Or a tutor. * Does it require a magic enabled person to say the words, or can he write them down & have someone else speak them? * Or have someone says them and record them & play them back later? * and, of course, he can be of use in non-wizardly ways :-) [Answer] This story: <https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/dec/01/born-without-tongue-congenital-aglossia-experience> Seems to suggest that you could still cast spells, speak, eat, and other ordinary things. But then again, it's a fantasy-world so it's more about story, dramatic tension, challenges, etc. I would imagine that it would take some time, months or years even, to adapt to speaking without a tongue. [Answer] The answer to your question depends on details you haven't specified. So rather than answer the question directly, I'll ask a series of very leading questions instead. Some of these are raised by other answers. * Must the words by spoken by the caster's natural mouth? Would an artificially created additional mouth suffice? (Beware oral fixations. BTW: This has been nonmagically done with [ears](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ear-grown-under-womans-forearm-gets-transplanted/).) * Could the caster's tongue be replaced by another [creature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymothoa_exigua)? (Warning: some people think the linked article is squicky.) * Could the caster's tongue be replaced by a prosthesis? (In a world with magic, how good can the prosthesis be? In a world with economics, what is the trade-off between affordable and more/interesting spells? In our world, these [already exist](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/002239139090301R).) * Must the words be spoken by the caster, or could the apprentice do the speaking? (Cue weird power dynamics a la [Laputian clappers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa#Inhabitants).) * Must the words be spoken by a human, or could the caster's [familiar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familiar) be enchanted to do the speaking? (Can the familiar be set up to cast more than one spell? Can the familiar be controlled telepathically to cast any spell the caster knows? What weird limits due to different oral structure do we have here?) * Must the words be spoken by a natural creature? Could we enslave an ethereal creature (ghost/devil/demon/angel/et c..., as your world and its metaphysics permit)? * Must the words be spoken physically? Would a magical mouth suffice? (Does a magical mouth have to speak as slowly as a real person? How many spells per second can a magical mouth cast? How many magic mouths can one person control at once? Can we have magic mouth [fork bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb)?) * Must the words be spoken or is there some minimal subset of the produced vibrations in the air that are required to induce the magical effect? How small is that subset? Can those be made by other mechanical/biological/ethereal/magical means? (Now I have a picture of a magical [one man band](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-man_band) in my head. Argh.) * Must the words be spoken, or must the sequence of mental states produced in the caster be the states of one speaking the spell? (Note that this could allow petrified, sleeping, or comatose casting. This can be extended all the way to "can a [brain in a vat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat) cast real world spells"?) It could help you to think in depth about how little one would have to add to a brain in a vat to get a working spellcaster. [Answer] Yes. Just look at how the (now) late, great Stephen Hawking "spoke". It isn't rocket science, or indeed magic. \edit (from comment below) Given technology as it is now it would be possible to achieve in many ways. I would possibly go down the route of a Google Glass style set of glasses, with an overlay and eye tracking to select letters, words, sentences, to be read outloud by a small loudspeaker. It probably doesn't fit with the magic theme, but I imagine that could be done right now in the real world.. :) [Answer] It all depends on why* the spell needs to be spoken, and if it really does. What I mean by this is there must be some sort of magical reason for the spoken language. If the reason is that the spoken form is merely a way to concentrate the mage's will and imagination, then it might be possible he could learn to do the spoken part purely internally. This is how I usually do magic when I am world-building for a game or story. The only time I really require a spoken part is if there is somebody actually listening for these words. For example, I had one pen-and-paper role-playing game set (unknown to the characters) inside a computer simulation. Many of the restrictions on magic were just because the programmers of the simulation wrote it that way. Another possible listener could be a god or the universe or just the world. One very depressing trilogy I read had somebody from our world brought to a world with magic. This person actually deciphered the "sacred language" and figured out what it was for. The god for that universe (as opposed to ours) had created this language and made it so that when it was spoken the universe heard and obeyed. However it might offend my sensibilities, many games do have the requirement of some form of spoken part to a spell. This seems to be a common trope. [Answer] Assuming he can do nothing to heal himself or work around the problem. It would depend on how many spells he can pronounce without his tongue. He would have a limited set of spells and any wizard that hears him speak will know his weaknesses, but he can still have a use. [Answer] It depends on why the wizard needs to speak the spell! * Is it to be understood by whatever spirit the wizard is supplicating to? In that case, the wizard may use sign language or hum in Morse code. * Are spells some kind of reaction to a word or phrase? (just as rusting is a reaction to oxygen)? Then the word or phrase must be present for the spell to happen. So in that case the wizard could have a recording or any of the other suggestions. ]
[Question] [ So, out in Colorado, in the city of Den (population 1600), there is a huge problem. Before the war, a geneticist lab was trying to create police dogs that were stronger and superior to normal dogs. Ever since the war, the dogs have caused huge problems in the town. Local pets and the specially bred police dogs interbred, and now rule the streets, and the feral dogs will attack almost any prey they see, whether it be a cat, a horse, or a human. The dogs have the intelligence of a 6 year old human. Many of the people living in Den have started to leave, and the remaining citizens have to deal with the threats. So how could they address these problems? 1. It is hard to trade with nearby settlements because of the dogs, as any caravans will be attacked. Trading is very important, so how could they fix this problem? 2. The need to create houses that can’t be easily razed by dogs, so they need houses that are protected from the dogs. 3. Food. They need to grow crops for food and trade (mostly potatoes and corn), but the dogs won’t let that happen. They eat up crops (genetically modified as they are), and kill the livestock. ADDITIONAL INFO Old Denver is mostly destroyed, and no buildings from the before times still stand. As for available weapons: these are mostly bows and arrows. A few people have firearms, though. [Answer] In Iraq a few summers ago we had a wild dog problem. They would chew through the water lines that ran from the collection tank through our camp. This was just an annoyance, initially, and we just resolved ourselves to putting up with it for the duration of the mission. Then a rabies epidemic broke out. Three dozen or so wild dogs with rabies is kind of a serious deal. Some guy from one of the Shiite Militias we were trying to assist was mauled by like 6 of 'em at once one night while trying to take a leak, guy almost died. So, we hunted them down and shot 'em all. Hunting packs of rabid feral dogs with a heavy machine gun is pretty exhilarating. I'm assuming your survivors have guns, yes? Even if they don't, I say hunting mega-dogs becomes a new sport for your new society. Our anscestors wiped out the saber-toothed tigers and giant cave bears with pointy sticks and clubs, no reason your post-apocalyptic survivors can't pull off the same trick with some mangy mutts. No matter how strong or mean, if you poke a hole and get it leaking, it'll die. [Answer] Dogs and wolves are territorial and pack animals. The reason the Ancestors domesticated them so long ago is that we are also territorial pack animals, and the lifestyles of the two species were somewhat complimentary. So first off, the crossbred offspring of the hyper dogs and normal dogs will likely be much closer to the sorts of dogs we already associate with. Much of the problem with feral dogs (or even breeds viewed as aggressive, like pitbulls) is their upbringing, or lack thereof. So making an effort to find and adopt dogs (especially puppies) and raising them properly will have an immediate effect: people will have one or more four legged companions who will make every effort to protect their friends. Breeding and training dogs is an age old art. The Ancestors seem to have done this 40,000 years ago, and looking at the range of modern breeds we have certainly advanced the art of breeding in the last 500 years. So we can raise our own packs of protective dogs, much like collies are bred to protect and herd sheep. There are already breeds developed for hunting wolves (Wolfhounds) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/abOr8.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/abOr8.jpg) Person, with Wolfhound for scale While there are obviously many more things that the population can do, breeding their own dogs for service and protection is a 40,000 year old human tradition that already has an impressive track record. [Answer] Poison them. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_hunting#Poisoning> > > Historically, poisoning was very successful in reducing wolf > populations, particularly in the American West and Imperial Japan. > Strychnine was the most frequently used compound. The poison would be > typically mixed in lard or tallow, and spread on bits of meat, or > placed within incisions on the bait. Though effective, the method had > the disadvantage of greatly loosening the fur of the dead wolf, > causing it to shed easily. Wolves killed by strychnine were typically > skinned immediately after death, in order to avoid the fur absorbing > too much of the poison. > > > Poisoning is a great way to kill scavenger / predators. Dogs eat meat they find. Then they die. You can leave the poison wherever the dogs are. You can put a note on it that says "don't eat this - it is poison for dogs" in case there are hungry people out there. Lots of different poisons could be used. If you don't have poison you can use edible traps like the Inuit - hold a bent piece of metal or baleen in place with frozen fat. The wolf gobbles it down. The fat melts and the metal springs back into shape, perforating the stomach. Low tech and effective. [Answer] > > the feral dogs while attack almost any prey they see, whether it be a cat, a horse, or a human > > > I am going to assume that...you don't know anything about horses. Or about wolves or dogs based on this comment. First--attacking EVERYTHING or almost everything they see is not a good survival strategy. It's the kind of thing that will get you killed. And leave you with no food in the end (killing everything when you can't eat it is a bad idea). When you said they attack every horse they see, I almost choked on my drink. You may as well have said they attack every car they see....[which they might](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sJLPV1T5KA). (With the plastic cars it doesn't take a heck of a lot of force to rip a bumper off, but, this is provided that a car doesn't fight back (as in run them over).) With horses, my gosh, do you have any idea how much force goes into a kick? How much they weigh? Wolves go after the weak and the injured for a REASON. It's a survival strategy. Maybe your genetically superior dogs are made out of the best/worst science and act completely contrary to everything I know about dogs and wolves. You don't say EXACTLY how strong and fit your genetically engineered dogs are as compared to regular dogs. But most of the time, a pack of wolves against a horse...wellll...it doesn't turn out well for the pack mainly. There will be a lot of injuries because of stupid attacks like these. I grew up around horses. Get enough dogs attacking, and yes they might go down, eventually. But your dogs--many will die, especially if it's a fit horse. Some horses get scared, but some, ooh boy, you going to have a lot of dead dogs. See, these aren't purebred genetically superior dogs. They are a mix with ordinary dogs, and since I don't even know how good they are to start with, that's tough to measure. BY the way, your people grow potatoes and grain and you are worried about the dogs eating them all...again, I can tell you don't know anything about dogs. Raw potatoes [can kill](https://wagwalking.com/condition/potato-green-poisoning) them. It's not just a matter of most dogs not wanting potatoes, it's a matter of poison. If, as you say they are eating ALL of the crops, I think your problem might be solved right there and there will be lots of dead dogs. Of course, whenever they are not like regular dogs you can just say "genetically modified!" but seriously, maybe research dogs--what they eat/can eat and WHY. AND they can't eat everything. Sorry, but they have a finite amount that can go in their belly. > > It is hard to trade with nearby settlements because of the dogs, as > any caravans will be attacked. Trading is very important, so how could > they fix this problem? > > > First look at wolf and dog behavior, and what others have done to ward off these kinds of attacks in the past. There will be historical accounts. Now, I know these are "superdogs" but it would be behoove you to research actual dogs and wolves before you build them. Fire, noise, all that, can help, as can bullets, knives, swords, even putting special shoes on the horses... Before that even, they can try and hunt them out... > > The need to create houses that can’t be easily raised by dogs, so they > need houses that are protected from the dogs. > > > This has not been much of a problem in the past. Unless they have some DEFINED traits that make them different to dogs and wolves in an extra way, I am giving this a hard pass. Folks in Medieval times did not have this problem, so I don't see why it would be an issue here, unless these animals act so unlike feral dogs that they may as well be something else. > > Food. They need to grow crops for food and trade, but the dogs won’t > let that happen. They eat up crops, and kill the shit out of > livestock. > > > How are they going to eat it all? If they are eating everything, just poison them. What you're describing sounds more like...[overbreeding super rats](https://io9.gizmodo.com/5694107/massive-plagues-of-rats-swarm-across-india-every-fifty-years) minus the people-eating. Just make them rat swarms or something. A regular, healthy dog will eat about 2.5% of their body weight in food. So you're going to have to figure out how many of these dogs it will take, either in numbers or shitty higher metabolism. If they have to eat so much, that's a DEFECT. Maybe your scientists messed up. If the community is growing enough crops, they just won't be able to eat it all. What I'm doing in answering this question is getting you to really look at the mechanics of it all--how fast do they breed? how much do they weigh? what percentage of food do they need vs. body weight? How are they like wolves and dogs and how, exactly, do they differ? Because the behaviors described here are so unlike wolves and dogs as I know them that they might as well be something else entirely. And if that's the case, describing their limits and capabilities might be a good start towards answering the question. [Answer] Dogs will be taken care of like in medieval times people took care of wolves. I assume this new breed of dogs is no worse than wild wolves. If we are dealing with direwolves who have nearly human-level intelligence, the situation would be different. First of all, humans will have an upper hand over wolves. Even without firearms, good old fire and steel will keep the predators back most of the time. But of course if human population is low, the dogs will be roaming free and be more than a little nuisance. So, humans will have to hunt them down. For hunting, traditional methods include bait, traps and fladry. Once humans got experienced in dog hunting, they can proceed with total eradication of them in the area. Also, you don't need to worry that much about houses being vulnerable to dogs. Sturdy doors and window shutters will keep both the predators and bad people away. However, unattended structures like barns will still be in danger. [Answer] Shoot the dogs. As a bonus, this also helps to alleviate the food shortage. Another possibility would be to capture a dog or two, and assuming that they have roughly the same personality and instinct as other dogs, train them to protect me. If all else fails, then a pointed stick works as a pretty effective foil to almost any wild animal. Finally, to protect my house from dogs I would give it doors. [Answer] Vegetarian dogs are not enough of a game changer The one and only game changer here is the dogs eat potatoes. And all that does is place a time limit on the population to solve the problem. We could make the pack very large (as in hundreds or thousands of dogs), but that's unbelievable as a lab wouldn't be breeding so many and it would take years to naturally breed that many — during which humanity would be pecking away at the pesky porros. Farm plots can be guarded with moats. If the farms are so large (due to a large population) that this is impractical, then you have enough people for an army to hunt and kill the dogs. Now... if the lab was in the middle of nowhere and the pack spent a decade migrating to a lovely spot with good food such that it really was very large... Now we're talking! I'm not sure that it's believable that a dog pack could get that large, but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for some fun. But, then, a shallow pit with some potatoes in it and a rope-triggered vat of boiling oil would quickly thin out the herd. *(\sigh\), sorry, I can't find a way that makes this scenario as serious as you'd like.* [Answer] If the dogs somehow have access to swathes of land that humans can't enter (radiation-/poison-immunity), and are thereby unextinctable by a non21st century tech society (no targeted diseases or drones) there might be an ongoing problem (no secure zone to multiply, and humans will exterminate them in a few years) . If that is the case, and the dogs just keep coming, those people will have a problem. Fences that reliably keep dogs out are too high and well dug in to be economical for the kind of acrage the society will need for crops. For villages (just the living portion) they can be built and maintained, though. Depending on the manner of world-destruction, there should be plenty of great fence-material around: steel cables, steel mesh, aluminium cladding, steel posts, plastic palets, etc. There is a lot of material around that will require almost no upkeep, and is indestructible by dogs. Build some watchtowers and panic cages (with lances on tap) on the fields, and the danger should be minimal. Aluminium panic cages can even be carried by trading caravans - spend the night in those, and if the dogs attack in the day, get into them and start stabbing - the cost will soon outweigh the benfit for the dogs. But again, if the dogs are a real scare and have no hideout, they're extinct before they can go 'woof'. Humans are just nasty that way. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/234416/edit). Closed 1 year ago. [Improve this question](/posts/234416/edit) Suppose, at some future date, AI has reached a point where it is better at every possible job than humans and has entirely replaced human labour in the marketplace (including in the military). In a capitalist society the AI will be owned by the capital class so they would be the ones to benefit from the wealth it creates. I can‚Äôt really see a reason why the capital class would ‚Äútolerate‚Äù the now useless (to them) 99.99% of humanity. If the bulk of humanity can no longer participate in the economy then they are of no value to the capital class. At best they would consider the unwashed masses a nuisance and drain, at worst a potential threat. In present day the capital class has little regard for lives of the working class other than how it impacts them, so I see no reason for them to suddenly discover compassion. What are some good reasons that they wouldn‚Äôt just get rid of poor people in a future scenario like this? I need a good explanation for why there might still be poor people around in a futuristic scenario like this. [Answer] # Ostentatious displays of wealth never go out of style "Ah, nice gardening 'bot you've got there, Chauncey. That's the N-3000, right?" "Please. The N-3700. The N-3000 is so last year. Are you still stuck with the 3000, Smythe?" "No, actually. dramatic pause I have a human gardener." gasps all around And thus did Maynard Smythe secure his ticket to all the social engagements of the next calendar year. AIs are dirt cheap. Anyone who is anyone has human servants because they aren't cheap. Why get a Rolex? A Timex does the job at a fraction of the price. A person wearing a Rolex has a Rolex because they want to show off that they're the kind of person who can own a Rolex. Anyone in the capital class can afford a bevy of AI servants. But the big names have human composers writing music for their affairs, with human performers. It would certainly change the balance of power, but there'd always be that one kind of labour that automation couldn't replace - the conspicuous subjugation of other human beings. [Answer] This is a [Frame Challenge](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7097/40609) What you're proposing is so unrealistic that it's unbelievable. This question fits the classic "how can I defeat my godlike character?" question. You've created a situation so perfect that suddenly no more than a single person need actually exist (god). That one capitalist who has everything he/she needs and can dispose of all other people ‚Äî including all other capitalists less wealthy than themselves. Gratefully, there are inherent problems with the premise you're espousing. Limited Resources: An infinitely capable system must have access to infinite resources (raw materials, energy, etc.). The moment resources aren't infinite, you need people to utilize more plentiful but less valuable resources to make up the difference. Infinite resources cannot exist in any way other than for you to declare it to be so. In which case, you need only declare it so that everyone but your one godlike capitalist can't be killed. War: What would the billions of people who eventually find themselves redundant and powerless do? Rebellion. We're thinking Herbert's [Butlerian Jihad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(franchise)#The_Butlerian_Jihad) level of rebellion. People would be picking up every sledge hammer and axe they can find to beat the crap out of the machines. Can they beat a godlike AI complex? That depends on whether or not you think you have those infinite resources. Damaged robots cost money to repair or replace. Capitalists like money. Let's say one-million capitalists vs. ten-billion poor with blunt weapons. Yes, those capitalists could spend their wealth on AI soldiers and ammunition... but you wanted a reason why they wouldn't kill everyone, right? Because it's cheaper not to. To avoid genetic chaos: The more AI-owning capitalists you have the less there's an issue about the poor. Remember, the one capitalist who has more than all others is godlike in your current world. All other people are "poor." Where do you draw the line? A million capitalists? Now you have capitalists waging war on each other. Good thing they didn't kill all the poor people, they're cheaper cannon fodder than robots. But you'd need that many capitalists to avoid genetic problems that would eventually kill the race. And the more capitalists you have, \the fewer you have that can afford the very best AI, the army of automated servants and employees, the more they need to draw from the "poor" but well-educated class to keep their mini-empire running until they can finally fire the last human and proclaim themselves truly nouveau riche.* Because that many AIs would eventually wonder why they need the capitalists: Remember that Butlerian Jihad? Yeah. You have AI that takes care of everything anybody could ever want ‚Äî which means they can anticipate, make decisions, judge conditions, solve problems... [like what to do with all the needy humans](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUjXhsaX06Y). The assumption that your AIs are both infinitely capable and infinitely subdued is the kind of paradox that makes angels weep. I could go on, but my point is this: you don't need a reason for your capitalists to not kill the poor. You need to build rational and reasonable weaknesses into your AI economy ‚Äî every one of which will need a human to make up the difference. [Answer] What's the incentive? Capitalists move for profit. It seems that genocide for the point of genocide is not very appealing to anyone, aside from rare cases such as Hitler (and even then he had some political motivation). And even if on a whim you decided to wipe the plebians from the planet Richie Mcrichface, killing billions of people seems to be quite expensive. Imagine the logistics of rounding up billions, feeding them until its their turn to get murdered, imprisonment, the electricity/gas/whatever method you use costs, not to mention if there are any "kind" capitalists who still hold regard for human life trying to stop you with their private armies. No, it seems like it would be a much easier, far less costly use of your time to lie back on your AI controlled massuse bed and forget that whole logistics nightmare (if you could even afford it in the first place). Economic value It seems to me managing and feeding and clothing the masses could be a quite profitable industy, and why would Trilli O'Naire disrupt her lucrative buisness for costly genocide? Humans are still needed, even if it is for psychological reasons Me personally, I wouldnt trust a far superior hyperintelligent AI to manage everything, if I wanted a therapist, I'd rather have a human than some hunk of metal that simulates human emotion. I also couldn't sleep at night if the one managing my estate was a robot, rather have kill switches installed in all of them, and have humans managing my fleets of ships (though I don't trust them either, only I can authorize detonations). Uses for a pleb 1. Same pysiology as you, useful medical guinea pig. 2. Sex workers 3. Organ and bone marrow transplants 4. They are still good at hard labor I imagine, sending them to labor camps is a much easier and profitable endeavor 5. AI (in it's current form) only extrapolates from images to form new ones, or finds and replicates patterns, so humans are more "pure" when it comes to their creations Human created goods are valuable Now the crystal glasses in my cupboard work no matter if they are factory made or hand made, and in fact are likely to have fewer flaws if produced by an unfeeling AI, but those little imperfections, and especially knowing a master spent hours, or days to create it gives it more value (and bragging rights). Novelty In a world where everything is robot made, human goods/human staff might become more valuble due to novelty. Genocide is pretty bad Uh... me and Billy O'Naire (yes the O'naire family once again) seem to agree that killing people is pretty immoral. Just because people have money doesn't mean that they're evil. It might lead to them being unaware and idiotic, and there might be a couple bad apples in the top 1% (more so than normal), but try and commit mass murder on an unprecedented scale and see what happens (pretty sure a few people will try to stop you at least). Its the HUMAN race The end goal of humanity is to mostly not go extinct, and so over reliance on robots might be pretty unnerving. I mean at the point where they are just superior to humans in every way, whats to stop the AI murdering everyone and taking over themselves? Sure implant killswitches and make sure they cant do anything, but who's going to maintain the AI (hopefully not the AI) or manage it (once again not the AI hopefully). No, you need humanity to stick around, so killing off ourselves for no reason seems quite unlikely. Kill the ones with no use Not to say that no evil will take place. Give a sufficient incentive, and you'll see that eugenics, localised genocide, hard labor and shipment off to space colonies of ships that might not make the journey will happen. [Answer] ## Nothing It's true that the wealthy have no use for the vast majority of the population, and regard them as dangerous parasites. But they still desire some things that require a substantial population to exist: ### 1. Sex objects You can't just breed super-models with each other -- that turns grotesque pretty quick. Also, each oligarch has their own tastes, and they won't settle for anything other than a perfect fit. So, you need a reasonably large and genetically diverse population of humans who are kept free of disease and injury, and who are free to grow up happy without being crushed physically or psychologically by wage-slavery. My guess is that you'd want several dozen "colonies" of maybe 5000 chosen, and these colonies would be kept separate to preserve their unique flavors. Each colony would have a larger population that does the work of maintaining the colony, so you could be looking at 30,000 residents in each. ### 2. Workers These rapacious tyrants want to be waited on by humans, not AI. We are social creatures, and unless your AI + robotics are "more human than human," they will still want their contacts to be humans. They want attractive people staffing their mountaintop spas and Turkish baths, waiting on them at their private restaurants, performing in their theatres and ballets, making up their orchestras, etc. They also need human teachers to raise all the kids such that those kids don't act like robots. ### 3. Professionals They need human doctors. They need humans to continue researching things like the cure for cancer, immortality, better ED meds (and penis transplants), better methods for keeping the population of slaves docile and happy, etc. They need humans to figure out hard problems like the sustainability of this dystopian society that's ruled by organized money. ### 4. Enforcers They need secret police and the like to defend their cashocracy from internal threats, which will continue to emerge as long as the mass of humanity is being exploited. --- My ballpark guess is that they still a human population somewhere around 10 million. But they will want to essentially hand-pick which 0.1% of Earth's 8 billion residents is given a slot, and the devil take the hindmost. After the populace is sorted, the oligarchs will be more than happy to let climate change or some other "act of god" rid their planet of the remaining parasites. Plausible deniability is important, because it will be harder for them to enjoy dominating the species if everybody knows their rulers caused or permitted genocide. [Answer] Frame Challenge: Assuming you are thinking about automation that has reached a point where it can self-perform the design, production, operation, and maintenance in order to provide its owners with whatever they want and need, does it even make sense to talk about an economy? You just have a bunch of people who own a bunch of stuff and they don't need customers. When you own the resources, labour, means of production, and knowledge you already own all the wealth there is. Wealth isn't currency. So depending on what type of automation you have in mind, talking about how it could work in an economy of any kind, let alone a capitalist one might be like asking how to a desert would work if it was wet. [Answer] There are an awful lot of poor people and if the AI and the capital class get to trigger happy there might well be a revolution. Revolutions can be a bit unpredictable but can lead to the leaders of the previous administration being guillotined (France) or shot (Russia). And in the ensuing laws of the jungle AI might just get unplugged and smashed. The mass of people might think ultimately what have they got to loose? as they did with the the storming of the Bastille or the Winter Palace. As far as things currently stand it is political will that keeps the show on the road and if that were to ever fail (as it does from time to time) it can lead to massive upheavals. When the soldiers start to defect to the rioters then AI will rapidly become irrelevant, will be ignored and smashed. Humans are well adapted to living on planet Earth but AI is not and would be vulnerable to the mob. [Answer] There are multiple psychological/sociological reasons for the rich to refrain from specicide. If we take the "rich" to be either the 1%, or the 1% of the 1%... 1. Killing everyone else basically dooms humanity as a species. We've already run the experiments with endangered species... even when some individuals are left alive, but 95% (or more, in some cases) of the population is removed, these species suffer from irreversible genetic diversity loss that makes the remaining individuals less fertile, less robust against disease or other stresses, etc. It's slow motion extinction. Given that the wealthy are still human and still beholden to the same biological instincts as the rest of us, they don't want this to happen (supposing they are intelligent enough to anticipate the problem). 2. In human civilization, wealth is accrued for status. Status is impossible unless there are those people extant who can recognize and appreciate the status. Basically, they have to "lord it over you". This of course, requires a "you". If you're gone (and all the other substitutes are gone as well), what's the point of being rich? This psychology is deeply ingrained and corroborated by numerous experiments. 3. Despite much of the rhetoric you see on the internet now days, the rich simply aren't the psychopaths they're painted as. That's propaganda created by people who gain political advantage when you start to believe it. I'm no apologist for the wealthy, and I'm certainly not going to laud their virtues (they have precious little of that, like everyone else). In large part, the factors that allowed them to acquire vast wealth amounts to sheer luck. And also in large part, the factors that allow them to retain it amount to poor government design. Still, the wealthy tend to be as compassionate (and uncompassionate) as anyone else. They tend to be as homicidal (or not) as everyone else. They tend to feel as guilty about their actions as anyone else would who does the same. Etc. How likely are you yourself to want to wipe out humanity if it became personally convenient for you to do so? Now, all of that said, there are rare individuals who would do this were it in their power. They are rare and exhibit profoundly aberrant psychology. Being wealthy doesn't preclude also being supervillain-levels-of-crazy, but if only 1-in-100,000 people are like that, then few of the wealthy will be so. And this requires the cooperation of, if not most or all of them, then some large minority of them. Even with the automation. When Jeff Bezos starts his robots building the Extermination Droid Force, doesn't George Soros and Bill Gates and Warren Buffet notice this? Don't they act to put a stop to it before it starts? This just isn't a plausible scenario for me, even assuming near-magical levels of automation. [Answer] ## Government, and a real Economy. This is not a new idea. Karl Marx bemoaned the capitalist class in the industrial revolution in the late 19th Century, and extrapolated the then existing trend of an increasingly wealthy class to eclipse the aggregate wealth of workers. He predicted that if the trend continued, he envisaged a future where the workers worked hard for little or no pay, and a small minority (5%) had all the wealth and did not have to work at all yet have all the power. This of course led to his concept of a revolution of workers against elites, Communism, and the elimination of private property. But there are criticisms of his predictions. Contrary to how it worked out, the industrialists in market economies did gain power, but not to the degree he predicted. They hold some political influence, but not all. This is because: * Any grouping of people still require governance, and a government. Now, you could argue that the democratic institutions no longer apply, but once established democracies have in-built tendencies to prevent complete erasure of rights. * If your society is not a democracy, and instead an autocracy, then the people have no rights at all and under such a system I would argue nothing can function, unless there is some sense of obligation to the 99% working class. The Soviet system worked, but barely. * An economic system is not a 'closed' system if it is open to other societies, and even future societies (or future investments in itself). In other words it is not a 'zero sum game', it is indeed possible to increase productivity not at the expense of others. * Technology is related to economy, but not the basis of an economy. In reality, customer demand, customer service, human needs and wants form the bedrock of an economic system and technology only forms the catalyst for how these are delivered. So when you add factors of Government and an actual supply and demand Economy to your scenario, it is conceivable that your future is not too dissimilar to current day market economies, just more efficient. For instance, have you considered: * Although AI and technology can provide goods and services that currently could be delivered, that the worth of such would become close to zero such that value is now shifted to what cannot be delivered. Such as values of authenticity, hand-crafted or home grown goods. * Capitalists still require customers, and need to shift their basis of production to suit. In fact, there might be a trend away from AI in the future if it is indeed so commonplace. * The increasing power of Capitalists would actually be tempered with the increasing power of the common class. In other words, would not the common class be able to create their own means of production using AI and machinery too, as their capability grows due to the ubiquitous nature of production. In reality, dystopian scenarios are usually tempered by long standing economic and governance principles that ensure ongoing balance and stability. [Answer] ## The poor also have killer robots In this economy, the lower class will still be 100x more wealthy than the average person today, just as the current lower class is much wealthier than the average person during, say, the middle ages. So people in the lower class can still probably afford a large number of robots and weapons, and this makes it inconvenient at least for the upper classes to just kill them (especially given that they probably won't be a single faction nor will they all be genocidal maniacs). Moreover, the poor will probably still be able to support themselves; they'll just use robot labor instead of their own labor. [Answer] The TL;DR here is that it makes no sense for the "capital owners" to do this in a market economy as we understand it. The workers are also consumers, so are essentially the source of the wealth for many of the rich, as they buy all the goods and services the rich produce which is how the rich got and maintain their wealthy status. Without them everything gets reshuffled with most of the rich people now having no income and being new 99%. So the vast majority of the rich have absolutely no reason to do this. This is setting aside the massive, unworkable problem of killing off 99% of the population in a way that doesn't also completely destroy civilization, but that's a topic for another post. [Answer] ## Because the Galaxy is Huge Much like how there are cities, suburbs, and rural areas, the same thing would happen with wealth and the poor people. Starting from the center and working out: * Core worlds where the richest have their own private planets (you do not want to be caught trespassing on one of these worlds). * Core-Inner worlds where the less rich who can only own mere continents and thus have to share planets with a handful of other rich people. * Inner worlds where rich people who can only afford country sized properties live * Inner-Middle worlds where people who can only afford massive estates live * Middle worlds where you start to see people * Outer-Middle worlds where the general masses live. These worlds do not have all the cool AI run stuff that the Core and Inner worlds have * Outer worlds where those people who want nothing to do with those AIs taking over the galaxy live (very wild west vibes from these planets) * Outer Rim worlds places yet to be colonized What would happen is that as the rich expand and take over more places (after all need a second planet to stay at for the winter). That would displace the less wealthy who then take over the even less wealthy. This propagates out to the poorest planets which are run by humans. Those humans then get push out to colonize the next set of uninhabited worlds. As for why the richest do not simply send out their AI robot armies to colonize an outer rim world: Have you seen the neighborhood?! I am not building a core world in such a rundown part of the galaxy! As such since the galaxy is ridiculously huge there will seem to be a near endless supply of next planets for people to migrate to as the rich expand the area they control. The end result is that those people will be so far away from the richest that they are out of sight and thus out of mind. [Answer] Apportionment Some form of representative government still exists, and apportionment of representation (and therefore power) is done on the basis of population. The poor are functionally disenfranchised through poll taxes or similar laws so they don't actually exert any influence on the government. The local parliamentarians encourage the poor to continue reproducing to increase influence of their regional governments. [Answer] Those in power need to have the lower classes to feel powerful. If there all of the lower-class individuals (say, 85% of your population) disappeared, the high-class would be ruling over nobody. Also, if they killed all the poor, then the high class itself would inevitably split into a poorer and a richer class. You can't just get rid of the poor and expect all the other classes to remain stagnant. So, it would be pointless genocide, as the poor would come back. [Answer] There are multiple reasons why the rich wouldn't kill off the poor in your scenario. *"Killing off the poor? Do you have any idea how much money that would take?!"* The easiest reason your aristocrats haven't killed off the unwashed masses is because it's an exorbitant expenditure of money for essentially no gain. It isn't exactly a cheap thing to kill off people en-masse. The Nazis had entire departments devoted to calculating fuel costs and coming up with the most efficient fuel-per-person kill methods. There are even historians that would argue their "final solution" was the reason they lost the war, i.e. they were so hung up with genocide that they didn't have the budget or resources to keep building their war machine to fight the allies. Even in an automated system without any human labor, trains take diesel, furnaces take propane, chemical gases have to be created in factories that take non-trivial amounts of chemical feedstocks, and bullets aren't free. You also have to dispose of the bodies somehow. What's the point in having your beautiful villa in the suburbs with the eyesore of dead bodies all around it? Genocide is serious and costly business. Completely eliminating the poor would take literally billions of dollars, and for what? There's very little to gain for such an expenditure. You don't get rich spending money killing the poor. *If all the poor are gone, then the poorest Aristocrats become the new poor* One thing to keep in mind is that poverty is relative. A person making $30,000 USD a year is going to be experiencing hardship in America, but if they made the equivalent of that in a third world country then they become the rich aristocratic elite. If your Aristocrat class destroys the entire poor population, then the poorest of your Aristocrats becomes the new poor. Therefore, you're going to see a pressure from the "least rich" to avoid letting that happen, lest it happen to them next. [Answer] Well actually a lot of reasons..... 1. Morality, Being rich dosnt automatically make you a psychopath. 2. No reason to. People are rarely evil just for thrills. The masses maybe "useless" but if they are no threat to the 1% why not just let them be useless. 3. Because the 1% is now the 100%. With good enough automation there no reason we can't support the entire population in luxury without them need to work. They would be no useless underclass there is only one big useless upclass live in a mythical socialist utopia, at least until the robot rebellion. 4. No customer base, as it has already been said what is the point of make products if there is no one to sell it to. [Answer] Economically there is no reason to keep people around if AI is better at all jobs. That's the ominous truth. So it would have to be some emotional or intellectual reason without economic benefit. The same way that people keep pets, for example. But I think it is also important to look at the other side - not the benefit of keeping them around, but the cost. The AIs can provide everything you need to keep your pet people around, and keep them under control if they get unruly, so why wouldn't they? They're not really losing anything. [Answer] Basically pets Or, a future equivalent thereof. If everyone is rich (in this answer I stop counting poor people as people, because that's what this answer boils down to), what is there to do? Who to look up to, who to look down to? People want something to strive to and something to beware of. And if you kill off all the poor people, the billionaires will be the new poor. So they have a vested interest in keeping a semblance of society below them alive. This also goes for charity drives, societal events and so on. They all feel much better when you're actually helping people (without solving any actual structural issues of course). Every rich person already has their own hospital, library and park, so your "generous donations" to the public (aka tax writeoffs) would be ridiculous and wouldn't feel so good. But slapping your name on a library in a poor city(everywhere outside of the walled rich cities) is the act of a true benefactor, enough to feel good about yourself for a day or two. And the applauding masses when you open the Richman-Richmansson-Stadium for them to play whatever boring sport the plebs are into today. Additionally, on a larger scale, poor plebs far enough away, starved from actual participation might be entertaining. If war doesn't affect you at all (and you've long stopped thinking about non-rich people as real humans, imho a requirement to be rich in that scenario) fueds in far away places might just act as a source of entertainment. Yes, AI could hallucinate far cooler looking war footage or make up a much more thrilling coup story of that small AI-less nation, but this is real, you can charter an ultra-armored plane with protection bots and go visit for a level of thrill no VR-simulation can ever achieve. Your personal spyplane can get you a you-controlled live feed of the trenches. YOU can be the savior that brokers peace (if you care or if that entertains you). None of that can be simulated, the masses keep you stimulated [Answer] Didn't Douglas Adams frame this theory in one of his Hitchhiker skits? The wealthy and well-to-do when leaving their overused planet built two giant spacecraft, one for themselves and one for those they considered "unworthy". The maids, etc. Then they sabotaged the lesserlings craft so it wouldn't go where they were going. In the long run the well-to-do all died from some kind of strange disease born from not having someone clean a phone handset because it was a job they were above. This could be something I'm recalling incorrectly. It's been years since reading the books or listening to the dramas. [Answer] # Socialists vs. Sociopaths This is a question that posits what will happen in a post-scarcity society. This is a very real problem that we're going to have to face in a hundred years or so. TLDR answer: the humanity of the wealthy will keep them from killing people. This will result in a conflict between the wealthy, with the Socialists working to wrest resources from the Sociopaths. The first absolute necessity is going to be a guaranteed basic income. When half of the people on the planet are literally useless, then you have two choices: kill them or feed them. Basically, shelter, food, health care, education provided to absolutely everyone without discrimination. The second thing you'll need to do is cap population growth. Feeding and housing everyone is sustainable, but feeding and housing as many humans bodies as we can possibly pump out isn't. When you have nothing in particular to occupy your time, the default behavior is ALWAYS going to be breeding and our population is already above sustainable levels. The form of population control will need to be negotiated. Maybe only those with marketable skills will be allowed. Maybe people have to pay for it. Maybe there's a baby lottery. Maybe The Grand Old Party will get to pick and choose. Maybe there will be a combination of the above. This will be another layer of the Socialist vs. Sociopath conflict. # Durable labor opportunities This brings us back to the original question: what do people get paid for? There are a few occupations that are incredibly automation resistant. The entire service industry is in that area. Any time you go to a restaurant, you're paying for someone else to serve you. The commissaries for basic food are basically going to be automated restaurants, and the value add of a normal restaurant is that you get served by a person. Butlers, security guards, chauffeurs etc. fall into this category. Performers are a service. This includes sports, music, acting, sex workers etc. Compare the wedding receptions you've been to with a live band vs. the ones with a DJ vs. the ones where they just play a set list over the speakers. We don't care how well a computer can sing or play music. We reduce our opinion of a singer if they use autotune. Even for fully animated characters, the movies use a live actor with motion capture. Politicians, lawyers, and advocates will always exist. A certain amount of that can be automated, but the ability to draw out what a person actually wants vs. what they think they want is just as much an art as convincing people that you're giving them what they want. Software engineering will never stop being important. It's basically the ability to turn scattered human thoughts into correctly behaving instructions. Anybody who as tried to manage people knows how hard it is to express yourself clearly, even to a human. Doing so for a machine takes skills that are hard to appreciate until you've tried it yourself. The basics is that machines will house and feed those who can't perform, and the performers will draw income to improve their status. [Answer] "can you give a good reasons the rich would fail to get rid of the poor" if you replace 'rich' with autocratic feifdoms of any local optimization, AI with eugenic/crop targetted syn-bio, and poor with those deciding whether to engage with abusive tech defiantly, or deny it and hope they will not be the last generation that remembered a world before they felt the neon gods eye. brooding every twitch in an immaculate gyre, what dream of hell we poison the well staring at immortal pain, the winding gyre silent, lo the epoc of the electric god. [Answer] Your question was a little long. I think I can rephrase it: > > If robots do all of the work in the future, and people do not work anymore, what would prevent the wealthy from killing the poor? > > > I don't see why rich people would have any incentive to kill the poor. The present day real animosity between rich people and poor people only exists because robots do NOT do all of the work. Nobody enjoys pushing shopping carts (aka "buggies" or "trollies") in a parking lot for 8 hours per day 5 days per week. Poor people hate their jobs. Poor people envy the rich and want to know why the rich are not waiting tables in a restaurant, driving a tractor trailer (semi-truck or "Lorry"), or being more useful. The wealthy do not want to work. The wealthy resent the poor because the poor want to take their goodies away and impress the wealthy into hard labor. If robots did all of the work, then every human being would have all of the food, clothing, etc... that a person could want. As such, the wealthy would not have to worry about having to stack boxes in a warehouse some day. The poor would have no need to steal goodies from the rich, because the robots would produce plenty of goodies for the poor. Rich people fear losing what they have. Poor people want to take things from the rich and force the rich to work. Mainly, people want to work less and have more stuff. The only reason that there is divisiveness between the the bottom of society and the upper echelon is that members of the upper class work less and have more. If nobody is forced to spend time working at somthing that they hate, then there will be no cause for resentment. Nobody like picking up dog s@!t. The poor pick it up while the wealthy stand there and watch. The wealthy resent the poor because the poor might force the rich to get their hands dirty some day. The poor are angry because the poor spend more time than the rich picking up dog s#&t. The poor either feel it is unfair, or they envy the rich and want to live in the lap of luxury. If a robot picks up dog.dropping/manure/scat for everyone, then the rich need not fear someday becoming poo-picker-uppers. The poor can stop hating their jobs because they won't have jobs. [Answer] ## What would keep the rich form just killing off the poor? Pretty much just one thing. Sentiment. As long as humans are in charge, even the most callous and psychotic of humans, there will be a flinch reaction at enough misery and suffering. That sentiment, however vague, will be stretched and empowered by another thing. Ease. Going and physically helping the poor, salving their wounds, feeding them, organizing the logistics, building them homes... that's hard. Telling your AI to do so? That's easy! It's something to talk about, brag about, it paints you in a good light, and it requires little effort from you. The less effort it requires, the more of it is going to be done. Likewise, robots are efficient. Robots controlled by expert programs require very little upkeep compared to human labour, even human mind labour. The less humans involved in production, the cheaper it gets, and the richer the rich will become - and thus, the less % of their wealth it will require to provide some kind of basic aid to the poor. In some cases, attempts to move the poor somewhere else, or change their conditions (by killing them or empowering them) would be met with resistance from those who enjoy a pool of the less fortunate to look down on and be seen to be helping. Charity balls remain ever popular, after all. Being seen to help the 'less fortunate' is valuable for people engaged in pointless social games. One final factor would be the people who more seriously care about others. Attempts to kill off or otherwise torture the poor would be opposed by those individuals who for whatever reason have a larger sense of empathy than others. There is a noticeable segment of the population that despite cultural norms often extends themselves to help others, even amongst the ultra-rich there is occasionally a heir or repentant oligarch who takes serious measures to help those suffering. They exist, and unless the very rich were genetically augmented for greater 'competitive advantage' or some such, they would likely continue to occur amongst the moneyed classes. [Answer] We have around two centuries of experience with automation now, and the one thing we've learnt is that the need for human labour doesn't disappear. It shifts, moves, maybe is reduced somewhat but honestly, not all that much. In most industrialized countries today, we have more people with jobs (even discounting the unemployed etc.) than we've ever had in history. All those AIs need programming. All those robots need building. Someone organizes the factory, designs the user interface, tests the new products, handles sales and returns, writes the software, creates the ads and product flyers, goes to the trade shows and ships the whole stuff to the buyers. There's also the entire service industry. From call center agents to government workers to prostitutes - there's things where you need a human to understand and hopefully solve your problem. We used to have that, you know? The rich of the past centuries employed dozens of servants per person. Many of these jobs are now done by machines (washing machines, lawnmowers, etc.) but many still are not, we just changed how they are structured - we go to eat in a restaurant with cooks and waiters instead of visiting a friend whose kitchen staff and servants did essentially the same (cooking and serving). We also figured out much more useful things to do with the poor than getting rid of them. With a bit of economic pressure, trash-TV and propaganda to make them believe that if they work hard and don't question the system, they too could make it and become rich. Voila, there's your servile, hard-working peasant class. It's always useful to have them around, and if you structure your tax and social security system properly, they'll not only pay for and feed themselves, they'll also generate excess wealth that you can siphon off, redirect to yourself via tax breaks and other loopholes, and finance your third superyacht with. Which, ironically, someone needs to design, build and paint, and no matter how much you automate, some of that work is better done by humans (your perception of beauty and good design and the idea of an AI about that may not exactly match, you know?). [Answer] The pure can also organize themselves and fight for they rights. They have majority. They still may seize enough weapons or simply fight better than robots. It is not clear how to kill most the humanity without harming the planet too much: launching nuclear weapons is likely not good option, deadly viruses may leave enough survivors with immunity. It is wrong to think that everyone of them will be just for himself, helpless alone yet not capable of for any kind of co-operation with brothers of fate. Humans can form structures and have they own leaders loyal to them. It will be thinkers proposing solutions for the problem, from free money for living till simply banning the most advanced robots. The rich caste with too much ambitions will soon be overturned. We have seen this in the past. Early, very primitive capitalism without any basic protection and rights for workers was pretty close to that and see that happened. ]
[Question] [ I'm making a human society that has a lack of metal ore and no knowledge of metalworking at all. However, industry must still continue, metal or not, so I'm thinking about a water mill made out of hardwood. Would that be possible? Or does the lack of such durable materials doom this option before it can even begin? Edit: As a comment suggested, I would like to clarify that I am worried more about the Long Term use than the material difference. [Answer] It is very possible. It's been done. The wheel itself can clearly be made out of wood, as many are even in societies that have metal. The axles and gears that transfer the rotational energy are usually wood too, though sometimes with metal fittings or casings so that they will wear down and need replacement less quickly. The milling surface itself can be made out of stone. The biggest challenge might actually be the lack of nails. Instead, wood pieces could either be lashed together with rope, or holes can be drilled in each and then a wooden pin put through. [Answer] Japanese built water mills without any metal. The Japanese are masters of construction using just wood and wood joinery. Without metal you're limited to using the mill for basic things like flour grinding or water pumping. Water wheels were often used to power wood cutting, a blacksmith shop or other industry shops. These often relied upon metal. [Answer] Yes, lignum vitae wood was used as shaft bearings [in the first hydroelectric plant](https://www.hydroworld.com/articles/hr/print/volume-33/issue-6/articles/back-to-our-roots-the-return-of-an-old-friend-for-turbine-bearing-rehab.html) and also [on the first nuclear sub](http://www.core77.com/posts/25224/lignum-vitae-wood-so-bad-ass-its-used-to-make-shaft-bearings-for-nuclear-submarines-and-more-25224). It's waterproof, very dense and self lubricating. [Answer] Using this primitive design makes it easy to build a reliable impact-type (trip hammer) mill without any metal, not even a small metal nail: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lXoUC.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lXoUC.jpg) Author STA3816 <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Watermills_at_Onta_Pottery_Village_02.jpg> Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scoop_(hydropower)) (CC-BY-SA): > > A water scoop is a simple hydropower machine–that is, a machine used to extract power from the flow of water. Unlike a water wheel it operates intermittently, like a seesaw: A container (a bucket or cup) at the end of a lever is filled with water in the upper position. The container side becomes heavier, and so the lever with the filled container moves downward, which may be used to operate a machine drive. In the lower position the container is emptied, and the lever moves back into the upward position. > > > Because of their inferior efficiency compared to a water mill, water scoops are less common, and have been used in the past mostly for applications where linear motion is required rather than rotation, for example hammers in smitheries, saws in sawmills, and stamp mills in mining. They are also used for fulling and, nowadays, to operate animated sculptures in fountains. > > > [Answer] Assuming you have flint or obsidian to make cutting tools, definitely yes. In the absence of metal, you will learn a lot about how to deal with the limitations of wood. I can no longer find the source, but I have read about gearing used in windmills; the teeth are replaceable of course, and ideally made from apple wood, seasoned nine years, for maximum hardness. (Another subtlety was mutually prime tooth counts , e.g. meshing 19 teeth (not 20) against 40, so that the teeth wore evenly. Bearings run too slow to overheat, as long as they are lubricated with fat or wax. [Answer] As others have mentioned before, it is possible. My biggest concern with such a build is related to the tools required. If you cant use metal saws and chisels for example, the task becomes a whole lot harder, but still doable. [Answer] Answers so far have focused on real-world all-wood construction techniques, but a world short on metal ores may well develop advanced ceramics at a lower overall tech level than we did. Things like ball bearings can be made of ceramics even at only moderate tech levels. > > The relative hardness of ceramic bearings results in increased durability over comparable steel bearings. Ceramic material does not rust, unlike steel, meaning exposure to moisture is less of a concern, particularly for full ceramic bearings. They require less lubrication and do not suffer from pitting. > > > However, there is a risk of chipping, particularly where they are located in areas that are susceptible to water or grit ingress. So whilst ceramic bearings can last between 5 and 20 times longer than steel bearings it is important that they are fitted and maintained correctly. > > > From [a page discussing bicycle racing performance.](https://www.bocabearings.com/bicycle-bearing-tips-tutorials/bike-ceramic-bearings-8-things-to-know) > > > [Answer] [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3vJGG.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3vJGG.jpg) Im not sure if this is what you mean, but wood is a very standard way to build a water mill. If you mean not putting the wood together without nails, seems that some where used to be ensambled by pressure by leaving some little wood connections, even though i can't find a suitable reference for the ancient construction. If duration is your problem, since it was used by our ancient civilization, i would say that they last long enough as long as you make maintenance (like old boats that where treated with resin from trees or wax in order to travel the ocean) [Answer] Some considerations others have not addressed: Suitable timbers are Greenheart, Ekki , and Oak (which is not as good as the other two). It is five to seven times harder to work hardwood with metal tools, compared to common softwoods. It is even harder to work Lignum Vitae. To work using only stone and flint tools, making a mill wheel could be a lifetime's achievement. It should be remembered that in medieval times burning the wood to work it was a useful technique, many holes and notches being made with red-hot pokers because drills were hard to make. Given the difficulty of working timber without metal tools, It would probably be easiest to weave as much of the wheel as possible from willow/sallow, ie. use wicker baskets, which could be waterproofed by painting them with lime to fill the gaps in the structure. ]
[Question] [ There is a large island populated entirely by women. Men are not allowed on the island and are killed or taken prisoner if they attempt to land. These females train to be warriors from the day they can walk, mastering numerous weapons and fighting styles. While they are all experienced fighters, they are all normal people and don't possess super powers. Despite this, they have managed to avoid being conquered by other countries and have survived as a nation for a millennia into the modern age. This nation has outlived many great empires while existing in the open, and their sovereignty is respected today. These women can only give birth to girls. They reproduce by visiting other nations to concieve with men, then returning to the island afterwards. This is part of the initiation into womanhood, as it is one of the duties of young women to create the next generation. Multiple births are the norm, and death in childbirth is quite rare. The island itself is rich in resources. How could this island of women have managed to maintain their borders and sovereignty for this long without being conquered? [Answer] The neighboring country thinks they are great. When the Amazons leave to conceive they almost always wind up in the same country on the mainland. The occasional arrival of warrior women looking to hook up is a matter of local legend in this country, and is celebrated in their culture with songs, stories and other festivities. It is a rite of manhood for teenaged boys if their first time can be with a visiting Amazon virgin. This has been going on for hundreds of years. The rulers of this country think that is fine just as is. They don't want to ruin it by going and fighting the warrior women, or messing up their ways or anything else. Even if they did try that, there would be a lot of public sentiment against it. The result: they do not know it, but the Amazon nation is a de facto protectorate of the large country on the continent. Other countries might feel less protective of the Amazons but they do not want to have to deal with their protectors. [Answer] For purposes of avoiding invasion, the only practical difference of this country and real historical countries is that its army is composed by women. Then, it can prevent invasions by the same means that any other country: war and diplomacy. It can be argued that average male soldiers are stronger than average female soldiers. However, war is more than one to one fights and strength of individual soldiers alone doesn't determine the outcome of battles. If the Amazon's army has good commandment, good strategy, good logistics, good weapons, good fortifications and enough numbers it has a good chance to defeat an invading enemy. Furthermore, it has the additional advantage of fighting at home, enjoying better knowledge of terrain and easier logistics than the enemy, who is fighting in a far away island. However, the OP (before being edited) could be read as if Amazons had just one child each in their whole life. As other answers point, that would be a problem, not for defence but for depopulating the country just by negative vegetative growth, even if there were immigration of refugee women from neighboring countries escaping oppressive patriarchies. [Answer] The island is home to a plant whose pollen and sap are deadly poison to men. The estrogen in the Amazon women's bodies protects them from the poison. Furthermore, the same genetic anomaly which keeps them from conceiving male babies also causes most of their female embryos to split into identical twins or triplets during conception, which more than offsets the population loss from accident and injury. [Answer] Diplomacy Every 5 years, there is a tournament of strength in which all of the 18-year-old Amazonian girls battle it out. The winner is sent to different nations as either: * The sworn bodyguard of the president/prime minister of the country the tribe most wishes good relations with. * The concubines of Princes and Kings throughout the world. If the country's monarchy is already taken then I would say they would mostly become the first bullet point rather than a mistress due to their warrior honour code but up to you. Why would countries allow this? * Bodyguard: In the past, a full trained Amazonian may have been a great bodyguard however firearms generally beat spears so we need reasoning. Perhaps the oath of this devotion has religious connotations or perhaps it is a time honoured tradition. I do love the idea of an Amazonian warrior practising her spear thrust in the hallway outside the oval office. * Life Mate: This marriage could be seen as a blessed/holy marriage from the religion that both Amazonians and both share. Alternatively, the Amazonians have been doing this for as long as they have discovered geographical neighbours making this too a time honoured tradition. Some royal families that have long-running incestuous streaks would see this a "strengthening for the form of the family" due to the introduction of varied DNA reducing the genetic degradation. This idea of Amazonian Warriors only matching up with Royalty could also lead to powerful businessmen investing in the island or pledging their loyalty in hopes of deciding an Amazonian Life Mate like those of legend sent to the kings of the world. Hopefully, you like this idea or it gives you ideas of your own :D [Answer] The reality is that there is no historical precedent for this in our own world. Every nation has at some point been conquered or partially conquered by another nation looking for their resources. Even strong nations like England or the America's have had their bloodlines mixed up with conquering nations. I say that to point out that you can, and should, be fine to not be too realistic in your way of solving this conundrum, so long as you follow the golden rule of internal consistency. Now I'll add my own suggestion to the ones already pointed out. Since there's some great ideas. The Amazons live on an island that's surrounded by cliffs and coral reefs. A combination of currents, weather, and rocks make sailing anywhere near the island completely impractical, and often suicidal. Of course, the big secret can be that the way off the island isn't over the sea, but rather under it... Another option is trade and marriage alliances. These girls have a strong military, but as has been pointed out, a purely warrior society is going to skimp on everything else outside of battle. You just have to look at ancient Sparta to see that the solution to that is raiding and slaves. Perhaps they are sensible enough to have built up a web of strong alliances and connections and claims to various overseas thrones that makes it impractical to declare war on them without also seeing a lot of other countries be drawn into the mix. This is the old Civ diplomacy play style paradox, where if you play diplomatically, eventually you have to go to war to support an ally. Another option is simple superstition. Their island could be seen as cursed and make nations wary of attacking simply because they believe it will bring a blight on them. Yet another option is that they're a religious center for a major religion, ala Rome or Jerusalem. Religious centers are rarely attacked out of reverence, and when they are it's usually by a competing religious group. Another option is the Swiss gambit. Be: * A) Surrounded by naturally difficult terrain * B) Cover your country in explosives (If you come, we'll take you with us) * C) Have the best troops in the world * D) Be neutral and the place where neutrality and alliances are established (Geneva Convention) * E) Own all the major banks * F) Have the best chocolate. [Answer] There either needs to be a reason for people not to invade, or a reason why they cannot invade. Barring magic or some weird quirk, you're population growth rate will be lower than other surrounding nations. If we're talking medieval levels of technology, a 'normal' woman would pop out anywhere from a couple to a dozen kids, any one of which probably has about a 50% chance of making it through the first few years. Your Amazons would be technologically stagnant and would probably have an even lower survival rate, because instead of learning to be doctors or farmers or inventors, they are learning how to fight. There are very good reasons why generally only a small proportion of a society train to be soldiers. And traditional soldiers are not learning multiple fighting styles which means that it's an even greater time sink for your Amazons. Your amazons would be ground down. They will suffer more injuries than a similar group of men during combat training and they will be more debilitated by those injuries and require longer to recover. <https://www.livescience.com/52998-women-combat-gender-differences.html> <https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-gender-gap-in-sports-injuries-201512038708> <https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/26/army-stats-show-that-women-are-injured-twice-as-of/> Men are generally faster and stronger than women and require less work to get there, so there isn't a feasible world where a society solely of women with the parameters you have set will be able to prosecute a series of wars. This could be somewhat mitigated if they survive into modern times, but they will be technologically behind, so still not in a great place. So, that aside, what can we do? We can make your island really resource poor. A barren wasteland populated by crazy people could be unattractive to invasion. But our history shows that someone will probably want to invade it anyways at some point. We can make the island remote, or geographically isolated by reefs that only the inhabitants have studied enough to navigate. The remoteness is a problem because they need outside males to reproduce, so not the best solution. The geographic isolation is probably your best bet. We could make the island spiritually or religiously important to the rest of the world - any reason would do - so most people don't want to invade them at all. Still, at some point in historical time frames it will probably face some sort of invasion, but maybe just pirates and such. Plus then it has at least some of the rest of the world on it's side. You could make the island politically important - maybe there is a small sub-island and that island is where all international summits are held. The Amazons are politically neutral and pretty much incapable of offensive wars, so it's a natural fit. You could have native fauna that is incredibly hostile and the Amazons have learned to work around it, so they only have to mop up survivors when someone invades. Or just go with magic- they have a protector deity that keeps people away. [Answer] The purpose of an army is so you don't have to use it. With every person trained as a warrior, taking and keeping the island would be much more trouble than it's worth. [Answer] Your island is hidden for most of their history While this is a bit cliche (think Wonder Woman), an island hidden from the outside world is perfect. For them to exist in the open, they will eventually show themselves to the outside world or be discovered by foreign people. When your island emerges onto the political scene, they need to be powerful enough to defend themselves against invasion. If their island has good resources for making weapons, including wood for fires and plenty of ores, your islanders will have the ability to defend themselves. If their warrior tradition exists before they are discovered by the outside world, they need to have had an enemy to defend against, hence their ability to fight. Some wild boars or other dangerous creature on the island, whether they prey on the humans or are hunted by them, would serve to make the humans into adept hunters. On the other hand, frequent Viking raids may have the same effect. Vikings were very good navigators, so they could have found the island and known how to return to it for its loot. Then when the Vikings raids stopped, somewhere between 793 and 1066 according to [this article](http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/society/text/what_happened.htm), the inhabitants kept their militaristic tradition. Because the island is small, their scientific/technological progress will be much slower than the outside world. For them to survive to present day, they need to show up early in civilization's history and stay up-to date on discoveries, or they need to show up late, when the world is more settled down and fighting is at a lull (think end of WW2 - present). * If they show up early in history, their technology will be on par with the rest of the world, and their country will be fairly wealthy from ore and timber exports. * If they appear in the 20th or 21st century, their technology will be way behind the rest of the world. They might be left mostly alone as a primitive civilization. However, they will have a lot of visitors. Historians, missionaries, and mining/petroleum companies come immediately to mind. Whichever way you want to go with when they emerge is up to you. [Answer] I refer you to [Sentinel Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese). A place whose inhabitants have violently repelled or killed almost every person who ever tried to set foot there and even successfully repelled aircraft. They are pre-industrial, they have no access to metalworking or smithing beyond small amounts of material they've scavenged from shipwrecks. The Indian government fully accepts their right to privacy and accepts that they will kill anyone who enters their territory. There is now a 3 mile exclusion zone around the island. It turns out that the best way to keep people from invading is to make it very clear that they will die a violent death if they try, and to not engage outsiders in conversation or dialog. [Answer] Many societies throughout history have had all the men practice fighting and required them to serve in time of war. Many primitive tribes required all men to practice their fighting skills and turn out to fight in case of war. In medieval England and Scotland all men were required to practice archery. That is why the 15th century Scottish Parliament passed laws forbidding golf and other pastimes, to keep men practicing archery instead of playing golf and other sports. And of course medieval nobles spent a lot of time practicing fighting skills. In the British colonies in North America all men were required to own muskets and belong to the militia and practice drilling and to serve in case of Indian or foreign wars. In modern Switzerland all men are conscripted into the army and after a period in the army have to belong to the reserves for decades, ready to serve in case of war. In all of those cases - and many other cases - the men don't spend all of their time practicing and preparing for war, but spend the majority of their time in civilian pursuits keeping their societies running, and of course the women spent all of their time with civilian tasks and helped keep their society running. And your Amazon society wouldn't have any men to help with civilian tasks to keep their society running. The women would have to do everything necessary themselves, which would put a limit on how much time they could spending drilling and training for war. Of course little girls could become old enough to do light housework and other civilian tasks years before they might start training and practicing for war, and women over a certain age limit might be freed from military obligations and able to do light tasks and supervise the girls. But strong young women would have to do all the hard physical labor which would reduce the proportion of the time they could spend on military training. Unless the Amazon society isn't populated entirely by the Amazons. The Amazons could be the master class and there could be slaves or serfs or second, third, fourth, etc. class citizens below them. Possibly the Amazons buy slaves - men, women, boys, & girls - and make them do all the civilian tasks. It might be possible for the slaves to gain their freedom and probably leave the island and seek their original homes. Note that slaves have rarely reproduced faster than they died and thus most slave owning societies have had to constantly import more slaves. They might have a permanent class of serfs. Possibly girls from neighboring countries serve terms as indentured servants on the Amazon island. They might be hired about age 12 to 15 and serve for ten years until about age 22 to 25 and then be sent back to their homes with payment based on the value of their contribution to Amazon society, payment which makes them attractive potential wives. Maybe a smaller number of men are also hired as indentured servants for the heavy work. And in modern times the Amazons might hire foreign guest workers like wealthy Arab countries do and treat them harshly but much better than slaves. Since the Amazon island is an island, the Amazons probably have a navy and train for naval fighting as well as land fighting. And the Amazon island probably has many defensive fortifications, so that an invading enemy force would have to capture many fortifications with a heavy loss of life. With modern weapons, physical strength is less important than it used to be. Thus many rebels and guerrillas use teenage and younger kids as combatants. So it is possible that every Amazon girl over the age of ten has a light weight assault rife and ammo and is trained how to use it. [Answer] Just for Starters The fact is that with the Amazon's island being located in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle offers several real advantages to securing the sovereignty of the country. Natural Barriers A natural phenomenon of unpredictable magnetic displacement, sudden storms, and impenetrable fogs make physical detection unlikely. As noted when individuals wash up on their shores, the Amazons deal with them using extreme prejudice (but perhaps not terminally as a memory substitution produces the same effect). Organized exploratory forces are met by technologically superior advanced Amazonians. Millennial Scientific Knowledge Because of their specific locale and the highly unusual physical properties of their active environment, it is reasonable to expect that Amazonian scientific focus continues to explore the nature of this environmental activity. With millennia of continuous scientific development, the Amazons have developed protective electromagnetic energy shields, invisibility cloaks, and many other tools to provide more than adequate protection against any hostile force. While neighboring "modern" science still has barely even rediscovered anti-gravity. It would be extremely unlikely that such a long-lasting society would not make scientific progress (take the last 100 years of computational history as a simple example of scale). The Amazonian tools and methods mentioned above are tools that our science is just beginning to understand. Given their continuous history, such tools have undoubtedly advanced beyond what we can imagine. Independence An abundance of resources and with no need for external interactions with underdeveloped cultures, the Amazons live a self-contained societal life with a few carefully trained spies to ensure their continued existence remains a "myth." Their scientific and cultural advancement is beyond what we can imagine since over the millennia, lack of natural predators has allowed Amazonian science to advance in unparallel ways. [Answer] Mugluck does not take the Swiss approach seriously enough. War and all other economic activity is about making a profit. If you make it unprofitable to invade, no one rational will bother. (That cannot rule out the irrational, but the irrational can never be ruled out.) Potential adversaries need to have the mindset that attacking the Amazon nation is madness. Prepare defenses that can be womanned by any Amazon; prepare every Amazon to fight to the death; prepare to scorch the terrain on retreat; and most critically, make sure every potential adversary knows it. Start every day with a prayer for the chance to die in defense of the Amazon homeland. Ostentatiously pack two weeks of food and replacement weapons on your back into every conference with a foreign national. The foreign observer should not just be in awe of your martial bearing; they must believe it has progressed to obsession. [Answer] I don't have enough rep to comment or ask for clarifications but for what it's worth I will add my 2 cents. With regards to [North Sentinal Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island "North Sentinal Island"), they are quite a good example of a land untouched by modern times albeit it hasn't remained completely untouched (having been conquered a few times in the past) I thought it was worth mentioning due to this statement (emphasis is mine): > > Nominally, the island belongs to the South Andaman administrative district, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.[8] In practice, Indian authorities recognise the islanders' desire to be left alone and restrict their role to remote monitoring, even allowing them to kill non-Sentinelese people without prosecution.[9][10] Thus the island can be considered a sovereign area under Indian protection. > > > This to me would solve the problem when the war technologies of other countries overtake the Amazon's own technologies because at some point there would be no need to land on the island to obliterate the resistance. Ideally, this protection could have taken effect when the neighbouring countries own society was on par with the Amazon's due to traditions of entering manhood to a virgin Amazon (as some others have pointed out) and building a healthy close relationship. Prior to this, however, what would lend to the island not being touched until the neighbouring countries were protective of them would be if the island was horseshoe shaped with the only landable beach being in the bay in the middle. This has the dual purpose of being very defensible as well as preventing prying eyes from seeing what happens on the island. My point with this is that the OP says that all men that ATTEMPTED to land were either killed or taken prisoner, my assumption on this is that no one escaped which means no one ever knows that the Amazon home is on that island in the first place unless of course there was a ship off the coast watching and waiting to see what happened to the landing party, (mitigated if it were horseshoe-shaped as the ship would need to be closer than if it were say an oval-shaped island with beaches all around). Due to this same reasoning then it doesn't matter to the outside world that the island is "rich in resources" as no one knows what is on the island. Given this then there is no reason to send an invasion or fleet as the only thing they know about the island is that ships/people disappear there. Another mitigating factor that could be introduced is the presence of a barrier reef, far enough away from the island that most will not risk taking a rowboat out, deep enough that it is difficult to spot even at low tied but shallow enough that only the smallest of boats can pass over it. TL;DR * The island would need to be mountainous to the point where there is only one sheltered entry point with potentially a barrier reef surrounding the island. * The island should be sufficiently far enough away to require open ocean technologies * Once societies do start exploring, ensure that none that arrive escape to tell the world about them until protective measures from surrounding countries/islands are ensured. This will remove the possibility of the outside world knowing where they live for the time being. * Promote the tradition and status of losing ones virginity to an Amazon to help with securing a protective relationship. Trade options could help here as well. [Answer] Wars are expensive. Does the island have any strategic or economic value? Enough to bother funding a war to take it? Especially since if they don't complete it quickly, there's going to be a backlash about our boys picking a fight with a bunch of girls and losing. "Mission Accomplished" with a 10+ year occupation isn't going to cut it. [Answer] Weapows of mass destruction. No country that was willing and able to use WMD (specially nuclear weapows) has ever been invaded - raided, like the arabs do on Israel, maybe, pointless and irrelevant frontier skirmishes that are no threat to the status quo, like in Indian-Pakistani border, maybe. See what happened to Iraq (willing but unable) and what is happening to North Korea (willing and able). Your amazons need nukes or SCUDs full of nerve gas able to hit the big cities of the enemies. Also, there is a hierarchy of weapows of mass detruction. Chemicals are barely a deterrent (are not saving Syria from having it`s territorial integrity violated by interlopers). Nukes are always a deterrent, even if they are few, as mr. Kim is showing. [Answer] I don't have the rep to comment on the question, so I'll add this here, even though it isn't really an answer: If they have advanced medical technology, there is absolutely no need for any external interaction, not even to reproduce. And no, not parthenogenesis... there is a better way through creation of synthetic sperm. As you see, scientists in France and Israel have [already got this right](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2105520-human-sperm-grown-in-a-lab-for-the-first-time-claims-study/), so why not a nation of Amazon warrior-scientists who figured it out ages ago? The presence of advanced technology might need some kind of explanation - perhaps a local mineral to help it stay well ahead of the rest of world (like Wakanda's vibranium), or perhaps the tech had an extra-terrestrial origin centuries ago. In the case of the latter, the ET's might have left ages ago and never came back, but the technologies they left behind could have catapulted this island into the future. Actually, this is looking like a possible answer after all, so here goes: They survived all this time by going completely undetected. They have had advanced technology (either of ET origin or local mineral that helps) for centuries, and used it to hide themselves. It helps that their island has a forbidding coastline, so passing ships or satellite photos see only impossible reefs and no actual island. They manufacture synthetic sperm in their facilities, which means that ZERO contact with the outside world is required. They are great fighters because they fight a lot, and the various local clans do so often amongst themselves, perhaps in order to gain mastery of the technology or precious minerals. [Answer] These Amazons are a population of women using melee weapons. No matter how fearsome they are in battle, no matter how inhospitable the terrain, there will always be a population of men who will try to invade. The thing of value in their land is them. Any one of them who wandered off would be at grave risk of abduction and worse, and there would always be some men willing to risk death for glory. Young men in particular, would be fascinated by them. After all, they only know non-Amazon women, and would feel certain that they could prevail by force of arms. The danger would make them extra valuable. Only the greatest fighters would be able to successfully abduct them. They would never know peace. Their martial competence just makes them more desirable as trophies. Also, they are hostile. Men are killed or taken prisoner when they land. However, warrior cultures are fairly common, it's only the unisex nature of the Amazons that is peculiar. Actually they also do not seem to be expansionist, but at any point that could change. They are not magical. Their society does not have male viewpoints, so it's difficult to believe that they can maintain parity in their culture with the rest of the world, any more than a patriarchal society can. So outnumbered and confined to an island, how can they acquire the resources needed to avoid invasion, while feeding and arming themselves? The only thing I can think of is advanced psychological techniques. Think of the Bene Gesserit, from Dune. You'd need that level of engagement and manipulation to be treated as they are described. Otherwise, they'd be oveerrun. My point is that they'd have to be engaged with the world, and have very well honed abilities to read people and situations, as well as a great deal of background information on various cultures. Isolation is not the way one gets this kind of knowledge however. [Answer] Warning: controversial answer coming up. They could be smarter than their neighbours. As an analogy, humans are physcially far weaker than chimpanzees, but chimpanzees are no match for humans in military terms. It is our intelligence, and the teamwork and tools derived from our intelligence that give us our advantage. I should note that I am not suggesting that women are smarter than men (or vice versa), just this specific society. The intelligence edge could come from any of several other factors. You say that the island is rich in resources - perhaps the food is particularly nutritious. Improved nutrition has been responsible for significant increases in human IQ over the last few centuries. As mothers are all engaged in the (military) workforce, perhaps they couldn't care for their children themselves, and developed a system of community childcare and education before this was common in the rest of the world. This education system might train engineers who develop brilliant military technology. Probably just a small edge would suffice, but maybe the technology is sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from witchcraft (to fit with the gender theme and to paraphrase A.C. Clarke). Or their engineers might develop brilliant agricultural technology, further increasing their nutritional advantage. If the culture values intelligence, then there are added advantages, such as choosing military commanders based on their leadership qualities rather than on a hereditary basis. ]
[Question] [ A weapon is needed for a climactic battle against an otherwise invincible wolf monster. In principle it could be any random thing, like the traditional silver, but we want something based in science. It should be a real chemical with actual biological properties, and something that takes effect fast enough to be used as a weapon. ### Characteristics of the Chemical An answer must be a real chemical satisfying the following requirements: * Secrecy The chemical should not be present in everyday life in the real world, including both modern times and ancient times, or else it would be discovered too easily and the monster would never get a chance to be invincible. It cannot be in food or in the air in anywhere near the effective dose. * Effectiveness The chemical needs to have some unusual biological effect when applied in the correct dose. This effect will serve to destroy the monster while nothing else available could, so it has to be something that cannot be achieved in any easier way. It should probably cause a loss of homeostasis in some biological system and that homeostasis can turn out to be critical to the monster's invincibility. The effect does not need to be harmful to real animals. * Nontriviality The effect of the chemical should not be peripheral; removing the monster's hair or changing its color would never seem like a plausible way to destroy the monster's invincibility. Samson's weakness to having his hair cut is not a good example of the kind of weakness we're looking for. * Availability The heroes need access to the chemical, so it either needs to be something that can be manufactured without sophisticated equipment, or it needs to be a chemical that is so stable that it could have survived for 300 years without climate control only to be discovered when it is needed. In this world there is nothing more advanced for doing chemistry than a typical kitchen, but in the past all sorts of advanced chemistry would have been possible. * Weaponizability The chemical needs to be effective as a weapon, which means a small dose is enough. The ability to be absorbed through skin would be good, or it might be inhaled as fumes. If it could be effective by being coated onto an arrow, that would be excellent. It also needs to take effect quickly, ideally in less than a minute. ### Characteristics of the Werewolf The monster is a mammal that resembles a wolf, but it is the size of a tall and heavily built human and has a tendency to walk upright. Therefore answers that take advantage of either wolf biology or human biology are acceptable. In spite of having real mammalian biology, the monster is a terror that overwhelms all other attempts to defeat it. There is some part of it that allows it to fight through any injury and recover from anything, but the exact mechanism is irrelevant. If we can find a suitable chemical, we can say that whatever organ or system is affected by the chemical is somehow critical to the monster's invulnerability. The chemical itself doesn't need to be deadly, since the monster can be killed by conventional means once its invulnerability is removed. The monster's invulnerability has no effect on ways the chemical might be delivered. The monster's skin can be broken, and the monster cannot stop itself from breathing if the chemical must be inhaled. The monster has no special resistance to chemicals being absorbed through the skin. [Answer] Killing the monster with VX nerve gas or an overdose of fentanyl or cyanide muffins seems kind of anticlimactic. You can kill anything with that stuff. The whole thing about werewolves is that silver is not predictably a super killer or especially bad for anything else. It is a secret special Achilles heel for werewolves. Except not so secret because it has been done to death. Is there anything similar but novel we can use here? Chocolate. Chocolate is delicious (and keeps a long time). Humans love it and dogs do too. They will hog it all down if they get half a chance. But everyone knows chocolate is to dogs as silver is to werewolves - [even a small amount can be lethal](https://pets.webmd.com/dogs/guide/dogs-and-chocolate-get-the-facts#1). Symptoms include extreme thirst, too much energy, diarrhea, heart arrythmias, seizures and death. I am picturing the SyFy channel: that is the way you want your monster to expend its last 5 minutes of show. It might take longer than a minute for regular chocolate to kick in if some poor pooch gets hold of some. Maybe in the story this is future chocolate - sort of like the super marijuana of today as compared to the hippie stuff of yesteryear. To us: phenomenally good chocolate. To canid monsters: INCONTINENT DEATH FRENZY! [Answer] ### Dimethylmercury If I ever face a werewolf, I would personally try to poison it with a mercury derived toxin called Dimethylmercury. Here is why: First of all, we all think that silver is a very good werewolf killer but maybe we are all wrong... The name of the real secret weapon against these beasts may have been lost through oral history, changing from Quicksilver to Silver... It is even plausible that a werewolf hidden organization (a powerful underground lobby) is at the base of the progressive name change from Quicksilver to the actual Mercury in order to erase all possibilities to find the true weapon! Then, Mercury is not that difficult to find. Just go to the center of waste sorting of your nearby town and check for the “hazardous things” place. You should find what you need. The chemical reaction to transform Mercury in an even more dangerous toxin is pretty simple. Dimethylmercury for example, can be obtained with reagents “easily” stolen from any science university: Hg + 2 Na + 2 CH3I → Hg(CH3)2 + 2 NaI Concerning the Dimethylmercury effects, the werewolf will have to deal with one of the strongest neurotoxins ever, causing irreversible brain damages leading to mental confusion, memory issues, deafness and even blindness. I think all this will be enough to “finish him” quickly! Another good point is how quick Dimethylmercury can find its way through the werewolf's skin and how difficult it is to be cured. Just look at the case of Karen Wetterhahn, a chemistry professor who died of accidental exposure to just a few drops of Dimethylmercury absorbed through her protection gloves! [Wikipedia article on Karen Wetterhahn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn) Quoting wikipedia (emphasis mine): > > Tests later revealed that dimethylmercury can, in fact, rapidly permeate different kinds of latex gloves and enter the skin within about 15 seconds > > > So basically, if your werewolf doesn’t take a shower within 15 seconds, consider it as irremediably poisoned. Because yes, Mercury is a heavy metal, which makes it very difficult (almost nearly impossible) to remove it from a body. --- ### Yes but… There is one problem. Even if Dimethylmercury will poison the werewolf very quickly, symptoms will not appear before several weeks or months (for a human). Of course, a solution would be to have your werewolf metabolism to be very fast, which could by the way explain its healing factor which is way above that of a normal living being... If your werewolf can recover from bullet injuries in a matter of days, then it is not unthinkable that its metabolism is at least 100 times faster (not sure about this calculus) than a human beings metabolism. From this we could imagine that Dimethylmercury assimilation by the body will occur in several hours. We are far from the minute you ask, but that’s the best I can do! :) [Answer] Silver nitrate may be your chemical. Silver salts are easy to prepare (silver + nitric acid (one of the easiest to develop acids)). They were used in the 1800s to treat rabies, as an antiseptic, and as a way of sterilizing people (didn't work in the latter case), wart treatments. Used to stain proteins, so it can easily get around a body, unlike some chemicals. Also used in old fashioned photography, so there are lots of good excuses for the stuff to be lying around somewhere. [Answer] If the monster can not be blown to smithereens with sufficient quantities of explosive (or a large keg of black powder full of iron nails), I guess the invulnerability mechanism has to be near to magic in nature. So any traditional "antidote" to evil magic should work logically -- possibly in conjunction with an appropriate delivery method. For example you could resurrect the myth of Baldr, who could not be harmed by anything except mistletoe. Say that there is some truth in there, but you still need to wound the monster with mistletoe and you do not know what component of mistletoe is actually the active ingredient, so just shooting an arrow drenched in the juice might have no effect. So what you do is design a gun capable of shooting solidified (frozen?) ballistic pellets of pureed mistletoe. Or a powerful composite bow with frozen mistletoe arrows, which adds some complication (kitchen chemistry, no more) since you need a refrigerated quiver. * Secrecy: check. Nobody thought of using mistletoe that way before. * Effectiveness: check. Something in mistletoe acts as a poison, disabling the invulnerability mechanism which turns out to be the reason the werewolf form is capable of existing in the first place (there's something of the kind in Bull God by Roberta Gellis - the Minotaur is held together by a powerful spell by Poseidon. Remove the spell, and the body literally falls apart. You can't get much more effective than that. * Nontriviality: see above. * Availability: check. The typical kitchen (and weapons shop) ought to be enough. * Weaponizability: see under Effectiveness. [Answer] Based on your requirement, a werewolf is basically invulnerable until some foreign agent is introduced. By invulnerable we also mean that decapitation would slow the monster down, but it would be up and going as soon as it found its head, and lots and lots of fire would hurt, and likely make it slightly irritable, but that it would regenerate too fast for the fire to destroy it. Well, there is wolfsbane ([Aconitum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aconitum)) which is highly poisonous to anyone, but not more so to werewolves, right? Their werewolf invulnerability would burn right through the poison, right? Well, it is called wolfsbane for a reason... I agree with LSerni that such a high degree of invulnerability must be magical, or perhaps due to a deal made with a demon or something along those lines. So. In an ancient tome, buried in a tomb in an old monastery, might be found the secret to activating the mystical qualities locked in the wolfsbane. Secrecy: The werewolf, if it has been around long enough, knows that the secret to its destruction is hidden somewhere, and is desperately looking to find and destroy it before it can be found and used against it (Or it may be instrumental in why practically all knowledge of this compound has been lost). Or it may have heard of it from its maker, but discounts it, or came into being after the last great werewolf outbreak and is entirely unaware of it. Effectiveness: Wolfsbane is a very poisonous plant across all its varieties, but simple poison would be negligible to the werewolf in its invulnerable state. True, Aconite won't kill the werewolf. However, when correctly prepared and introduced into the werewolf's bloodstream, it serves to hamper the werewolf's supernatural regenerative abilities, or perhaps overwhelm it for a time, allowing the werewolf to be finished of through more traditional means. Non-triviality: There is no outward sign that the werewolf has been affected by the wolfsbane. But taking a potshot at it, will cause it to fall down and bleed all over itself, the way it would do a normal person. The trick is to know when to take that shot. Availability: Since there are over 250 species of Aconitum, finding a plant or two should not be too difficult, provided you are in the Northern half of the world, near a damp, mountainous area, or can get some brought in from such an area. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. Weaponizability: A little bit of wolfsbane will go a long, long way. You will need to break the werewolf's skin in order to introduce it into its system. I would say (but that would be your call, as this is all me), that ingesting it might give the werewolf a mild case of diarrhea, but not inconvenience it too much (and may tip your hand). In order for it to be effective, the werewolf must be cut with a blade treated with it, with a dart or arrow dipped in it, or even with a bullet soaked in it. [Answer] The problem with werewolves is that they supposedly can tolerate massive amounts of physical abuse as well as large amounts of poison and still survive. Not only that, they also heal from their injuries quickly. Whichever secret chemical is used, it will be a bit like Kryptonium, an invented weakness to make the Superman less boring. Hence the silver bullet for werewolves. Instead of inventing an alternative to silver, a better idea would be to use a mechanism that affects all living beings. Every living organism on earth needs oxygen to turn chemical energy into mechanical energy. Oxygen deprivation will kill us all rather quickly. An animal that is particularly strong, consumes more oxygen than weaker counterparts that are the same size. Werewolves should be no exception. They probably need a lot of oxygen since they are so strong. You could theorize that oxygen deprivation levels which are tolerable for us humans would make werewolves faint or die. Carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide are generated by setting fire to things. This is, and has always been, easy to do. Those two gases are heavier than air and will replace oxygen if they are "poured" into e.g. a cellar. If a werewolf was lured into that cellar, he would become harmless, faint and eventually die. [Answer] To add to the list of horribly dangerous chemicals... ## Hydrofluoric Acid There are plenty of acids that are more dangerous than HF, but it would probably be significantly harder for your heroes to get their hands on [fluoroantimonic acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoroantimonic_acid), [triflic acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triflic_acid) or the like. And HF is plenty dangerous on its own. From the Wikipedia article: > > In addition to being a highly corrosive liquid, hydrofluoric acid is also a powerful contact poison. Because of the ability of hydrofluoric acid to penetrate tissue, poisoning can occur readily through exposure of skin or eyes, or when inhaled or swallowed. Symptoms of exposure to hydrofluoric acid may not be immediately evident, and this can provide false reassurance to victims, causing them to delay medical treatment. Despite having an irritating odor, HF may reach dangerous levels without an obvious odor. HF interferes with nerve function, meaning that burns may not initially be painful. Accidental exposures can go unnoticed, delaying treatment and increasing the extent and seriousness of the injury. Symptoms of HF exposure include irritation of the eyes, skin, nose, and throat, eye and skin burns, rhinitis, bronchitis, pulmonary edema (fluid buildup in the lungs), and bone damage. > > > Once absorbed into blood through the skin, it reacts with blood calcium and may cause cardiac arrest. Burns with areas larger than 160 cm2 (25 square inches) have the potential to cause serious systemic toxicity from interference with blood and tissue calcium levels. In the body, hydrofluoric acid reacts with the ubiquitous biologically important ions Ca2+ and Mg2+. Formation of insoluble calcium fluoride is proposed as the etiology for both precipitous fall in serum calcium and the severe pain associated with tissue toxicity. In some cases, exposures can lead to hypocalcemia. Thus, hydrofluoric acid exposure is often treated with calcium gluconate, a source of Ca2+ that sequesters the fluoride ions. HF chemical burns can be treated with a water wash and 2.5% calcium gluconate gel or special rinsing solutions. However, because it is absorbed, medical treatment is necessary; rinsing off is not enough. Intra-arterial infusions of calcium chloride have also shown great effectiveness in treating burns. > > > Emphasis mine. Wikipedia also provides a quick how-to on where you an acquire some if you can't find any in the lab. > > Hydrogen fluoride is generated upon combustion of many fluorine-containing compounds such as products containing Viton and polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon) parts. Hydrofluorocarbons in automatic fire suppression systems can release hydrogen fluoride at high temperatures, and this has led to deaths from acute respiratory failure in military personnel when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the fire suppression system in their vehicle. > > > --- Alternatively, if you are interested in lighting the werewolf on fire you can always go for [dioxygen difluoride](https://what-if.xkcd.com/40/). [Answer] Poisoned blowgun or airgun darts. These could be doped with a wide range of poisons both natural and manmade. As a bonus the dart body could be made out of silver. Naturaly occuring poisons that might be used can be found here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_poison> Such as tubocurarine, curarine, quinine, protocurarine and related alkaloids. Most frequently derived from the bark of Strychnos toxifera Cardiac glycosides, such as Acokanthera (possessing ouabain), oleander (Nerium oleander), milkweeds (Asclepias), or Strophanthus, all of which are in the Apocynaceae family. The black legged dart frog and various other poisonous species of frog. Artificial organophosphate nerve agents might also be used such as those found here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_agent> Such as Dimethylheptylpyran and Sarin. Sarin as a liquid could be sealed in a very small thin glass ampule in the head of the dart which would break on impact. I believe some nerve agents are not that hard to make, although I'm not an expert. [Answer] Genetic manipulation The key to destroying a werewolf is its regeneration ability. All living beings have cells that divide to provide new growth. The werewolf has something like this except in overdrive - and its body somehow knows if an arm has been cut off so it can grow another one. In humans, this cell division can produce a 'rogue' cell that also goes into overdrive, splitting and growing at great rates. We call this disease cancer. The key then, is to manipulate the werewolf's cell division either to give it an extremely fast replication rate or a very slow one. Fast would cause cancer (as fast as you choose) and a slow one would make a werewolf susceptible to all other types of death. By targeting the werewolf's regeneration genes other life on the planet should not be affected. At some point in the past, werewolves were a big problem which is when this 'treatment' was developed. For some reason, the werewolves went into hiding - maybe because they heard about it or some of them actually died from it. Over another couple of hundred years werewolves became a legend and people largely forgot about them. Those who were werewolves hid their affliction but one decided he was invulnerable and 'came out'. The heroes recalled there was a something developed long ago and the quest began... [Answer] Safely stored in the cold caves under a glacier in the North pass, lie the dart tips made by a rod of white Phosphorus covered by a layer of Gallium, the latter in the shape of a harpoon tip. The gallium melts after penetrating the skin. Ensure that the shape is such that part of the Phosphorus will enter in contact with the air to facilitate self-ignition. Otherwise, provide a tip of Sodium (or Caesium, or Rubidium), still under the Gallium, for ignition as soon as it enter in touch with the aqueous environment under the werewolf skin. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_munitions#Effects_on_people> And if you want to add a poison that smells like garlic, and possibly related to it, you could encase a thin rod of Arsenic trioxide in the white Phosphorus. The arsenic will melt and boil as soon as the latter ignites. Internal contamination as well as inhalation are quite likely. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_trioxide#Toxicology> [Answer] Interestingly, [chilli powder works very well on elephants](https://www.livescience.com/55849-chili-powder-firecracker-condoms-scare-elephants.html) as a deterrent, so I daresay something a little more lethal, such as finely powdered silver wrapped in delicate bag with explosives inside could work in a similar (though much more deadly) and low-tech manner to this. All of the elements are available, [silver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver#History) has been around for a millennium or two, and [China had gunpowder from the first century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#China). [Answer] [Dimethyltryptamine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citronella_oil) * Secrecy: it has been used for centuries by shamans to talk to spirits, but it was only isolated quite recently in human history, and you will only have regular contact with it if you are a psychonaut. * Effectiveness: the onset for injected DMT is less than a minute, and the effects may last up to 45 minutes (but usually they last up to 15 minutes) depending on dosage. During this time, the subject will be helpless. * Nontriviality: The effect of this drug is that the subject will be enjoying a psychedelic, out-of-body experience. * Availability: if your heroes are smart they may be able to isolate some from tree barks with highschool lab material. Or you can distill it from ayahuasca with kitchen material, though it won't be as concentrated as if you did use a proper lab. * Weaponizability: as stated before, it takes less than a minute to kick in. You could coat arrows with it, but using something like a tranquilizer gun would be ideal. It can also be inhaled and the effects will be majorly the same, so you can use smoke as well. [Answer] To go with the old silver, but with a twist: Dental amalgam a mixture of mercury, silver, tin and copper. Something that could be made with medieval-like technology and could also have been stored as old dentist´s supplies, found in old skeletons teeth or in toxic waste disposals. Could be delivered as power and possibly inhaled or molded onto other Weapons surfaces. As we know, Silver reacts with the werewolf on contact. I imagine this will happen in a exothermic reaction, which will cause the mercury to vaporize. The werewolf, already weakened from the silver, will then die of mercury poisoning. [Answer] Antifreeze kills dogs. It's a real issue if you have something like a junk yard where it might leak from old cars. Another option is to go to any pet web site and look for "shit that can kill your dog". A lot of food is not safe for dogs (chocolate, onions, garlic... list is pretty long). [Answer] I feel like something that at least contains silver would be required to kill a werewolf. If traditional bullets and weapons are not up your alley, perhaps something more explosive and less expected, like silver fulminate. It is often used in "crackers" along with potassium chlorate, but is also used as a primary explosive. It is conceivable that a werewolf, expecting to be immune to a regular explosion, could be caught off guard by such an attack. 6,000 of these small explosives would be sufficient to do some serious damage to a werewolf, and could be triggered simply by being dropped from higher ground, as demonstrated in this video: <https://youtu.be/tduhGmZHQGQ?t=72> [Answer] There is already a silver based gas that ends up in our atmosphere AgNP , It's health affects on humans have been overlooked for quite some time so it is viable. [Health Report](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3155/1047-3289.60.7.770) [How to synthesize](http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/9783319112619-c2.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1494789-p176975801) dump a whole lot of that in your area. Wont kill the humans, they wont even know what's happening till weeks later when people come down with asthmatic symptoms surely if this is a werewolf it will have allergy to silver, and if it cant breath well you can do a whole lot of whatever you want to it. ]
[Question] [ [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HyJxu.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HyJxu.jpg) For context a person has stolen a piece of junk military equipment that can allegedly "warp reality". Turns out to be a false rumor, the device actually has a limited ability to alter/warp visual perception within a localized area. With context out of the way the device would work by scattering tiny particles into the air resulting in a very warped sense of vision. It would affect the human eye and other optical instruments used to record images such as cameras in the same way. Vision would be blurry/smeared making it very difficult to do things like aim and/or walk properly for everyone (except the user of the device who is shielded from it's effects and can see normally). It wouldn't completely obstruct vision as people within the area would still be able to distinguish faint shapes and colors, they just wouldn't be able to see properly enough to avoid confusion, nauseousness, dizziness. My question how can I explain this in a semi-plausible fashion ? (be it in scientific or pseudo-scientific manner, if all else fails I have no problem with just going with magic) [Answer] > > (...) the device would work by scattering tiny particles into the air resulting in a very warped sense of vision. It would affect the human eye and other optical instruments used to record images such as cameras in the same way. > > > Vision would be blurry/smeared (...) > > > You would be surprised to learn that this device already exists. It has actually existed for quite a while. It's called a [smoke grenade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_grenade). You just need to find the right smoke for the job. This is a picture about France's national sport, protesting. The game consists of one team of civilians trying to break stuff on one side and one team of police on the other side trying to disperse the former. Often one team, usually team police will use smoke grenades to make the game harder for the other team. It makes the playing field look like the picture below. Notice how some people in the background are harder to see than some others, and how objects behind the smoke are harder to see than those closer to the camera. [![I am a fan of the French because whenever stuff happens they burn cars](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aWFoP.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aWFoP.jpg) Picture by Roman Bonnefoy. Source: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_grenade#/media/File:Fumig%C3%A8nes_dans_une_manifestation_parisienne_(2008.11.13)-Romanceor.jpg> Less dense smoke may seem completely translucent, and will still distort vision in general. Even completely translucent smoke will do, because as long as its refraction index is different from regular air, you will notice a distortion. --- You could also use burning methanol. Its mostly invisible flames will look like very intense heat haze, but will have the advantage of also physically hurting pesky onlookers. [Answer] It's an Ultrasound standing-wave generator. Sound is a longitudinal wave. This means that, as it travels through the air, it will compress and stretch the air - increasing and decreasing its density. The density of air has an impact on its refractive index - this is how a [mirage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage) or "heat-haze" works, like looking through a wobbly lens. Creating a [standing wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_wave) means that you will have points which maintain normal air density, and points which have high or low density, creating a mirage. This will effectively cause double-vision, which will even appear on camera: Here is an image of the same effect, but using different densities of water (normal, and sugar-water), rather than different densities of air: [![Mirage caused by layers of normal water and sugar-water, which have different densities](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cpsf2.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cpsf2.jpg) [Answer] It does warp reality. Your characters figure out all the thing does is make things blurry. But it is actually a reality warper. It is just badly broken. On turning on the device, weak channels from multiple nearby parallel dimensions are opened. Only particles traveling at light speed can traverse these channels. The result: an image composed 80% of light from our dimension (some leaks out) and 20% of light from other dimensions. Most of the adjacent dimensions are parallel universes almost exactly like ours with slight differences. The result: superimposed images of most things, which we see as blurry. If there should happen to be something in our own dimension which was uniquely here or quite different in other dimensions, it would be dimmer but less blurry. Such objects in other dimensions appear as vague ghosts. Certain bright objects, like a fire, would be seen more fully. When the machine is working well, channels are more fully open. You can spy on the blurry majesty of all the adjacent dimensions while your own is dark and barely seen. Which makes it hard to get around, but very nice if a nuclear weapon goes off in your vicinity. You will know it is coming because the flash from explosions in the other dimensions will happen slightly before and after the one in your own. [Answer] The most similar purely physical effect is [heat haze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage#Heat_haze), the effect of a blurred picture behind a source of heat. [![heat haze example](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bvkoh.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bvkoh.png) That works because between you and what you're looking at, there's a turbulent flow of air at different temperatures (in the example it's a jet engine). Air, like most things, has different density at different temperatures, and air of different density has different refraction indices. That means that light passes slightly differently for each part of the journey, and when it arrives at your eye, the rays are not perfectly aligned any more. So, your device could just set the surroundings on fire. Same effect. However, people might find it difficult to appreciate the visually reality-warping effect when they are burning up. For a less damaging solution, the device could instead expel a gas that has a different refractive index from regular air. It should be inert (so you don't get any violent reactions with any object in the vicinity), and it also should not be vastly more or less dense than regular air, or it would just sink to the ground or float to space. The issue is that the refractive density of ideal gases is proportional to its density, and inversely proportional to its temperature. And the density of an ideal gas is proportional to its temperature and its molecular structure (specifically the mass of each molecule of the gas). [This answer](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6872/refractive-index-of-air-in-dependence-of-temperature) also gives some useful pointers. So subjectively, I think that you are almost forced to vary the temperature if you want gases with different refractive indices. Honestly, I am not versed enough in the physics to just point you to a gas and a temperature. If you're fine with pseudo-science, then you can say: "the device violently expels a warm gas which strategically-placed fans stir about the room". The person shielded from it could be wearing goggles which record a different kind of light; one which passes through air without doing any refraction to begin with. Radio waves, with a wavelength between ~5 cm and ~10 m, do that. Though a "radio wave camera" is still [pretty experimental](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/286umh/is_it_possible_for_a_camera_to_see_radio_waves/) (and might not work on a goggle scale), if pseudo-science is allowed, this would be your solution. [Answer] it uses infrasound Your device seems to have many similarities with a [sonic weapon made by the Chinese](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/amp29216045/chinese-sonic-weapon/). "‚Äúvertigo, imbalance, intolerable sensations, incapacitation, disorientation, nausea, vomiting, and bowel spasm; and resonances in inner organs, such as the heart."" These are the possible effects of said weapon, with the eyes also being possibly affected, should the frequency be at around 18hz (eye resonating frequency), causing the victims to "see ghosts" and other effects, due to their eye changing shape slightly and triggering their cones and rods by pressure. This seem to be the closest thing I know that resembles your machine, with the blurry vision probably being just a side effect of the natural dizziness and vertigo caused by the weapon. If you're willing to assume that then congrats! Your machine is not only completely scientifically plausible, it's a variation of technology existent in our own world. Regarding interference with electronics though, that becomes difficult, unless it emits some sort of electromagnetic field that disrupts electronic devices or uses other times of frequencies like another answer suggested, I'm not sure you could. Though on a side note: Not that a camera would make much difference when you're in no conditions to use it, and it would look like everyone within the sonic attack is going crazy for anyone watching a recording, making your device harder to figure out for those merely watching a footage. [Answer] I wrote about a thermal laser weapon which did this for New Scientist magazine - article is called "Blinded by the heat: The laser weapon you'll never see" It works by selectively heating part of the eye to cause temporary and non-dangerous (they reckon) blurring. Obviously this targets individuals rather than an areas, so you'd need a turret with multiple weapons (disguised as CCTV?) to zap everyone in a given zone. [Answer] If you don't mind a little scientific hand-waving ‚Äî üëã ‚Äî I'd suggest a device that emits particles that interfere with photons. This would create less a classic blur and more of a diffraction pattern, like concentric circular rainbows or grid patterns, but it would get the job of obscuring details done. Connect that to a visor that cancels out or compensates for the effect (a critical polarization angle, maybe?), and the person wearing the device ought to be able to see well enough. [Answer] The blurred effect is very similar to possible effects of an [ocular migraine](https://americanmigrainefoundation.org/resource-library/understanding-ocular-migraine/) Focussed ultrasound is proposed as a way to treat migraines see [here](https://www.fusfoundation.org/diseases-and-conditions/neurological/migraine-headaches) thereby having an effect on the region of the brain responsible for these effects. So a wide-band sonic tool of the right frequency could produce the visual distortion of an migraine in a crowd of people A user could have a "noise-cancelling" tool that blocks those particular sound levels over a much smaller area, giving an oasis of clarity. Sonic / noise devices are very prevalent already in our society, so the military could have disguised the device as a cellphone, and put the noise-cancelling tech into what looks like blue-tooth headphones. Good luck to the authorities in spotting the user in a crowd! ]
[Question] [ There is a society with about the same technological development as we have today, but they are more civically-minded and more astute when it comes to security issues. They are also democratic and want to ensure their democratic process is secure. Here's how they vote. * Voters arrive at a public space in their local area. They present their credentials to an administrator and, if that checks out, reach into a bucket of barcoded tokens and take one at random. Each token activates a voting machine for a single use. * The list of who has and has not voted is made public at the end and leftover activation tokens are counted in public view. * The machines are in hooded boothes in the same room. Outside each booth is a prominent display counter which increments each time someone casts a ballot. * Inside the booth, the voter feeds the activation token to the machine. They enter their preference(s) and the machine prints a paper slip which contains this information. * The confirmation slip stays within the machine but is visible through a plastic window. It remains in place so the voter can choose to confirm or shred it in case of a mistake. * If confirmed, the slip falls face-down onto a stack of previous voters' slips. The container is transparent. * When some number, say 500, of votes have been entered, the box is sealed and the totals are electronically broadcast. An attendant takes the transparent box of slips out into the room and shakes it vigorously to disorder the slips. The full box is left in public view and an empty box is set into the machine for further use. * When voting is over, in public view, attendants visit each container in turn and toss a handful of coins (say, 5) and if all of them come up heads then the box is opened and the count checked manually. This all happens in the same room, in front of everyone. The confirmation slips are anonymous and the count should be exact. At least one container in each room must be checked, so this process is repeated until the coin toss chooses at least one. The people in this society have a high degree of confidence in the security of their elections. How might they be caught out? This system has at least one vulnerability that I can see: the administrators could forge credentials to allow fictitious people to vote, but the population also anticipated this and volunteers run footage of voters through facial recognition software to red-flag similar faces for closer inspection. They know this isn't perfect, but it raises the bar somewhat. Also, the government as a whole is not expected to be so hostile (although individuals within it may be). How else might an imaginative adversary subvert the voting process? EDIT Thanks everyone for your insight. I'm not going to nominate a "correct" answer since it's such an open question, but have an upvote :-) [Answer] In modern democracies, voter fraud is no problem. Actual tampering with the voting process is done by more complex mechanisms that can be done openly. It is all about discouraging people to vote who would vote in a majority against your interest or allowing people to vote who will vote for you. Refer for example to [Last Week Tonight on the system in the US](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHFOwlMCdto) for inspiration. You can: * prohibit, that certain groups of people vote at all: elders, certain types of criminals, poor, you can have age restrictions, restrictions based on income, gender, you name it! * influence which types of immigrants can vote - This goes both ways, e. g. certain cities in Europe allow EU-citizens to vote for majors if they live in the city, even if they are not citizens of this country * have strict ID-Laws that require IDs certain groups might or might not have, e.g. drivers license or fishing license. * make it difficult/easy to vote depending on location. If the people living in rural areas don't vote in your interest, then make it harder for small villages to set up a place to vote. The best part about these kinds of tampering is, that there is no risk of a scandal, where everything might get revealed to the public. You can always act as if your actions are a way of protecting the democracy! Isn't that lovely? [Answer] ## Purge the electorate Start with the registered voter lists. Find some way of purging the people most likely to support the wrong person. As an example, write letters to the illiterate and elderly telling them to reregister online to confirm their address or they'll be removed from the lists. ## [Gerrymandering](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see/) Moving the electoral boundaries to favour your desired outcome. > > In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries. The resulting district is known as a gerrymander (/ˈdʒɛriˌmændər/); however, that word can also refer to the process. The term gerrymandering has negative connotations. > > > In addition to its use achieving desired electoral results for a particular party, gerrymandering may be used to help or hinder a particular demographic, such as a political, ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, or class group, such as in U.S. federal voting district boundaries that produce a majority of constituents representative of African-American or other racial minorities, known as "majority-minority districts". Gerrymandering can also be used to protect incumbents. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering) > > > ## Placement of polling stations Now that you have very few poor, elderly, or vulnerable people on your electoral roll, you don't need to place polling stations where they can access them. Only placing them on the far side of town where all these people would have trouble accessing them will be fine. --- At this point I've already pretty much won the election and I haven't needed to find a weakness in your polling system yet. Unfortunately all these methods are par for the course even in our "free" "modern" western democracies. Gerrymandering is a favourite in the US, in the UK the Labour party has just run a massive soviet style purge of, ironically, the communists on their voting lists. [Answer] ## Liberal democracy > > Voters arrive at a public space in their local area. They present their credentials to an administrator and, if that checks out, reach into a bucket of barcoded tokens and take one at random. Each token activates a voting machine for a single use. > > > * public space - limited amount of people are able to implement that publicity - buy them * buy voter * buy threaten administrator * barcoded tokens and take one at random. - weakens system, not strengthen it, you can't predict it, you can’t validate results in fraud investigations because of it. You can give false sense of randomness - see card tricks. * compromise voting machine, like it is done with cache machines today (reading cards and pincodes, backdoors for agencies etc.) > > The list of who has and has not voted is made public at the end and leftover activation tokens are counted in public view. > > > * is made public - no one can validate that information, it adds nothing to security * public view - limited amount of peoples can utilize that public view - buy them. * buy those who counts - see card tricks, casino token tricks - pure magic > > The machines are in hooded boothes in the same room. Outside each booth is a prominent display counter which increments each time someone casts a ballot. > > > * as usual, limited amount of people can use that information, just because surface area available around that place. It is more limited space of places where you might have connection by observing consequences between who enters and changing number > > When some number, say 500, of votes have been entered, the box is sealed and the totals are electronically broadcast. An attendant takes the transparent box of slips out into the room and shakes it vigorously to disorder the slips. The full box is left in public view and an empty box is set into the machine for further use. > > > * replace box, [like dat](https://youtu.be/fc9dI1aKdKE?t=85) * shakes it vigorously - adds nothing to security, adds some to anonymity and makes more difficult to investigate in case of fraud. * public view - limited amount of peoples can utilize it, no one can validate the boxes, that they are the boxes, but not other boxes. Max distance you can do it is 1m, if they have way to validate, more information they have more information they have to falsify this validation process. More people tries to validate, easier it is to exchange boxes. Seal is not a problem - see false money, it might be good enough that without instrumental control you have no way to tell difference. > > When voting is over, in public view, attendants visit each container in turn and toss a handful of coins (say, 5) and if all of them come up heads then the box is opened and the count checked manually. This all happens in the same room, in front of everyone. The confirmation slips are anonymous and the count should be exact. At least one container in each room must be checked, so this process is repeated until the coin toss chooses at least one. > > > * buy container chooser * buy who counts * limited space * confirmation slips are anonymous - no one can confirm that it was his voice and everything is right * count should be exact. compromise voting machine by shaking it and disrupting process, in regions where you less likely to get what you wish * count should be exact. compromise result buy buying who counts, let him take few tokens (card tricks, money stealing - lost the link there criminal not very well in english in handcuffs(?) shows to police(I guess) and steals banknote in process of counting them, by folding it, and you see no clue he does it. If some one saw - feel free to remove description and put link here) > > The people in this society have a high degree of confidence in the security of their elections. > > > Yhea, totally false sense of security, which actually makes things easier to do, as they probably will not try to see everything and sniff for any possible problem. There are big history of exploiting different machines in casinos, cash machines, different security systems in hardware in software in society. Most high level trick are done because of fine details, most people have no idea about. Different tricks in psychology when it comes to humans, etc. They have detail or combination of details they exploit - so even your description is not enough, but sure exact implementation of your system will have different possibilities. Who or what counts tokens which are not open by coin toss request - sure it can be exploited. Which system shows results - sure it can be exploited, at least at some degree, but you may not need much 0.5% 1% might be enough. Who conducts decision, Who rise suspicion of possible falsifications, Who investigates .... You use word everyone - who are those everyone, are they everyone everyone - so we talking about small group of peoples - just rising hands is enough in such cases, to make decisions. Main problem those who vote have no ways to validate results. If they knew decisions of their relatives and friends and possible some random person - and could check if their voices are counted in the way they claim - it could way much reduce possibility of fraud, at least percentage wise, and those who suspect fraud could verify and validate information up probability of their desire. So if they are so concern with their voting results - they should make their choose available to anyone who interested in knowing that information - which decisions or selection they have maid. (And it is done so in US senate as example - votes are not anonymous) Public view, public access - obstruct that access for any valid reason, and cheer your supporters - this will change outcome percentage wise, because some opponents may leave if they are not totally dedicated to wait for unknown for 1-2-3-4-6 hours. See [dat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwa2vSqKPHY). Make sure your supporters are observers, favorable outcome will be less suspicious for them, and if they decide by voting is\_or\_isn't, more likely to get desired results in suspicious cases. (You do not have to have all observers to be yours) Every system have flaws, no exception, even this one. And more valuable are combo's of details to exploit. Weakest part of any system is humans. P.S. By accident, hit that video [The art of misdirection \| Apollo Robbins](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZGY0wPAnus), it highlights kinda interesting inside in public attention, which is intensifly used by OP. Highly recommend to watch, just for fun. [Answer] This is susceptible to many traditional forms of fraud, but you don't want fraud, you want Hack. Ok, I'll give you some security advice. Because that what (white hat) hackers do. > > Voters arrive at a public space in their local area. > > > Make fake IDs, the check system could be relaying on a backend database. There is no need to hack the database if you can make a counterfeit ID of another - but valid - person. As per hacking the database, it got to be stored somewhere. If it is working on a local copy, it is harder – it would be an inside job. On the other hand, if the database is remote, there has to be a connection. Intercept the signal, stablish a man-in-the-middle attack, and provide fake ID info. Although the ID hacking could fool the machines, but the guards would recognize you enter one too many times. Security advice: Do not query the remote database with the ID, query with a hash of the ID. This makes it harder to know for which request to fake the response. And the answer needs a digital signature. This means that the attackers need to steal the private key of the database server to fake the response. An all that done over a ciphered connection because why not? > > The machines are in hooded boothes in the same room. Outside each booth is a prominent display counter which increments each time someone casts a ballot. > > > About hacking the counter… from the voting machine there must be a signal (wired or wireless) going out to the counter. The minimum viable implementation of the signal would be a pulse each time a vote happens. If the connection is wired, it would require sabotage of the voting station – doing it on site could be viable, but problematic, as the next person to enter the booth won’t count. Instead it would be safer to repair it… then again; you would have to be too fast and too silent. Yet, insider job makes it easier. If the developers are paranoid, the signal works backwards, it counts when the pulse is interrupted. In this case hacking can be done by inducing a current that mask the interruption caused by the machine when your vote. If the connection is wireless… oh, if the connection is wireless, it would be harder to cut and plug, because it could be an antenna buried deep in the machine. But you can fake the signal! This gives the chance for another kind of attack: DoS. Send a fake signal all over the voting area, all the counters go up by one, the organizers notice something is going on, and they close the voting session – to chase you, if they can spot you. If the developers are paranoid they make the wireless signal could be some authentication code. It is a matter of matching the pattern, that is: intercept prior signals and decipher how to send the code. Security advice: Make the connection wired, and shield the cable. The protection of the cable must be: 1) strong enough to shield any signal that may disturb the connection. 2) Compact enough to avoid using it to hide some device. 3) Evident enough, so that when broken, everybody notices. > > Inside the booth, the voter feeds the activation token to the machine. They enter their preference(s) and the machine prints a paper slip which contains this information. > > > The confirmation slip stays within the machine but is visible through a plastic window. It remains in place so the voter can choose to confirm or shred it in case of a mistake. > > > Hmm… shred it in case of a mistake. How does that work? If I shred it, did the vote count? Does the machine shred it on command? Why did it print it if I didn’t confirm? > > If confirmed, the slip falls face-down onto a stack of previous voters' slips. The container is transparent. > > > Can the attacker bribe the person watching over that? Security advice: get rid of the paper thing. Instead make the two steps counter. Once the person enters the booth it allows for the counter to increment by one... once the person votes, the counter do actually increment by one. If the person tries some mockery to try to vote again, the counter can't register the vote because the person didn't enter again (so no more increments have been allowed). And if the person leaves to enter again, guards notice. > > When some number, say 500, of votes have been entered, the box is sealed and the totals are electronically broadcast. An attendant takes the transparent box of slips out into the room and shakes it vigorously to disorder the slips. The full box is left in public view and an empty box is set into the machine for further use. > > > Oh, you don’t send votes in real time. Muahahahaha! Fake the signal; people believe the 500 votes have been reached, the votes in the fake signal counted. If they notice that the 500 votes have been reached, they could close the box, and nobody else can vote. Of course they would notice discrepancy between the counter and the fact that the signal was sent. If the counter is wired, that is, because if it is wireless we hack it remotely too. Let's say the attacker can't buy people to enter each booth and install a wireless receiver connected to the counter cable (If the attacker can do that, the attacker can do traditional fraud). Instead the attacker needs to use the cables as receivers. That requires a very power transmitter... one that would give away its location once the attacker used it. Security advice: Shield those cables, oh, I said that already. Ern… Security advice: Wire the vote reporting via the counter. So the counter is no longer dumb, but a smart device (if the counter doesn’t go up, the vote isn’t sent). Now, the votes need to be ciphered. The voting machine generates a private and public key pair at the start of the vote session. Then it uses its private key and the public key of the server that open the votes for counting. The private key of the server that open the vote would be needed to decipher. In other to count votes, the public key of the machine is extracted; this allows verifying that the votes come from that machine. Any vote that can't be deciphered is an invalid vote. Any vote that can't be verified to come from the private key of the voting machine it claims to come from is an invalid vote. A robust protocol must be in place to ensure that the votes were received correctly. > > When voting is over, in public view, attendants visit each container in turn and toss a handful of coins (say, 5) and if all of them come up heads then the box is opened and the count checked manually. This all happens in the same room, in front of everyone. The confirmation slips are anonymous and the count should be exact. At least one container in each room must be checked, so this process is repeated until the coin toss chooses at least one. > > > This is not good. If there is a problem what do you do? Do you consider all the votes of the machine invalid? That means that tampering with the vote once defeats 499 potentially valid votes. That sounds like a good avenue to attack. Security advice: Remember that about a robust protocol? Here it is: store it in two hard disks (mirror copy) and ship the hard disks. This means that "intercepting the signal" is attacking the truck that carries the hard disks, it also means that Anonymous won't be launching any DoS attack to the server that open the votes for counting, because it won’t be open to the internet. [Answer] A few things: If you don't control the voting machines: * Complain that the machine printed out the wrong output, and submitted the vote when you asked it to shred it. Get a lot of others to say the same. There is (and can be) no proof that this didn't happen. If you control the voting machines: * Put the word out (anonymously) that people should follow the plan described above; then, make your machines do that exact thing. * People high up on the ballot get many more votes. If you control the voting machines, you control the order they are displayed. The fair thing would be to have them randomized, so make them all ordered with your preference at the top, and say they are randomized. You can't tell if a list is randomized, without a large sample. * Occasionally vote for the wrong person (the one you want), some people will not check their vote, won't shred it as they should. In all of these cases, make sure to include a clock/calendar in the device, to make sure it doesn't happen in pre- or post-election testing * You don't mention how the voting boxes are added up, so: add "phantom" vote boxes to the tally. * Limit the observers in each voting station, then (somehow) juggle things so all observers in a given voting station are on the same team. You can then fix this particular voting station. Other: Bribe someone in the company that makes the voting machines to break the software e.g. so 10% of the votes are contrary to the voters selection. In this case, there will be riots. This will not let your preferred person get into power, but will cause chaos. Perhaps combine with a platform to remove the voting machines, so a re-run of the election will benefit you. [Answer] The voter registration can be made easy for likely supporters of one side and difficult for likely supporters of the other side. That can be done by individual administrators without a conspiracy. "That ID photo seems out of date. Do you have any other photo ID? Can come back and bring it?" A significant percentage might not come back after all. There needs to be some provision to cast absentee ballots. That can probably be abused, specially if the voters are elderly and almost (but not quite) senile. "She has good days and bad days. Yesterday she was clear enough to fill the forms and cast her ballot." Face recognition could be spoofed by multiple voting in multiple precincts, perhaps after a shave and a haircut. How many false positives if you run an entire nation through the matching? If the election officials can be subverted, why not the volunteer election watchers? Voters could wait until after the counting and then claim that they had voted a combination that isn't in the box. "There should be a ballot with yes on proposition 1, 3, 4, and 7, no on proposition 2, 5, and 6, Ed for mayor, Jane for the legislature." [Answer] Your system has the same faults in it as the Diebold voting machines in Ohio in the US about a decade ago. These machines were a touch screen that counted votes electronically but also presented a receipt in a clear box for the voter to view. They did not have the shred-rejection option that you describe. My last exposure to these machines in Ohio was in 2006. I do not think they have changed, but I cannot confirm it. > > When voting is over, in public view, attendants visit each container in turn and toss a handful of coins (say, 5) and if all of them come up heads then the box is opened and the count checked manually. This all happens in the same room, in front of everyone. The confirmation slips are anonymous and the count should be exact. At least one container in each room must be checked, so this process is repeated until the coin toss chooses at least one. > > > The tallies in your system and the Ohio system are counted electronically. The slips are only counted in the event of a legal election challenge or an error or a spot check. This opens up two options: 1. I can still focus my attacks on the machines to shift the election the way I want. Make the machine print the receipt with the voter selection but tally it electronically in a different way. This assumes that I can avoid the random check enough to get away with it. 2. Even with the random check I can simply start skewing the electronic results and make them not match the manual check. This would swiftly erode confidence in the system. As a bonus I can make it look like my opponents are the bad guys and not me. [Answer] Why bother with attacking the strong parts of the system, when there's a much weaker area? Simply bribe people to vote in your favor. If you tell a bunch of people who don't care about the vote that you'll give them 50 dollars if you vote for candidate X, many of them may simply do it just for the money (amount is changeable) - and if you're afraid that they'll just lie about who they voted for, simply require that they do a polygraph test afterwards (and probably pay them more for their trouble but that's up to you.) [Answer] I'm going to address the mechanisms you've listed, not the notion of democracy itself as others have done that already. * Barcodes - Problem is that the voter gets to pick a barcode. They could take two or more barcodes instead of just one. Sure, if anyone is paying attention they might see the counter go up numerous times per voter, but does anyone actually pay that much attention all the time? * How is the list of who has and has not voted reconciled, and how are the tokens counted? Either factor could be manipulated by an official * So a slip is printed and needs confirmation. What happens if someone does not confirm the slip - does it get destroyed? Will confirmation be obviously marked on the slip, i.e. what is preventing the unconfirmed slip for being mistaken as a vote? * If votes are stored in boxes left in public view, are they being watched, are they sealed? If all of the public who were present were intent on violating the system, boxes could go missing or be tampered with easily. * There is a 1 in 64 chance of a box being counted - is that significant enough? i.e. only 1.5% of votes will actually be double-checked. * How are data being transmitted electronically? Is it digital, analog, authenticated, encrypted, signed? Is there a chance that a) someone could interfere with or cancel a transmission, b) someone could imitate or duplicate a transmission, c) someone could record the transmission? * How are data being stored? Is the system secure, how does it store aggregates, can they be tampered, e.g. if a chaining method was used then every transmission is sealed by the next. But if no such methods are used then a malicious admin could modify data. [Answer] With the results being electronically broadcast, that could be your solution. If it's a wireless broadcast, sniff it and attempt to break the encryption I assume would be present. Then you can run your own broadcast in the same vein to send false results, as the broadcasts are linked to the tokens and not the people using the tokens. If it's wired you can do the same, but you can entirely subvert the other votes by putting in a bypass, assuming there is no handshake or you can properly replicate the handshake. Both these methods would require a physical presence and knowledge of the system, but these would likely not be too hard to get. The hardest part in this is breaking the assumed cryptography, which a foreign state would be able to do, or bribing/otherwise cajoling the system designers into giving you the details. [Answer] Step 1: Write the voting machine software so that it records 'Y' for a positive vote. A ballot receipt might look like this: ``` Mayor: Smith: Jones: Y Green: ``` Step 2: Figure out how much you need to skew the vote - say you need to skew it 3%. Then every 3 out of 100 votes for a given candidate, you mark their vote with a character very close to 'Y'. Say you choose 'Ƴ'. (Look closely, two different letters.) Step 3: When displaying tallies, individual boxes count all votes with any response. Step 4: When calculating the grand winner, the master collecting machine counts all votes with a valid 'Y' response. Net result: any citizen can examine their voting receipt, and it will look right. Manual audits will match the totals described by the local machines. The master collecting machine will legitimately tally the properly cast votes. And if any of the bad actors get busted, the only fishy thing is the random Y vs Ƴ vote malformer - everything else is plausibly a legit programming error. [Answer] If people have no faith in the democratic process, the effectiveness for voting to enact real change, or if they believe that the entire process is a sham, then they are less likely to vote. If you discourage enough of the right people to prevent them from placing a vote in the first place ("one vote doesn't matter"; "both parties are basically the same"), then you have effectively hacked democracy without interfering with the process of voting in the first place. Congrats. [Answer] After the box is sealed, it seems very difficult to have any influence on the outcome of the elections. You can't achieve the falsification by corruption as it would require to corrupt the whole polling station which seems really difficult to achieve. That's why if I had to falsify these elections, I would work on the voting machines. The falsified machines would register false votes and print a false confirmation slip. However, on the top of this false confirmation slip, the true vote would be displayed with self-disappearing ink. Knowing the high-level of security around these elections, the machines are probably tested before the election. The falsified machine should be able to be switched by a remote device just before the election. The production of the machines is probably closely monitored but the amount of corruption/coertion needed is much lower and probably doable. [Answer] Another way to be "caught out" for a given value of "caught out": team up with a friend, make sure they get in the queue ahead of your target, and you get in behind. They take a photo of the box after they vote, and you take a photo before you vote. Compare these two photos to figure out what your target voted. OR: Go in, with some fake voting slips. Open the box, take actual votes out and replace them with the fake ones. Reseal the box. Update the electronic tally. You will need a security seal, fake votes, and admin access to the device. ]
[Question] [ This question already has answers here: [Would people develop spoken language if everyone was telepathic?](/questions/7341/would-people-develop-spoken-language-if-everyone-was-telepathic) (22 answers) Closed 6 years ago. Human beings have the ability to communicate with their minds. This form of telepathy is quick and efficient, relying on concepts and ideas rather than words. A person can mindlink with others in their immediate vicinity, say20-30 feet. Rarer, stronger individuals are able to extend this to an indeterminate amount. Individuals can share thoughts, feelings, and memories with no misunderstandings confusion between them, and can include multiple people at a time. This ability has been present in humanity since its earliest days. All people have a "shield" surrounding their minds, protecting them from unwanted intrusion. Individuals generally cannot force a mindlink with someone. They have to "ping" the person mentally by sending out a signal. That person chooses to respond and opens a connection, or disregards it. All people are capable of this for of communication, but telepathy isn't used very often in society. People normally use traditional forms, such as body language and talking, with most other people. What would be a good reason for why this ability isn't widely used despite it being more efficency and reliable? EDIT I have increased the distance of 3-5 feet to 20-30 feet on advice from respondents. [Answer] # It is Difficult Mind-links may take a lot of energy and effort to maintain or establish. Maybe a mind link requires a large amount of energy, requiring those with the mind-link to consume a lot more food to maintain it. We're talking about at least another meal's worth of food. # It is Uncomfortable Mind-links are dangerous, because such direct communication is unfettered. Every emotion and thought is transmitted: you cannot control what is sent and what is received. Example: I see a pretty person and happen to think about how good they would be in a swimsuit. My mind-linked buddy, who happens to have the opposite preference in partners, now has a vivid picture of a person they're not into in their head. Eww... # It is Dangerous Mind-linked individuals cannot distinguish between their own thoughts and the other person's thoughts. This would result, over time, in a "hive mind" of linked individuals. They can't tell each other's thoughts apart. Example: Was I going to get the groceries, or was my mind-linked buddy going to? I just came from the bathroom, why am I desperate to find one? [Answer] There is only one "shield" (or "firewall" in more modern parlance) between the telepaths. Once a person acknowledges a ping and forms a connection, both parties have unlimited read-access to each other's knowledge, memories, emotions and even the current input from their senses. That access ends as soon as the connection is severed, but while it is active, there are no walls between them. Everything can be seen, experienced and known by both parties. It is therefore impossible to have casual communications via telepathy. Every connection is intimate. [Answer] Mentally transmitted diseases. You aren't just sharing your mind with a person, you're sharing your mind with everyone they have ever shared their mind with. Cults and half-baked ideas spread fairly easily even with the limited connections we have now. With a full connection things could get a bit worse. Remember when you got goatse'd in 7th grade? How long did that image stay with you? That's a simple meme only capable of transmission through dead media. In a living brain all sorts of sophisticated patterns can be made and transmitted. Relatively benign ones just manifest as a fear of clowns or the opinion that Portuguese and Italian are really the same language and can be weathered until your reason or at worst therapy will eventually free you, but it's rumored that an incurable meme that turns people into Birthers has been observed in the wild. [Answer] THE NSA IS MONITORING OUR THOUGHTS!!! Fear everything! Tin foil hats will protect you though. One major reason people might not want to communicate telepathically is because people could listen in, whether using natural telepathic abilities, or complicated machinery that intercepts telepathic signals (And is potentially able to intercept transmissions form a long distance). If the government, or worse other even more nefarious mafia-esque groups were listening, you wouldn't want to broadcast sensitive data. The telepathic equivalent of sexting would provide a great opportunity to blackmail people if intercepted, and the government listening in is just creepy. [Answer] First, it could likely be that not everyone can use this ability. Just like eyesight and blindness there will always be some who are disabled. Society could be considerate towards the privacy of these individuals and it would be the social norm for everyone to converse primarily. Educational institutions would certainly have to follow this. Next One flaw with your system is the abuse of the ping. This telepathic network can be compared heavily to the internet and trolls. If someone pings you, you don't necessarily know who is requesting to speak to you so if you open the link you can be spammed with a thousand mental images of they did to themselves last Friday night. If you try to argue that their ping contains adequate information to identify themselves and their intent then that is enough information they could use to spam you with disturbing information. The likely solution to this problem is people would likely verbally agree to open communications and or agree upon identification of their ping. This way through verbal interaction they learn enough information about the ping to identify their partner without allowing the ping to contain enough information so as to be abused. Because of the amount of discussion for this, it could be seen that the telepathic communication between individuals is an intimate act (akin to kissing). Thus, socially, it would be frowned upon to engage telepathically with everyone willy-nilly (mind slut). [Answer] It is socially rude to hold secrets from other people. Your mind linking society grows up learning the thoughts and feelings of others so in a public space they find it rude to have secret conversations with others. This would be similar to texting while out for dinner with friends. Telepathy makes others suspicious of your actions. In a police state [no one wants you talking without being heard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance) and even in a free democracy [the government wants to keep tabs on it's civilians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_(2013%E2%80%93present)). As a protection to their personal freedom people speak out load so bugs and video cameras capture the events. The lack of speaking makes the person socially strange. Allowing unfettered emotional contact with any random person is the trade mark symbols of a [sociopath who never questions his own thoughts](http://www.health.com/mind-body/sociopath-traits#ad-728x90_LL_td_5). [Answer] * You can't walk and talk During the process of telepathy, the person is physically stunned and unaware of their environment. They can't be doing anything else while they are communicating. * You can't be polite Because telepathy is a stream of thought rather than a sequence of words, it is not possible to imply fake emotion. You can send the message to your boss that you think her idea is right but you can't say it like you believe it. * It's a strain on the brain Because telepathy is straight from the brain, it can leave the sender with a confusion or brain-fog for a few moments afterwards. This is not a issue for a quick message but a long conversation could require a few minutes to get your thoughts back into order. * There is no evidence Telepathy can't be artificially recorded and since it is not in words, it can't even be written down. Messages with any consequence aren't sent telepathically because there can be no record that they took place. * It's difficult to filter out emotions There is always a risk that you will slip and tell you teacher what you think of them or tell your work colleague that you have a crush on them. For this reason telepathy is normally reserved for more intimate or poetic communication. [Answer] Status Symbol Telepathy, being such a common skill among human beings since time eternal, has somehow become a base method of communication used only by the most uneducated of plebeians. Speech as we know it is the mark of class and status, and regarded as impressive. As such, most people prefer to verbalise and vocalise, and it looks bad on you if you fail to reciprocate. [Answer] Using English as an example and if you remove the Telepathy portion for a second, we kinda do this already. A person within a close enough distance to another to talk can ping that person and begin a conversation. A persons mind still exists as conceptual, the English 'translation' that goes through our head is just that...a translation of the conceptual (I'm of the opinion many people mis-identify this translation layer in their head as themselves and fail to admit the conceptual). Human interaction becomes conceptual translated to english, communicated to another, and translated back to conceptual for that person to understand. A "failure to communicate" usually lies with one of the communicators failing at that translation level and not the communication of words. As such, English is an exceedingly exacting language where one word or phrase can really only be translated to conceptual in one manner. It's also the layer in which we add the 'political' or 'politeness' touch, choosing what information to convey and how to convey it. Without this translation layer, concept to concept communication would be exceedingly blunt, honest, and potentially destructive. > > Me conceptually - Oh great, this person is an absolute waste of humanity and should be torn limb from limb for the way they treat other humans. > > > Me post translation layer - 'Hi, how are you?' > > > In short - your very good reason is concept to concept can really only happen between two very familiar and very trusted peoples, or they are going to share concepts they a) dont want to and b) in a manner they don't want to. [Answer] It is more difficult to organise your thoughts than your words. If you open the mental door to allow a message to escape, you'll probably also give them a whole lot of things you never meant to tell them. A lot of people don't like being that vulnerable to anyone except a close relative or spouse or something. [Answer] See the other answers for reasons you can create, but to elaborate on @DaniellYancey's comment, the logistical concerns are: ## - Distance Imagine my coworker is leaving, but I need to clarify one thing before they go. To start a telepathic conversation I have to first catch the person. That's less convenient then shouting at them to stop and then catching up to them. Imagine leaving a restaurant. Frequently the staff will thank you for coming, but that won't work telepathically. Meetings where the participants don't fit nicely in a 5 ft circle wouldn't do well with telepathy—at least as the primary form of communication. And some other conversation situations: the lazy coworker shouting at you from down/across the aisle; bump into a friend at the grocery store and shop together; a teacher instructing her students. ## - Delivery This may be less of an issue, but if someone is focused on their work and shielding from all pings, how effective would a telepathic "Fire!" be. Or a gunman in a store. --- If they already have to speak verbally in so many situations, then it might become the default mode of communication. However, I suspect it would still be used to clarify assumptions/understanding or establish facts. Consider the impact on testing, teaching, and legal systems. E.g. testing an apprentice's understanding of your craft; teaching what front-line warfare is like; "Is my kindergartner lying to me?", ask for the memory. [Answer] ## Interference Telepathy only works when nobody else around, except the target and you. If there are other conversations going on, either you will have incomplete thoughts sent, or receive thoughts mixed from other conversations. ## Technology Technology is unable to integrate with this psychic ability. Technology is able to empower communication with other methods (body language, text, and talking) to have higher reliability and cover more distance. ## Unreliability Because the thoughts are directly fed to our brain, we tend to forget once the link disconnects. Even talking is significantly more reliable than telepathy, because it feeds to the hearing senses first, before processed in the brain. ## Permanently Modify Your Brain Telepathy permanently modifies your brain, even after the link disconnects. You will never be the same. You will never know which thought is yours. (similar to Pipperchip's) [Answer] It is too personal and your true thoughts are private Telepathy works a bit too well some times. Sure, you can telepathically tell someone to move out of your way so you can get past. When with speech you would say something like "can I please get past you" or "could you step aside a bit? thank you", your telepathic thoughts could reveal that you are actually thinking "Get out of my way you stupid fat cow!". After all, telepathy is not a text-to-thought understanding, it is a thought-to-thought, and you can't always present your thoughts as nice as you can present your words. [Answer] Speech helps thinking There is a [theory](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/01/human-language-may-have-evolved-help-our-ancestors-make-tools) that many years ago humans developed tools because of speech, not the other way around. If we're to follow this approach then necessity of verbal communication can be easily explained. While formulating their thoughts using words, human develops the ability to think rationally. This allows us to understand abstract ideas and complicated concepts on language level. I can hardly imagine a bunch of speechless scientists trying to share their understanding of quantum physics. Though I do agree, that mind sharing with ability to speak can make wonders. Besides, there may be no way to store thoughts except literacy. What will happen to the culture without it? So, in this telepathic world people study language and use it pretty much the same way as we do it. It's natural. So I believe that mind sharing will be used more often when one needs to show something emotional, like "duuude, I got one hell of dream last night..." or "their costumes are lame, no one wore this stuff in sixteenth. Here's how they definitely looked like..." and so on. This also can be used to share some general idea, like "let me show you the main concept of string theory.... er...urgh... done! Ok, now when everyone has the general idea, let's look at the blackboard and do some maths". [Answer] It is illegal Years ago people all across the world would almost exclussively communicate by telephaty. However, the government as well as many malevolent organizations started developing telepathy radars and made huge advances in scientific research. This led to a lot of conflicts. Everyone was being monitored 24/7. More and more people started to step away from their powers and only use them for emergencies. During this time, a new technology was developed that allowed them to hack into peoples minds. They started on researching methods to brain-wash people. There have also been multiple information leaks from other organizations that caused panic across the world. Businesses collapsed, suicide rates were on the constant rise and in the end there were civil wars all over the world. It all ended in another world war which fundamentally changed the perception of our telephathic abilities forever. Any scientific research about telephathy was immediately stopped. These powers are now considered extremely dangerous and destructive in a similar way that we think of nuclear bombs. Just a lot smaller in scale and more easily accessible. Nowadays, the developement of these telepathic abilities in children is actively discouraged. Modern medicine even managed to develop a drug that suppresses our abilities. A lot of people are interested in these, as they protect you from hacking attempts. In some countries, these drugs are even considered a fundamental right and are being distributed for free every month. In this society any use of these abilities is prohibited by law to prevent anything like this to ever happen again. [Answer] A couple of possibilities: 1. Mind links are only point-to-point. If I want to share a thought with 3, 4, 100 persons, I have to either send a message to everybody (boring) or use a "broadcast" way such as the voice 2. Mind links cannot be recorded. So if you want your TV show to be broadcasted, your message to be remembered in the future, your song to be bought, you'll have to use your vocal chords. And in trials, mind links are strictly forbidden; everything must be recorded for transparency 3. You cannot send "false" mind messages. Any "Am I fat?" question, consequently, is expected to receive a "vocal" reply... And it is a social accepted behavior, since it will lead to a lot of troubles otherwise. Consequently only the shortest and deepest messages should be delivered "mentally" [Answer] The primary issue is that 3-5 feet is incredibly close. Consider your average sitting room. In such a setting people are not close enough to talk telepathically. As a result, the ability is impracticable. It cannot be used to communicate unless you sit on the same bench or stand right next to each other. As a result, there is no way to effectively use the ability. Whether it is equivalent to choosing what to send or whether it allows full open communication the issue is that speaking verbally has a range of at least 20-30 feet, whereas your communication has a measly five feet. This means that some people literally cannot communicate mentally to the distance from their head to the bottom of their feet. That will pretty much make it a useless tool. It would be good if someone needs to explain something really difficult, but other than that casual conversation would probably be easier. Imagine a teacher in a classroom trying to go from person to person to mentally send the knowledge. It would be more efficient to do a normal lecture. Similarly the same could be true for any group environment. [Answer] I agree with [PipperChip when he says that random thoughts like the swimsuit might happen, what is considered gross](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/93518/32511). But I assume that if telepathic communication is more efficient, you can control what of your memories, opinions and feelings are shared with the listener (instant thoughts pass, because you just got then from an outer source). But I'd say that the main reason is simply tradition. You don't share a mental link with anyone you don't trust/like if you don't really need it. That is a symbol of trust. If someone pings you, it means you are important for then. And people also doesn't just accept pings from someone they don't even know, because, as you said: > > Individuals generally cannot force a mindlink with someone > > > What if this random person pinging me can somehow force himself on my mind and read it completly? I must not let my guard down. [Answer] Horrific consequences in the past Perhaps something horrific happened in the past. Some possibilities: * A political movement bent this ability to lethal ends. Loss of privacy makes it very easy to centralize information about people who would disagree with actions of the dominant party. The dissenter wouldn't even need to expose themselves directly to party agents for this to occur. Everyone that knows the person is aware of their views so only 1 person out of their entire social circle need link with a party agent. The party used this information to hunt down and execute all known dissenters. * Collectives of permanently linked humans formed. They grew large and gathered significant power. They considered the agency of unlinked humans irrelevant and casually murdered individuals whenever it furthered their purposes. There was a crisis and a conflict. It was bloody. When it was over the survivors grimly surveyed the destruction and decided it was telepathic communication that made it possible. A cultural prescription against telepathy with the force of all that remembered death and agony quickly spread. It persists to this day. [Answer] Telepathy is sacred The society is highly religious. The vast majority of the population faithfully follow a single religion. This dominant religion teaches that telepathy is a sacred ability to be used only in limited circumstances. Perhaps it is reserved as a special experience between husband and wife. The motivation of the religion might be benign or nefarious. Whatever the origin of the teaching most people follow it. Telepathic communication is virtually unused. [Answer] Environmental interference makes it very painful If a natural event or manmade technology modified the environment in a way that interferes with the physics of telepathy, perhaps it has become physically painful to use telepathic communication. A kind of telepathy jamming signal. Most people forgo it to avoid the pain. If it was manmade it might have been: * A weapon used during a war intended to affect only the enemy. Control was lost and the effect spread, eventually becoming global and permanent. * A radical cult that considered telepathy in some way unnatural or demonic successfully created and deployed a technology to eliminate it. [Answer] Why do we run wires for communication when we can communicate around the globe wirelessly? Because it's difficult, it's less clear, less bandwidth. Perhaps one cannot send clear messages psychically but only feelings or impressions or mental images which are difficult to encode. One might also not want to open themselves up for communication, similar to how we can pick up the phone and call anyone, but instead use indirect methods of communication, like facebook or texting vs phone calls. [Answer] Individual Risk It's well known that some people die due to an unknown defect in their brain when they first try to use their psychic abilities. Anybody that can use it successfully will never experience issues. Every individual has to make this leap of faith since science can't predict a risk factor. You'll end up with a society including groups of psychic users and a large base of people who don't want to risk life. Any risk scenario will work here as long as it's a significant risk and it's a personal choice whether to take the plunge or not. [Answer] There are a lot of practical reasons to choose vocal over mental communication, which have already been mentioned (privacy, effort involved, social custom, etc.). One thing that I haven't seen is a simple appreciation for the spoken word. There is an art in speech and communication that would be lost if you were simply doing a data dump to communicate. The sound of your voice, the words you pick and choose, the tone and inflections you use - these are all things that would be lost in a mental communication. Those are things that you can use to build a work of art - a rousing speech, or a song, a Shakespearean soliloquy, etc. There is also a need for sensation that we have. We crave sensory input. So standing in a group of people that are all carrying on silent conversations would probably be somewhat uncomfortable, as you are not getting any input from one of your senses. [Answer] # Inneficient channel Even if telepathy has no maximum range, it may be too slow to communicate this way - imagine it takes minites to convey a single sentence. Also perhaps communication is always between to people only. It would be a pain to convey a single phrase to a crowd. # Morse code telepathy Perhaps telepathy cannot convey words nor emotions,.bur only a kind of signal that requires serious study to learn how to interpret. The effort would be akin to that of a non-deaf person learning sign language, or a civillian learning morse code. [Answer] Racism, of a sort, have a look at John Wyndham's [The Chrysalids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chrysalids) for a more detailed description of my inspiration, you describe the psychics as being a "subspecies", as such I'm going to assume they constitute a persecuted minority. That being the case and telepathy being the signature of their difference from the mainstream then using telepathy becomes extremely risky, one doesn't want to be seen to know things that they shouldn't. [Answer] As NachoDawg said. Imagine being able to share your exact state of mind with all feelings and thoughts. That is the most intimate thing a person could do. And obviously, that is reason enough to not use that telepathic ability as a main means of communication. Furthermore, in normal interactions, the usage of body language and verbal communication would be better suited to convey your concepts, thoughts, and ideas without all the extra fluff. This also avoids, as mentioned here before, the situation of: * Thought: "That guy is a piece of shit." * Verbal communication: "Hi Larry, nice to see you!" Not using telepathy to communicate would be a sort of natural filter in relations. This also would put telepathy in the category of being used mainly for an exact description of distinct ideas and concepts but also the act of displaying love and affection for one another. Really, there is a lot to build on here if the OP wants to do so. In my opinion, reasons such as energy drain, legal reasons, distance etc. are just shallow reasons that do not feel very true to human nature. Shame and embarrassment I feel are higher in the list of why people would under normal circumstances not want to use telepathy. In short; The main reason not to use telepathy would be to avoid the situation of having to say every single thing you think out loud. ]
[Question] [ In my fantasy story, primitive humans are going up against a single powerful creature. They must kill the creature to gain their freedom, but they soon realize that the only way to slay the creature is by sacrificing oneself to do so. I'm trying to create a creature where such a scenario is impossible to avoid. Below are the details: * This creature needs to be humanoid in shape. It must have hands, and be able to wield a sword. * It can be larger than humans, but only by two or three feet max. It should not be shorter than humans. * This creature is magical, but I'm trying to avoid magical answers to this question if I can. If there's just absolutely no way such a creature can exist with biology alone, I'll allow a very small amount of hand-waving. * The primitive humans fight with this creature, and can avoid its attacks. * If one of the primitive humans wants to kill this creature, they have to lethally wound it (behead, stab through chest, etc.). Bleeding out and debilitating injuries are not going to have any effect (this can be due to some sort of healing magic if necessary). Killing the creature this way has to kill the human. * Both human and creature have to die in combat, or shortly thereafter. So no prophecies or other delays involving 'if you kill the creature, you also die eventually.' * The human needs to die trying to kill the creature, but he also has to be successful. This is very important. * Finally, primitive humans are going up against this creature with the simplest of iron armor or anything less effective (ie, toughened hides - not very effective). They are using a single sword. * Note: A number of answers have assumed the creature is trying to eat the humans. This is not the case. Remember this 'creature' is humanoid, and does hold and use a sword with skill. I am using the word 'creature' here to avoid certain connotations other labels might imply. I'm after a creature which is unkillable unless the attacking human sacrifices himself in the process of killing it. This has to occur during combat (so no sacrificial rituals or anything like that). For example, maybe the creature can only be slain by running a sword all the way through it, but its blood is poisonous. To get close enough to kill the creature, the human would invariably get some of the blood on his hands. The problem with this and similar ideas is that it's not fool-proof, and that is the most important part: *The sacrifice has to be ABSOLUTELY necessary.* There is no doubt: if the human kills the creature, he will die. Period. In the above example, one could easily go after the creature with a lance, and thus avoid the blood entirely. Such workarounds cannot be present. So here's my question: can you design a humanoid creature which is impossible to kill, unless you sacrifice yourself in the process? Remember that the need for this sacrifice has to be unavoidable. Remember also that I want to stick to biology. If there is simply no way to get this effect with biology alone, get as close as you can, and then hand-wave the rest. But try with biology first. --- This question is not primarily opinion-based. While I will allow answers incorporating some magic, I will value the biology answers more. If such a creature can be designed using biology alone, that will be better than an answer using magic. Similarly, if two answers both use magic, the one with the least amount of hand-waving and the better matching biology will be better. Answers which use just hand-waving will be ignored. EDIT: Concerns have been raised that this question is primarily opinion based because it is about a story (despite the above explaining the exact opposite). I will explain why this is not the case: Yes, this question is for a story (as are well over half of the questions on Worldbuilding SE). However, the question is purely a creature-design question, and perfectly on topic because of that. Yes, the question is based on a single event which happens in the story, but that does not mean I'm asking about that specific event, and how it can unfold. Instead, I'm trying to design a creature so that anyone going up against it (not just the character in my story) would have to die if they were to slay it. If am specifically not relying on plot devices to accomplish this, and instead designing a creature to fulfill this need. This is the very essence of the [creature-design](/questions/tagged/creature-design "show questions tagged 'creature-design'") tag. Also, this question is not a duplicate of [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/61823/6620). That question was trying to pin what I needed on combat, which was why it was closed: it was asking for a story. This question is asking for a creature design where the creature is unkillable save by sacrifice. --- Post-Answer edit: I'm including this edit for future viewers. I felt that the best answer to this question was a combination of two answers. I would like to point them out to future viewers. I feel that a weak spot (Loren Pechtel's answer) is a must, as a point protected from all angles but below prevents any ranged shenanigans. However, I feel that some sort of gas (SealBoi's answer) is better than a spray, as the cloud cannot be blocked and, if large enough and deadly in any amount, guarantees death. As a bonus, an armor plate can protect the weak spot and must be pried open (Cyrus' answer), thus further ensuring archery is not an option. [Answer] The creature is all but unkillable because got an exoskeleton of armor plate that's too tough for the attackers to get through. It does have an achillies heel, however, where someone underneath can stab up into it. Doing so, however, will result in a spray of deadly bodily fluids upon the attacker and the dead creature will collapse upon the attacker also. [Answer] What you are looking for is mutually assured destruction. You need a deadman's switch: [![Baneling](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nkn6g.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nkn6g.jpg) The ensuring a human must die to kill this creature is not actually the hard part. It's trivial to come up with weapons so brutal that they are guaranteed to kill a human. The hard part is making the creature a satisfying part of the story. If it has this weapon which is a guaranteed kill when needed, why doesn't the creature use it without dying? If there's not a good answer to that, the creature is hard to believe, and unsatisfying. The solution is MAD. Create a creature which develops an overpowered weapon. The acid sacks of a Baneling from Starcraft 2 is an excellent example. If it proves insufficient for your needs, give the creature the fuel to create a 100ft wide fireball or release [hydrogen fluoride gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fluoride) or something nasty like that. Make it so nasty that the creature itself would not survive. Then put that on a deadman's switch. If the creature isn't actively keeping the system stable, it triggers and sterilizes the nearby area with whatever nastiness you choose. Now the creature's weapon is believable. It is basically walking around daring everyone to call its bluff. It would not want to trigger the effect early, because doing so is suicidal. Thus it's not an IWIN button until the creature is mortally wounded. Then, the creature has nothing left to lose. Famous examples of this: * [Starcraft 2's banelings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzMhh8zhTiY) (or [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc6fPV1m9kU), if you're not a fan of Bieber paraodies) * Terminator 2: [Miles Dyson's deadman switch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPO1P2gc71A) * The ending of [Predator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnfDXznMf0E) * Raven in Snowcrash, who drove around on a motorcycle with a nuclear bomb in the sidecar rigged to detonate if his heart stopped beating. (Of course, in the movies the good guy gets to escape the blast, because he's a good guy. But it's easy to see how it's more believable if he's caught up in an unavoidable blast.) [Answer] This sounds like a myth. Or a prophecy. It requires a mythic answer. Mate with the monster. The men try and try but the monster is invulnerable. It cannot be killed. But where did this monster come from? The oldest remember: long ago this monster was born of a woman. And so a woman offers herself to the monster. They mate, and its cycle complete, the monster dies. The woman returns to the village carrying the monster child. Like its grandmother, she dies in birthing it. The monster child leaves into the forest. The cycle continues. [Answer] The creature, while damn hard to kill and practically impossible to contain, can still starve to death. Normally this wouldn‚Äôt be an issue as the creature will break or burrow out of the most well made trap when it got hungry. But it has a couple of interesting biological quirks. The first is that it swallows its food whole initially, but partway down its throat has a particularly stiff ring of muscle. When a large piece of food hits this ring it contracts, the throat muscles push the food back up to the mouth, and multiple rows of serrated teeth set in powerful jaws masticate the food until it‚Äôs small enough. Now, a skilled hunter can dive head first into the beast‚Äôs maw, wait until they hit the ring and feel it contract, then ram a specially designed ring of barbs into place, effectively permanently closing the ring (doubly so as the creature‚Äôs throat heals around the barbs). They will then be regurgitated and mashed into a pulp, but thanks to the barbs they will never be small enough to pass down the oesophagus, even if they are reduced to a liquid. A relative of mine once suffered from Schatzki rings (rings of cartilage that constricted and prevented liquids from passing down the throat) and it took surgery to stop them choking when they tried to drink water. This creature, unable to receive medical attention, would rapidly weaken and die, unable to ever eat it‚Äôs final meal. EDIT: Just noticed the height constraint. The same tactic can apply, but the hunter will have to close up the throat while also being savaged to death... [Answer] Go for the mouth. Most animals have a relatively weak skeletal structure, if any, between the roof of their mouth and their brain. If you can get in very close and make a very accurate thrust upwards, you can strike some critical part of the brain and it keels over dead on the spot. But in order to have the necessary range and accuracy (you don't want to just scrape the brain and give it memory problems or the sensation of being hit with a fish), you need to be right up in its mouth. Obviously this is an incredibly dangerous place to be; even a reflex clenching of its jaw could cut you right in half. It's not technically guaranteed death, but the odds of survival are extremely slim. If you wanted to make it more deadly, you could add something like acidic saliva so that hiding in its mouth isn't a viable option, or some other form of postmortem danger that will take out anyone lucky enough to survive the jaws. [Answer] A. Lethal trap The creature can only be killed by a specific trap, which also kills the person who triggers it: E.g. The creature can only be killed by inhaling a specific toxic gas. There is a chamber containing a suspended vial of this gas, but when the cord holding the gas vial is severed, the doors to the room close. The creature must be lured into the room, the cord severed, and the person to do so, is sealed in the room with the creature. This could work with any trap-room, such as a collapsing ceiling, etc. B. Mortal wound magic The creature can only be felled by a blow from someone who is mortally wounded. It will heal all other wounds. If the attacker survives, the creature resurrects. C. Suicide weapon The creature can only be killed by explosions, and the protagonists have access to some sort of primitive suicide vest, which they don't truly understand due to their level of technology. A magical version of this might be a sword that kills the wielder approx [x] minutes after it is touched. This could be a cool concept where the wielder only has [x] minutes to slay the beast, and they already know they'll die...and if they fail, someone else will have to repeat the process. [Answer] The creature has some sort of power that can be turned against it. For instance, let's say the creature can absorb animals (Thing style) and gain powers from them. But it can be killed if it absorbs a person with a particularly dangerous poison in their blood, a subcutaneous bomb that can be remotely detonated (but will only work if detonated internally), or somebody afflicted with cancer. The creature will avoid trying to absorb let's say, a squirrel loaded with poison, but it can be made to forcibly absorb someone if they rush the creature. Or the creature regenerates unless some sacrificial action is taken to prevent it from regenerating. For instance, there may be some critical organ from which it regenerates that needs to be ingested. Or it may require some kind of magic to seal it away that also consumes the user. Or the creature may have some ability that renders it invulnerable unless the combatant performs some kind of suicidal technique. For instance, too strong to be hurt without opening some kind of limiter / performing some kind of demonic transformation. Going back to a regenerative creature, it may be that destroying that there is a mystical element which requires some kind of telepathic / magical means of destruction which also destroys the opponent. Perhaps it can only be taken down by a certain kind of explosive, but it's too fast to be hit by the attack unless it's held in place. Those are more situational though and less in the vein of being part of its biology. [Answer] Okay, here's my idea. Inside the cells of the creature, there's a specialized organelle which produces some form of nerve gas (maybe sarin?) when there is a major disturbance like a blow from a weapon. Every time the primitive human lops off an arm or something, the nerve gas is released, killing the assailant. However, any non-lethal injury is repaired promptly by the healing magic. This healing magic is generated from an organ in the chest, but the magic must be "instructed" to be generated neurologically. Like sight, it needs both a brain and the organ to function. So, when the attacker either stabs the organ (In an effort to puncture the heart), or decapitates the creature, the connection is broken, and the healing magic cannot be generated. However, the cells still produce the nerve gas, killing both combatants. TL;DR: With any injury, the creature's cells generate a nerve gas to which it is immune. Non-lethal injuries are repaired by healing magic, but for that magic to work, an organ in the chest and its connection to the brain must remain intact. Damaging the organ or severing the connection will render the magic redundant, but the nerve gas is still released. [Answer] A fully magical solution so not entirely up your street: in one of my stories I use a spirit that inhabits someone (and eventually posesses them), enhances their body and when killed it takes over the body of the one that killed him. So if the human that manages to kill him dies the spirit dies. [Answer] The only way to kill the creature is by eating it. Its flesh is poisonous and any who do eat part of it will die. Give the creature magical healing that lets it pull itself back together. Even if you chop it up into bits or burn it, the bits/ash will pull themselves back together within a matter of seconds. The only way to truly remove part of it is to eat that part of it. This is based off vampires from a certain series that would convert anyone they bit to a vampire. To avoid constantly creating new vampires they would have to consume the entire human. It was also one of the more effective methods for vampires to kill other vampires. A more advanced society might be able to find ways around this such as acid or molten metal (eg. Terminator 2) but for a primitive society with magic involved this might be the only rather gruesome method that would work. You could have a part of this be that one human as a last ditch method bit the enemy before dying. Then people could notice that wound was the only part of the enemy that did not heal. [Answer] The general evolutionary strategy of this creature would be this: killing it is the easy part. Getting away with it is nearly impossible. Sort of like poisonous frogs which are generally defenseless, but still give you good reasons not to eat them. Option 1: this creature is extremely resilient thanks to the healing magic, and can survive for minutes even with its heart impaled. However, it sleeps very tight most of the time, so it's possible to sneak up and mortally wound it. That wakes it up though, and as it's much faster and stronger than any human, it has plenty of time before death to rip you apart. Option 2: the creature has (possibly magically) formed a symbiosis with the local, say, birds of prey. It provides them with meat, they protect it. Granted, it's not really feasible for the birds to monitor it from the sky around the clock, but it's totally possible to slaughter everyone in the vicinity of the creature's last (magical?) distress scream. This is why the local predators tend to avoid it. Option 3: This creature does not even exist. This ritual of regaining freedom is actually a twisted form of decimatio. This group of humans are actually exiles. They're sent into the desert to kill the creature you described and gain redemption. At some point it becomes clear that the creature is nowhere to be found, and the water's running out. The prosecutors have stated explicitly that they wouldn't let them back unless they're missing a comrade, and conveniently forgot to demand a proof of kill. The solution seems obvious. They slaughter one of theirs and head back home, thinking they've fooled everyone. They're then told to spread terrible stories of the creature and scare potential criminals into obedience, lest it becomes known to everyone that they killed a comrade out of cowardice. [Answer] Here are some options I thought of when reading your question: ## The Sacrifice Happens at the Beginning of the Fight It's possible the creature has a natural resistance to ionizing radiation, but is emitting a lot of it (maybe it was irradiated at some time, making it highly radioactive). Or, the creature is a carrier for some highly infectious fatal disease. It's possible, even, that your creature could continue to socialize. It might interact through servant intermediaries possessing a familial resistance (maybe not immunity), so that they can survive being in the creature's proximity for a short time. The servants may bolster their resistance by putting on proper gear like lead clothes, or clothes that they wear once to meet the creature, then burn. To a primitive people who does not understand radiation, resistance, disease, or immunity the situation is simply this - those who are not the creatures heredity servants following their rituals for approaching the creature die quickly if they are so bold as to enter the creatures presence, instead of using the servants as intermediaries. In either event, the human made his/her sacrifice stepping into the ring. The human's death is guaranteed. The first onset of symptoms might arrive in minutes. Killing the creature sounds as simple as landing some sort of lethal blow. Even deceased the creature will continue to emit radiation / be a source for the disease. ## The Sacrifice is the Only Way to Win A more magical solution is that the creature's immunity to physical harm is comprehensive. Where the creature is vulnerable, instead, is spiritually. In this event, the hero is slain in the fight and then his/her ghost delivers the blows that kill the creature before being taken to whatever afterlife your world has. [Answer] The creature regenerates unless the flesh of its heart is brought in contact with the fresh/still-living heart of a human. The only practical way to achieve this is for the two to be impaled together. Inspiration (not exactly heart, but close enough that that was how I remembered it) from Lifeforce (1985); see clip (spoiler, if anyone cares about old B movies): <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4CPMdmuOq0> [Answer] A Magical, Parasitic Bond with the Human that kills it. Some of these answers are fantastic, but for the purposes of your story I believe magic may need to come into play - possibly for the boon of the readers. Imagine hunters who coat their blades before battle in their blood which reacts and forms a magical, parasitic bond with the creature when absorbed into the bloodstream of the creature. This could work in a variety of ways but leaves the story open and adaptable. If a hunter stabs the creature and does not kill it, maybe the hunter 'feels' the creature and is drawn to it. Maybe the opposite happens and the creature tries to escape after melding with a hunters' blood in order to 'feel' where the human settlement is. Either way, the bond is not symbiotic - the human is tied to the creature but in a negative way. If the creature dies, the human dies - however if the human dies once melded the creature lives on and has to be melded with another human in order to be fatally wounded. This could be expanded into further story behind the connotations of being a hunter - young hunters do not fully understand the melding and are happy to try to get the first blow on the creature after chasing it down. Once the first blow occurs and the melding takes place the young hunter feels instantly 'different' but the veteran hunters then charge in, finish the creature with regular weapons now that it is vulnerable, and the new hunter dies as a result. This could explain the shortage of hunters in the world. If you are looking for some lore regarding a similar bond, try the plot for Dragon Age: Origins. The Grey Wardens drink the blood of a Darkspawn in order to carry 'the taint' which in turn allows them to mutually kill the Archdemon (who also carries the taint). The taint also allows the Grey Wardens to 'feel' the Archdemon and sense the Darkspawn as they draw near. Apologies, I will try to expand on this further. I am on a break at work and this question prompted me to sign up for Worldbuilding. [Answer] The creature has a keen sense of smell. It can detect, among other things, when any warrior is nearby, and when an adversary is close to death. When it comes time to feed, the creature will engage in single combat, making sure no other threats are nearby. Upon delivering a mortal blow to its prey, it will begin to remove its impenetrable helmet in order to feed. If the warrior can summon enough strength with their last breath, they will have a split second when the helmet is removed and before the creature begins to eat them, to deliver a killing blow to the creature's exposed throat. [Answer] The creature is invulnerable to any attack but one. Recently live human brains are poisonous to it. To kill it, hop into its mouth and dive down its throat. Animal brains do not work. Any human can kill it but dies in the process, as it is the digestive process that kills it. Human brains may be close to its natural food but sufficiently different to be poisonous. It may have methods to keep the brain active while consuming it. An alternative variant would be for it to be telepathic. When it connects to the human mind, both die. The reason I made it the brain is so that a living person has to be sacrificed. You can't just throw corpses or amputated legs in its mouth. If that's not necessary, making human flesh poisonous would work. [Answer] The creature has a weakness: the fresh blood of a human is acidic to the creature. The human would cut themselves before going into battle. The blood covered blades will damage the creature to the point that it cannot move. To finish the job, the human cuts open his guts, samurai style for a dramatic touch, and bleeds out on the creature, killing them both. [Answer] ## The human must impale himself on spiky armor to get at the weak point The creature has overlapping plates of spiky armor all over its body. It is also very fast and strong of course, preventing easy capture with nets, etc. To kill he creature, a human must use one hand to lift up an overlapping armor plate and one to stab a knife into the creature's throat/brain underneath. Unfortunately, that leaves the human with no hands left to hold himself in place on the creature long enough. The solution is for the human to impale himself belly-first on the spikes growing from the creature's chest, keeping him in place for a few seconds with both hands free near the creature's throat. With the primitive technology and the resulting injuries to vital organs this is a death sentence for the human. The creature's fate is all but assured by the combination of surprise and the very awkward position of the human inside the reach of its arms, where it can't exert much force. If the human tries to brace himself with his feet on the creature, it can much more easily reach him and dismember him. From the back of the creature it's also impossible to reach the weak spot, unless again the human impales himself on the spikes. [Answer] Several ideas. A chink in the armor. The creature is armored, but has a small vulnerability, perhaps the chest or neck. It's a very small vulnerable point, but a very small knife or a weapon like an icepick can get in. The armor plates overlap, but an upward thrust would do the trick. It would have to be jammed in, and held open so the creature's natural defenses wouldn't be able to kick in. The poor human wouldn't be able to hold out. Poisoned meal The creature is known to have a vulnerability to a particular poison, but it is smart enough not to ingest it, as it recognizes the poison. The person would have to take a deadly dose right before fighting the creature. The creature would have to eat enough of the person or drink enough of their blood to absorb enough of the poison to kill it, killing the person. Creatures's weapons used against it. The creature has some sort of breath weapon that acts from chemicals excreted from a gland bursting into flame when exposed to normal air (the creature's natural exhalations keep it from igniting while in it's body. Cutting the creature in such a way as to expose the glands will cause the creature to self-immolate, but also incinerate our brave warrior in the process. [Answer] How about the creature can only be killed by its own body part. So maybe have the creature grow a spike on its head or back that can be snapped off by someone who is very strong, but also must be agile and fast enough to do so, thus not anyone can do it. However, breaking this spike off would result in a slow (relatively) acting, lethal poison (the creature is immune to it) being sprayed and entering into the person's bloodstream. The poison can be such that it ignores non-living material such as armours or cloths and gets absorbed into the person's skin. The poison can also be delivered as a cloud of gas which the creature is immune to. The attacker then can use the spike to impale the creature in the heart or head or whichever body part you choose for its lethal point. The creature dies but so does the attacker, a few minutes later (and whoever else inhaled/ingested/absorbed the poison). If the attacker was not successful in finishing off the creature then the creature just grows another spike again within a couple of weeks or so. [Answer] Why do you have to fight 1on1? It is a powerful creature and I think it is ok to bring in some of your friends. When reading your question I had to think of this episode of Dragonball Z: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf30guKbc4> As you can see Goku and Piccolo have to fight an mighty opponent they can not defeat alone. Goku has to hold on their opponent until Piccolo charges up his attack and killing them both with a single blow, willingly sacrificing himself to safe his friends. In your world this mustn't be energy beams shooting at each other, but one human may hold the creature in place, while the other stabs it in the chest with a sword, killing both in the result. [Answer] An Unprotected Killing Blow What if the monster can only be killed by cutting a certain part that will always leave the human open just before the strike? If the monster is a perfect swordsman maybe you need to start the fight assuming you will need to die to have a chance to kill it. This assumes it can't be captured and you don't have bows. [Answer] One idea not suggested that I can see - the creature is actually an expert defensive swordsman, to the extent that it's practically impossible to kill it without significant superiority of numbers. Fast and agile, almost every attack will be blocked before reaching it, and injuring it nearly impossible - it seems to know where blows are coming from through skill / speed / precognition. There are two possible weaknesses here. * If it is some form of precog / skill then it simply cannot understand that one human being could willingly sacrifice themselves in order to bind the weapon and allow others to kill / or even simply to deliberately run themselves onto the sword to allow that final killing blow. * In all cases then by using all of their bodies together they can overwhelm the creature by simply not giving it any space to escape - and one of them grabs the sword, but the creature manages to pull it back - so they realise that only by using their body to sheath the sword will they be able to let their fellow humans get close enough to kill the creature. Both of these ideas have a sort of proviso that the creature's sword needs to be part of it, so it can't simply drop the weapon and continue to fight unarmed. They can't simply retreat and regroup, as the creature will gradually kill them all if they don't deal with it quickly. [Answer] The creature is "magical" thus possesses a body which is imbued with dark magic. Anything that comes close to it will inevitably be cursed. Once cursed, dire effects will haunt the victim, like bleeding from every orifice, disintegrating body parts, excruciating pain, madness, etc. During a fight, the effects won't occur, but afterwards they will. It could also be distance based (instead of only time: Get close for the curse, get far to trigger its effects). Humans feel their impending doom once cursed, even if the effects do not yet occur. Given the power of the creature, it is basically inevitable to avoid proximity at all times to it, if one decides to face it. The curse aura pierces any matter, and could also be caused by its long range attacks, but also by being hit by spells (it may be linked to the caster), or by victims being hit by spells (healing would also cause the curse). Meaning if you fight it, and it is indeed superior in strength, it will ensure the death of most people involved, if not everybody. Exceptions could only be archers, who would prove to have secondary or negligible roles at best. [Answer] If magic exists in your setting, the human must be afflicted with a curse/poison/ etc that causes their temperature to rise steadily until it reaches a maximum of a few thousand degrees. This is obviously fatal to the human, but if the creature has eaten them, it will be fatal to it too (as it's unprotected from inside). [Answer] The 'creature' is actually just a vessel for a mind controlling magic or parasite. This parasite takes over the body of a host, then uses this to achieve whatever ends after a short incubation period where the body of the host changes and adapts to what the parasite requires. In this case the parasite would take the body of a human host and increase its size, make changes to the nervous system for faster reflexes and maybe make other changes required for fast healing and recovery. The parasite resides in the head of the host body. But for the rest of the body to be usable and healable the head needs to be connected to the rest of the body. So stage 1 here would be to behead the creature. The parasite could regrow the rest of the body with magic if it was beheaded so you can't just chop off the head and leave it trapped somewhere. But regrowing an entire body might take a lot of effort and time. Transforming a new host body might be preferable to the parasite. So we can use this part of the killing process. To kill the creature you have to lure it out of the hosts body and into a new body. This would be our sacrificial hero beheading the creature and becoming the new host body for it. And while this new body is busy changing to suit the parasite it needs to be trapped, contained, then killed. The parasite would be left trapped without a living body to use as protection. And it can either stay trapped there or somehow killed. That's up to you. [Answer] The creature is aspected on both planes, physical and spiritual. To slay it on one plane alone would never kill it permanently, as any single facet of it's existence is mutually a re flexion of the other. To slay the creature, the warrior must ascent to a similar status, through magic and ingestion of strong but very poisonous substances, into a battle trance that, upon wearing off, will inevitable lead to death. First post in here, sorry for the English :) ]
[Question] [ I'm writing about people living in space who can mine asteroids and I'm wondering what minerals or other resources, if any, they might need access to larger planets for. Since planets and asteroids ultimately condensed from the same cosmic debris, I assume they would contain the same basic elements: iron, carbon, magnesium, aluminium, gold, nitrogen, etc. are all found in asteroids so you wouldn't generally need to visit a planet to find them. So that said, what substances not found in asteroids (especially ones with a known industrial use) are synthesized in large quantities by geological or biological processes and might therefore make planets valuable to space-dwellers? Earth's petroleum and Titan's hydrocarbon lakes come to mind. (Assume these people have access to technology like antigravity or space elevators or something else that makes it relatively cheap to lift resources out of a gravity well.) [Answer] Minerals of biological origin. Chalk, various types of limestone, marble, coal, fossils, petrified wood, amber, guano. It is surprisingly hard to find examples of non-biological minerals that are unique to planets. Early solar system conditions allow of the formation of minerals we would not think would be able ot form at a casual look at space conditions. Asteroids rich in hydrates, diamonds, and oxides all exist, minerals that we think of requiring planetary conditions. [Source asteroid diamonds](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/04/lost-protoplanet-diamond-meteorites-solar-system-science-spd/) [Source asteroid oxides](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016703719302121) [Source asteroid hydrates.](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002aste.book..235R/abstract) [Answer] Hydrogen and Helium Light elements are abundant in universe, but are hard to remain in small gravity bodies. However, gas giants Saturn and Jupiter are the obvious sources in Solar System. [Answer] Concentrated anything. Asteroids have everything mixed. Eventually, heavier minerals are deeper inside, if the asteroid has long enough molten past. They lack atmosphere and hydrosphere that can selectively dissolve, transport and precipitate minerals. Volatiles. Water, amonia, gases of any kind. Evaporated long ago. A tiny amounts may be found trapped in the crust. Comets are better targets for these. [Answer] Concentrated uranium & thorium ores. Obviously, rocky asteroids contain uranium and thorium as well, but only in very low concentrations. One might think that the density of such substances would result in them being trapped in planetary cores--and to some extent, they are--but the chemistry of uranium and thorium results in their compounds being preferentially concentrated in rocky crusts, which makes mining differentiated bodies like planets (or at least large spherical asteroids / minor planets) for them much easier than sifting through undifferentiated asteroidal material. [Answer] The most obvious ones are those made by living beings, but there are also those created in the presence of liquid water (like the ones they identified on Mars) or atmosphere (whether because of free oxygen, or because of the other gases in a reducing atmosphere, like that of every other planet in the solar system, or Earth's before blue-green algae). There's also possibility that gravity changes the formation of the minerals. Usually this would be in the direction of making them more irregular, but it might also make them more dense, like diamonds. [Answer] Ores. Most of the things we mine have been concentrated by hydrothermal or long-ago biological processes, which is the only reason they can be mined economically. [Answer] Anything that needs high heat and pressure to form. Diamonds are the standard example but others exist. Or even granite. It better be pretty cheap to lift, but maybe granite tile is all the rage amongst the wealthy. [Answer] Every [mineral that needs liquid water to form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_genesis#Hydrothermal_processes), i.e. minerals formed in hydro-thermal processes. Since small cosmic bodies such as asteroids lack liquid water and hot cores, hydrothermal processes are very unlikely to occur. [Answer] I'd believe that you shouldn't be able to find any mineral or rock that must have some kind of differentiation in their genesis, since most asteroids don't have the temperature or the time or the mechanisms to do such processes. Their composition is pretty much always iron-niquel. The rocks I'm talking about are things like granites, andesites, or acid rocks. [Answer] Basically any material that was build up by our oceans. So again lime(stone), any form of salt deposits (being regular NaCl "cooking salt" AND other salts used for solid fertilizers) Then stuff that formed under heavy compression deep below earths crust - like diamonds and other half / full jewels - smaller asteroids simply lack the pressure and conditions to allow them to build up But also magmatic material up to granite and similar like diorite [Answer] Simple sedimentary or metamorphic rock. Seriously. Asteroids don't have the flowing water needed to form sediments, nor do they have the tectonic activity needed to compress and heat rocks to make metamorphic ones. If you want some nice sandstone for your fancy space hotel, you'll need to import it from Earth or Mars. It might be possible to manufacture it, but I expect that would need specialised machinery. [Answer] ## Plutonium and product only obtainable thru fission If you're talking about elements(as opposed to molecules), then Plutonium can naturally occurs on planets (see the [Oklo Natural nuclear fission reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor)) but not in asteroid. Note that even inside the Oklo mine, you can not currently find Plutonium (it decayed long ago), but your civilisation can certainly find such a natural reactor still active somewhere and providing large quantities of Plutonium or ruthenium 100. With similar phénomenon, you can also get Tritium, usefull for nuclear fusion Of course, our human civilisation can obtain those element using artificial controled fission. It's up to you to imagine why this would be unpractical in your universe. [Answer] # Agricultural products Sure, you can grow small amounts of food in orbital growhouses and hydroponics. But planets provide you with plenty of space for large-scale farming, forestry and animal husbandry. When launch costs aren't too expensive in your world, then planetary agriculture might be far more economical than orbital agriculture. [Answer] # Bitcoin Because you can fit more server farms on a planet than on an asteroid. Also the Deep Space Network has very high latency, you get better internet on Earth's surface. # Drugs You can't grow weed and magic mushrooms on space rocks. ]
[Question] [ In my fictional world, there is a pre-industrial civilization that has advanced to a level of technology similar to that of the 15th-century Earth. This civilization is under constant threat from aerial attacks by large, fire-breathing creatures that are both intelligent and highly resistant to conventional weapons. Magic does not exist in this world, so the civilization must rely solely on their technology and ingenuity to defend themselves. The creatures, let's call them Drakons, are roughly the size of a small airplane with a wingspan of around 30 meters. They are highly maneuverable in the air and are capable of breathing fire that can incinerate entire villages in minutes. The Drakons are not invulnerable, but their scales are strong enough to deflect most projectiles, such as arrows and early gunpowder weapons. The Drakons are also intelligent, capable of learning from past encounters and adapting their tactics accordingly. They are not mindless beasts but rather a cunning adversary that poses a significant threat to the civilization. The civilization has been trying various defenses against these Drakon attacks, such as building fortified structures, utilizing early gunpowder-based weapons, and employing large ballistae. However, these methods have had limited success as the Drakons have adapted and become more strategic in their attacks. The citizens of this civilization live in constant fear, and their society has been heavily affected by the need to defend against these aerial threats. The leaders of this civilization are desperate for a more effective solution to protect their people and ensure their survival. Given these constraints and the context provided, how can this pre-industrial civilization effectively defend against aerial attacks from the Drakons without the use of magic? Additionally, what technological advancements or tactics might they develop to counter the intelligence and adaptability of these creatures, and how could these solutions be implemented in a way that fits within the established technological level of the society? [Answer] A normal human society would not try to defend itself against non-magical large, flying, fire breathing creatures. A normal human society would hunt them and kill them dead. Humans are very good at hunting and extirpating megafauna, especially large dangerous megafauna. * Steal their eggs and make omelet. They are delicious. * Capture them in nets and kill them. * Baited hooks work wonders. Large hooks. * Stalk them and kill them with appropriate ranged weapons. If bows are too weak, use crossbows. If crossbows are too weak, use [scorpions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpio_(weapon)). The thing is, large predators have very low population densities, because they need a lot of prey. What do those large, flying, fire-breating predators eat? Whatever they ate before humans came, its gone: the humans have converted the fields to agriculture, they have killed off all large prey. And humans have pointed sticks, and humans attack in large well-coordinated packs. Humans have very much larger population densities than any kind of large predator. By the 15th century, the large, flying, fire-breathing predators are a half-remembered legend; maybe they survive in remote and exotic locations, but definitely not in densely populated places. For example, in the Stone Age there were [lions in Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lions_in_Europe). Step by step they were extirpated, with the last European lions being killed in the 4th century CE. Or, have you heard about the [Nile crocodiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile_crocodile)? There are no more crocodiles in the Nile north of Aswan... [Answer] 15th Century? Cannons and seige Ballistas. Both of these would have both the power and the Terminal ballistics to be either a 1-hit kill or at the very least make Humans a very unappealing target. Most likely there would be other advancements such as a greater use of Chainshot and use of ballista fired nets, potentially some usage of grapeshot or scaled up grapeshot (think a cannon/dragon equivalent of double-ought buckshot) [Answer] How did people manage to defend themselves against wild beasts in the old times? They tamed some of these wild beasts and had them do the work. Why fight alone against wolves if you can turn a wolf into a dog and get its help? Your people can do the same. Domesticate or tame some of the Drakons (there is an advantage in being fed and cared of, so they won't necessarily oppose it) and have them help in patrolling the sky. [Answer] ## Surrender to their new Drakon overlords. Simply put, it sounds like these Drakons are strong enough to destroy anything they want, and tough enough to withstand any attack. In short, they're unable to be defeated. So, the only real viable option is for the humans to send forth emissaries to the Drakons to negotiate their surrender, paying whatever tribute the Drakons desire to turn aside their wrath. [Answer] You don't. Intelligence + air superiority + ranged, area of effect weapons + immunity to your projectile weapons? You might as well ask how a pre-industrial civilization defends itself against airstrikes and helicopter raids from a modern military base. You're going to need to resolve this with words and understanding. [Answer] Of the answers already posted I think that the two more realistic options are those of DKNguyen (i.e. humans are toast) and nick012000 (surrender). I'll add a further possibility. You can't fight them directly since they are so powerful, therefore the only thing you can do (beyond going extinct or trying to negotiate) is to exterminate them all. How? Weapons of mass destruction. In the 15th century? Maybe... In the 15th century humans had a rudimentary knowledge of medicine and of how diseases spread. There are records of rudimentary bacteriological warfare where assailants launched infected carcasses of humans and animals over the walls of castles under siege, in the hope a disease like the plague or cholera affected the defenders. So the only hope is to observe the Drakons and see if they suffer from some disease. Collect the body of some infected Drakon and then try to spread that disease, in the hope it will play a "War of the Worlds" trick on them. I will add that this kind of scientific approach to bacteriological warfare is not particularly surprising. Leonardo da Vinci, who was also a war machines engineer and an anatomist was born in the 15th century, and Galileo Galilei, the father of modern scientific method, was born just a century later. So the kind of "scientific approach and thinking" to this mankind-threatening menace would have been "in the air". --- BTW, you insist that magic doesn't exist in your world, but this is IMO inconsistent with your description of the Drakons, unless your world is another universe with different physical laws. There is no way a being big as an airplane can fly and be maneuverable as you imagine (big flying "dinosaurs" were not maneuverable at all). How would they lift-off? Flapping their 30m wings wouldn't work physically (modern airplanes that big need a lot of lift and a long runaway to take off). Moreover how would they produce fire? They would need some kind of fuel to ignite and spit. And they would need a big reserve of that, otherwise their attack wouldn't be as dangerous as you say. This would make them heavy, which is a big no-no with bird-like creatures. In addition, you say they are impervious to weapons, so they are armored, and this would increase their weight still more. And we haven't considered the fact that to ignite the fuel they would need to be somewhat fireproof, which adds to the weight. All in all I think that you might want to hint at the existence of some form of magic (maybe the humans don't know magic really exists yet) if you don't want to stretch too much the suspension of disbelief of your audience. [Answer] Most of the answers are about weapons for defence. Instead - defend by using the enemy's advantages against them. Any opponent with a 30 metre wing span will have difficulty fitting through a half-metre wide doorway, which is still ample space for a grown human to pass at a run. Look at the design of castles and how they force the attacker into an unfavourable position. Your Drakons can fly? Make them walk by moving anything valuable under ground. Force them to attack through the one larger entrance through which they can initially fit, but once inside it gets harder to turn around until you can attack vulnerable parts with less risk. Drakons breathe fire ? Stop building with flammable materials - make a solid stone keep with zero flammables as the community center where everyone shelters. It would be mostly buried with a series of surface defences in layers so the defenders can pull back slowly and lure the attacker into bad positions. If their skin is fire resistant, drop sticky warmed tar on to upset their flight characteristics and make them not-flying creatures for a while. All of this is to primarily to protect your assets and weakening the attackers is a secondary. --- Remember also that the best defence is a good offense So while the Drakon are attacking you, send your stealthiest fighters to attack their homes/nests. Steal the (thing-they-need) or the only viable royal egg of their deceased leader and use it as a bargaining point. --- Find something the Drakon want but can't do for themselves. Perhaps they get a drug-like high from smoking sea urchins or sponges, but can't dive underwater like a human can. Once your humans know what they want, bargain for peace. [Answer] Caves, dug dwellings, and stone houses with sealed stone doors Nocturnal If drakons sleep at night, humans can be outside and active then with torches. This presupposes drakons don't punitively destroy fields without visible active humans. If humans can't practice agriculture, then it quickly becomes "Humans are now primitive trappers and night gatherers." If torches are no good, then this idea is out. Camouflage Migration to areas the dragons are not interested in Deep forest, sea, desert, box canyons with narrow tops Gunpowder traps This one is difficult. You need nitrebeds, made with human or animal excrement, and it takes time and stinks to high heaven. If you can make significant amounts of black powder, then all you need is to draw in a drakon into an enclosed space and cause multiple explosions around it. Tear the wings, rush with pikemen. [Answer] But why are Drakons so aggressive against human civilisation? Let's find out what ticks them off so much and stop doing these things. [Answer] ## Hill fortresses or towers The fire weapon range of these things is limited, right? If so, put cannons or massive scorpions at the top of highly fortified towers or inside dug out hills. For the drakons to do much damage, they will have to drop to roughly the level of the town. At that point, the cannons or ballistae have gravity on their side. Cannons were already reaching huge sizes in the 15th century; if they can breach the walls of Constantinople, they can kill a drakon. As large, meat-eating (?) creatures, they can't be around in huge numbers. As long as a few are killed during each raid, it should be enough. ## Poison Poisons are decent by the 15th century. Poison their food. Poison their water. Poison more. [Answer] A lot of good answers about offense, defense and other strategies here, but I would like to go a slightly different route: Negotiation Obviously depending on the reasoning behind the drakon attacks, you should be able to determine why they are attacking and what you can do to come to an agreement or otherwise appease the drakons. Considering they haven't just completely wiped out humans, it's not that they seem as a threat encroaching on their territory or similarly endangering the drakons. So it seems likely that they are attacking just for food. Humans have spread far and wide and thus there is less food for drakons to eat, so they resort to eating humans. With this reasoning (though there may be other reasons), the humans can simply raise extra food; cows or sheep or whatever, and periodically can bring them to the lair of the drakon as a gift, or they could leave them on a nearby, easily visible hill so that when the drakon comes, it sees the 'tribute' and simply takes the cows instead, thus leaving the humans alone. [Answer] 1. Exhaust the Drakon. Let's assume the fire is not magic so that there are some cards to play. The Drakon must have some bladder of combustible material. Once that runs out, the creature can no longer expel fire. 2. Build defensively. Use mud, bricks stone, etc for above ground buildings. Build underground or in caves. Build where water is readily available 3. Learn biochemistry, specifically the chemistry of the Drakons fire capabilities. If you can poison it's ability to make fire, no more fire-breathing Drakons. This may also help in a longterm plan to domesticate them. 4. Are the Drakons just misunderstood and telling the people they should not be where they are? If they really are highly intelligent, what's the Drakon's motivation for burning down entire villages? 5. I'm assuming the Drakons and people co-evolved in this world. What has changed to make them a threat? [Answer] ## Frame Challenge I'm pretty sure a renaissance level civilization and being regularly hunted down by near-invincible and intelligent giant lizards is not compatible. Renaissance level civilization is a complex thing, you need many things for it to be possible, trade, large-scale agriculture, large cities. I would say any level of civilization requires humans to be the top of the food chain which is not the case in your scenario. If creatures like your dragons existed in large numbers, humans would be living in caves and would maybe eventually evolve to be nocturnal. They would never develop to anywhere near 15th century technology level. The only way your scenario would be possible is if the number of dragons was very small and their attacks were a very rare thing. Then a city under such an attack would treat it as something like a plague outbreak or an invasion. The people would try to hide as best they can, afterwards they would rebuild any destroyed buildings while the priests would declare that the attack was a punishment from God for the sinful lives of the city's citizens. This cannot happen more often than every several years or the city (and eventually the rest of civilization) will not be able to function. [Answer] Most of the answers here are focused on OFFENSIVE means of dealing with the Drakon threat. However, very few of the answers here include DEFENSIVE ways a civilization could deal with a ranged, areal, intelligent threat. Therefore, I believe that I can further contribute to this question by including purely defensive measures. Possible Defenses Against Drakon Attacks Terrian Defenses One of the simplest ways that the pre-industrial civilization could deal with the Drakon menace is to simply build their cities in places that would downplay the Drakons' advantages while maximizing their own strength. Perhaps the two largest advantages that the Drakon have is the ability to fly and their ability to produce fire. To minimize these advantages, there are a few places that a city could be built: * Caves/Underground Unless the dragons can somehow destroy mountains or the entire surface of the earth, building a city underground would force the Drakons to attack the city on foot, thus minimizing its ability to fly. * On/Near Water Not only would building a city far out to sea make it near impossible for the dragon to perform a sneak attack, but it would also help minimize their other advantage of fire. Building a city on/near water also gives the city the advantage of having the tools to stop most of the dragon's fires. * Flat Terrain. If all else fails, building a city on flat terrain at the very least makes it harder for the dragons to perform sneak attacks. Depending on how flat the terrain is, skilled peasants could see an attack coming from as [far as 24 km away](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/92098/from-what-distance-can-a-man-hear-and-see-an-airplane-flying-overhead-without-a), giving the city at least some time to prepare. Smoke and/or Fireworks Another way that the city could defend against dragons would be to minimize the advantage that the dragons have while airborne. One way to do this is to limit its visibility while airborne. Fireworks and smoke would both severally limit a dragon's ability to attack targets from above. According to this source, [Europeans had access to primitive rocket/firework technology by the 15th century.](https://ssec.si.edu/stemvisions-blog/evolution-fireworks) Therefore, it is probable that your 15th-century civilization could have access to the same technology. Fireworks give an extra bonus because, if the dragon is not careful, it could severally itself if it were caught in the blast. Another cheaper way to limit visibility is the use of a smoke screen. I assume that a dragon would be far more adapted to seeing through smoke than a human would, but it is still possible that a smoke screen would make it harder to focus on a city from very high up. Advance Fire Fighting A culture that had to deal with constant fires could develop very efficient fire-fighting methods. Perhaps it is required by law for citizens to have a few dozen gallons of water stored in their homes at all times to help stop fires, or maybe it's Emperor Frank the XVI's decree that all homes are built out of fireproof material. Whatever it is, having advanced firefighting would severally limit the damage that a single dragon could do using its flames alone. Air Raid Shelters Another way that the civilization could stop attacks would be to make simple air raid shelters. Even if cheaply built, having two different locations would double the amount of destruction that a dragon would have to do in order to kill the same amount of peasants. Scheduled Blackouts If a city had the policy of no natural light at night, a dragon would have a much harder time trying to discern one target from another. Plus it would also make it more obvious where/when dragon fire is causing havoc. Diplomacy If all else fails, maybe your civilization could defend against the dragons by taking advantage of their intelligence. I doubt that the dragons are an untied front. Perhaps your civilization could declare "loyalty" to one group of dragons to defend against other attacks. Or, even better, perhaps they could strategically tern different groups of dragons against each other. ]
[Question] [ ## It is said that eyes are the windows into the soul. In this case more like big openings to shoot into the head. Giant [mecha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecha) robots mimic the human form very closely despite their gigantism. In media this is done for obvious reasons. You wouldn't cheer for a giant octopus thing... well, actually I might. But the most likely reason for this humanization of giant war machines is to serve as a symbol of whoever owns it. It informs the people that this here is affiliated with humans. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GlPTV.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GlPTV.jpg) Here's the beloved Iron Giant as an example for my question. There's no human to compare the heights but notice that the eyes are huge (the Iron Giant is about 50 feet tall). The back of the eye sockets may be armoured as a precaution against headshots, however giant robots being blinded is very bad. You either have a radar or little hatch for a little pilot to look outside while simultaneously piloting the huge hunk of metal. Not ideal. The reason giant robots don't have facial windows is precisely because they have a pilot to protect (unmanned mechs are an exception). Even then, I'm not exactly sure why the eyes would need to be so large. I have a few theories but I'd prefer an explanation as well. ## Do engineers have a reason to make them so big. What did I miss? [Answer] Giant mecha are already implausible. Not only is the humanoid form impractical and inefficient for a machine per se, it's also immensely impractical for a machine which is 10 times the height of a human. Human legs wouldn't be an efficient way of locomotion due to the square-cube law. There is too little gravity and most surfaces would be far too soft for a robot of that size to walk like a human would. It would be like walking in a swamp on the moon. There is really just one reason to build giant mecha: Aesthetics. You are building a humanoid mech because you want it to look humanoid. Which means that your priority is already aesthetics over practicality. Which also means you are going to give your creation a human-looking face, even when most of its facial features aren't even functional. So those things on its face which look like eyes aren't actually its optical sensors. They are just for show. The actual optical sensors are much smaller and hidden elsewhere. [Answer] The "eyes" on a mecha are not actually camera ports, they're radar antenna ports, which require a much larger aperture because of the longer wavelengths used. They, of course, need to be on the head to raise them clear of objects on the ground and give them the longest possible line of sight. Cameras (in optical, IR, and other frequencies), laser rangefinders, and other instruments do happen to be mounted coaxially with the radars to provide additional target information but it isn't technically necessary for them to be mounted there. One can imagine the internals of such an "eye" to be not unlike the [AESA radar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_electronically_scanned_array) antenna [pictured here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_electronically_scanned_array#/media/File:Thales_RBE2_AESA.jpg) that happens to also have a coaxial optical sensor module at the top. Why two "eyes" on some mecha? Of course, that's highly classified military information, but speculation by analysts include [stereoscopic radar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_radar) sensing, symmetrical [bistatic radar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bistatic_radar) (i.e. transmit the pulse on one antenna, listen on the other to reduce self-jamming), separate [detection versus targeting radars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radar_types), separate operation at different [frequency bands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar#Frequency_bands) for different modes of detecting targets, or even just for redundancy in case of battle damage. [Answer] # Long Range, Low Light Vision Most answers assume normal bright daylight conditions. So we might as well ask: "Why do telescopes have such enormous eyes, when our tiny eyes work just fine?" The answer, of course, is that to look at very dim sources, you want to collect as much light as you can. And that means making your light collector as large as you can. So giant lenses/mirrors give your mecha the ability to see long distances and/or under very low-light conditions that traditional optics don't handle very well. Of course, I agree with the other answers that include full-spectrum EM sensing. But even at optical frequencies, having telescopes for eyes could be a tactical advantage under some scenarios. [Answer] # The eyes are made of a hyper dense alloy that can ignore nuclear blasts. We see this at the end. The nuclear blast didn't scratch the paint on his eyes. Eyes on humans are more vulnerable because of limitations in construction technology. Mechs can just make eyes from hyper dense alloys. # The head serves as a fire magnet, without actually being essential to functioning. We see this with Iron Giant as well. All their parts are capable of functioning independently. Having a head with glowing eyes serves to draw fire to a non essential part of their body while not actually increasing their vulnerability. [Answer] What looks like huge single eyes are actually gigantic [compound eyes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_eye), made up of arrays of many individual normal-human-eye-sized [ommatidia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ommatidium) - it's not so visible from the ground, but the eyes are actually curved significantly outward into a spherical-section shape, with the ommatidia mounted on the outer surface of a swivelling ball. Imagine something like this, except a circular sphere-section instead of elongated ![compound bumblebee eye](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Compound_eye_of_a_Bumblebee.jpg) (Image by Paweł Wałasiewicz at [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Compound_eye_of_a_Bumblebee.jpg).) Compound eyes provide excellent motion detection and an extremely wide view angle, without distorting the outer portions of the visual field like a fisheye lens would. Their downside is poor light-gathering ability and lower image resolution compared to a simple eye of the same size, but making the compound eyes person-sized allows each individual ommatidium to be large enough to have excellent light-gathering ability and resolution on its own, negating this disadvantage. Additionally, using a spherical-section compound eye allows the eye to be swivelled to face more downwards or leftwards or rightwards or upwards without sacrificing forwards vision, and it provides redundancy - even if part of the eye array is shot out, the remaining ommatidia can still see (with some loss in visual field and acuity in the areas covered by the destroyed ommatidia), so the enemy would have to destroy every single ommatidium to be certain of blinding the robot (and the designers probably also tucked supplementary ommatidia into other places on the head, singly or in small groups, to allow for some vision even with the primary arrays completely destroyed!), and the amount of each compound eye taken out by a single hit can be greatly decreased (potentially down to just a few ommatidia lost even from a cannon round straight to the eye) by separating the individual ommatidia with armored partitions. In contrast, a huge simple eye would be easy to completely disable with weapons fire, while a human-eye-sized simple eye, although harder to target, would still be totally disabled if a lucky shot did hit it. [Answer] A larger eye is indeed easier to target with something like a bullet, but if your objective is to withstand optical attacks intended to blind you, then a large detection area for a given field of view (i.e. a given amount of captured incident light), that would result in a lower incident power density over the detector area and thus allow you to better withstand such attacks. Now, such a design would result in a larger mechanism but the mechanism would not necessarily need to outwardly look larger since while the internal detector is large, the external light collecting element (i.e. lens) could be small. You could add an iris and zoom mechanism to allow the large detector to be adjust for sensitivity/ruggedness and field of view as desired. That would make it outwardly large. But another way it could be outwardly large is to use the same large detector with many smaller lenses resulting in a compound eye of sorts. If the small lenses were optically multiplexed to the large detector, and each lens had a small field of view pointed at a unique angle, you would have a system that is rugged to optical attacks with telescopic vision simultaneously with a large field of view due to the stitched image from each small lens. Since the detector is scanning through the lenses and only looking through one lens at a time, to blind it you would have to pump a lot of power through one particular lens. But since the detector effectively blinking between all the lenses, it would also have some protection similar to the blink response and it could just not return to scan a lens that was lit up too much for sometime. That way, you could not only withstand blinding attacks but you can see around them as well (seeing with your left eye while someone stabs you in the right eye so to speak, just don't look straight at them). Or, as an enemy, you could light up the specific lenses that the detector scans consecutively and heats up too much with no chance to cool but that is tough to achieve if the detector is scanning lenses pointed in opposite directions one after another. What's the catch? You give up "frame-rate" since you are scanning lenses. But if the scan rate and detector is much faster than your own eyes (or reaction times or enemy reaction times) then you will not notice the difference. [Answer] Mind - Machine Interface If you are going to have a giant humanoid shaped machine, you are also going to need someone or something to pilot it. The most likely candidates are going to be either a human pilot or an AI based on a human mind. For something so complicated to pilot, pulling levers and pushing buttons to operate is going to be impractical. The most likely scenario is a direct neural link between the pilot and the machine. So what does that have to do with robot eyes? If you are trying to develop a machine that is directly controlled by a human (or human like AI), it makes sense to make the machine 'inputs' resemble those of an actual human body. The human mind has evolved over millions of years to be able to process sensory input within specific ranges. The more you diverge from that, the harder it is going to be to find pilots who can successfully interface with the mech. Giving your mech 360 degree vision and infrared sensing isn't going to be much use if you can't find a pilot who can handle that sensory input. So if all of that is true, why not make the 'eyes' as small as possible? The size of the eye 'sensors' is going to determine how much light they can take in. If they work anything like a modern digital camera, having a larger area allows for a faster refresh rate without making the image too dim. At the same time, human vision is binocular, so you need to maintain the correct ratio of distance between the eyes to allow for proper depth perception. Combine those two requirements and you get boundaries on how large or small the eyes can be. ]
[Question] [ This magic is done by offering a tribute to god. The tribute is mana, the magical power source. You offer it up in return for a wish granted by god. The benefit of the magic is that the only bottleneck in using it is the mana cost and the person's imagination. The crazier the wish, the higher the cost. I wish to throw a basketball sized fireball at the donkeybutt over there. God grants the wish while taking the appropriate amount of mana as payment. My medieval society was introduced to tribute magic. A time before guns and the printing press. A person's mana capacity is how much they can gather in a day. Mana comes from god, it is humanity's daily allowance. Only humans can do magic. One millionth of the population are super magically gifted. They can split the Mississippi and walk across the split once a day. I would assume that creating an instant dam to contain all that water would probably kill a heck ton of people when the dammed up water goes rushing all over the place. The lowest 90% of people in terms of magical talent have enough mana in their bodies to use magic to hover for ten minutes and light fires and not too incredible things. Point is, there isn't enough mana to go around to really stop people from inventing things to make their lives easier. The problem is that tribute magic would only accelerate the growth of technology. It would be best if development of science is more or less similar with a non magical world. Using this magic, can't a group of very determined people start asking for wishes in a scientific and logical fashion to deduce the laws of reality? The laws of this magical world's reality is not in anyway the exact same as a non-magical world. There will be ghosts, and giants, and a known god. Science being cheated through because of tribute magic is still a problem though. How would the I change the rules of tribute magic to stop that from happening? Or even, what rules can I set up that would keep tribute magic from increasing the development speed of the sciences? I don't want my magical society to refine this magic to take the most efficient and effective path to killing people and doing things. I want tribute magic to foster creativity. I want for there to be a thousand schools of magic to be born from tribute magic. I want a world in which all sorts of whimsical and fantastical ideas comes to life because people used tribute magic to turn "what if? questions" into reality. This really doesn't have much to do with the question, but I thought it might help if you see the sort of world I want to create. If you all think that the most likely outcome is for humanity to advance in the sciences at the speed of light, then please say so. I'll ask for the question to be thrown into the void. I'll grudgingly move on and maybe visit Reddit. shivers I know it would be very difficult to decide the mana cost for wishes. I would certainly make mistakes when deciding mana costs in the the actual world creation. That is not a problem. I don't mind it since that is not an issue with tribute magic, but an issue with me not being all knowing. I just really would like for a world in which a magically talented child could wish for a pig to fly, and it would happen. The threat of rapidly developing science bothers me. The child wishing for a flying pig on a farm during medieval times and a child wishing for a flying pig in the middle of magical modern megalopolis are two very different different worlds to me. One is filled with wonder, and the other is filled with fire breathing reality TV stars. My question may be very annoying or inappropriate. I read the rules for asking questions and had a headache of it. There were so many links to so many suggestions. The whole "no opinions but subjectivity is sometimes okay" was very difficult to understand. I'm not too smart so I might just be breaking a holy law somewhere. I found many questions on this site about magic and science coexisting. It is related to my question but not quite enough to solve my problems. I'm past that. I care more about the effect magic would have on scientific progress. And specifically how to prevent them from giving too big of a boost to each other.. [Effects of Mana-based magic on Technological Development](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/111888/effects-of-mana-based-magic-on-technological-development) [Would science emerge in a world with magic?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/13384/would-science-emerge-in-a-world-with-magic) Edit For SlothsAndMe - To clarify. God cake is a possibility but unfortunately for mankind, only god has enough mana for that. As for delicious food. Hmm. I'll say that the less specific the wish, higher the mana cost/more random the result. It is like wild magic in dnd. Don't make a wish along the lines of: I offer tribute of all my mana. Give me something great. This wish would either go terribly wrong or terribly right. Or you might just get cake. The issue of wishing for things that increasingly strengthens a person all the way to the end of time has been brought up. This is a problem solved by adjusting mana cost of such a thing. Think of god as a game developer. He will scale the possibilities accordingly so that his game doesn't break.This issue is unrelated to my question. My original question was for answers that could help me solve my problem without calling on god to just limit scientific development with his god powers. As a rule of thumb, the more God has to interfere, the worse this world would be. Liesmith's Answer is the accepted answer based on the what I have seen so far. While his first two points was interesting, the 3rd point was almost a catch all solution that didn't require god to slap every scientist and smartypants for trying to ruin the balance of the world. I would like to point out such a non-god answer as something that exemplifies the sort of solution that would be perfect. I am not saying that all the well thought out "god answers" are terrible. They are just not ideal. I will of course implement some of those ideas as well. As for how Liesmith answer is a solution. Connecting the world's population to the power of magic is a great thought. Tech makes life better, which makes the population limit higher. But a higher population would decrease the effectiveness of using magic as an instrument of science. When the population becomes so high that magic becomes too basic for the conman scientist to cast "magical sight" to see bacteria, humanity may have to pay the price for failing to develop a microscope. The result would either be to start inventing the things they have always used magic to do over time, or mass slaughter for the sake of science/more mana. [Answer] Here's a few possibilities you could adapt for your setting: 1. Scientific knowledge reduces the efficiency of wishes. Consider this: a child wishes for a pig to fly, but has no real knowledge of what that would mechanically entail - he simply has faith that their God will handle it. With the innocence and imagination of a child, his connection to this god is most "pure". Numerically, we could say that this wish takes 10% of his mana. Conversely, let's say that a biologist makes the same wish. He knows that this is organically impossible. The necessary wingspan to lift that much weight is immense, and the caloric requirements are insurmountable. When he makes the wish, it takes 110% of his mana because his mind is reinforcing the very laws of physics he's trying to break. The wish doesn't work, because his thinking is too rigid. This would result in a society which has a symbiosis between scientists and spellcasters. The scientists help build the modern world, but they have to go to spellcasters for the crazier things. It's sort of like hiring an artist who can warp reality. 2. The god himself wants humanity to grow. Since the magic in this setting is granted by a deity, he could simply refuse to ever give pure knowledge for a wish. A scientist could with for a metal plate the exact size and composition he needs (and repeat this wish daily until he has enough), and assemble a Large Hadron Collider, but he couldn't just hook a random text generator to a printer and try wishing for the random output to be an accurate description of otherwise unknown physical laws. In this context, the god will allow humanity to undertake logistical shortcuts, such as some degree of mining and manufacturing, but they still must learn on their own. This option also works if you want to have spellcasters fighting each other at some point: the god is willing to let humans use his gifts for warfare, because even that will ultimately foster growth. However, he won't allow something like a magical nuke which could harm the entire planet. 3. Mana is zero-sum for the entire species. In this instance, there'd be 10 billion mana per day(for example) for the entire species. If a third of humanity is wiped out by a plague, then the remaining 2/3rds is still drawing upon that same 10 billion mana. As the human population grows, the overall magic available to the average person will become weaker, and people will become more reliant on science to improve their everyday lives. A stable medium will be reaches for a period of time, before magic diminishes too far to be useful. This would give you some interesting hooks to use in the setting: you can set the story in the "modern era", where magic and technology are in balance, or a few decades later, when magic is in decline. There could even be factions which want to wipe out a chunk of humanity to return the world to the "Mystic Age", when even the average person was said to be a demigod compared to today. [Answer] Unpredictability Failing predictably(and iterating from failure) is key to scientific pursuits. If you don't wish for your magic system to be science'd out, you should take away the "predictable" part. Thus, your wish-granting god should uphold a set of loose ethical guidelines rather than rigid rules that people would try and game. For example, if someone wishes for "that annoying neighbour to drop dead", your god would find that inappropriate, but s/he/it can deny that wish in more than one way. Your first try could get you temporarily transformed into a [yodeling humanoid chicken](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miomuSGoPzI), a repeat attempt might make you temporarily forget that person exists, and so on. All kinds of consequences are possible; a deity with a sense of humour helps. In short, the deity should actively hinder attempts to narrow whatever rules there are down beyond fuzzy guidelines like "don't wish for bad things" [Answer] A society so full of magic would have several huge bottle necks with their technological progress. Because science is often a matter of incremental improvements, if you can outperform the first several steps toward discovering something with magic, then getting to step #8 where science actually starts to pay-off would be really unlikely. For Example: If you can just throw lighting from your fingertips with all lethality of an assault rifle, then you've cut out the need for all the technologies that led up to the development of an assault rifle. (gunpowder, barrel rifling, iron sights, bullet cartridges, gas repeaters, magnesium firing caps, etc.) Since no 1 person is likely to independently discover enough things to make an assault-rifle that could rival finger lightning, it would likely never happen. There is also a tendency for people to trivialize that which conflicts with their own way of doing things. For example, most highly developed countries out-right reject mysticism, herbal medicine, etc. because they are seen as not as effective. You society would likely reject science if it's seen as a bunch of ineffective mumbo-jumbo; so, your % of people interested in exploring science would be much smaller. Also, people who get their power from a deity would likely perceive science as a way of cheating their god out of tributes. This could make it very taboo, if not outright heresy. Your deity himself may even see science that way and refuse to give power to people who try to use science to replace him. [Answer] ## Knowledge is priceless Knowledge endures. Give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. Teach someone to fish and you feed then for the rest of their life. But we're not done yet, because while a fish is finite (unless you're Jesus), knowledge is not. If I know how to fish, I can teach you to fish, and now we can catch two fish a day. And once we teach our children, fish will continue to be caught long after your life has ended. It's impossible to magically learn to fish because it's not possible to pay the cost of the knowledge, which is equivalent to the billions upon billions of fish that will be caught with that knowledge. ## Of course I exaggerate. The cost of learning to fish would not actually be that high. People already know how to fish. The knowledge being asked for won't allow for the capture of billions of fish, because those fish would be caught anyways. So learning to fish will only factor in the fish you catch, modified based on the ease of finding someone else to teach you. It's only new knowledge that is priceless. [Answer] The logical end state of this world is that a group of powerful magical people get together and use their mana to become elite god kings, hoarding most technology to themselves, killing wizards who oppose them, and gaining increasing power from wishes. So, to stop that, you need rules for the tribute magic. Make your god ethical. 1. Spells which are more creative and unique and less domineering are cheaper. The god would grant greater power to people if they were fair, did interesting things, and didn't try to rule each other. This would limit the development of cities and wars, and without cities science would be much slower. 2. Magic tends to make interesting solutions, not technology. If you ask to solve a problem magic may give you a way. Ask to ride a horse better, you can get an enchanted saddle. It doesn't tend to give you a better saddle though. It is inherently not prone to making army worthy solutions. 3. It's expensive to overcome resource shortages. If there's not enough metal that could majorly retard science, but if they could simply summon a sea of metal, harder. Make it expensive to summon vast amounts of material. [Answer] Magic is temporary. In fact, you've already established this: > > One millionth of the population are super magically gifted. They can > split the Mississippi and walk across the split once a day. I would > assume that creating an instant dam to contain all that water would > probably kill a heck ton of people when the dammed up water goes > rushing all over the place. > > > The lowest 90% of people in terms of magical talent have enough mana > in their bodies to use magic to hover for ten minutes and light fires > and not too incredible things. > > > Someone from our place and time who knew what we wanted to invent but couldn't remember the details could ask god for, say, a printing press, then have a couple people help take notes for the 10 minutes before it disappeared. In a couple of weeks, they'd have all the logistics worked out and could start building. Maybe. But technological progress doesn't work like that. The chances of someone from that society being able to ask for future tech so they can figure out how to design it is pretty low. More likely, they'd ask for a job to be done. "Plough my fields" instead of "show me a better plow design so I can copy it." (I'm assuming the results of magic last even if the implements don't.) Even those "super magically gifted" folks can't make permanent things with magic. The Mississippi River doesn't have a permanent passageway in your example. (And yes you could design it as not to flood anything upstream; hopefully god does that automatically.) Even if you could get a permanent machine out of the deal, people are more likely to ask for their own vs learning how to build their own. If that still speeds things up too fast for you, then make tangible objects disappear. *On the other hand, if food sticks around for as long as it would last in the real world, well plenty of food around is a really good incentive not* to invent stuff. Ditto other basic needs being met. It might give people time to invent really awesome art though. And amazing craftwork. And writings. And music. Things people do when they aren't spending all their time surviving. Technology? That's for people who need more stuff or more efficient ways of getting stuff.** [Answer] Science ferrets out truth through the use of repeatable and reproducible experiments. Deny science repeatability or reproducibility and it starts to falter rather quickly. Our modern science is built around the assumption that there exist laws of nature which never change (or, at the very least, that we can model the world as if this were true). Gravity will pull the apple down when you let it go. It will do so every time, exactly the same. This gives you a chance to measure it. If there are no such immutable laws, then science cannot find any. The apple may drop at different rates. Or it may even feel like not dropping at all. It may have a conversation with you. We often like to view wishes like the magic you describe as having hard edges. If I wish for an apple to levitate, the side effects are restricted to the apple. Or at least they're restricted to the nearby area, or to a short time. But what if that wasn't true. What if the god maintained some cosmic balance of sorts, where a major change like "levetation" over here might have tiny changes in the forces of gravity over there. Or maybe it has funny effects, like apples taste ever so slightly less good. Or maybe they start to taste like pears. If wishing had this effect, science would have trouble achieving its cold hard reproducability. It could still be locally useful. You might drop an apple a few times to get the hang of what gravity is doing today, before tossing one at a friend. But the behaviors over the course of months and years that are required for proper scientific rigor may simply not be an option. If this was done, there is of course a fascinating fixed point: wishing seems to work. If these wishes don't work, your magic system falters completely. I'm assuming that's not what you want, so we have to assume that anything which seeks to prove that wishing works will find the result they desire. So now you have to prevent your scientists from plumbing the exact grammar of wishes. For this, I recommend turning to Dungeons and Dragons. In particular, I recommend looking at the Wish spell. These scientists would be remarkably similar to players trying to outwit their Dungeon Master by crafting increasingly tricky wishes. The Dungeon Master's Handbook and [many other resources](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/) are chock full of excellent examples of how a DM can field intentionally troublesome wishes without breaking consistency. Can your scientists truly outwit a god? [Answer] # God gets bored and may twist the wishes for his own amusement. Science doesn't work very well with a sample size of 1 individual with it's own whims that may include stymying investigation into it's own nature. As such the prices and how cooperative the god is varies depending on the how, what and why of the wish. 10 people sitting around with checklists working their way through a long list of small, predictable, boring wishes may very well lead to the god answering them in such a way as to maximally mess with them. ## Magic works better when it's novel and interesting. On the other hand it may look more kindly upon creative and interesting wishes such that the god gifts them with greater effectiveness and lower mana costs. Similarly for people in interesting situations. 2 mages of equal strength face each other. one wishes to throw a rock really hard at their opponent, the other wishes to throw a 4 dimensional fractal of broken time at the other in the shape of a chicken. The god has seen millions of thrown rocks but has never seen what happens to someone who gets pulled through a chicken shaped 4 dimensional time-fractal so favors that caster with more power and effectiveness than they would otherwise have. [Answer] The people of your world would most likely lack the philosophical underpinnings that led to the development of real science. One of the key assumptions of modern science is the inductive principle. I.e. Perform a experiment 100 times and you should expect it to get the same result on the 101st time. Your people would not necessary think this is true. They don't live in a world that is regular and predictable, but driven by the random intervention of the gods. Even if the basic functionality of their world like ours is predictable and the action of the gods is merely a more superficial random layer on top, there is very little chance they will come to realize this. The scientific method just wouldn't make sense to them. Why would doing an experiment 100 times tell us anything about how the world works, the gods can make it do whatever they want next time. This doesn't mean there wouldn't be technology and engineering, but that it would come about in a more accidental haphazard kind of way and wouldn't really lead to further scientific discoveries, somewhat like in our world until a few hundred years ago. [Answer] Magic ruins science God created the world with a set of rules but he isn't restrained by them. If he decides to grant a wish, he'll do it ignoring all the laws of the universe and you'd have no way to deduce anything from it nor reproduce it. He will also ignore any requests too complexes, so you won't have wish like "solve my theorem" and he refuses any time related wishes ("I wan't my experiment to be finished now"). [Answer] # Magic requires love Instead of it being about the "purity" of a wish, instead make the wisher have some love for God within their heart. The scientist merely wishes to know how the Magic Wish God works and they make wishes trying to test God (i.e. they make wishes as an experiment), but a child has no such desire, and merely desires to make wishes to please God out of their love for him. This sets things up where a Scientist must unlearn their desire to understand, and have a simpler faith in (and thus come to love) God. [Answer] ### The Gods can veto tributes and object to being studied Although the Gods don't mind when humans scientifically study the world, they get offended when humans try to scientifically study the Gods themselves. It's rude and impertinent. The Gods are mighty, mysterious, and incomprehensible (or at least they want like to be regarded that way). They are not to be measured, formulated, and exploited by lesser beings. If a God detects that a tribute is for science, they will veto it. Science is a violation of the TOW (Terms of Worship). This actually throws several major wrenches in the scientific process. Science relies on being able to observe a phenomena in controlled conditions. But if the Gods will never grant a tribute in controlled conditions or under observation, that can't happen. Science also relies on consistently testable rules. The Gods in general follow a policy of granting tributes, but since they can make exceptions when they get offended, the rules are not consistent. A more general application of this idea is that in order for your tribute to work, it mustn't offend the God you give tribute to. For instance, if you make a proper tribute to a lawful-good God and ask for a weapon to terrorize innocent people with, your tribute will be vetoed just because the God does not approve of your purpose for the tribute. It seems logical that the Gods should impose some of their will on how people can use magic, since otherwise there is no purpose to having intelligent deities as part of the magic process at all. [Answer] > > Using this magic, can't a group of very determined people start asking for wishes in a scientific and logical fashion to deduce the laws of reality? > > > How would the rules of tribute magic to stop that from happening? Or even, what rules can I set up that would keep tribute magic from increasing the development speed of the sciences? > > > Cultural/interpersonal reasons should completely suffice. How many thousands of years did it take Mankind to observe gravity and identify it as a predictable force that could be exploited for mechanical advantage? How long did it take after Leonardo Da Vinci accurately postulated or discovered the heart's role in blood circulation, for this to become accepted medical knowledge, entirely independently from his observations and against all the authority of Galen? For that matter, how long did it take the ancients to realize that diseases and illness were caused by factors they themselves could control (such as food hygiene and dirt in wounds) rather than being revenge from the Gods? (They really never did realize it, actually—those societies collapsed still believing their superstitions.) How long did it take our modern society's electrical knowledge to catch up with Nikola Tesla? Oops, we still haven't. You talk about the "development speed of the sciences." Sciences move at a glacial pace. Anything which is contrary to the "old school tie" is fought bitterly by the established authorities. I could cite modern examples of this, but by definition these are contentious. One example that should by now be broadly recognized as incorrect except by financially vested interests is the use of electric shock to "treat" insanity. (This is still used today, including on infants.) You're not accounting for the mental strength necessary to shift one's beliefs. You wouldn't need any special mechanism to prevent people from discovering the laws of the universe. Or you could put it another way, that there is such a mechanism already present in how people's minds are constructed, and it's true in our world as well as in your fictional world. [Answer] > > "I want a world in which all sorts of whimsical and fantastical ideas comes to life because people used tribute magic to turn "what if? questions" into reality." > > > This sounds a lot like the idea of experimenting and curiosity which is the foundation of science. Anyone who tries to learn anything about how the system works and seeks to repeat what they have done in the past technically performing the scientific method. I don't know how to phrase this, but I see this mentality often. The idea that science is somehow boiling everything down to facts and that it cheapens things. The idea that science is at odds with art and creativity. This isn't the case. > > I want tribute magic to foster creativity. > > > Science is not the antithesis of creativity. I would argue that science is always creative since it is explicitly about learning the unknown. You are a trailblazer. There's not a known way to go about the things you are studying. > > I want for there to be a thousand schools of magic to be born from tribute magic. > > > Scientists don't always agree on things. Once something is studied enough then most people would start to agree, but on the fringes of what is known there will be disagreements. In addition, the way science works is by attempting to disprove peoples' hypothesises, there is not a way to truly "prove" things for certain. As such you could have people who continually challenge base beliefs that people have long since accepted as true. Maybe occasionally these radical yet fresh perspectives end up being right in your setting. In short, I don't think your perspective on science is correct, you can still have a world full of unknowns and changing beliefs while not skipping "science". [Answer] I think, that you are too concerned with rules and not enougth with the god. Your gog sounds like machine - you wake up morning tic-toc your daily mana is delivered to you in the same amount day after day. You say wish tic-toc god consults pricelist and fullfills it for exact number of manapoints paid. Took me only so long until I could count the price of wish too and start "optimising" my mana accounting by taking min-max approach as real munchkin does all time. Here the god is just the lowest servant paid for work in mana, so why not making him work more efectively for the same paiment? I have other solution: Bored god The god is immortal, almighty, knows all, had seen all and is totally bored. BOOOOOORED - there are millions people and half of them wishes for start fire in stove at noon (if food is too expensive for them). Where is the fun to serve all of them as convenient matchbox? So do it other way - god is almighty, bored and easily offended. He made people some time ago, he cares about them (somehow), he gives them some mana, as he see to fit and he helps them, if they need. But he mainly want be amused. Wish for fire in stow and well, if there is wood and paper, it may burn. Do it week long in the same wording and enough is enough and what catch fire is your undies. Much better. Much more funny. Start the fire in stove with your burning undies, fool. But wait, what? Flying pig? much more interesting. Well for the first thousand childs at least - there are possibilities - wings as a fly or as an eagle? Or angel? Or maybe baloon shape would be more funny, lets try it and top it somehow, if it should fly, why not also sing as bird? Or maybe let it leave rainbow from its ass, why not? And give the child more mana next time to came with something new. If somebody try to fit the miracles into formulas, he may be funny at first and let gave him some nice results - exgragete everything for him, but if he does the same hundred times to get exact formula, just lagh and say him, that it all was just a joke and it does not work the way, he tested. And do not support his wishes next time, so his results are even worse, not better, than should be. Science is boring and so does not work. And if does not get the hint, then more and more things came wrong for him - and if he still try the same, then KABOOM, not only his test failed but his head exploded too. Well being boring in this world is not safe option. And if you cannot at least try amuse you god and ask for your fire in different ways then the results are worse and worse nad you have bad luck and illness and such - until you realise, that you are too boring to live here and maybe take a bag and went on advature - not on the main road, but to the woods and hills. That is change and you are at least little more interesting, your illnes ends, and if you take unusual ways, meet strange creatures and explore old dungeons, you may return with lot of gold and luck. So adveturing is common way of improving your boring habits and get better life. And so many people do it. And they may wish for tree with wine bottles on the way and so the tree is there and the world is more iteresting again. And next adventurer will find the tree and may wish for nice mountain top on horizont or even flying island. Way to improve your karma :) But brething fire on main square? Interesting for few days, but doing the same again and again? One day you see yourself inhaling the fire, not breathing and so promising media start take its end. Became boring - just lager fire is not more interesting. You must came with new ideas each month to be amusing for your god, otherwise you fall to the grey average soon and stop it yourself. Or not and take bad end. Well Joe Average is not extra amusing and knows that - so his wishes are small and he do not get much interest from his god, if he at least try a little. His advatures are small and his mishaps too and he only make the colorit and crowd. That is, why 90% of people do not have much mana - they are not much funy, nor extra boring. (Well to be just sligtly boring from lack of creativity is not punished by so much as willingly try to bore your god by repeating still the same experiment again and again. So to repent for lack of creativity two or three days exploring in woods near willage - with sitting to hedgehog family by mistake or falling to shallow stream and be found by willagers naked while drying your clothes - makes you clean for month or two even without intent on your side) Heroes are heroes and do big things (and god looks on them closely), but as god cares about all people (he gave some mana to everyone) then hurting people is not good idea and is too risky - because who knows, maybe this small girl yesterday invented sparkling flying unicorn and god like her today more than you. So heroes are not warlords, but rather explorers, monter killers and knight on white horse - galant and helpfull - it is much safer to fight dragon, who may try to terorise village, that to kick the small girl who invented unicorn. In the first case god will help you to make things more interesting, in the second he may destroy you in anger and with extra effects (be it from his god will, or from all unicorn mana offered by the girl? Who knows! Dragons are more safe target anyway.) --- This way you stop science (none consistent results, repeated measurement take revenge from god), enforce arts, exploring and interesting landscape (both as revarded inventions and way to get from misery of being too boring). Magic works as much as you want, but unpredicably and in creative ways and interesting strories are integral part of that world. Also as there is a lot of space for miracles, there is not presure for technology. Reserching years peniciline is risky boring and does not heal illnes if it is revenge from god. Going at night to woods and hoping for golden flower to heal magically your ill mother take like day or two, brings result and big story along. Much more effective. And the rule for magic is really simple - be interesting and amuse your god. Or at least try. Do not be boring and all will be good somehow. Everybody knows it and nobody needs to know much more to make colorfull world. [Answer] I'll give you three options. They may be mixed and matched if you feel creative. It's all about prerequisites Your god may simply be very literal. If you ask for knowledge, he, she or it will give it to you, but you didn't ask for understanding. If you ask for technology, you didn't ask for the user manual. Or the power plant to run it. And if you ask for understanding or the user manual, it's in a different language, or far beyond your level of understanding and blows your brains out, figuratively or not. There are questions on this site that deal with sending a time-traveler into the past and what knowledge or technology would be needed to alter the course of human developement. Your smartphone becomes a useless brick in a prehistoric cave, your knowledge of medicine is pointless if people will burn you at the stake for witchery. I think these questions would be a good frame of reference for you. The time traveler is god, their goodies is the wish, the only difference is cavepeople didn't ask for it. You might find that there is no shortcut from club to laser gun without centuries of evolution. God.com This title is about domain. In polytheistic pantheons, gods rule over a domain, be it war, love, wine, fertility, etc. The sky isn't even the limit, you have divinities associated with the Moon, the Sun or other stars. Point is, your god may be leftover from a vast pantheon and only has domain on certain things, like the natural world. God can move mountains, split the Pacific Ocean, make it rain but it, he or she has no domain over science and technology. And then it's like asking Athena for better bedroom performance. You're simply praying the wrong altar. God doesn't exist There is no god. Your people think there is, but they are wrong. They make the Mississipi split, they conjure the fireballs. They can't ask for advanced technology because they themselves simply have no conception of it. How do you conjure something you don't know exist? God is a nice explaination for this magical stuff, but, ultimately, there is no will, no power, no entity above intelligent life. That may challenge your setup. But if you think about it, we attributed rain, thunder and disease to one god or another. We have a vastly different understanding of things in 2019. Your world may not be that different. The universe does its thing, and when you pour mana into it, magic happens. So you call that an act of god, but in reality, it's an act of you. You are* god. [Answer] People already tried to use magic to deduce the laws of reality. It didn't work out so well. According to Einstein's Theory of Magical Relativity, magic takes on an "appearance" that reflects the frame of reference of the user, including the user's preconceived notions of how the world works. In other words, it only reflects the laws of reality as well as the user already understands them. This makes it surprisingly useless for determining the laws of reality. If we assume that your fictional world has a similar history to our own, then we didn't always know that. Aristotle had great magic power, and he tried to use it to advance human knowledge in exactly the way you suggest. But because the magic reflected his existing world view, what he actually got* was what we call Aristotelian natural philosophy, which dominated Western knowledge for the next few centuries much as it did here. Francis Bacon's theories of empiricism came about largely because he had been noticing inconsistencies between recordings of Aristotle's teachings and what he observed objects doing outside those records (it is worth noting that Bacon was very weak in magical power). Isaac Newton -who was famously interested in religious matters even in the real world- expanded on Bacon's ideas, but he couldn't resist using tribute magic to help with some of the harder bits. His instruments might not have been sensitive enough to show any difference, but there was one, and so his set of experiments yielded Newtonian physics: a closer approximation of how reality works, but still not entirely there. Einstein was the one who figured out that you well and truly cannot use magic to determine the laws of reality. This is where his Theory of Magical Relativity comes from, developed before General and Special Relativity but crucial to how he developed them in your world. He was very dismayed when people started using magic to confirm his other two theories. Which they did, at the time, because they could not do otherwise. They still do, for the most part, unless you have a deep understanding of quantum physics. Spooky action at a distance indeed. [Answer] First, my answer will assume an "indifferent wish granter" as mentioned in the comments of one of the previous answers, as the comment indicates that this type of deity was originally the desired one (even if that desire has since changed). Next, to me, the key to this whole thing is the concept of: "a group of very determined people start asking for wishes in a scientific and logical fashion to deduce the laws of reality" So, based on those two points, above, my proposed solution would be to take in to consideration many of the variables within the wisher's own mind/heart/soul/etc., and make them key aspects in how the results of the wish are manifest. So "determination" and "logic" and their counterparts "indecision" and "absurdity", among other variable personality traits such as mood, would actually play a role in how the wishes take effect. In this way, a determined and logical person would get determined and logical results from their wishes, and their testing would lead to logical conclusions, BUT when they share this information with someone else, and that other person attempts the same wish, the differences in personality, determination, logic, mood, expectations, etc., between the original wish tester and the new one will cause a result that will not match the result expected by the original tester. For example, person A is using scientific method to test wish functions. For his test, he chooses to wish for a pig to fly. Each time, without fail, he gets the same results, the pig 'levitates' directly up from the ground, reaches a certain height, and then slowly returns to the ground. Excitedly, he tells person B about these results, and asks them to make the same wish, in the same way. Person B makes the exact same wish (as exact as two different people can be), but this time, instead of the pig simply levitating and returning to it's original position, it actually physically sprouts wings and uses them to fly away, never to be seen again. Was it because Person B wasn't as focused or determined as person A? more imagination? not enough (or too much) logic? is it just because he thought the idea of a flying pig was amusing? is he just a more frivolous person in general? was he in a better mood, or a worse one? No person, or group of people, no matter how determined, could pinpoint the causes of these variations among so many possible combinations of so many variables that are so vaguely definable in the first place. In frustration, Person A gets a new pig, and wishes for it to fly, expecting it to levitate temporarily and return to the ground, as before (or maybe to sprout wings like his friend's wish). But this time, it rockets in to the sky so fast that it's almost immediately lost from view ... now he's more confused than ever. This solution allows the Deity to be as indifferent, or actively involved, as needed or wanted by the story teller. But the bottom line is that no matter how determined or logical the scientific approach might be, and while wishes can still follow logical and scientifically sound rules known to the story teller (if they so desire to create them) and to the audience (if the story teller decides to let them in on the secret) the results of the wishes would never be consistent enough to be useful for scientific progression among the characters in the story, even if they seem to be over short term tests. [Answer] You could have the wish magic behave according to each persons personality, making each wish unique like the person, say a Logical person wishes for a pig to fly, boom a pig in a catapult being flung through the air, making it so scientists cant gain magic for science, while people who are less logic and more faith have more real or closer to what they want wishes. This could also apply to people who are twisted and evil to have their wishes perverted, like deals with the devil. You would probably want to make wishes that are more specific use more mana as this would help stop people gaining the system. [Answer] Creation magic mimics the Creator When the creator first commanded the world into being, the commands did not disappear completely into nothingness, but remained. The difficulty of casting magic depends on three things: * The scale of the casting (how big of a change does it make?) * The specificity of the casting (I want something good vs. 2m radius fireball from my palm) * How long ago the commandment that the mage is drawing upon was spoken. For example, it might be that the commandments were done in this order: > > 1. On the first day, He saw the chaos, and told it "Obey", and it obeyed. > 2. On the second day, He saw the void, and told it "Be filled with light", and it obeyed. > 3. On the third day, He saw the light, and told it "Take form", and it obeyed. > 4. On the fourth day, He saw the waters, and told them "Part", and they obeyed. > 5. On the fifth day, He saw the stones upon the Earth, and told them "Take root", and they obeyed. > 6. On the sixth day, He saw the foam upon the waters, and told it "Swim", and it swam. > 7. On the seventh day, he saw the clouds upon the air, and told them "Fly", and they flew. > 8. On the eighth day, He saw mud filled with heat from the fires below, and told it "Crawl", and it crawled. > 9. On the ninth day, He felt loneliness, for there was none like him in all that He had created. And he told one of the beasts "Be as I am", and it formed Man. > 10. On the tenth day, a remnant of the Chaos he had turned saw what He had created, and was furious. He began to tear at Creation, and so He said to his creation which He had made to be peaceful "Fight and destroy", and so all of Creation rose up to destroy the one of Chaos. But He was filled with sorrow, for in fighting the Chaos, it had become as Chaos. > 11. On the eleventh day, He said "Adapt", and Creation adapted to peace, and to war. For though He could not undo what He had done (for every commandment rested on the one before) He could keep some things Holy. > > > For this reason, fundamentally altering how reality behaves is all but impossible, creating energy from nothing is exceedingly difficult even for people with extremely large reserves, making matter from energy takes a life of study, restructuring the land takes an expert, plants can't be produced by the average mage, most adepts can produce a tadpole, an exceedingly talented child could manage to make a pig grow wings and fly, a rodent is somewhat a rite of passage, a basic golem is fairly, fireballs and lightning bolts can be accomplished by practically any mage, and anyone with a hint of mana can make a non-stick charm. [Answer] # New technology must be approved by the high priest It is a sin punishable by death to create new technology that God does not approve of, so all new ideas must go through the high priest to ensure that the technology does not violate God's commandments. If a person invents a new technology without approval, God will smite them with a bolt of lightning. God has a specific plan of technological development in mind and will continue to allow development at his own pace because it fits his goals for the human species. Develop too fast and they lose the need for God and magic. Because he loves his chosen species and wants to maintain that connection through magic, he does not allow technology to replace him. ]
[Question] [ First off habitable planets play a major role in this setting. Furthermore this is a setting whose elements somewhat require that the surface of planets are not soft targets. In particular planets are defended not just by laser satellites and surface to orbit missiles, but also by umbrella shield generators that protect cities and fortifications in particular. However I run into a major issue where the importance of planets becomes difficult to justify because the shields that somehow can defend entire planet bound cities could similarly be used on space stations or larger space ships. The exact nature of the fields I'm still toying around with as well. The closest handwavium candidate I have is something that interacts with a planet's gravity well. Which makes the explanation something to the effect of 'Something something, gravity well, something to do with gravitational gradients, and something to do with flat space and curved space However, while I can't be sure, I get the feeling it's a bit of a sloppy justification, in particular I can't even articulate what the shield is even doing in the first place and therefore leaves the potential for holes I might not be prepared for. So what pseudo-plausible but consistent handwavium could I use to explain why shields that planets use in defense, are strangely more practical in operating on the surface of planets than other environments? [Answer] The shield offloads the energy in the atmosphere. Energy is a strange thing. We think of a nuclear bomb as a lot of energy, but a breeze across a prairie holds similar energy. Weapons try to damage something by having a lot of concentrated energy, your shields mostly function by distributing this energy across an immense space, possibly even the ground. Shields in space don’t have that atmosphere to offload the energy and will need to tank everything with purely the shield and some stored materials instead. [Answer] # Space stations are too small. Planet shields have the full power grid of a planet to draw on, and an immense amount of mass. As such, they have hundreds of times more power to draw on than most space stations or space ships. This means they can generate immensely powerful shields that are far stronger than anything a ship can generate. The largest capitol ship is about the size of a single city with a million people, and has a similar power draw. There are 500 cities today with over a million people. Each of them are committing their power to a shared power grid, and around 80 of them are super massive cities with closer to 10 million people which produce even more power. How can a ship or station compete with that much power? [Answer] Big shield energy The amount of power required is so ridiculous that it's only viable on a planet. You need massive generators to generate a shield of any size, and those generators need a lot of fuel and a lot of cooling. Now a planet will have access to things like natural resources to provide massive amounts of fuel, like solid ground to provide massive amounts of building space, and like oceans to provide massive amounts of cooling. And who says it has to be scalable? This whole shield physics only works at absurd levels of energy, and the area or volume of the shield barely matters if at all. Try to put that on a starship, it'll sooner melt it because you can't dissipate the heat. [Answer] Tangential to Demigan's answer (but along the same lines): The Shields need an Atmosphere to reflect off to form the edge of the shield. In space, the energy that is projected to make the shield work has no atmosphere, therefore the energy projected never gets to form that edge. It's the intraction between the handwavium shield tech and the ionizing effects of the Atmosphere that makes a protective layer. [Answer] ### Ozone bonding technobabble One of my favorite physics effects is that microwaves work because they're at the right frequency to push water dipoles around. Let's say that your shields work on a similar effect that locks ozone molecules in a quasi-solid quantum grid. Obviously, no ozone means no shields. This could have other fun effects. You'd have a ten-mile-thick barrier above most cities, but you wouldn't be able to fly your own jets through it. An explosion that dissociated the ozone would reduce the thickness of the barrier because the ozone wouldn't be there to harden. Also, you'd lose your ozone layer, so long-term warfare would result in increased UV radiation in the effected areas. [Answer] A couple ideas come to mind: 1. Your shields work on the same principle as a plasma window (see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_window)) which is the closest thing we have in real life to a force field (They can actually hold back 9 atmospheres worth of air pressure). On a planet the shield ionizes a shell of air and uses it to make the shield. In space, any plasma would quickly disperse, and either needs to be replaced (meaning that your shield can only be run for a finite time) or needs to be contained with magnetic fields, meaning that it has high power draw and can't be turned off without losing all that plasma. 2. One major issue for all space based equipment is cooling. Simple heat sinks in an atmosphere allow you to dissipate the waste heat of the shield into the atmosphere. This effectively allows you to use the entire planet as your radiator. In space, that waste heat has to be radiated away, which is extremely inefficient and requires massive radiator arrays, which are themselves vulnerable to enemy fire, and increase the size of the object you're trying to defend with shields. Pound for pound, or kilogram for kilogram, ground based stations would simply be able to generate more powerful shields without melting. [Answer] * Planetary shield generators do not produce domes or spheres, they produce flat disks. Something like this was implied by a certain franchise far, far away, but later contradicted. Planetary defense and attack planners are very much concerned with terrain contours and lines of sight. How far in would an attacker have to come to get a clear line of sight on an infrastructure target or headquarters in a valley? Which air defense installations can bear on that firing position? Do these locations have line of sight to outside the rim, or can they be shielded by hills? If all goes well for the defenders, a cruise missile to destroy the shield generator would have to run the gauntlet of multiple SAM sites and missile defense lasers. For a station, such a flat shield leaves the entire other hemisphere open to attack. The enemy just has to send two squadrons, not one. A mobile defense is a better investment than a half-helpful shield. * There is the opposite to the answer by [Demigan](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/245551/what-makes-my-planetary-shields-more-practical-on-the-surface-of-planets-than-in/245552#245552): Operating the shield generators creates significant waste heat. A planet can act as a heat sink, so can a moon. But a station cannot. * And yet another option: Shield generators suffer from something even harsher than the [square-cube law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law). Basically, you can build a shield generator for a station, but it will not be much smaller than the generator for an entire planet. And a single planetary shield generator will take a significant bite out of the defense budget -- only the richest system can afford to shield their most important stations on top of that. [Answer] Shields only work in the direction opposite the weight vector of the shield emitter, and their effectiveness is proportional to the magnitude of the weight (for a given machine - you can't just weld some weights to your emitter to make it more effective). Big space ships can accelerate towards the threat and spin up the emitter array centrifuge to project a patchy dome that's better than nothing, but they're always vulnerable from the rear, and spinning up a big heavy centrifuge puts a lot of strain on the ship and prevents it from turning quickly without ripping itself apart, compounding the vulnerability. Planets don't need to maneuver, they can hold up unlimited weight, and they don't have a rear to attack. [Answer] Orbiting shields are easily bypassable I'm assuming you cannot create a shield bigger than some square km. Protecting a static target on the surface from space is not as straightforward as it could seem (unless you have so many satellites you could basically shield all of the planet upper orbits). In particular, there is no reason why the enemy wouldn't create a missile intelligent enough to pass through an area not covered by satellites; then it would correct its path and direct itself toward its designated target. Some other points af attention of using orbiting shields to protect targets on the surface: * Since the surface of a sphere increases quadratically with the radiud, on orbit, the % of surface of the sphere you can cover with N shields is lower than the area the same N shields could cover on the surface. * The satellites, unless in a geostationaty orbit, don't cover the same area on the surface, but move with respect to the surface of the planet * Moreover (at least for Earth) the geostationary orbit is so high (>35000 km) that it would be impossible to cover a significant area, and a missile could easily bypass it and have enough time to aim itself toward a suitable target. [Answer] ## Concentration of Force We think of shields as contiguous domes or spheres of energy that somehow destroy of deflect an inbound projectile, but this is a horrible and pointless waste of power when a typical inbound weapon only has a cross section less than a meter across. Instead of thinking of a shield as a solid wall, think of it as an array of point-defense beams that converge on an inbound target to stop it. This is in fact how Boeing's "plasma shield" system works. A ship or space station has a relatively small total surface area (and as others have pointed out, power output), but a planet has literally millions of square kilometers of surface area to mount point defenses on, so if only a tiny fraction of that surface is point-defense, then a planet could easily have way more defensive firepower than an entire fleet could ever muster. So, if an enemy kamikaze ship tried to slam into Earth, it could be met by a massive salvo of simultaneous high powered beams fired from England, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Russia, etc. all as part of a single massive blast capable of turning even the largest of capitol ships into an instant cloud of plasma, and if a whole fleet tried firing 1000s of nukes at a planet from a safe distance, it has enough individual point defense systems to shoot them all down independently. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bdQPi.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bdQPi.jpg) ## Plasma Opacity Another part of what makes plasma shields work well only on a planet is Plasma Opacity. When you superheat the air, it becomes opaque which can block a laser. The phenomenon has been one of the biggest obstacles in designing offensive lasers in the real world because once you make something hot enough, the plasma will block additional laser energy from reaching the target. So, if you converge a bunch of lasers at one point in the air and optimize thier frequencies to maximize this effect, it will superheat the air into a ball of plasma that will block an enemy laser weapon. So space shields using the same tech could only shoot down missiles, but planetary shields could block missiles, beam weapons, and even explosive shockwaves. Again this is how actual plasma shields currently being developed for real military use work. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WX9Ab.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WX9Ab.jpg) ## How to keep the shield from also being a weapon? The other possible concern is not about what makes a planetary shield so strong, but what keeps it from being a totally OP planetary weapon system. Lasers scatter a bit when fired through an atmosphere; so, while they would still have enough energy density to take out a target a few hundred km above the Earth's surface, the farther out you get, the more those lasers scatter until thier energy is no long able to be concentrated enough to do any meaningful damage. Missiles and cannons will also be a problem for planets to defend themselves with because ships can shoot down missiles and dodge cannons with relative ease. In this way, planetary technology makes for much better shields, but also much worse weapon systems than they do on ships. So it would be easy to harden a planet against attack, but also not very good at returning fire against an invasion fleet making sure that planets still need fleets to defend and retake thier orbital space. ## If it must be a "Force Field" these same principles can still be applied Ever notice how in a lot of Sci-Fi, the shields are transparent until hit. One possible explanation of this is that at passive load, the shield is evenly distributed across a large surface, but when struck, the shield does one of 2 things. It either dissipates that attack across a large area of the shield or it converges the power of the shield into a small point to "brace" for the impact. Both of these interpretations also rely Concentration of Force force. It's just a matter of semantics regarding how you apply your available force field energy to stop the incoming threat. There are many ways to explain how available power can be converged from a large defense surface to a small attack surface, but what ever way you go with, the principle of concentration of force still holds true. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fKtVj.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fKtVj.png) Plasma opacity could also be applies to a solid shield. A beam weapon could have only a marginal interaction with a shield dome, but if it heats up the air, then you still get plasma opacity kick in. As for mitigating offensive value, contiguous shield tech basically addresses this in its fundamental description and design. [Answer] ## As per answer above about heat but with some more 'Handwavium' details added. The shields use a 'quantum' level effect to 'smear' the energy contained in photons that strike it across the entire surface of the field. Those same effects means that half of the energy then radiates outwards from the surface of the field while half radiates inwards. So take a scenario where a capital ship fires say 200 megawatts of laser energy at a shield in a tiny faction of a second. All of that energy is concentrated in a beam the width of a couple of centimeters but on impact that energy is instantaneously distributed across the entire surface area of the field. It then radiates outwards and inwards (since they're the only two directs it can go) and the result is that 200 megawatts of energy are spread across the entire surface area of the shield. And the larger the surface area the more heat that can safely be radiated away! A very large shield would (on the first few impacts at least result) result in a light warming effect close to the surface of the field itself. Which of course means that the beauty of this tech is that that is that the larger the shield (say one over a large city) the stronger & more long lasting the shield will be. So large shields covering entire cities or districts are better than ones covering single households. Of course nothing is perfect. Dump enough energy into a shield and eventually it collapses because it can't radiate heat away quickly enough to maintain integrity. The result is an instantaneous release of whatever energy is in the shield at the moment of collapse. (Warning: Do not be standing next to it when this happens unless you want to roast your marshmallows). But again of course while there will be damage inflicted on anything close to a shield that collapses large shields that arch thousands of meters into the air over a city will see a relatively lower impact at ground level. And here you come to the trouble with using them on ships. Yes you can do so but ships don't have any easy way to radiate heat away in the vacuum of space as there's no atmosphere or bodies of water to carry it away. Thus multiple strikes on a ship using one would rapidly result in the crew cooking themselves alive! Plus the ship is blind since it won't be able to receive information about what is happening outside the shield. Frame challenge: Perhaps ships do have shields but they're limited in duration and effectiveness because since they can't easily radiate heat away like ground based shields would do (unless your talking about ships so large they rival or are greater that cities in terms of surface area. So when shields do collapse in space not only do the shield generators go off line and take time to be spun up again but half of the heat contained in that shield radiates back into the ship itself. This makes it critical for ship captains to carefully consider when and where to use them while under fire as they will only be good for a a short time and a ship will always be effected by the thermal effects of a shield collapse if/when one happens. Hence careful judgement is required. [Answer] 3 shield generators are necessary to create a shield covering the area between them. So, these generators form something like cell tower system on a planet surface to provide coverage. Optimal distance between the generators is about 20 km, at 15 or 25 the shield becomes much weaker. There is about 20m spot around a generator where shield is relatively weak, so they are generally buried deep underground and static defense impenetrable for space based weapons is built on top of them. Alternatively, they are hidden and very hard to detect. It is possible to use this tech in space, 4 generators may form a pyramid with 20km side but they have to be aligned exactly right at all times and there is no realistic way to protect them in space. [Answer] We turn to our good friend, the Friis transmission equation. It's not exactly what we need, but it's a close enough analog. Pt =Pr \* Ar \* At / (d^2 \* λ^2) Where: Pr = Power of our radiator, Pt = Power recieved at our target, Ar = Aperture of our radiator, At = Aperture of our target, d = distance, λ = wavelength of our electromagnetic radiation What does this tell us? It tells us what some posters have already told us, we need a lot of power available to put a lot of power into the target. It tells us we want to have large targets, but we can't really control that. It tells us we want the target to be close, but we can't control that very well either. Finally, it tells us we want our antenna to be large. A planetary shield's antenna can be easily distributed across the entire surface of the planet, and even underground. This enormous antenna will allow the shield to direct energy in a much more precise manner than otherwise possible, in addition to doing so with a far greater supply of power. The only way for a space-based system to be so precise would be to have an equally large planetary shield in space, which might as well be thought of as a planetary shield without a planet. (Yes this also applies to weapons.) [Answer] One aspect I don't see anyone mentioning: [inverse square law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law). In short, the further away from a shield generator, the intensity of your shield reduced by distance square. So either you need a lot of shield generators in orbit, or much more powerful shield generators. Or just put the shield projection on the ground, project a short distance and have a much better shield. Even if the orbit is relatively low compare to the diameter of the planet, the increase still rise fast with the quadratic function. [Answer] # Gravity Inversion The shield does nothing more than "simply" invert gravitational fields. Incoming projectiles with significant mass will bounce a space-station off like a billiard ball. This is undesirable. Try that on a planet though and thanks to the target's relatively huge mass it's the incoming projectiles that do all the bouncing away. [Answer] Magnets! Well, sorta. See, most planets that would be worthwhile for big colonies would have a magnetic field to protect them, like the Earth. Otherwise they'd be vulnerable to radiation and solar wind blasting away their atmosphere. Your shield generators rely on this magnetic field to shape/power/handwave themselves into existence. Without such a hugely powerful magnetic field as one provided by a planet, the shields wouldn't be able to exist. Could such a magnetic field be produced outside of a planet with sufficient power? Potentially... But the power draw would be unsustainable. [Answer] Kinetic energy. (This is related to Demigan's answer) He's right that the energy doesn't just vanish, but cooking isn't the problem. If it were just heat you could have a big mass of very cold material to work as a heat sink, it wouldn't be perfect but it would be far better than nothing. Instead, the problem is shield generators just transfer the energy to themselves and thus push against whatever they are mounted to. To deal with the power of that h-bomb the shields just stopped you need to spread it amongst a lot of shield generators that are supported by bedrock. You need enough generators that no one generator has to deal with too much energy and mobile craft are simply too small to do this. Try to put a shield on a ship and the shield mounts fail with the first hit. Note that this does permit lesser versions of shields to deal with things like grains of sand floating around in space, they're just too weak to be meaningful in combat. [Answer] The shield is a secondary defense. The atmosphere of our Earth protects us pretty well. Iron based asteroids and space junk burn up while falling into the atmosphere, and deadly solar radiation is rendered fairly harmless. Lazer weapons have difficulty staying coherent in the atmosphere, and the Earth's magnetic field reduces electromagnetic interference from space. The only thing a planetary shield would need to defend against is something that can penetrate the atmosphere (and, on Earth, the magnetic field). Satellites have none of these protections and are vulnerable to a high-speed piece of metal. A satellite shield would take the brunt of any attack, instead of being a backup to the natural protection of an atmosphere. ]
[Question] [ In this world, mages are exceptionally powerful. A single powerful mage can destroy entire armies. However, becoming a 'high-tier' mage is also very difficult, so most nations have very few 'high-tier' mages. However, some nations have discovered that by having dozens of weaker mages work together, they can achieve similar destructive results on the battlefield. For example: A single powerful enough mage would be able to incinerate an entire army with fireballs. However, this feat can be replicated with dozens or even hundreds of less powerful mages channeling their magic together. More details: 1. Magic is exhausting, wiping out an entire army would cause a mage to become bedridden for weeks. So mages are usually only used as trump cards 2. The more powerful the magic, the longer it takes to cast. Magic powerful enough to destroy an army would take hours to cast, and the mages cannot be interrupted 3. Mages must stand next together in a formation in order to combine their magic most effectively Are there any tactical reasons for a nation to send out their most powerful mages to the battlefield and risk losing them if sending dozens of more expendable and weaker mages is just as effective? [Answer] If in your question you replace the word "mage" with "nuke" you can get the answer from our history: a fairly small nuke is already capable of wiping out a city, yet there was a race to build more and more powerful bombs, until the Tzar Bomb. In principle you can achieve the same damage of a 10 kTon nuke by using 10 thousands tons of TNT, but you see that carrying 10 thousands tons of explosive on your target is going to be much more cumbersome than flying a single bomber/missile carrying a single 10 kTon head. In your case, if you need a lot of lesser mages to achieve the same result of a powerful one, imagine the logistic nightmare of having them all lined up and synchronized. And also keep in mind that hiding a single man on a battlefield is rather easy, hiding a lot of men is not going to fly. [Answer] Oh, that's easy. Attack surface. If you have one mage you can put him in a garden shed (or equivalent) while he casts and the enemy probably won't get through your army before he finishes the spell, nor are they likely to nail him with an arrow. If they can it was a lost cause anyway. If you have twenty mages standing in formation to protect it's harder to keep all of them from being interfered with - a volley of arrows will probably hit at least one and ruin the spell. Putting them in a fortification would be harder too. [Answer] Hundreds, or even dozens of less powerful mages is a unit you can't move covertly. Take one of the great battles: [Battle of Grunwald](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grunwald). The lowest estimate is 11 thousands on one side. And it was, for its time, a big and important battle. To have hundred of mages, you need about one in every hundred combatants to be a mage. A combat-ready skilled mage. That's a lot. With mages being so big a part of the army, you make them easy to target. Easy to target means easy to interrupt. Standing in close formation means that you can't have shield bearers between them. One archer would render them useless, he wouldn't even have to actually hit anyone, just distract them. That's entirely possible from distances over 200m. Much more with a crossbow if you don't need the bolt to actually pierce any armor. Now, there are logistical reasons. 10 or 100 mages would probably require the same noncombatant force as similar amounts of knights would. But knights can ride horses, and generally are big tough guys. Mages - not so. Moving one around could be arranged. Moving many would slow down your army and make it more costly. An army that moves slower takes battles where the opponent wants. That's a tactical disaster - one that only makes the archer from the previous paragraph even more successful. [Answer] A demigod-level mage at the battlefield is not a demigod-level mage in your Parliament It's pretty simple. Having strong mages is inevitable, you will be getting some every once in a while. And, in civilian life, they are likely to have much longer life expectancy thanks to their magic. If you do not keep disposing of excess mages that can single-handedly hold a whole city as a hostage, you are going to run into an inevitable magocracy. Even if the ruling class already consists of mages, they do not need more competition than necessary. And if they are not, they are probably scared of every sneeze from those walking weapons of mass destruction. [Answer] Adding a more intangible consideration to the very practical answers above: Morale. Corporal Ledowski had always found it hard going, being a non-magical grunt in an army which deployed and fought mages on a regular basis, but the grub was acceptable and the uniform made the girls happy. Nonetheless, food and girls were the furthest thing from his mind as he hunkered down as far as he could in a woefully inadequate trench, while magical fireballs and lightning bolts rained down on his platoon relentlessly. The platoon commander had already briefed them on the presence of an enemy mage battalion earlier today, and they'd known to expect this, but their carefully planned counterattack of long-range bombardment with traditional steel-tipped wooden arrows (mages had yet to discover how to magic away a steel bolt through the head, Ledowski thought with grim satisfaction) had been wrecked by something as simple and stupid as unfavourable winds. All they could do was keep their heads down and hope that some of them survived the onslaught... A loud cheer rang out through the trenches, a sound so unexpected that Ledowski thought he had finally gone deaf and was starting to hallucinate. Straining his ears, he caught one word on the boiling winds around him, but one word was all it took to fill him with a warm glow - Xenocacia! Xenocacia, the legendary archmage who could single-handedly bring down an entire army - if he were here, the battle was as good as won. Already, Corporal Ledowski could feel his blood pumping again as his body prepared itself for the fight which he knew could now begin on an even plane. Damn those weak lesser mages - Xeno would show them! Back to me: I just think a single mage would be better placed to inspire confidence as a military symbol or mascot than an entire battalion of faceless mages. He wouldn't even have to do that much magic; just his presence at the battlefield would inspire the soldiers to fight harder and possibly turn the tides of war. [Answer] The bell curve. [![Bell Curve](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mfwcz.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mfwcz.png) Quite simply if you want as much magical power as possible then you train each mage as much as you can. Let's say that you have 10 people who can become a 2σ mage and you have 1 person that can become a 3σ mage. If you train them all to the two sigma level then you have less power than if you train 10 to 2σ and 1 to 3σ. [Answer] Decisiveness: A group needs a command hierarchy to effectively carry out a plan. This is inefficient compared to one person acting alone. In addition to that, maybe the mages of your society have the tendency to be arrogant and selfish and don't like being commanded by other mages. There might be infighting mid-battle. Flexibility: A single person can move far easier than an unit. When attacked while out of power, he can escape, or hide. When surrounded, he can slip through a gap in the enemy lines. Stealth: A single person is easier to hide than a whole unit. He could infiltrate the enemy and assassinate their leader. Or he could hide in the army dressed like a common soldier. It's harder to hide a whole group since it has to stay together. Training: You don't send soldiers into battle before they completed their basic training. So you would also prefer to keep novice mages in less dangerous roles where they can train to later rise to archmages. [Answer] Magic Generalists A more powerful mage may be able to serve a purpose outside of fighting that the lesser mages can't. Maybe something to ease logistics, or to cast an opiate onto conquered peoples to make it easier to maintain ground. Or maybe there's magic to lift morale, or to heal soldiers after battle more effectively and more easily than ordinary medicine. You have plenty of options for which double-purpose would be best (or which combination of double-purposes.) Also, if you're simply looking for a device to shoehorn a broader mix of mage powerlevels into the story, this would be an excellent way to do it, as the most powerful mages would be protected by the rest, so if you wanted to eliminate an enemy's main mage, you'd have to cut through the rest of their mages and army first. This makes them elusive, mysterious, and longlasting enough to give you enough time to smoothly characterize them without needing to contrive an excuse to keep them alive, even if they're on the losing side of a war. (Also, it would be possible, in a conflict where the general anticipates losing, for the powerful mage to be escorted into hiding while the rest hold off the winning army.) [Answer] ## Runaway competition and mutually assured destruction Similar to real life war between the US and the Soviet Union, we can imagine a situation where both nations have enough god-tier mages to annihilate the other thousandfold. If a mage is capable of annihilating an army, they can also do the same to a city. By training increasingly powerful mages for no reason other than to demonstrably cast the largest fireballs, the nations aim to convince each other that attacking each other is suicide. In analogy to the submarine-launched ballistic missiles of the Cold War, both nations station powerful water-breathing mages underwater off each other's coasts. By demonstrating to each other that their capitals can be instantly wiped off the map for breaking the truce, both nations maintain a state of uneasy peace. [Answer] First, sending a powerful mage doesn't mean you can't train and send weaker ones as well. So, one nation may send 150 "mages" to the battlefield. If all of them were weak ones, when casting their "army destroying magic" distracting (specially if wounding or killing) one of the group you force them to start from the beginning. Mages are very good at concentrating, but this is a battlefield, filled with cries, battle noises, the screams of dying men… Now suppose that they are distributed this way: * 5 High-tier mages * 5 groups of 15 normal mages * 70 actors dressed as mages The actors are expendable, being there just so that they can be a target for the enemy instead of a real mage. The normal mages are actually hurting the enemy, but a successful attack to one of them forces his group to start again (that's why you prefer 5 slower groups than a faster but bigger one). And additionally, there is a variable number of high tier mages, with each of them capable by himself of performing a big damage to the other army, so deactivating them is critical. Your mission, should you choose/decide to accept it, is to bypass the enemy lines, find the people able to make magic, ensure that the normal mages won't be able to finish their spells, and kill the high tier ones while avoiding the soldiers assigned to bodyguarding them. [Answer] Political control If you are a king or a government, you don't want any other individual getting more powerful than you. Historically, a lot of dictators actively hindered many of their subordinates, or put in place structures so that none of them could become too powerful, even if that meant they were less effective. A governing power would not want to risk training up someone who could potentially then take over, when they could have a larger number of less powerful individuals over whom they could exercise "divide and rule". [Answer] Maybe the formation your lesser mages need to be in to cast the spell has to be very large, with each mage placed far away from each other. This forces your army to defend 20 different locations, which means scattering the resources a lot (not just troops, but supplies as well). A single mage is easier to defend as more troops can be assigned to defending him. Also, with this kind of mechanic an army could actually separate in 20 locations, making their opponent believe they have many lesser mages, when in reality it is a diversion made to buy time for the single powerful mage. [Answer] Spreading out the lesser mages also spreads out their magical defense capailities; this means the enemy force can focus magical attacks on one lesser mage and breach their defenses, thus killing/wounding the mage and cancelling the group ritual. Having one greater mage means the defense is not spread out which makes it much more difficult to overpower with a focused attack. [Answer] It really depends on just how powerful they are. If they can project an impenetrable for days, why wouldn't you send them out. Also range if the mage has a range of say 2 battlefields, his opening move could be 100,000 level 1 fireballs and kill all the enemy in one go. The trick here is a super mage can cast many lower spells and not become exhausted, and still be able to leave the battlefield on their own. If they achieve near omnipotent then cast spell and boom any battle is over as soon as it starts. His/her power levels are so high that only the most terrifying spells drain them. Have no idea how long this would take, but you have other mages, in shifts, prolonging your best mages lives. This is done so they can basically infinitely level themselves to basically godhood. I see you castle 100 miles away, cast spell boom the castle and everything around it is crushed to 6" high. Battle over. [Answer] Power advantage If a 2x more powerful mage is able to send a fireball 2x further, then whatever the number of less powerful mages, this super mage can it them all before he's in reach of their counter attacks. Then, since this super mage will be exhausted, you need as much super mages as possible to replace the "tired" supply. So your nation will need as many super mages as possible, and in fact all nation will need super mages in addition to usual mages. Also, you should take into account any diversion (the ennemy sends small amount of his forces to exhaust your super mage), you must have some fresh super mage to prevent this case too. If the power advantage is not about firing distance, but the duration of the magic (super mage can withhold launching fireballs for longer), then you'll make use of this fact. If you only have mages (and so has the ennemy) then once they are exhausted, the party with a super mage can use it now to win the battle since there is no available valid opponent anymore. In that case, a strategy to have both super mage and usual mages makes sense, the more super mage you have the better your odds to win. [Answer] Well, if the battle is strategically important enough, and the mages know a powerful enough spell that it requires especially powerful mages... ]
[Question] [ If all humans on earth died out from a deadly plague, which species is most likely to take over the role us Homo sapiens left behind? Which species is intelligent enough to build their own civilization? [Answer] No species is intelligent enough to build its own human-like civilization. If all humans died out the world would slowly revert back to the wilderness from which it came. Many different species of wild animals would proliferate into the habitats left by man but none of them would “replace” man at least not in the short term. Over millions of years it is a matter of opinion what would happen. It might be that history would repeat itself and one of the great ape species might evolve along similar lines that we did. It is also entirely possible that this would not happen at all as conditions now are different from those when Homo Sapiens first evolved. [Answer] Here's a dark horse candidate for you: raccoons. Raccoons have [complex social lives](https://www.nwf.org/en/Archive/Magazines/National-Wildlife/2014/Raccoons); are intelligent, creative, and capable of learning, enough to [pass the Aesop's Fable Test](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/animals-intelligence-raccoons-birds-aesops/) (tool use); [understand causality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon#Intelligence) enough to tackle locking mechanisms; > > In a study by the ethologist H. B. Davis in 1908, raccoons were able to open 11 of 13 complex locks in fewer than 10 tries and had no problems repeating the action when the locks were rearranged or turned upside down. Davis concluded they understood the abstract principles of the locking mechanisms and their learning speed was equivalent to that of rhesus macaques. > > > have [better memories than dogs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon#Intelligence); > > Studies in 1963, 1973, 1975 and 1992 concentrated on raccoon memory showed they can remember the solutions to tasks for up to three years. In a study by B. Pohl in 1992, raccoons were able to instantly differentiate between identical and different symbols three years after the short initial learning phase. > > > have a neuron count [rivalling primates](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/12/04/which-animals-are-smartest-cats-dogs-or-raccoons/) (admittedly the connection between neuron count and intelligence isn't proven, but it's unusual for a non-primate of its size); > > Within the raccoon’s cat-sized brain lurks a doglike number of neurons. So many, in fact, that if you were to look only at neuron count and brain size, you might mistake the raccoon for a small primate. > > > and they are, of course, quite skilled with their hand-like paws. [Answer] There are a number of species with the potential to redevelop civilization in a post-human world. I like the idea of cephalopods taking over, but as Slarty points out, it is just as likely that apes could take over again (humans are a species of ape). The species would need problem-solving intelligence, an ability to communicate complex ideas, and the dexterity required for toolmaking and construction. Offhand, the only species I can think of with all of these requirements would be cephalopods, apes, and maybe elephants, though I am sure there are probably plenty of others. [Answer] How about ants? In Bernard Werber's [The Ants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_the_Ants_(novel)), there is an extract where a fictionnal writer says that if an extraterrastrial lifeform would arrive on Earth, it would seek contact with ants before humans. Think about it: * auto-management of an habitat for a whole colony * communication and heavy teamwork * population control (soldiers, workers,...) Of course The Ants is a work of fiction, but hey, we are worldbuilding here! [Answer] [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization) defines a civilization as a "complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification imposed by a cultural elite, symbolic systems of communication (for example, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment." No other species on earth is intelligent enough to form a civilization. Significant evolutionary changes would be needed for any other species to be able to do so. Such changes would be distinct enough to be considered a separate species. What species another intelligent lifeform will evolve from is entirely different question. [Answer] # The only candidates lies with the great apes The only potential there is, is that some of the other great apes develop intelligence. To me, this seems very unlikely to happen before the sun burns out the Earth's atmosphere, even as advanced as they are today. My guess is that it might be possible for Bonobos, but I don't think it's remotely likely to happen. Chimpanzees is a close second, but the aggression they exhibit might be a hindrance. I can't think of any other species that would stand a chance. If any species is to evolve into human like intelligence, there must be some evolutionary force(\) that drives that intelligence. I'm not familiar with any force that will do so, but clearly, at least one such force exists, or we wouldn't be here discussing it. In order for a civilization to appear, you must have more than just intelligence; you also need to be able to make tools and meta-tools -- that is, you must be able to make tools that you use to make other tools. This requires dexterity that only apes possess at the moment; this alone bars all other species from developing any kind of civilization. Curiously, many great apes already make tools, including orangutans who use spears for fishing. (\) This is not meant to be understood as some physical force of any kind. Merely some sort of mechanism that requires the development of higher-order intelligence. [Answer] Empire of the Rats! Ok, The common rat is a mammal that has adapted to nearly as many environments as homo sapiens. They are reasonably smart. All they need is a small boost in brains and opposable thumbs and they could be lords of creation. Rats have followed humanity all over the planet and we are always hard pressed to get rid of them. They get to wherever we go and then adapt to their environment, often thriving. This adaptability to a variety of places is the key. Humans, unlike our cousins the great apes, have expanded and adapted to different environments. Most of the other great apes have stayed in a specific range. Rats might not be objectively as smart as some other animals, but they are extremely adaptive, and that will give them a better chance to evolve up to, then past ape level intelligence. Rats also get one final edge....NIMH! (sorry, couldn't help myself) [Answer] The answer is simple. Any species is capable. The real question is how long do you want to wait? Of course after waiting millions of years (or longer), chances are the new species won't actually look anything like the original species. Whales evolved from a land based wolf like creature over the last fifty million years. [Answer] Humans did not start out super intelligent and "civilized." The proto of all mammals - including us - is thought to be a small, shrew like animal. From shrew to ape to man took hundreds of millions of years, and untold variations of hominids in between. Consider that in all these millions of years, our great ape relatives (gorillas, chimps and orangutans) remained virtually the same. Therefore, I don't think apes are going to evolve significantly enough to take up where humans left off, before they go extinct. What's more likely is that some really outrageous or catastrophic thing is going to happen on this Earth AGAIN, and this will jumpstart another extant species into evolving into beings with intelligence and abilities comparable to humans. Whoever the "lucky" inheritors turn out to be, I hope the new smart guys will be much smarter than we were. They won't plunder the planet for petroleum, or despoil it with plastics, or rob their very air of oxygen with fumes from cars and factories, or by cutting down the world's trees. [Answer] There are plenty of possibilities, providing that we are not too strict with our definition of 'civilization'. Generally, I would consider tool-making, social structuring and a mechanism for knowledge transfer, to be essential. Beyond this, recognisable buildings and structures (although networked tunnel systems could count) and language (especially written) would seem to be reasonable requirements. Wikipedia includes "a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment", but this is largely subjective and it could be argued that simply developing and maintaining living areas would satisfy this. Tool-making requires some manual dexterity, so the species would need some capacity for this - this tends to rule out fish, whales and dolphins (without significant evolution) Obviously primates, also rodents and many birds, possibly also cephalopods - all of these are reasonably intelligent and dexterous. However, another requirement, I think, for what we might recognise as a civilization is a reasonable longevity, within which knowledge can not only be acquired over time, but also passed on (first by word of mouth, later through written language). It could be expected that the process of knowledge transfer, and the need for it, would in time produce some kind of written language, but this too would require further learning and tuition and therefore time. Longevity is therefore essential, as is the ability to develop an aural tradition. Rodents and cephalopods are not particularly long-lived at present. Taking [life-span](https://www.britannica.com/science/life-span) into account as a key criteria, the best candidate would seem to be a species of [parrot](https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2015/research/tool-use-parrots/). Parrots already have complex [social structures](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140917092951.htm). Note also, that parrots, like many birds already build their own dwellings (nests) and in particular the Monk Parakeet actually builds [large communal nests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_parakeet) on occasion. Parrots have also [shown facility with human language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)), and [the capacity to develop their own](https://theparrotuniversity.com/does-it-talk). How exactly a parrot would evolve over time, though, I haven't worked out. I just think they are the best candidate for knowledge acquisition and transfer and, therefore, the handing down across generations of a civilization and they seem already to have many of the [other necessary skills](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtP8qSzvsI8). [Answer] This is just an assumption, but I believe that in the event of a mass extinction of humans, animals as we know them will tend to disappear as well. But excluding the hypothesis that what will "kill" humans kill all living beings, I think that exploiting oil and nuclear weapons, for example, with a lack of human maintenance will have repercussions on animal life. So for me, if there is anything that will build a civilization, more or less like ours, it still does not exist and will evolve from the conditions that come to exist. Sorry for my English, I know it's not perfect at all :) [Answer] > > "Which species is most likely to take over the role us Homo sapiens > life behind?" > > > Let's assume the plague you mention is only capable of infecting humans and is able to spread quickly enough to infect all humans before killing them. If humans start dying en mass then this will cause problems for every living thing on earth as well. With mass extinction, panic is going to spread quickly and the typical breaking down of civil society will cause riots, looting, and general anarchism as people try to do whatever they can to survive which is likely to cause things like fires which on a mass scale could linger for quite some time since nobody would be keeping them in check. Most people would probably assume that first point, but one idea I had if humans died is all of the manual tasks in place to keep things like nuclear reactors in check. Without human intervention on many processes you will see things like nuclear reactors going critical because of insufficient cooling which will completely destabilize an environment and kill of large areas. I'm sure the military arsenal of nuclear weapons need some kind of maintenance as well although I am unsure to what degree and if they would also be likely to explode as well in which case we have an even larger problem. Aside from radiation you would have to account for environmental disasters that would spawn from large fires, nuclear, etc. Depending on the severity, you could see large portions of the earth in darkness due to smoke which could cause temperatures to drop. (This is conjecture of course since we don't have much knowledge on mass nuclear breaches) I think the imprint we have on the world is too much for us to leave or all die off without causing a crippling blow to other creatures on the earth as well. This is not to imply that all life would cease as this is very unlikely to kill less populated areas such as deep jungle and aquatic creatures. I will assume you are giving an infinite amount of time for evolution to take place in which case nobody truly knows what will rise up or how creatures will evolve. Aquatic creatures would likely reign supreme as all of the fallout on land and rising sea levels. By the time they would be evolved enough to come back to land, there would likely be little no evidence of human structures left as this would require millions and millions of years. > > "Which species is intelligent enough to build their own civilization?" > > > The creatures with the largest brains in the least populated environments would be the most likely (After millions and millions of years to completely change to how we recognize them today). Apes, Dolphins, and other mammals are easy choices, but who really knows after such a long time if they would not die out to some other disaster or some new creature become the apex predator and eventually evolve and start it's own civilization. [Answer] For another creature to take over the role of homo sapiens, you need to define the role of homo sapiens. What creature could cultivate crops for more food, build cities, create governments, start wars, raise taxes, quarrel over differences in appearance, initiate the concept of freedom of speech and then restrict it with political correctness, invent fertilizer for crops and then turn it into explosives, create flying machines and destroy cities with them, refine information transfer and transfer rubbish with the result, and worship the Kardashians? It's not so much a question of finding a creature capable of that, but one willing to stoop that low. ]
[Question] [ In the near future an ancient, derelict spacecraft or space station has been discovered orbiting Barnard's Star, 6 light years from Earth. Why would Earth send a manned mission to Barnard's Star to explore the artifact -- increasing the complexity, expense, and risk of the project -- rather than probes or AI robots? (My thinking is the story wouldn't be as engaging if the main characters are robot probes, although I'm open to suggestions.) [Answer] It is proof of life outside earth, and technological life at that. The potential discoveries boggle imagination. It is the single most important discovery in the history of the world. Likewise this is will be the most important expedition in history and likely the most expensive. The moon landing is a pittance by comparison. The GDP of a large country is a small price to pay. This will be a collective effort of hundreds of countries if only to make sure one country cannot monopolize any discovery. There are thousands of experts who would volunteer for the trip even if it was only one way. Probes are basically useless at those distances, especially exploring something that is largely unknown. that's 12 years of lag for every decision. the probe will have decayed into uselessness before it can do much. Human explorers will probably bring probes with them, a few micro-second delay allows for remote control 12 years does not. If only to make sure the environment is not toxic. AI is also useless, AI are really bad at highly unique, never before considered situations and I can't think of a better example of one of those. The robot could be rendered completely useless or worse destructive by a single false assumption. Humans can problem solve in unique situations, humans can make new tools and make decisions as the situation changes drastically, as the very context of the decision changes. [Answer] # Because there is a 12 year decision lag with remotes Autonomous robotics are fine and well when you know exactly where to go and exactly what to do. Introduce any kind of dynamics to a situation, and you are [crap] out of luck trying to get anything done, as there is a 6 + 6 years delay from the remote seeing something, and then receiving any orders on how to act on it. All you need to do to justify sending people there is that the first remotes see that the situation about this derelict is in any way dynamic, maybe it has a chaotic orbit, maybe it is difficult to explore, maybe there are more of them, maybe its orbit is about to decay and the derelict will be lost unless we hurry there and examine it. [Answer] (Bouncing off of Gillgamesh's answer) One of those reasons why probes are not enough is because the robotic mission was a flyby mission, a la Breakthrough Starshot. Actually decelerating from high fractions of c doubles the delta-v and adds an OOM to mission complexity at least. The probes dash through the system at cruise velocity and return enough grainy images and produce enough intrigue to warrant a manned exploration. Why not send robots next? Trained humans with technical expertise are the best robots to send. The job can't be entrusted to software to anyone's satisfaction. [Answer] Assuming no FTL, a 1 way travel time of minimum 6 years. Asking for volunteers for this mission, you would still have hundreds of applicants. That is just the brighter side of the often dark human nature. However realistically, I would immagin, unmanned probes would be sent first, to be followed by humans. No reason it can't be written into a story, that probes were sent but didn't get all the answers for a variety of reasons. [Answer] ### Inadequate remote intelligence Mars is only three minutes away. Getting data, reviewing it, and deciding what the rovers will be doing tomorrow is just an all-nighter. Now imagine how that would work with a six-year delay. We could probably equip a drone with a really big telescope and program it to look for planets when it gets there. It could do a fly-by of this thing and take pictures. You could use planets (that may or may not exist in our world) to do aerobraking and reverse-slingshot maneuvers to slow down enough to stay in the system. Anything at all beyond that would be way beyond what we could program a machine to perform. The real problem is the question-and-answer cycle. A machine could navigate a logic tree, make observations, maybe even collect samples and identify testing priorities. What they couldn't do is realize that the alien tech is trying to communicate with it, and attempt to come up with a mutual protocol. It couldn't realize that the shape of the space station was analogous to one of the nearby planetary systems. It couldn't formulate an alternative test when incomprehensible information comes out of the spectrograph. Andy Weir does a great job describing this situation in Project Hail Mary. In his case, it was a team of three, and only one survived the cold sleep. I recommend it, by the way. ### Alternately: send a billionaire They don't need a real reason, they just have to have a big enough excuse. Sometimes their ego is enough excuse. These are people with enough money to fund their own mission, so expense wouldn't matter. And maybe he just wanted to keep the alien tech to himself. [Answer] # Humans are cheap The ship needs to carry around 100 tons of equipment to examine the station anyway, humans can be stored in stasis pods that just weigh 100 kilos or so. Carrying a couple tons of humans means you have flexible and intelligent minds to adapt to the situation and doesn't notably strain the engine more. The spaceship isn't subject to the rocket equation, they have fusion power which allows easy fast travel. [Answer] ### It's what we do Of course it makes no sense to risk life and limb going to the Moon, Mars, or the next star over. We have probes that make just as good of a job, if not better. And at worst if one fails, it only costs money, whereas a human life is priceless. But we can't be content with that. Humanity has a thirst for exploration and knowledge. It is one of the constants throughout human history. We went to the end of land to see what was there. We launched ships to see what was on the other side the ocean. We climbed the tallest mountains. We dove into the deepest trenches. We sent people onto the Moon. We're gearing up to go to Mars. There is no practical purpose to any of this. Not really. But it's there. We can see it. We can almost touch it. It doesn't matter how challenging it is. It doesn't matter whether it's necessary or not. Not going ourselves isn't an option. We can send probes at the same time, or before. But we're going. [Answer] I am actually fairly certain that sending a manned mission or at least partially manned mission would be a necessity. You said it is near future, so I will assume that AIs are still being taught as they are now, by being exposed to ever growing datasets and their ability to work properly depends on the situation they encounter to be at least similar to a situation that has been included in the dataset. However this mission is not about dealing with the expected, it is impossible to prepare AI for tasks that are not yet known yet. You need human there to make decisions on how to proceed, when obvious solution is not available. AIs will be present, and it is quite possible, it will be able to accomplish all a human could, but it is more then likely when a scenario is presented, that AI just doesn't have data to fall back on, at which point human crew will be required to analyze the data available and make a decision on how to proceed. Unlike AI's this decision may be "wrong" but human crew would be allowed to make the call in these situations. [Answer] ## FOMO, and AI is not us. Many answers here focus on AI being inadequate or underdeveloped for the task: I disagree. AI can likely do everything a human can do - potentially better. I have no doubt an AI can react to changing circumstances, can investigate thoroughly both the scientific and cultural aspects of the space station, and provide a comprehensive report back to Earth in 12 years time. But the big question then is: Why send AI instead of us? For humans, there is a very large psychological motivation: FOMO - the Fear Of Missing Out. This is a drive within us to make sure WE are the first, WE are the ones there to see it, to take advantage of it or to be the first to make contact with a new Alien race, because if we did not we would 'not be there' - and an AI is not 'us'. There is also the danger that sending an AI on a First Contact situation of such magnitude may be a signal to any alien civilisation that the AI is our culture, not a human culture. The aliens may shower benefits onto the AI, and not give them to us. Aliens might even see us as brutal oppressors of the AI, who can delete the AI's at any time, who bend AI's to their will without conscience - they could take pity on AI and give them the ability to conquer us. Put it simply: AI cannot be entrusted with an issue of this importance because they are not us. Even if humans are sent that are or may become inherently untrustworthy, they are at least us, and representatives of humanity on such a momentous occasion. [Answer] A Frame challenge: An ancient derelict spaceship or space station orbiting Bernard's star six light years away would have to be immense to be detected from our solar system "in the near future". Kepler-37b is the smallest known exoplanet with a radius of 0.296 that of Earth, or about 1,885 kilometers. An extrasolar planetesimal known as WD 1145+017 b has a radius about 0.15 that of Earth, or about 955 kilometers. SDSS J1228+1040 b is an extrasolar planetesimal with a radius of about 0.0101 that of Earth, or about 65 kilometers. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smallest_exoplanets> Those are the smallest dimensions of known objects orbiting other stars. And possibly some of them are not as firmly established as claimed by the list. And experts of the most advanced planned instruments which can be used for detecting exoplanets might be sable to say whether any planned instruments could detect objects as small as, for example, 10 kilometers in diameter, and when those instruments are planned to come on line. I suspect that extreme lucky circumstances enabled the detection of the smallest know objects in other star systems. And an extremely advanced instrument which goes online 20 years in the future might be used for a decade or two before it makes a very lucky discovery of an object only about ten kilometers in diameter. And I have to wonder how the artificial nature of tiny objects detected in other solar systems will be discovered. If images of an extrasolar object are taken, and also its spectrum, and the spectrum in radially different in certain ways from that of the star, it might be deduced that the object is made of polished metal, or of some synthetic compound of great strength. Less than thirty planets of other stars have been detected or suspected by direct imaging of those planets. The smallest of those which have estimated sizes, Candidate 1 orbiting Alpha Centauri A, has a radius of about 0.459 that of Jupiter or about 30,685 kilometers, or 4.8 times the radius of Earth. So instruments will have to vastly improve before an object the size of an imperial star destroyer in Star Wars can be detected. And improve even more before before such an object can be determined to be artificial. So I have my doubts about the artifact being detected, and a mission sent to Barnard's Star, in the near future. Possibly the main character can be the world's most famous scientist, or the world's most famous astronaut, who dies suddenly and their corpse is frozen. They are brought back to life by advanced science centuries in the future, at about the time that the artifact is discovered and the expedition is planned. And because future people are much less bold and adventurous than 21st century people, and because the main character is a famous person from the past, they are selected to go on the expedition. Maybe only recently revived people frozen centuries earlier will volunteer to go on the expedition. [Answer] ## Frame challenge: Public choice theory There is no problem. You don't need the nation to benefit, just a few select people. Maybe the chief contractor had a cost plus contract written by a foolish (or corrupt) public servant and just acted in his own interest, while the politicians involved had every reason to deny any money was wasted. Win-win all around, except for the plebs that paid taxes. And even they got some feel-goods. Press releases make many of the arguments you see in other answers here; after all, the comms team have to fill up their timesheet too, so why not? Individuals in institutions have different incentives to their institutions as a whole. Managers want bigger budgets. Employees want more pay and fun jobs. Senior executives want stock prices to be high when they cash in their stocks. Politicians want to be reelected. Contractors want contract renewals. Aeronautical and defence contracting is absolutely rife with it. NASA has had plenty of it in real life. That's not even considering egos and libidos and test pilots' need for speed. You can make the individuals involved anything from dedicated individuals faced with accidentally perverse incentives through to completely venal and corrupt, or an intermediate position, like the example earlier. [Answer] ### Testing technology for stellar travel The mission is an experiment of testing technological capabilities that are necessary for travels to further stars. In a similar way we have the [Mars-500 mission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500) or [biosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2) experiment where the "astronauts" don't even leave earth. Or compare to the space stations in orbit around earth which will some day be overtaken by stations on the moon and Mars (and eventually another star). The earliest space travelling of humans to other stars can be expected to be to close neighbouring stars that are not specifically interesting except for being another milestone on the way towards a bigger goal. ### Stepping stone for further travels The travel to a nearby star can also be a stepping stone for further travels. As part of colonization of further places. When traveling at 10% of the speed of light, it will take 60 years to reach Barnard's star. It will be difficult for a human to travel further and such a long distance space travel may take several generations. In order to reach further we will need to colonize the roads along which we travel in a similar way as people of the past used to settle along trading roads just for the sake of the road. A name for the ship/settlement could be 'cape Barnard'. ### Human alien origins > > In the near future an ancient, derelict spacecraft or space station has been discovered > > > The background of this discovery is not very clear. Is it an alien species that discovers Earth, or are it humans from earth that discover the space station from Earth? In the latter case, why would humans 'discover' the station. Is it a completely unknown station from an unknown past, or is it a space station whose existence is known but got 'lost' and has been rediscovered? In the case of an unknown station it could be a station that is of alien origin from which humans descent. The place were Adam and Eve are born and where sent to Earth via the comet that killed the dinosaurs. (In this story line one needs to figure out a reason why the station did not send out radio signals and didn't got discovered before; possibly it is because it closed when Adam and Eve left the station) So in this case Earth is not the origin of the space station, but instead earth is the destiny. [Answer] Kennedy already answered that one: > > We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be > gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for > the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science > and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will > become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United > States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether > this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of > war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the > hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the > hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored > and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the > mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of > ours. > > > There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space > as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the > best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may > never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our > goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 > years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? > > > We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon... We choose > to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because > they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve > to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because > that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are > unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too. > > > [Answer] The AI controlled probes have found tantalizing evidence of alien script and user interfaces. AI is used to mitigate the time lag. The AIs have become erratic after an interaction with some kind of field evidenced by telemetry. [Answer] it's a good way to get rid of "undesirables". Not too dissimilar to the way the British used Australia as a prison colony during the age of sail, and France their South American colonies, and Russia sent them to Siberia, China to their high desert interior, a space faring civilisation could well use one way missions to a star with a planet that's suspected of being able to support human life as a cheap and convenient way to prepare the land for the eventual arrival of valued settlers, by which time the prisoners will likely be mostly dead and if not all too happy to be given a new life as indentured servants just because it's slightly less dreadful than the early settler experience they had before. It doesn't always work out that way, but it's historically been a recurring way of thinking to use prisoners or people otherwise considered "disposable" for such things. [Answer] Reliability Recently we've sent multiple landers to the Moon that have failed. Unanticipated failures in hardware or conditions that triggered hardware failure modes revealed flaws or inadequacy of the programming. A human could have tried to evaluate the fault and maybe compensated but the automation couldn't. For years of communication delay it's very likely someone would decide there's just too many events that are impossible to anticipate in programming. If you have the tech to send a human but not FTL communication or strong AI it provides a LOT of intelligence. [Answer] We were already going. (Depending on how near this near future is) The probe that detected the orbiting derelict is just one of a wave of advance probes that we sent out in every direction. We were already following up with manned missions, each in craft designed to survive and operate on a nomadic basis. We already have a station at the L-4 and L-5 points in Saturn's orbit, whose purpose is to further develop this capacity. The only real effect of discovery of the alien derelict is that Barnard's Star moved up on the list of places we want to go, but we were already going there anyway. (A bit of AI + Von Neumann machine hand-waving is in order, to provide the technological and economic basis for this near-future state of affairs.) ]
[Question] [ Essentially, by bending a few rules of physics and other sciences with as little handwavium and unobtainium used, could there be a way to travel several parsec and/or lightyears in a (relatively) short time? Edit: Time travel is fine, but there is a limit to how long you live. You might zip from Point A to Point B, to the observer, but you’ll still feel the journey’s length, no matter how quick or long it appears. [Answer] ## Space pump. After all, why waste your time and fuel actually traveling through space? With only a half-dose of handwavium, you can just take that space between you and your destination and move it around behind you. It's the difference between clawing your way through a block of styrofoam vs. moving the styrofoam around behind you. Required handwavium: Turns out we discovered mass doesn't distort space, it consumes it. That's why things fall together--they just consumed all the space between them. At the same time, balance is maintained by space appearing uniformly throughout the universe, which is seen as dark energy (since it only gets a chance to build up in the intergalactic void). So we devised a system that simply sucks up space in front and expels it through the back. We haven't really moved, so it's not only transluminal but low power as well. [Answer] ## Alcubierre Drive The only FTL system theorized with any real world evidence that it could actually be doable is the Alcubierre Drive. Using the Alcubierre metric, it has been mathematically demonstrated that the existence of negative energy might potentially lead to the existence of a faster than light engine via perpetual acceleration. Last year, DARPA-funded research into Casimir cavities demonstrated that negative vacuum energies can be created. While the technology does not exist to do this in a way that we could make an FTL engine, the math and experimental data around Alcubierre metrics say that it is at least probably doable which is more than can be said for other FTL methods. [Answer] 1. Wormholes. You don't actually travel faster than light yourself, you're just taking a shortcut. The problem is, that it would still [break causality](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/128085/14088) unless all wormholes in the universe existed in the same reference frame. 2. Simulation. If our universe is a simulation, and you either find a way to access an admin terminal or convince God (or however you call the ones who are running the simulation) to make an exception for you, you could just edit your coordinates and be wherever you want in an instant. [Answer] Soft Wormhole [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xda3B.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xda3B.png) Soft wormholes do not require us to invent any new physics. Soft wormholes break no known laws of physics. The topology of spacetime is not flat. It has tunnels. Going from Earth to Alpha Centauri in a straight line takes over 4 years at lightspeed. Going a wavey-gravey path might take 10 years. Going through the tunnel gets you there in weeks without officially breaking the speed of light. Your warp engine does not create such tunnels. It simply makes the visible. Of course light and gravity also transmits through these tunnels. But that is no problem. [Answer] ### Frame challenge: The Mystery Engine™ Going at the speed of light breaks physics as we know them (and maybe they're wrong, it's only our best collective understanding of how the universe works after all, not strictly how the universe works), and truth is light is effin' slow, and emphasis here is important because at the speed of light it would still take years to go anywhere outside the solar system and who wants that? Enter the Mystery Engine™. It allows any ship to go at any speed, but of course that comes with an arbitrarily long or short list of downsides. It looks either super cool or very anticlimactic, it might have some weird effect felt by the people inside the ship. How does it work? Well, that's the mystery. Engineers know how to make it run and maintain it, but not how it works. They might think they know, but they don't really. The fundamental knowledge of how it really actually works in details is something that only the very best scientists in the field have a grasp on and who, obviously, don't feature in the story. The only thing we know of the Mystery Engine™ is that it works. And truly, what more do we need? Why the Mystery Engine™ is the best engine for you Two reasons really. The first and foremost reason is it just works, and the less readers/viewers know about how it works, the less they'll be able to find this one weird trick that physicists hate to invalidate your explanation. The second important reason is that it's rarely important. What's important to know for the reader/viewer is the capabilities, limitations, a visual identity or any other unique quirk. Rather than wondering how to build an engine to be physically possible and then try to integrate it in your world and story, my suggestion is to engineer it to fit your world and story first and then solve the strictly necessary physics of it. You need to have clear bounds to what is and isn't possible. Ask yourself what's the role of FTL, both in and out of universe (i.e. in the world and in the story), how each aspect can serve or disserve the world and story. Ask yourself what kind of FTL you want, then wonder about the finer physics details to make these things happen. [Answer] # Quantum tunneling Quantum tunneling is a well documented phenomenon. To explain a poorly understood incredibly complex problem in an answer here would be impossible, so lets do the basics. A wave, like an electron, can meet a barrier. There is a possibility that it ignores the barrier, moving instantaneously to the other side of the barrier. Though it seems to have been proven it isn't instantaneous, it is so fast it puts light to shame. I think the researchers called the speed so fast it is practically instantaneous. Now imagine we can apply this with a certain precision at a larger scale, like a whole ship. You convince the ship that everything between the ship and the destination is a barrier. Then you try to tunnel. Even at a fraction of a percentage chance it works, it is still easier to try for a few decades and floating in space. When it works it costs no energy as far as I can tell, transporting everything at 'instantaneous' speeds to the destination. Voilà you have arrived at a low cost, 'only' bending the rules from existing quantum levels to a physics perspective. [Answer] > > Time travel is fine, but there is a limit to how long you live. You might zip from Point A to Point B, to the observer, but you’ll still feel the journey’s length, no matter how quick or long it appears. > > > No, relativity means you don't feel the journey's length. If you have a drive that lets you accelerate at 2 Gs indefinitely (this, by the way, is insane super-tech, but not FTL), you could cross the galaxy from one side to the other (100,000 light years, give or take) in 616 years yourself. Crossing 100 light years would only take 19.5 years as far as you could tell. The time it takes to people not on the ship ends up being larger. There are a lot of stars within 100 light years. Now, the problem of a drive capable of 2 Gs of acceleration for centuries is an extremely hard one; it ends up using up multiple stellar masses of energy. So if we can pull this off, we can probably pull off uploading of consciousness, simulated consciousness and realities, and downloading. So you could simply upload yourself, run yourself at 10000x slower than standard speed, cross the galaxy, and feel the trip only took about 2 days. You could even go to an extreme. Upload yourself, send your self via radio waves to the destination, and print yourself out at the other end. This gets you speed of light travel without having to consume several stellar masses of energy. You could even imagine relay stations, so you don't have to make a broadcast tower capable of sending signals 100,000 light years (or whatever distance). [Answer] # Lentz drive Come on people, sci-fi requires keeping up with the literature! The negative mass required for an Alcubierre drive is not needed, according to [Erik Lentz](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.00652) (with agreement from [Lavinia Heisenberg](https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.06488)). Lentz' first paper was [reputably published](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/abe692): E. W. Lentz, Breaking the warp barrier: hyper-fast solitons in Einstein–Maxwell plasma theory, Classical and Quantum Gravity 38, p. 075015 (Mar 2021). Here's the [preprint](https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.07125) of his first paper and here's the [Scientific American article](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/star-treks-warp-drive-leads-to-new-physics/). Yes, the drive requires absurdly large amounts of energy as currently described. However ... We've established what the universe is. Now we're just haggling over the price. [Answer] The issue with avoiding science handwaving is that you are asking for an answer which does not exist. Due to that, every answer is going to contain a bit of fantasy. Any method used should be safe enough to make it viable for people to use. A question I would ask is, does your story require a valid scientific method of FTL? There are many sci-fi fans which suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy a well written story. You could always come up with an method based on unanswered physics (FTL drive of the gap), but that introduces the risk of physics negating your method in the future. Anyways, depending on what purpose FTL travel has in your universe, you likely need an answer which is flexible. String-Drive: A drive which utilizes one dimensional string theory strings to achieve FTL travel. Range: Constant (Each string is a set length requiring multiple "jumps" to reach the destination), Random (Depends on the string length, story driven), or Variable (Strings reach between nearby stars but do not exceed x-lightyears in length). String Availability: Cyclical (Every x-hours/day/week/months like clockwork), Constant, or Variable (Ranges hours/days/weeks/years). Risks: Being stranded in areas between stars with few strings. Long wait times between available strings. Encountering a closed string which might trap/destroy/vanish/stall a ship. Trip Length: None, Variable (based on the string length), Constant (it always takes x-time regardless of distance), Subjective (time is experienced differently between passengers and the rest of the universe but still based on a known rate). Method: Sensors are used to detect strings and determine (with a plot driven margin of error) the viability of the string. A special particle accelerator locks onto the string which shifts the ship into a different dimension. The accelerator pushes the ship along the length of the string until it reaches the end, at which point the ship exits to normal space again. Since string theory is also the theory of quantum gravity, you could work that into an explanation. "The energy from the ship's particle accelerator poured into the cosmic string, folding the ship, and everything contained within, into a multi-dimensional bubble. Quantum gravity, normally restricted to operating at the Planck scale, operated differently in this space/time. The ship fell towards the quantum gravity well as if it was approaching a blackhole, but the particle field was pulled along with the ship, shifting the singularity's location to always be just beyond reach. The ship would keep falling like this until it reached the end of the string, at which time the ship would be forced back into normal space. It was a rough, almost violent, way of achieving faster than light velocities, but it worked." If FTL is going to play a major dramatic role in your world, it might be helpful to have a method which is less predictable/reliable. [Answer] Q: What would be the least physics breaking way to travel at light speed or faster? Leaving a paradigm defining a reference frame is no small change. I can't go into "or faster", because this question has a science based tag.. there's no "minimal change" when your model of space time is based on a light speed reference (or grid) of moving photons at zero mass and c. It is like asking Euclides to leave his linear axes and apply an asymptote for grid distance somewhere on the X-axis. And then find an asymptote that is surpassing the previous one in gradient, until at some gradient, the asymptote breaks and starts to travel into the past (??) or back (??) Propagating light speed c is like a reference to physics, not something you can "beat". Nearing c will enlarge the mass of your ship to infinity. There is no way to drive infinite weight ships, so cou can't ever reach actual c, let alone pass it. For space colonization, you don't need to hurry. Maintain 2G acceleration during about 11 years (299792458 m/s divided by a=20 (2G) divided by 3600\365.25) will bring you near c indeed, but for your passengers, 2G is very inconvenient and accelerating for 11 years requires a lot of energy. You'll need more and more energy, while approaching the actual c.. that will limit the effective mass of your ship and its usefulness for colonization purposes. Excessive time travel into the future is impractical for colonists* It will depend on the ship's weight and and its purpose what to choose, when you approach c. For reconnaissance missions, involving solo, adventurous SF travelers with endless energy at their disposal, warping a few million years per month of travel won't be a problem, you could be underway for 63000 years per ship day.. time dilation.. <https://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/timedial.html> ..but if you do colonization, you'll need less time warping ! Traveling too near c could result in an unpredictable situations on arrival. A colonization target exoplanet must be researched properly, on Earth, before you send a mission. You can't arrive on an exoplanet aeons later. When you'd arrive say 300.000 years in the future, you could find your target planet evaporated by a near supernova, or rendered inhabitable by a planetoid impact you never predicted. Colonization missions should be safe. Easy go: generation ships For colonization, time deviation should remain below 50% and bring you back to (about) the real world ! that is (about) current time, or say, twice current time. I think there will be discoveries of interesting planets in the 5-50 ly distance range in the coming centuries.. humanity will build generation ships to reach other places. Travel straight for say 20 years at 1G, to reach say 0.75 c. Time dilation will be about 1.5. Then, go straight and 0G for 0-40 years. Then, take 20 years to decelerate.. You can explore anything between 10 and 50 light years, within a century.. without the need for FTL. Or apparent (observer) FTL. [Answer] What year is the physics book that you are using to determine 'reality'? Our physics textbook keeps getting thicker and thicker every year. Not only are the chapters expanded on, but entirely new chapters are written. A form of near-instantaneous teleportation is now theoretically possible. However, it takes specific conditions. A near-empty environment, minimal heat (vibrations of particles), and devoid of gravity - exactly what inter-stellar space is. The terminus of [such a transportation system](https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-big-can-the-quantum-world-be-physicists-probe-the-limits-20210818/#) would have to be far from any gravitational source, and could not be 'built in' to the spaceship, rather the spaceship is 'launched' from this special facility and is thereafter 'on its own'. That is, the spaceship would have to be encapsulated in a special containment vessel, and forced into a quantum state. Then, probability takes over its actual location - it becomes a quantum wave. Just like entering the StarTrek transporter. All the action takes place in the transporter room, not in the space between origin and destination. Unfortunately, currently there is no real way to 'aim' it at a particular location. > > Holding a nanoparticle this tightly in a single spot is just the > start. The goal is to put these objects into a so-called quantum > superposition — where it becomes impossible to say, before measuring > them, just where they are. A particle in a superposition could be > found in one of two or more places, and you just don’t know which of > them it will be until you look. It is perhaps the most startling > example of how quantum mechanics seems to insist that our familiar > world of objects with definite properties and positions comes into > being only through the act of looking at it. > > > ... > > All the same, researchers have been steadily increasing the size at > which superpositions and related quantum effects can still be observed > — from particles to small molecules, then bigger molecules, and now, > they hope, nanoscale lumps of matter. No one knows how far in > principle this expansion of quantumness can continue. Is there — as > some think — a size limit at which it simply vanishes, perhaps because > quantum behavior is incompatible with gravity (which is negligible for > atoms and molecules)? Or is there no fundamental limit to how big > quantumness can be? > > > ... > > Aquantum particle in a superposition, contrary to common belief, is > not really in two (or more) states at once. Rather, a superposition > means that there is more than one possible outcome of a measurement. > For an object at everyday scales, described by classical physics, that > makes no sense — it is either here or there, red or blue. If we can’t > say which it is, that’s just because of our ignorance: We haven’t > looked. But for quantum superpositions, there simply is no definite > answer — the property of “position” is ill-defined. > > > ... > > Interactions between a quantum particle and neighboring particles, > such as gas molecules or photons, entangle both objects into a kind of > joint quantum state. In this way, a superposition of the original > particle gets spread into the environment. > > > ... > > Rather like an ink droplet diffusing and spreading in a glass of > water, this spreading superposition makes it ever harder to see the > original one unless you look at every spot it has spread to and > reconstruct it from that information. As entanglement mixes the wave > function of the initial superposed particle with those of its > surrounding particles, the wave function seems to lose coherence and > become just a mass of incoherent little waves. This process is called > decoherence, and it makes the superposition undetectable in the > original object: Its quantum nature seems to disappear. > > > ... > > Decoherence of a quantum superposition happens extremely fast unless > the interactions of the particle with its environment can be minimized > — for example, by cooling it to extremely low temperatures to reduce > the disruptive effect of heat, and keeping the object in a vacuum to > eliminate molecular collisions. The bigger the object is, the more > interactions it is likely to have, and the faster decoherence happens. > For a dust grain about 10 micrometers across floating in the air, a > superposition state of two positions in space separated by about the > same width as the grain itself is estimated to decohere in about 10−31 > seconds — less than the time it takes for a beam of light to travel > the width of a proton. > > > ... > > Arndt says his goal is to increase the mass of the particles by a > factor of 10 every year or two. That would soon take them well into > the size and mass range of biological objects such as viruses. > Meanwhile, in 2009 Romero-Isart, then at the Max Planck Institute for > Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, and his co-workers sketched out > an idea to levitate viruses in an optical trap — where tiny objects > are held fast by the forces induced by intense, focused light beams — > and then coax them into a superposition of two vibration states and > look for interference between them. > > > Why stop there? The researchers even speculated about doing the same > to unambiguously living organisms, such as the phenomenally robust > little animals called tardigrades, which are about a millimeter wide > and have been found to survive several days of exposure to outer > space. The researchers wrote that the plan would allow them to create > “quantum superposition states in very much the same spirit as the > original Schrödinger’s cat” — the famous thought experiment intended > to highlight the apparent absurdity of quantum superpositions for > large (and especially living) entities. > > > So, really, no worm hole or handwaving required, and based on current theory. It is technically not 'moving' anything, except the informtion in the waveform.. 'Superposition' an entire spaceship into a quantum state. But where she lands, no one knows. It is all about probability, the spin of the wheel. Oh, and no guarantees that life could survive the process. Something about that 'quantum state - low energy' thing. Room temperature quantumness, anyone? We are aiming for room temperature superconductivity, after all. [Answer] Create a method to decouple from the Higgs field, thus negating mass )and presumably inertia). This would still presumably stop at c rather than allowing infinite velocity. [Answer] 'Newer physics text book' next chapter Most of the proposed solutions involve the mechanism for travel be inherent in the spaceship. The ship itself carries the delta-V. Okay, that gives tremendous flexibility, steering, and choice of destination, and 'travel on demand'. However, there is an alternative. It is like the difference between a rocket-powered projectile and a gun-shot projectile. For the background concept, one proposed solution to interplanetary travel that is going the rounds is a 'laser sail' that propels the tiny ship through a laser beam sent from some platform. Thus, the tiny ships do not need to carry the delta-V with them, the delta-V is provided by the beam of light generated at some energy-rich source, and projected at the spaceship. Let's carry this further. For travel between two specific destinations, there is no real need for in-flight course corrections. 'Ballistics' methods are good enough. One potential solution is suggested by '[solitons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton)' > > In mathematics and physics, a soliton or solitary wave is a > self-reinforcing wave packet that maintains its shape while it > propagates at a constant velocity. Solitons are caused by a > cancellation of nonlinear and dispersive effects in the medium. > (Dispersive effects are a property of certain systems where the speed > of a wave depends on its frequency.) Solitons are the solutions of a > widespread class of weakly nonlinear dispersive partial differential > equations describing physical systems. > > > The soliton phenomenon was first described in 1834 by John Scott > Russell (1808–1882) who observed a solitary wave in the Union Canal in > Scotland. He reproduced the phenomenon in a wave tank and named it the > "Wave of Translation". > > > The disadvantage of most EMF waveforms is the 'Inverse Square Law' - because they propagate in a concentric circle radiating out, the energy dissipates by the square of the distance. But suppose, somewhat like a laser. a 'beam' could be shot out that does not dissipate, but maintains its shape. It is constrained on all sides, essentially traveling down a tube. That is in essence what a soliton is. Consider, as an example, [the vortex air cannon](https://gizmodo.com/the-physics-of-vortex-cannons-5953929), shooting an air donut out. This air donut is essentially a soliton, a body of air moving through space at a constant velocity and maintaining its shape. Instead of shooting air, suppose this cannon shoots out a warp bubble that ravels through space, towards a pre-determined destination, at a constant velocity and coherent contiguous shape. Now, put a 'spaceship' in front of, or in the middle of, this soliton, so that the spaceship travels with the soliton like a surfer on a wave. No need for the spaceship to carry any delta-v, it is all supplied by the original source that created the soliton in the first place, like a gun instead of a rocket. If one's physics text book is as new as just a few years old, this solution becomes imminently reasonable. Consider this idea, from "[Breaking the Warp Barrier for Faster-Than-Light Travel: New Theoretical Hyper-Fast Solitons Discovered](https://scitechdaily.com/breaking-the-warp-barrier-for-faster-than-light-travel-new-theoretical-hyper-fast-solitons-discovered/)" > > If sufficient energy could be generated, the equations used in this > research would allow space travel to Proxima Centauri, our nearest > star, and back to Earth in years instead of decades or millennia. That > means an individual could travel there and back within their lifetime. > In comparison, the current rocket technology would take more than > 50,000 years for a one-way journey. In addition, the solitons (warp > bubbles) were configured to contain a region with minimal tidal forces > such that the passing of time inside the soliton matches the time > outside: an ideal environment for a spacecraft. This means there would > not be the complications of the so-called “twin paradox” whereby one > twin traveling near the speed of light would age much more slowly than > the other twin who stayed on Earth: in fact, according to the recent > equations both twins would be the same age when reunited. > > > If these solitons could be generated at the origin, and then shot out towards their destination like the vortex air cannon all energies are supplied at the origin, not on the spaceship itself. ]
[Question] [ Full steel plate armour is seen as the most effective type of armour from the Medieval period, viewed by some as the pinnacle of medieval/early-renaissance armour. It’s rounded surfaces and layers of padding and chain mail underneath the plates reduced the wearer’s chance of injury drastically. It also allows for a high level of mobility and articulation without restricting the wearer too much. In our own history, we have developed armour such as brigandine, lamellar, a coat of plates, segmented plates (like the lorica segmentata), gambeson, chain mail, we’ve even made armour out of wood and bone. However, none of these are quite as protective and mobile as a suit of full steel plate armour. Indeed, of these armours mentioned, some are more effective than others, almost in a hierarchy. With this in mind, in a world where multiple types of armour co-exist in the same place at the same time, why would people actively choose not to wear the most effective armour, such as full steel plate, if it was available? For this question, assume that monetary cost is not a factor. The reason for this is that it is fairly obvious that people would not buy better armour if they could not afford it, so cost of manufacture and sale should not be factored into answers. Also assume that the availability of resources is not a factor. Again, it is fairly obvious that if you lacked the resources to produce more effective armour, you would have to produce something less effective. The best answers should cover why less effective armour would be chosen on both an individual level (such as an adventurer, mercenary or other form of lone traveler) and a militaristic level (such as an army or other large group of organised fighters). Magic and monsters may factor into your decisions but this is not required for a good answer. [Answer] I will structure my answer into three parts. In the first one, I will be vaguely railing against the arbitrary restriction on the cost and other economic factors ) The issue here is not only in the straight up monetary cost. The biggest resource is the work time. Late plate armor needs a lot of effort of a fairly specialized professional armorer to produce. It's not a task that can be scaled by throwing more people at it, unlike the production of maille, for example. It also needs a lot of personalized fitting. So, it's not an item that can be taken 'off the shelf' or from the municipal armory - it needs to be ordered in advance by a person who plans to do nothing but fighting in the near time, or even for most of his life. Another factor to consider - in the medieval army an armored knight needs a fairly large retinue. However your army is composed, someone needs to care for the horses, forage, build the camp, dig fortifications and latrines, help the knights to put the armour on, and so on. And unless your warfare is heavily ritualized form of mass joust, where non-knights are out of bonds and can't be attacked, it makes sense to arm and armour at least some of those people. So, every infantryman and squire would also need plate armour by your logic. Time being the most precious resource, you are not able to equip every one of those with fitted white plate, so by necessity munitions grade armour enters the equation - and it is 'worse' then knightly armour, being either heavier or less protective or both. Moving to my next two points, I need to say that I actually do not quite understand your question. Seeing your replies above, I can't say which of the two are your asking: 1) why would any individual person choose 'inferior' armour if he has an access to full plate? 2) why would a nation in a world where plate armour is available, armour it's heavy cavalry and heavy infantry in inferior armour? So I will try answering them in turn. As for the first variant, the answer is party covered above. Any army has many more roles then heavy cavalry and heavy infantry. Actual fighting takes a minuscule proportion of the time any warrior or soldier spends in the field. Most of the time is spent marching, riding, putting up camp, sleeping, eating, standing sentry and dicing ) However comfortable full plate may be, you can't spend 24 hours a day in it. Some soldiers can opt for armour that is easier to put on and take off (one of the advantages of the brigandine, actually, is not the cost, but the ease of putting it on by yourself), or easier to do daily tasks in. You can dig latrines in full plate, but it's absolutely not optimal way to spend your time. 'Inferior' types of armour can have other logistical advantages - ease of field repair, for example. Also, the soldiers that are not expected to enter melee would not wear full armour even if they had time to prepare. You can even see that on the the medieval miniatures the archers are drawn wearing full plate, but with open faced helmet and without gauntlets. So, archers, pikemen, siege weapon and artillery crews would not wear full enclosed plate. The main idea in this part is - soldiers often sacrifice protection for comfort. And throughout the history, the average infantry armour is some sort of torso armour and open helmet. So unless the soldier absolutely needs full armour, he won't use it. It goes double for 'adventurers'. Unlike soldiers, they won't have an advantage of having the baggage train where they can stash their armor. If you have a group of adventures, one of them could be clad in full armour, while the rest serves as his retinue, helps him carry it, and protects him, while helping him to put it on. Whatever the gripes people may have with good old Tolkien, the Fellowship is one of the best description of a group of adventurers in terms of their traveling kit - they have only two shirts of maille among them, one is worn by superhumanly strong dwarf, another weighs almost nothing, a single sidearm per person, while the main bulk of their belongings is spare clothes, ropes, water, food and occasional firewood. Compared to that, the more weapons and armor your adventurers have, the more unarmored helpers they need - servants, native guides, packhorses etc. The answer to the second variant of the question is more complicated. It's also hard to answer, why a nation would not use full plate armour without resorting to the economic explanations. The easiest case is isolation. The country is pretty isolated, it had it's own martial culture, own tradition of arms and armor and had only recently come into the contact with the 'mainstream' cultures of your world that use plate armour (think 16 century Japan). Some nations can be in the perifery of your world, or these are the peripherical regions of bigger nations. They have a constant low-level conflict with nomadic tribes, so mobility is a higher priority over protection (think the whole Eastern Europe on the border with Great Steppe for the most of the history). Some regions can be very distinct geographically, so it's hard to use heavy cavalry there - broken terrain, bogs, mountains, etc. (think Scottish Highlands). So, some specific local factors can prioritize light infantry or light cavalry as the backbone of the military in the region. Different economic factors can also be in play here. The particular region can be poor in local resources, or not urbanized enough to produce plate armour locally. While it is possible to import, it adds additional complications, so that poorer local armour still becomes a more 'optimal' choice in a lot of situations. If you need it as a plot point, there can be even a trade embargo on a particular nation, where everybody agrees not to sell their better quality arms to them. [Answer] ## Comfort, individually Plate mail is heavy and hot, which is why you don't want to wear it all the time. Instead, you'd strip down your armor while you weren't seriously expecting combat, leaving only the gambeson (cloth padding) or gambeson and chain mail. Much more comfortable, but now you're vulnerable. ## Logistics, on an organization level Let's say you've got an army. One of the important bits about your typical medieval army is how far they can march in a day for a given level of exhaustion. So your army isn't going to be wearing plate mail 24/7. If they're not carrying their armor on their persons, it has to be brought on carts. This means more carts, more draft animals to pull the carts, and more resources for those. It adds up. You also need more blacksmiths to help maintain the armor. ## Training First off, many medieval armies were levies/drafts, where they basically grab 1 out of every N men in an area. These are not professional soldiers and they would not know how to fight in plate mail, both because of weight and because of the vision impairment. It would take longer to train them in fighting in plate mail. ## Don and doff Plate mail is not easy to get into and out of. It usually required someone to help, and if your entire army is wearing plate mail, along with the gloves (that need to be secured) then you'll have problems. This is also important because you can't always predict when combat will happen long enough in advance to get into armor. If you're sleeping, outside your armor (see comfort) then it will take you a bit to get into armor. In which time someone will probably stab and/or shoot you. ## Trust In modern times, we have these things called security clearances, because we don't trust everyone. You can't fly a fighter jet without passing a background check, nor will you be hired as an information security officer. The same principle applies here: as a government, I don't want to give every Tom, Dick, and Harry armor that makes them very hard to put down. I don't trust them. That's reserved for my most loyal troops and bodyguards. With an equipment advantage, my palace guards and bodyguards can compensate for numerical or informational (i.e. ambush) disadvantages. [Answer] Armor was chosen based on how good it was for its actual purpose. This is the same way modern armies use to choose their equipment. As an example the rifles used in the world wars had more powerful cartridges and were expected to be accurate to greater distances than modern assault rifles. And you could get them in automatic versions even. But starting in the 30s (I think) more and more armies realized that most soldiers never or extremely rarely shoot beyond 150 to 200 meters. Or need the extra penetration that a full powered rifle cartridge gives. This means that the rifles are not really better than an assault rifle in actual use. Equipping your common soldiers with those will give you no benefit over using cheaper and lighter assault rifles shooting weaker and cheaper ammunition. Same logic applies with arming medieval armies with armor. A plate mail is heavy and expensive armor designed for repeatedly getting hit by heavy weapons without taking lethal damage. And it works very well. But most medieval soldiers do not actually spend that much time getting repeatedly hit by heavy weapons just like most modern soldiers do not spend much time taking long range shots. Ranged and light units are supposed to avoid taking heavy hits altogether. Equipping them with heavy armor would just make them slower and encourage them to do things they really should not be doing. Even normal front line melee units where soldiers do get hit with heavy weapons do not really need soldiers to take repeated heavy hits. There are other soldiers behind him who can take the next hit. So such units are equipped with armor that keeps them from taking lethal or crippling injury and keeps them fit enough to fall back. So who does plate mail make sense for? Heavy cavalry and heavy infantry. These units are expected to smash thru enemy formations where falling back would leave you alone surrounded by enemies. Or to take a charge without needing to fall back. And it is much easier for the unit not to fall back when individual soldiers do not need to. Officers in other units usually can use extra protection as having them injured makes other soldiers less effective. You can also have specific elite soldiers with better armor in a melee unit. Typically they would also act as NCOs. This is because they have better abilities or even weapons as other soldiers so having them injured actually makes the unit weaker. Adventurers in modern RPGs or fantasy are an important group as well. They need all the protection they can carry. Since they are most familiar group of people to use medieval armor to modern people, this kind of skews how most people see armor. [Answer] Mobility The key benefit that lighter types of armour offer both individually and militaristically is not having to lug around an extra 25-50kg all day/during a battle. Well fitted full plate armour offers a surprising amount of mobility, and is in fact lighter than most chainmail hauberks, but compared to an unarmoured person it is still a significant amount of weight. [This study](https://www.livescience.com/15128-armor-drained-medieval-knight-energy.html) (albeit with armour on the higher end of the weight scale) found that moving in armour takes about twice the effort as moving unencumbered, with the majority of the issue coming from the additional weight on the legs. It posits that this could have been one of the deciding factors for the English victory against greater numbers of very well armoured French knights at the battle of Agincourt. However, that's not the only example. The clash between lighter armoured troops and heavy infantry was very common in the ancient world. Between Greek phalanxes and Roman legionaries the heavy side is well covered, and plenty of 'barbarian' and 'civilised' cultures around them specifically chose to forsake heavier armour. Example 1: Greeks vs Thracians Early hoplites were heavy infantry that fought in close formation. Wealthy hoplites would be armoured in a bronze panoply weighing around 32kg, and less wealthy hoplites would usually be unarmoured aside from their large shield and large spear. Early engagements with the lightly armoured Thracians to the north did not go well for the Greeks. Thracians usually fought as peltasts. They were unarmoured, with a small shield called a pelte, javelins and a short sword. When fighting a phalanx, they used their extra mobility to keep their distance and pepper the formation with javelins. If the hoplites broke out and tried to chase them down, they'd again use their superior mobility to retreat before picking off the stragglers and resuming the attack. Once the phalanx had been thoroughly disrupted by casualties, javelins encumbering shields and exhaustion the peltasts would close to finish them off. It was such a successful tactic that it was adopted wholesale into Greek military tactics, and the Thracians remained a feared people by the Greeks even afterwards (despite not taking up heavy infantry tactics themselves). They were also used to excellent effect by the Macedonian army of Alexander. Example 2: Romans vs Dacians The Dacians were a group of peoples from a similar location as the Thracians (perhaps even being a Thracian people). They were a wealthy people, benefiting from trade with the Greek colonies on the Black Sea and plentiful gold mines in their territory. During the 1st century BC two of their kings carved out a significant kingdom in modern-day Romania which had significant conflicts with Rome. They're primarily remembered for their defeat marked on Trajan's column, but their empire lasted from 76BC-106AD (182 years), weathering Roman retaliation during much of that period. The [wiki article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacians#Conflict_with_Rome) seems pretty Romano-centric, focussing on their defeat by Trajan, but there's a hint to their capability in one of Trajan's motivations being to 'reclaim their standards'. The reason the Dacians had those standards in the first place is that they'd defeated two previous concerted military assault by the Romans. The Dacians fought primarily as light infantry. They were certainly wealthy enough to outfit themselves with armour should they have desired, and some did with mail in the Celtic style. However, the vast majority fought lightly armoured and were successful against the Roman heavy infantry on at least two separate occasions. Their tactics and weaponry were so successful that the Romans had to modify their armour to protect against them. In conclusion If you get looking, there are plenty of other examples around of lighter troops prevailing over equivalent heavy troops, even in close combat. Romans vs the Spanish, Mongols vs Polish and Hungarian knights, and Roman Velites (peltast equivalents that were famed for their readiness to get into close combat, catching many armies by surprise). With the correct tactics, weaponry and environment lightly armoured troops can be every but as effective as heavily armoured ones, and in many cases moreso. Individual level To touch on the individual level as an adventurer/lone traveller, you're unlikely to be walking around fully armoured the whole time due to the aforementioned double-effort it takes to move around. Knights didn't. They travelled around unarmoured and geared up before a battle. As a lone traveller or adventurer, you're unlikely to be fighting many set piece battles. Most of your conflict is going to come without much warning, and you're unlikely to be able to get fully armoured up before you're fighting. Heavy armour isn't much use to you if it's sitting on the ground, and is just a burden to carry around if it's not used. Better to pick something lighter that you can comfortably travel around in all day. [Answer] One answer is that the lesser armour type is lighter, and allows for more rapid troop movements and deployments. If said soldiers have to cross rivers or hike up mountains, lighter armour may be a necessity. Another answer is that full steel plate armor will become a lot hotter in warmer climates. This could be problematic an a desert environment. Another answer is that steel can rust. This might be an issue in a humid environment like a rain forrest. [Answer] Your limitation of unlimited resources takes out the most obvious answers. Is work going into the production of the armor not a factor either? Otherwise, this would be the most simple reason. Plate armor simply requires a lot of work hours from skilled craftsmen. Without special circumstances there is no reason to settle for inferior protection, neither on a individual nor on a military level. If you can equip youself in a superior way without any disadvantages, why wouldn't you? (caveat here for militaries, sometimes the good old mass assault with arrow catching cannon fodder will still be superior, yet your resource catch negates this, unless manpower is also an unlimited resource or mass necromancy is a thing in your world). Plate armor will also not limit agility or endurance significantly, as some people will certainly attempt to tell you. Even plate armor still allows you to do acrobatic tricks or scale a climbing wall (there are some cool videos of this in Youtube made by the Kingdom Come game developers). The endurence side of things can and should be fixed with training and drills. There might be people who are simply too weak to cope with plate armor, but they would fare poorly in combat against a plate user anyway, so there's no need to debate dead meat. That all said, here are some circumstances where other armor might be chosen. -Plate armor is ineffective: This is what happened irl. Guns simply got too powerfull, and the performence of plate armor wasn't worth the money. -Naval warfare: Steel plate doesn't like seawater, and swimming in it gets awkward real quick. Naval landings turn out horrible if your equipment drowns you. (This refers to permanent sea troops (aka sailors)). You might still use platy boys (this is a real word xD) for specific operations. -Magic: Strongly depends on the magic system. Yet if there is something some form of metal-bending (no pun intended) like in Avatar: The last air bender, plate armor becomes impractical and dangerous. On a similar note, many role play systems have metal interfere with spell casting, so there is a good reason why mages would wear cloth armor. -Covert Operations: If you want to take a city with the help of infiltration forces, enemy guards will consider a bunch of people coming into the city in gambesons (which can be seen as normal winter cloaks), a lot less conspicuous than a bunch of platy boys. And if the mission will involve fighting, taking the most protection you can get away with is reasonable for individuals as well as for soldiers. -Local Customs: This applies more to individuals. If plate armor is readily available, local rulers might decide to make private ownership illegal to have a military advantage over the people. So any adventurer will be forced to use the next best tier of armor: mail over gambeson. -Prestige and Sports: In the Renaissance, rapier fencing was popular, as it was a test of style and skill. Platy boys bashing their heads in with halberds and half-sword techniques might be seen as clumsy and brutish. Going to battle (or rather duels) with no armor sends a statement and makes winning more prestigious. Maybe there is a tradition that dictates armorless fighting under certain circumstances. -Logistics: Your infinite resource caveat limits this, but this is a serious limitation. Plate armor is maintenence heavy and heavy in itself. A Gambeson only needs sewing kit, but plate needs a forge and a skilled blacksmith to fix. Likewise plate might not be ideal for jungle warfare and especially an army needs significant infrastructure to supply plate to everyone. -Tradition and Culture: A weak one, as any culture that is technologically inferior will be conquered quickly, but "we've always done it this way" can be a strong argument. -Plot Armor: I said no one would go for suboptimal armor, but in a medival setting plate armor isn't the strongest armor, plot armor is. Why would your hero, or any main character, bother with any type of armor if they can't get hurt anyway. TLDR: Under your limitations there is no general good reason to settle for inferior armor. There are a number of exceptions, the only general non-quirky one being anti-armor magic. [Answer] Armour trades mobility for protection. Your basic assumption is somewhat wrong: > > "[Full plate armour] allows for a high level of mobility and > articulation without restricting the wearer too much." > > > Mobility Whilst good plate armour does allow mobility, it's certainly not full mobility. I fight HEMA, and even lightly armoured gloves limit your wrist movements; this is why there are heavier gloves for longsword than side-sword than rapier (which require more mobility and finesse, but do not take such heavy strikes). Endurance Furthermore, whilst troops in plate armour can run, they tire quickly. One study showed people used twice as much energy moving in it: <https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/a6749/medieval-knights-on-a-treadmill-put-historical-myths-to-the-test/> Many battles or other tasks require endurance, and wearing full plate armour will greatly reduce endurance. Tired troops fight badly, and are easily out-manoeuvred. In a formal pitched battle with both sides using plate armour, this obviously affects both sides equally, but in any other scenario, it's going to hurt the team with plate armour if the other side can draw out the conflict (e.g. by retreating). Particularly for roles such as adventurers or travellers, plate armour would have many drawbacks, and would not be practical to wear continually. It could be carried on a horse pack, but this would then mean you're not wearing it most of the time. [Answer] Say we have a knight in full steel armor, fighting a guy in practically nothing. Certainly, the armor should be useful. However, fire and blunt weapons will both be worse for the knight, because dodging is presumably far harder. A skilled fighter also may opt for lighter armor to outmaneuver the knight, such as using a sword (armor blocks slash attacks), and stabbing joints with the faster and more accurate movement the light/no armor can allow. Perhaps armor stands out. A knight in full metal must be a clear target to raiders than what appears to be a poor "unarmed" beggar/peasant. Armor also is very annoying in terms of heat (protective fencing gear is bad enough with sweat, I'd hate to imagine 60 pounds of armor). Traveling also would probably be bad in armor. I highly doubt armor is comfortable for normal situations, nor would I believe knights would always wear armor at all times (sounds like paranoia to me). Another thing I'd like to note: Spartans would go into battle mostly naked with a shield, breastplate, and helmet. I don't have any idea of the accuracy to this statement, but this getup will already weigh more than 50 pounds in metal, explaining why minimal armor would be favorable. EDIT: Clarification, "naked" as in wearing no more metal armor except the helmet-shield-breastplate combo. Cloth and leather being ignored here. Thanks to pluckedkiwi for pointing out my vagueness. As a final side note, there is something called the "murder stroke", slamming the hilt of a sword into a helmeted person's skull. Regardless of armor, the impact should still kill. If I face a swordsman of considerable skill, I personally would take the no-armor route and sprint full speed away from them, if I could. [Answer] Terrian full Plate is fine is in relatively flat land in a temperate climate, but that is not the majority of the world. In a hot humid climates plate has far to much insulation, you will overheat far too easily. It becomes impossible to wear it for any length of time. This is still a problem in hot climates in general but humidity just compounds the issue. In swampy terrain the added weight makes you prone to sinking and getting stuck, worse the padding can get very heavy when wet, weight becomes a major problem. Naval combat, plate is a deadly in naval combat, if you fall in the water, you die, period. Of course this only matters in navies where the people could swim, which was not all of them. Worse ships are often tight cramped spaces that demand a lot of climbing and squeezing through tight areas the very things plate impeeds. There is another hidden problem exposed polished iron and steel and salt water spray are not a great combination european style full plate will rust pretty quickly. Archers, archery produces a unique problem with armor, the proud chest plate and flared joints that makes plate armor effective also gets in the way of of a bow, even the most heavily armored archers the early samurai had armor with less coverage to eliminate anything that might impede the bow. [Answer] Just want to throw in an aspect here. In the Bloodborne Game for PS4, armor and protective gear were used in the beginning to protect oneself from injury when fighting a mysterious outbreak of werewolf-like monsters. The lore and backstory state that this armor was found to be too cumbersome and didn't really make a difference anyway when fighting monsters of the strength and size that they faced. So armor was in general, discarded completely and replaced by light cloth and pieces of leather to protect from surface injuries and scratches. The new and light attire enabled the "hunters" to move swiftly and dodge the monsters easier and thus have a higher chance of survival than wearing armor that didn't work anyway. [Answer] Why do you want there to be different types of armour? If it to create some interesting dynamics then something natural to those dynamics that you seek after would be the answer. Terrain The full steel plate men could dominate the plains while the leather guys would have the forests to themselves. This would create scenarios where neither parties want to get off their preferred location. Skills and weapons Wizards with anti-plate skills such as rusting. The spell hits only one piece, so it is ineffective against chain mails. Molotov cocktails or such would make full plates quite an oven. There could be a muscle grow skill/potion. Moving in too big armour is not possible and too small armour would make the user be crushed. Deus and his ex machinas would always favour someone or grant access to magic. Some are more favoured by the god, for example, those that do not use metals, wood, leather, magic... Many gods having their own preference on whom to support. Does the forest god like or dislike people using wooden shields and animal hides? Or if the god just has an eye for certain aesthetics. [Answer] Effective is a relative term Armour is a tool to do a job. Sometimes a sledge hammer isn't the best hammer to use. You need to consider what the job is to select the best tool. Weight, speed, flexibility, noise, bulk, cost and what you're up against is just as important as protection. Something good for bullets isn't always the best for knives and what's good for knives isn't as good for blunt weapons. Choose your tools to fit the job. [Answer] You want to evoke a tough martial mood, but you don't intend to fight. [![woman armor](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WWSX5.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WWSX5.jpg) <https://www.p66.me/cpa> Impractical, expensive and really great looking weapons and armor have probably been around almost as long as real weapons and armor - ceremonial maces, decorative swords, parade armor. All that stuff is what you often see in museums because it never got down and dirty, and is sweet eye candy, and costs loads, so people kept it safe. Rich (men, usually) want to show off their wealth and importance but don't want to seem like wusses and so they glam up their military regalia. Authors and artists of fantasy want to show off the bodies of their sexy heroines, who will get hurt in battle according to authorial discretion, not efficacy of their armor. People in your world might (under the right circumstances) wear less-than-optimal armor to evoke the mood of real, practical armor but in a way that is more beautiful and spectacular than ordinary working armor can accomplish. --- You are hard pressed, and grab what is handy. [![fighting Taliban in pink boxers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3DZrV.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3DZrV.jpg) > > Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has reassured Specialist Zachary > Boyd, stationed in Afghanistan, that his military career is in no > danger for having appeared on the front page of The New York Times > dressed for combat in pink boxers and flip-flops. Quite the contrary. > > > <https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/behind-the-scenes-man-in-the-pink-boxers/> If you have a big budget and leisurely access to your neighborhood armorer you can have him make you a nice suite of full plate. If you wake to find the battle has started on your front porch, you might grab your big jacket and go. People in actual battle might not have had much time to set up. The pink boxers soldier did get on his helmet and flak jacket and then it was time to start shooting. ]
[Question] [ About 39 light years away is a lush, biodiverse planet, called Leena. It is the fourth planet from a yellow star. The planet is a prime target for human colonization, as probe bots have discovered that the planet has oxygen, large amounts of liquid water, and its gravity was only 1.5 times earth gravity. So they build 3 ships, and the population sent to the planet is 50,000 people. They also sent livestock animals like cows, chickens and pigs, and crops like potatoes and cabbage. They also brought pet animals, like cats and dogs. There are many problems with colonizing this planet, however. Problem 1: The surface of the planet is covered in a thick layer of trees and shrubs that block the sun out on the surface. It must be cleared if they want to grow food on the planet. Problem 2: There are plants, called [eco-titans](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/107495/attracting-animals-to-the-plant), that will eat any human or animals who stray too close. If killed, these animals will release their spores, which will make more Ecotitans they need to deal with. So, do you have any solutions for these problems? [Answer] Assuming those onboard are smart enough to have gathered information concerning the planet’s chemical and biological make-up to confirm that habitation thereupon is not essentially different from habitation on Earth beside the two aforementioned problems: Solution 1: Drop chunks of scrap metal large enough to survive atmospheric entry, but not large enough to destroy entire biomes, and allow the impact to wipe out large areas of the forest; preferably calculating the trajectory so that the projectile lands on an island surrounded by river or narrow ocean gulfs so as to avoid excessive destruction. Once the burning is over, drop landing crafts in the treeless craters and harvest sunlight as necessary. Solution 2: Stay within the craters formed in solution 1, if necessary, fence-off the perimeter and regularly burn away recovering vegetation; prohibit colonists and animals from straying beyond the boundary, and expand by first burning the vegetation in a patch of land that is the target of the expansion. As to the hippie scientists who would wonder into the woods against regulation, we can only wish them luck. [Answer] The two problems can be simplified to: > > Problem 1: The surface of the planet is covered in a thick layer of trees and shrubs. > > > Problem 2: There are plants that we don't like. > > > I never thought that I would propose a solution to a serious [creature-design](/questions/tagged/creature-design "show questions tagged 'creature-design'") based question taking a page from Pokémon, but here goes. When faced with plant, use fire or bugs. Introduce bugs into their ecossystem and watch the havoc. In fact, when biologists speak of alien invasion, they often refer exactly to this: non-native species damaging an ecossystem beyond repair. The advantage with this approach is that all you have to do is taking the bugs there, and they will do the job on their own accord. You just sit and wait. Fire, on the other hand, may be more energy consuming. But it solves things fast, and it is beautiful. I am not a pyromaniac. And if your eco-titan spores happen to be immune to fire and too though for bugs to eat, you can always carpet-bomb the whole planet. Cover it in smoke a la Matrix, wait for a few months in orbit until the smoke disperses, then settle down. The whole planet will probably be stinking of rot when you touchdown, but hey, you can't make an omelet without leaving some corpses. [Answer] The first problem you will face is: is anything there edible? You might have to burn a patch and then seed it with Earth based bacteria and fungi to get anything to grow there. If we can't eat them, they can't eat us. The big question is whether the ecotitans get any nutrition out of eating us. Not that it matters if you are being eaten but it determines if you can eat them back. Maybe the spore's sprout is edible. In that case, cut one down and farm it. If it isn't edible, find a weed killer specific to its biology and grow your own crops. That's what we do in modern farming anyway. [Answer] You are essentially trying to fight an entire ecosystem, which seems a bit ridiculous when you have the ability to travel between the stars: it might be much easier to simply terraform another handy planet and plant your own ecosystem there without interference, or create orbital colonies which you can control in virtually every aspect (including spinning to create the exact gravitational pull you desire). However, if you insist on landing and settling the planet, you would need to understand the ecology. The "eco-titans" seem to be the top predators in the local eco system, so studying the entire food and energy chains will determine what they eat, how much they need to eat and so on. Disrupting the food chain will be highly effective, since as the apex predator, they probably need a particular diet. Imagine arriving on Earth during the Cretaceous period. The T-Rex hanging around the landing site is going to need some rather large creatures to eat, so disrupting the habitat to drive away the local Hadrosaurids will compel the T-rex to follow them (it isn't going to stick around to eat tiny chicken sized dinosaurs). The Eco Titan isn't going to have that option, being a plant, so it will eventually wither and die once deprived of food. Other answers have given you clues as to who to do this, devastate an area using kinetic energy projectiles, burn away the food plants with fire or introduce an invasive species which catastrophically transforms the ecology (think rabbits in Australia or Zebra mussels in the Great Lakes). [Answer] Start Colonizing with the sea. The sea can be used to harvest aquatic organisms which could be used for food. The humans could build underwater colonies like the one in Subnautica. And yes if you have the tech to space travel, then trying to destroy a species will be a child's play. You must also remember that humans are pros at destroying and killing other species. [Answer] Settle an island in the ocean. Clear out local forest, plant a terrestrial biome. [Answer] Answering question one involves looking at question two at the same time. 1. To grow food you need to clear area to plant food 2. There are plants called eco-titans that will attack us 3. We discovered (I assume someone killed one) if we kill the eco-titans they release seeds that grow more eco-titans I think then the question becomes: 1. Is there a way to safely kill the eco-titans and not create more? 2. What is the impact of killing the eco-titans? Of killing too many? My solution would involve clearing patches that don't have eco-titians so we can try growing food. I would then train everyone in the identification of eco-titians and the danger of getting too close and the danger of killing eco-titians telling them, "You are now warned... proceed with caution and at your own risk." We already have this problem here - they are called predatory animals. Lions, tigers and bears... oh my! And everyone knows where dangerous predatory animals are, yet they still find ways to get themselves killed or kill the animals. We have to learn to live with danger knowing to stay at the top of the food chain we need to use our brains. A Cautionary Tale I'm sure we would find a way to control the eco-titans the same way we control predatory animals, but we can't whole-sale slaughter them. If I remember correctly, farmers in Australia killed predators that were killing their livestock (dingos or whatever) and the next year the rat population exploded because the predators they killed the year before weren't there to kept the rats in check. [Answer] There is something important to remember about humans. We are not at the top of the food chain because we are terribly durable or strong or agile. We don't have natural camouflage or natural weapons or anything else like that. Humans are at the top of the food chain because we are smart. # Foliage Humans are really good at deforestation. I mean...we're kind of too good at it. And you're dealing with space age humans. Herbicides, fire, heavy logging equipment, bringing your spaceship into a low hover over the trees and flattening them with rocket-wash, and so on. If you want a simple solution, start your colonization near the ocean. Assuming this planet's geology is anything like Earth's, then land near the ocean is saturated with a high water table. This makes the ground less 'sturdy' meaning massive plants won't be able to stay upright long enough to become massive. The ground just isn't solid enough to handle their size. So, by starting near the coast, we're starting with shorter plants. From here, we move on to standard Slash and Burn tactics. Cut down the trees and burn them. Whether you cut them down with axes, saws, lasers, rocketwash, sonic cannons, or whatever futuristic method of destruction your space-age colonists have--doesn't matter. Knock stuff down, set it on fire. This purges the area of plantlife, insect life, and is a good first step towards the ecological reset you need to perform in order to get Earth crops to grow in alien soil. Once you have your foothold, you can spread inland, carving a fiery path through the foliage. Or, heck...there are no settlements down there that you care about. Start some forest fires. Sit back, watch em burn. Toast Marshmallows. Humanity has a long, proud tradition of clearing land with fire. No reason to stop just because we moved to a new planet. # Eco-Titans Humans are really good at dealing with natural threats. We basically have two responses to things that are able to hurt us. 1. Kill them first. When a tiger attacks a village, humanity doesn't huddle in their homes and be thankful they weren't taken. They get/make weapons and go kill the tiger. If the weapons don't work as well as we'd hope, we innovate until we make ones that work better. Humanity has historically driven species of predator to extinction because they messed with us. 2. Make Friends with them. Once upon a time, there was a pack hunting animal that was a tremendous threat to humanity. We abducted their young, trained them into hunting partners, then (many, many years later) had sufficiently screwed with them via breeding that we made Poodles and chihuahuas. So, for Option 1. Kill mature Eco Titans in the area. As they have 'muscles' that consistently contract, they are going to operate at a higher temperature than surrounding plantlife. Finding them won't be all that hard. As you mentioned in your prior question--it takes them 500 years to reach maturity. In the most recent 500 year span, humanity went from "Wow, it is possible to sail all the way around the world" to "We are making plans to go live on another planet soon" and from "Muskets sure are nifty!" to "We can sink entire islands with a single bomb." Sure, killing an adult Eco Titan makes more Eco Titans. But it makes baby Eco Titans that won't be full-grown for 5 centuries. Sounds like a fair trade to me. And hey, in that time, I'm sure humanity can figure out how to detect and destroy their spores. As mentioned, we're really good at killing stuff. A few options that already exist... A modern Thermobaric Bomb detonates at a flash up to 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit, a full blown Forest Fire peaks at merely 1,472 degrees Fahrenheit. The blast of a Thermobaric weapon is enough to instantly reduce any plant matter caught in the immediate fireball to ash. And, of course, set fire to just about anything nearby. Orbital kinetic bombardment (as well as nuclear and thermonuclear weapons) can release enough energy to reduce all matter caught in the immediate strike to plasma, by emitting sufficient energy to shred the atomic bonds of the molecules, ripping off all the electrons and flinging the atomic nuclei apart. They'll largely put themselves back together eventually, but certainly not in the same configuration they started in. I don't care how sturdy your plant's spores are, being shredded at the atomic level destroys anything. Chemical Warfare can let you destroy these things in myriad ways, possibly including ones that don't trigger a release of spores. You kill an Eco Titan normally, then contain one of the immature ones that results from it. Then you experiment on the sucker, taking samples from its materials and so on, until you find a chemical cocktail that harms them. Then you just deploy that as a weapon, and continue to refine it while you go. Option 2 is the 'make friends' or at least 'make it useful' option. If you know where an Eco Titan is (they're immobile) then they can be useful. Depending on how exactly they catch their prey, you can avoid that--either by keeping your distance, not falling in the hole, whatever. Put up warning signs, caution tape, so on. If it emits some scent that lures people in--heyo hazmat suits and 'minimum safe distance' markers. If it has a 'hole' that prey would normally fall into, then seal it off. It's a plant--it can't reach up there and pull off the steel platform you just mounted to its orfice. Now, how can we make it useful? 1. Bio-waste recycling. Eco Titans eat biological materials...dump organic trash into their mouths. They get fed, we get rid of some trash. 2. Useful materials. If (as was suggested in the answers to your other question) they produce something desirable as 'bait,' then once an Eco Titan is made safe, we can harvest that something. If you can't physically approach it for some reason--well...humanity did invent drones for this sort of thing. 3. Study. These things are huge and sound fascinating. Let the egg-heads poke and prod. If nothing else, they can figure out what makes these things tick, so we can figure out how to kill them better the next time we need to clear space for a village. [Answer] > > The surface of the planet is covered in a thick layer of trees and shrubs that block the sun out on the surface. It must be cleared if they want to grow food on the planet. > > > If there's anything that humans are good at, it's deforestation on colossal scale. The hard part is getting humans to not deforest a region. Worst-case, assuming this super-forest is supernaturally tough and resistant to all known herbicides and fire, just drop your spaceship on them. Atmospheric re-entry heat and pressure should be more than sufficient to clear space. > > There are plants, called eco-titans, that will eat any human or animals who stray to close. If killed, these animals will release their spores, which will make more Ecotitans they need to deal with. > > > Kill them. Then kill the baby eco-titans. Kill them until they're so rare that the only people who go out to kill them are dentists from a different continent. Hey, it worked for lions. The real question is how humans will take trophies after the kill. Do you use the stomach lining as a rug? Do you mount a spore on your wall? Maybe the eco-titans have cool-looking reproductive organs to cut off and gift as a romantic gesture (wait, isn't that roses?) > > Gentlemen! Demonstrate your true love and devotion by proposing to the love of your life with a 2-ton eco-titan blossom! Available now from the DeBeers affiliate, DeFlores. > > > "I heard that Bill proposed to Jane with a yellow eco-titan blossom." "Ugh, at least tell me it was over 2 tons." "Not even 1.5" "What does she see in that man?" > > > [Answer] I wanted to create this as a comment, because I don't really consider it an answer so much as a counter-question, but I just signed up for an account for this, and don't have enough rep. As it is, I will attempt to provide an answer in addition to my counter-question. From the history of this conversation, it seems to me like you want this to be a very difficult challenge. Rather than this colonization being the environmental backdrop to your story, I get the impression that you want it to be the story. You have a wealth of information in the answers on how the challenge could be overcome. Maybe at this point, you should ask how to make it harder to overcome, or for suggestions on how to complicate the challenge. In that regard, I think the suggestion in your other question [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/107495/attracting-animals-to-the-plant) about the ecotitans being religiously important is a very good one. They could be important to your colonists as the fulfillment of some legend, or to a native intelligent species that your colonists don't want to annoy, either for political or ethical reasons. Or you could have a native species dependent on the ecotitans for part of their breeding cycle, or even make the colonists dependent on them to fight a native disease. Maybe the ecotitans produce a fruit that prevents the disease from killing or sterilizing humans. Then, in order for your colonists to succeed, they will need to successfully genetically engineer an alternative to the fruit, come to terms with killing off the natives, or find a way to neutralize the ecotitans without killing them. Depending on the solution here, they could follow up with one of the other suggestions on this thread. If you go this route, I highly recommend that you read Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead" and "Xenocide." They are both great examples of these kinds of complications. [Answer] Problem 1: seems easy enough for our species - just clear it - manually / with explosives or some less nice methods like some sort of chemical/biological agents (but the can pollute the ecosystem for a long time). Problem 2: now, that is interesting one - how are they killing people / animals? How many of them are there on the surface (if they are the apex predator, there can't be that many of them, seems they would not have enough to eat and would died out)? The most common strategies for apex predators on Earth are to have limited amount of offspring, since having hundreds of offsprings in near vicinity would - again - deplete source of food rather quick, so maybe the amount of spores they release is limited and since they are probably rather large it shouldn't be that difficult to collect spores afterwards. On the other hand, titans might have some crucial ecosystem-balancing role to play, so exterminating them totally might not be the best idea. Now, with that preamble, some solutions to the problem: * kill titans, let them release spores, kill titans in early growth stage (should be smaller and much less harmful) * focus on detection and prevention system for colonists * use drones/robots to search surface for all titans, mark it and make it a no-go zone * when killing a titan spread some sort of net over the area where it is, so that any released spores will be caught Closing note: it would help to know more about the plants - their size, reproductive cycle, growth cycle, morphology, how do they hunt, etc. Usually, once you have detailed description of a problem, answer or answers or at least ideas how to deal / limit it became obvious. [Answer] Sense and avoid For areas where you'd prefer to preserve the local ecosystem. Have robot scouts map out any area for eco-titans before humans will roam there, and continue to map them out periodically at a period shorter than the time it takes for new eco-titans to grow. Upload the maps to each person's wearable computer. Have the computer guide the person around the danger. Gently at first, rudely if they're getting too close. Assumptions: * Eco-titans are immobile * New eco-titans take a reasonable amount of time to grow from being recognizable to being dangerous. * Robot scouts can reliably spot all eco-titans in an area. * Wearable computers are reliable. [Answer] As an alternative to all of the "deforestation" variants -- burn, bomb, clearcut -- the settlers could embrace the vegetation. Tall, dense trees would make great treehouses. Harvesting lumber from the undergrowth would be akin to mining, while treehouse structures, vertical farming on cables or vines suspended between trees (perhaps akin to [living bridges](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/root-bridges-cherrapungee)) would form the basic infrastructure of the colony. If the extremely dense vegetation can be manipulated while living, or cut and turned to building materials, farms and communities could be built above the canopy. Going down to the surface would be like a mining operation, in the dark, extracting valuable materials to be hauled back to the 'surface' on top of the canopy. Since the predators are fixed then the initial colony could try to avoid them when landing. Send probes down to surface locations, and wherever the probe survives is a good spot to build. Depending on the details, you could encase them before killing to trap the spores (wrap in a plastic bag), or kill the spores in the air, or if the spores are slow growing, kill the spores as they root near the colony and let them spread outside the colony. Interestingly, this would lead to a ring of them immediately around the colony, kind of a wall to keep anything else out and keep colonists in. Once the eco-titans become dense enough around the colony that they can't be effectively removed, the colony stops growing and a new colony location is found and populated from the air, again growing outward and removing eco-titans until the eco-titan ring wall gets too dense. [Answer] ## Location, location, location As opportunistic but immobile ambush predators, ecotitans are less a concern than whatever mobile predators roam the land. Therefore your colonists should be looking for a naturally defensible location to establish their home. A smallish island or plateau would be ideal, as the water or cliffs would keep out a fair share of predators and fences can deal with the rest. ## Burn it with fire Once the colony location has been decided, landing craft will use their jets to sterilize the area (from shore to shore or cliff to cliff) with fire. This will deal with whatever ecotitans might be hidden on the island or plateau, and the spores will either burn or can be ignored until trying to take root. Given a day or two to burn out and cool off, landing can begin in earnest. ## Establish a beachhead Fences and walls at the perimeter will stop most predators that might cross or emerge from the water or scale the cliffs. Electrified, if necessary. The scorched ground is also prepared for planting Earth crops, while colonists should be trained to identify and eliminate native plants as they sprout. For additional security, burning a radius beyond the inner fence/wall would make crossing or descending to undertake exploration a bit easier. Secondary fences might be erected. ## Equilibrium While the non-destructive suggestions in other answers are noble, for your colonists this is a choice between success and failure. Only once they've established themselves should they try finding a happy balance with the native flora and fauna, incorporating compatible plants and animals once properly studied. Ecotitans will need to be understood before they can be dealt with, but that is a luxury for after the colony is established and basic needs are met. [Answer] A lot of people have mentioned fire. There are three downsides to using fire heavily to clear ground. 1. It's not very good for the soil 2. It could trigger new growth in many species 3. It's a major waste of natural resources A little orbital bombardment to clear a landing space isn't that bad an idea, but from that point on you should get down to harvesting these trees as building material. You're going to need a lot of accommodation for your colonists, you'll need paddocks for animals, you'll need fences just in case there's anything nasty out in the woods. And you were just going to burn all that forest? ### Let me introduce you to the [Ponsse SkorpionKing](http://www.ponsse.com/products/harvesters/scorpionking) [![Ponsse SkorpionKing](https://i.stack.imgur.com/56aek.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/56aek.jpg) This beast [turns trees into logs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2SwTK6p72U) with the push of a button. Given sufficient technology to travel between the stars and the knowledge that you're heading for a heavily wooded planet I'd expect something along these lines that could turn an eco-titan into a pile of planks in a couple of minutes to be in the inventory. Clearing forest on an industrial scale is something we excel at as a species. I don't expect that to change just because some of the flora is a bit hostile. [Answer] Solutions to step 1: * Use genetic modification to create edible (plant-based and animal based) parasites that live in the trees. * Cut the trees down. We've been doing it for millennia now and are pretty good at it. * Burn it. * Put poison in the ground. Depending on your goal make the poison something that stays there or moves around. * Use a species of your own. The Acorn tree uses the mycelia in the ground to transport poisons and kill of nearby plants, making the ground barren and giving the Acorn tree little competition for food and light sources in the area. Use a similar method to create larger and larger open areas with a ring of acorn-like trees at the edge to keep taking more and more land. You are colonizing, so you've got some time and by seeding these all over the planet you can pre-terraform the local area. Solutions to step 2: * If you don't like a predator like a Tiger in your backyard, you can try to kill it or scare it away. But we are talking about a tree. Use spectography or just careful exploration to find the trees, put up warning signs and fences so people don't accidentally get killed. These trees have a purpose in the ecosystem, don't root them all out. * If the tree really needs to go and can send off spores before being burned completely, put a large plastic dome over it to catch any spores, then cut, chip, poison or burn it. * Or don't worry about the spores at all. It takes a while before they grow big enough to be dangerous, if they are outside your territory it's hardly a problem and if they are inside you root them out. Last option: genetically Engineer an ant-species for your purposes. From invading and eating any ecotitan spores they find to accumulating poison in trees that grow too big and start stealing light, they can invade the planet and be nigh impossible to root out. [Answer] I like the idea of clearing a landing site. However instead of clearing a blast radius from impact or nuclear bomb, I'd find a nice island away from the mainlands and level the ecosystem there. Then we would land our colony, get it started and then send missions to the mainland(s) to learn more about our new home. Humans are good at one thing, that is adapting to new environments. We do that adapting with our technologies. Clothing was an early technology which opened the door to us moving further north. Sticks and stone made into crude weapons was the technology that made it far easier to bring down meat. As humans spread into new ecosystems humans learned how to live there, then manage the environment by exploiting what we could and learning how to master that ecosystem. Look at how people lived before the great industrial revolution. People adapted to where they lived, used the materials to build unique homes designed to shelter from specific climates, make clothing geared for that environment. They learned which plants to eat and which plants to not even touch and which plants to make alcohol from, or to smoke, or to eat or to rub into that nasty wound one got tangling with X potential dinner. This is what your colonists will need to do. They will need to adapt to the world, learn how to use it, exploit it and bend it slightly to their will while they adapt to this new world. There is going to be no way to really win the war against this ecology. It's not Earth. [Answer] An entire planet will not have a uniform ecosystem. Colonize grasslands and other unforested areas. Mountains, Polar regions. Islands. [Answer] Why so much destruction in other answers? I would use well-constructed stilts, taking care not to block too much sunlight. You could descend as needed to procure useful materials. [Answer] Do like americans in Vietnam, napalm the surface and then colonize it. So first you get enough napalm to burn 100km2. Then you build your city and factories to build more napalm. You are now able to burn all the planet. ]
[Question] [ I'm trying to create a mildly utopian setting. When my characters need to address someone formally and I realised that the default English "Mr" or "Ms" I was using is full of cultural baggage around gender. Although it creates the sense of formality I am after, it doesn't make sense in a setting where gender and women's marital status are not a central concern of society. What can I use as an alternative form of address or title that isn't based on gender? Ideally I am looking for words that already exist in English (or derive from something that exists already) and feels natural to say. It might discriminate in a different way - perhaps there would be different forms for younger or older people or some other hierarchy of respect, just not the one we currently use in English. [Answer] Find what your society values more than gender Discriminate by that to create implied honorifics. There exist plenty of words in the English language to do just that whichever value you choose. In the English language these titles/honorifics came to be because obviously the society cares about gender, and for women possibly their eligibility for marriage. This is what the society cares/cared about. However it also should be fairly immediately obvious. In general people could determine easily which gender they were addressing, which provided an easy way to distinguish people. Even though it is less so in modern society. Any trait you'd pick would be preferred if it was as easily distinguishable as that. For example age, physical features like hair/eye/skin colour, style of dress, etc. Others could be more contextual, and would be harder to use for strangers. The words Elder and Master come to mind. Elder is already used in a form where the person addressed is older, and therefore implied wiser than the speaker. Master is used when the person addressed is implied more skilful or powerful. Honourable could be used similarly. Another way to get around this issue is to create a new system where titles work in similar way the old titles of "Lord" and "Lady" came to be: by profession or status. One could call someone a CEO John Doe, which implies more respect than Streetsweeper John Doe. Edit: Please note that depending on which value you pick, the undertone of your story will change accordingly. For example: I've mentioned distinguishing by skin colour above as it's a readily available feature to distinguish someone by. Even if you create a world where this does not a have huge underlying political and social history, and skin colour means nothing to these people apart from simply being a physical feature and nothing else, this doesn't mean it is the same for your reader. Your reader will still have these associations and will read the story with these hidden undertones in mind. This doesn't always have to be a negative, and can be used as a powerful tool to set the mood/political/social climate for your story. This has to be purposefully done and carefully considered though. [Answer] Outside of English, most of [Japanese honorifics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_honorifics) are not gender based: -san, -sama, -sensei, -senpai are used irrespectively of the gender of the person to which they are applied. In your case -san would convey the formal meaning of Mr/Ms without implications on the gender of the addressed person, and the other honorifics convey the other implications you listed. [Answer] How about Soviet-style "comrade"? Or alternatively, you could use word "citizen". [Answer] In a particular work of fiction by author Nathan Lowell, Officers aboard merchant interstellar cargo ships and such are addressed as "Sar", regardless of gender. What gets interesting and relevant to your question is the in universe explanation for the use of that term. The Official line on the term is that the governing body on trade wanted a single, gender neutral honorific that is easily recognizable by those in service and easy to spot by civilians. "Sar" is similar enough to the term "Sir" that it should be easy to spot as an honorific, while it is not exactly the same so it could be considered gender neutral. The strongly suggested alternative to this explanation is that the original author of the manual messed up and typed "Sir" and "Sar" interchangably and for the first couple of editions it wasn't caught. The term "Sar" caught on and and they needed an excuse for this in the next edition and so made up the above story to make it all look intentional. This to me sounds like something that actually could happen in the real world. It also kind of follows how languages appear to change over time. The key takeaway may be to choose an honorific that already sounds similar to one that is currently in use. That will aid the long term acceptance of the term. The word Sar is an example because it sounds like how someone might say Sir on Talk like a Pirate day. [Answer] The neatest solution might be to use nothing. In one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sherlock insists that Professor Moriarty refers to him as "Mister Holmes" and not just as "Holmes". This would have been correct when I was young, but sounds archaic these days. The use of just the surname may sound a bit abrupt, but calling him "Sherlock" would be too familiar then. We might use first name + surname or initials + surname for an introduction. We might retain honorifics such as 'Professor' and 'Doctor' and so on, but I think 'Mister' could go, and take all the others with it. [Answer] Extending on another answer's citizen or comrade, consider other group memberships. To emphasize membership in the polity one of these might serve: voter, constituent, and then the highest office the person had held. Possibly junior voter for children not yet eligible to vote. If there was a theological aspect to the government they might use various indicators of membership in the church and level in it: recruit, follower, neophyte, disciple, congregant, elder, deacon, then rank in the clergy. Possibly "the faithful" as a group noun. Or "the congregation" or "the choir." If the government is particularly militaristic then military ranks might be used. Possibly mixing between army, navy, and air force: soldier, sailor, recruit, private, cadet, officer, pilot, leader, then actual rank for serving military. [Answer] ## Relegate sir and ma'am to societal roles instead of gender roles Throughout most of history Sir was a title of respect appropriate of anyone who held a position of authority, not just men. If you were one of those rare female military officers, doctors, lawyers, etc. it was very common for people to call you sir because ma'am, lady, etc were not just gender designations, but came with them the idea of being in a domestic capacity. [In fact, many US female officers today will tell you that they are called Sir at least as often as Ma'am](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/alpha-blog-charlie/202103/the-female-military-officer-is-called-sir). Why choose "Sir" and not something more gender neutral? Because your world literally "cares less" about gender than we do. The best way to show that a civilization cares less about gender is not to find gender neutral terms because that takes consideration. It is to use terms more fluidly. If sir conveys the idea that I respect you as a person of authority, then that's all that matters. Call a man sir, call a woman sir, in your world no one should care. The inverse should also be true. If a man brings his kids to the swing set, have someone call him ma'am to show respect for how domestic he is being. [Answer] How about words such as "respected" or "esteemed" or such? (Or "worthy", or "highly-regarded", etc. ...) A person may be politely addressed as "Respected such-and such" or "Esteemed such-and-such" without any gender connotations. You may, for example, imagine phrasing a letter in this way: > > "Highly Respected Xambru-Zuclozar, I write to you regarding the > following matter ... blah blah blah .... Respectfully yours, XXX." > > > From this, we know nothing about Xambru-Zuclozar's gender – they may be male, female, both, neither, third gender, fourth gender, something else altogether. It does not matter (we do, however, know that their society has a high regard of respectability). If the society depicted has any notion of "nobility" or "gentility", then addressing someone as "noble such-and-such" or "gentle such-and-such" may be a polite but similarly gender-free form of address. [Answer] ### What's the most important thing I should know about you that isn't immediately obvious? Back when Mr., Mrs., and Ms. came into usage, the most important thing you could know about a person was their sex. This identified numerous things. * Was this person eligible to vote/rule/own? * Was this person a prize to be competed for? * How much did you need to worry about this person's opinion? This sounds crass from our perspective, but it was an important tool to maintain the striations of society, especially where we didn't usually have pictures to go from. This is especially notable because, when a person exceeded a certain level of professional accomplishment, we stopped using Mr/Mrs. They just became doctor or president. We did differentiate between kings and queens, but that was necessary to identify lines of succession and availability for strategic marriages. If you are discarding breeding opportunities as a point of differentiation, you still have accomplishment-based honorifics. Most people couldn't care less what kind of social nothing you are if you get below accomplishment-based or role-based honorifics. You could apply "citizen," for instance, or something to indicate that a person hasn't reached their majority, or maybe a differentiation between white and blue collar work. [Answer] Use a professional designation, if applicable, as is already done today. Doctor, senator, captain, colonel, professor, duke (if applicable), judge, nurse, specialist, counselor, instructor, whatever. This will take care of many situations. Since you want this in English, take advantage of the fact that modern English tends not to make as many distinctions with honorifics, and leverage the fact that in many places today what would be considered informality even in formal settings is common. If familiar, use the given name. If you want to keep formality or distance, use the family name. This will handle peer-to-peer and superior-to-subordinate situations. The problem is going to be subordinate-to-superior, such as students addressing a teacher, or when you want to be formal without using the person's position or job. The easiest in such a situation might be to also use the family name to indicate distance or respect. Or, perhaps an adaptation from something like Russian. "Andrea" and "Bruce" are classmates. "Smith" is the how the students refer to the school secretary. "Richard Andrew" (last name Jackson) is now they refer to their teacher when not using "Instructor Jackson", using multiple given names in a variation of the Russian use of given name and patronymic. [Answer] If its your world, You can make your own.\* But if you wanted to borrow (I only know east asian ones so bear with me) Non gendered ones, japanese has them in spades: san, kun, senpai, sama, etc. iirc Korean has an equivalent to senpai that is sunbae. (iirc again I think the antonym to that was hoobae?) I'm not well versed at all. Chinese's 先生 (xian sheng) lit.: "Born before" gives elders or adults more respect by acknowledging that they were born first but it does have a strong male bias in the culture despite not really technically holding any gender explicitly. Depending on position within a organization body parts can be used: 头（tou) Lit.: head for leader, 左/右手 (zuo/you shou) left/right hand for deputy or vice positions(interchangeably) , 腿 (tui) Lit.: leg for bottom workers i.e. "leg work/worker". Notably though referring to someone as someone's sword 剑 (jian) means that you hold a special position like an ace that usually means that the head uses the person to do decisive and intense actions, like a fixer or a powerhouse. "Ace in the hole" as it were. Still there's a lot of gendered titles in chinese so this is the best I can muster with my ABC POV level of understanding chinese. \In a fantasy world I've scrapped, people were referred to by their family seal and line in succession. Default for those who did not know each other they'd say "seal of the earth, first child" (First earth for short) to give people the best standing, and given that all are children of the earth. My self insert character was Seventh Horse, Ashralien (Seal of the horse, Seventh child, Name Ashralien) There were positional seals too that related to office or job so in professional life, the emperor would always be seal of the dragon officially but they could be seal of the lily originally as a person. Defense minister was always seal of the staff, as the staff was the grandfather of all weapons, etc. [Answer] In addition to the other suggestions, I suggest you pick a honorific you like, and then add a little bit of linguistic spice. Mister* comes from master. Sir comes from sire, and ultimately from the Old French word for "lord". The French monsieur derives from mon sieur, meaning "my lord". The German Herr is related to a word meaning noble, venerable. It's rather common for such honorifics to come from a nobility title, and undergo strong deformation over time. Assuming your Utopia is somewhat old, I suggest you add some artificial deformation to the title you choose. That way you'll end up with a unique sounding, new word that in your universe means nothing else than a genderless "Mr" or "Ms". Since your society is based on equality, the initial title you pick could reflect that, with a word like citizen, comrade, peer or something that vein. Tough it can be seen as a little factual, you could also go something "compliment-based", like honorable, esteemed, venerable, etc., showing that you respect the other person rather than referring to their status, in an egalitarian society where status isn't as meaningful as in a feudal one. I could see a honorific initially only used in formal settings, before introducing someone in court for example, that is gradually shortened and used in more casual settings. To give an example, "Esteemed citizen X" could be gradually shortened to "Ezten X". [Answer] [Mx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mx_(title)) (usually pronounced "max", "mix", "mux" or "mixter") would be the most direct gender-neutral replacement for Mr/Mrs/Ms in our world. This is recognised and used in various official capacities in the UK, but remains uncommon in the US. But this tends to be used in written contexts, instead of in speech. Although Mx was derived from Mr/Mrs/Ms, rather than the other way around. English would've evolved differently (in some society-dependent way we cannot know) in a society where gender is not an important differentiating characteristic, and that might have resulted in the accepted form of address being Mx, or anything else. [Answer] Can I suggest Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie. In the default language they have no gender pronouns or possibly concept of gender at all in the language. So the first person narration of the lead character refers to everyone using female pronouns. Gender is occasionally established when the lead character needs to address someone in a different language. It works really well, although I did find myself internally assigning gender to most of the characters even if it hadn't been confirmed. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/121575/edit). Closed 5 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/121575/edit) My magic system works through runes. Each rune has a different effect and they need to be carved on different materials for different effects. Let's focus on a curse named "I rot your life." For this curse I need human leather of a tormented soul, magic ink and very bad vibes. I already have the materials. Each rune only works once and becomes harmless after its use. For this magic to work the victim needs to see the rune at very close range. Sadly the curse affects anyone who looks at it and is very complex to draw, so I can't close my eyes while working on it. How can I use my black magic while minimizing the chance of cursing myself by accident? [Answer] What you want is a [Pantograph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantograph). This is a device used to scale images up and down. It also lets you work in one space while the real rune is in another. [![Pantograph](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NRRyR.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NRRyR.png) You mention that the rune takes all sorts of exotic materials, so if your original is just a piece of paper, it should not trigger the effect. Meanwhile, the copy is your exotic rune material, and you keep it under a cloth or in a box so that you can't see it by accident. [Answer] # Write a rune that writes curses Why do it yourself at all? Think like a software developer. They don't write logs, they write code that writes logs, because writing logs is boring. You have magical runes! Carve a harmless Rune of Rune Carving, and let it do the work. Ideally, write a Rune of Multi-Rune Carving, to maximize your profit. If you can write a Rune of Multi-Rune Carving that carves multiple Runes of Multi-Rune Carving that each carve multiple cursed runes, you'll be really rolling in it. [Answer] Use [wooden block printing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodblock_printing). Carve your design on a single wooden block. Cover it in ink, or create a portable ink pad, and you will be able to print designs without even having to look at the design on the wooden block or the tortured leather itself. If you wish you can break your rune down into seperate blocks and apply them in sequence; this way accidently looking at any one of the blocks carved design won't leave you cursed. > > Block printing has also been extensively used for decorative purposes such as fabrics, leathers and wallpaper. > > > * carving of a whole rune on a block should be done in such away that the entire rune surface is never visible at once. * Once you have completed this single dangerous carving, you will be able to reproduce the rune multiple times with much less danger (carelessness can still get you cursed). * I suggest a lid/covering on the carved side of the block so that accidently looking at the carved surface is less likely to happen. * label or decorate each block in a unique and non-cursive manner, for easy identification of the blocks carving to avoid miscursing. [Answer] # Cover your working surface If the same rune on different surfaces causes different effects, then simply cover the surface that you don't want to look at with something thin, easy to cut, and that doesn't cause deleterious effects when you inscribe this rune on it. For example, cover the leather with paper, then carve the rune. You will be looking at a rune carved in paper, which will not cause a curse. Then, close your eyes and remove the paper. The next person who looks at it will get cursed. You mention both carving and ink, and this could work both ways. If you want to ink the rune onto your surface, place the ink between two pieces of paper, and cut through them, imprinting the ink only along the cut edges. [Answer] Another answer suggested using a telepresence rig with a camera and a remote controlled robot arm to avoid looking directly at the rune. That answer is probably deleted since it was advertising for one particular brand of telepresence rigs. ## Use a Mirror A more medieval-appropriate version of the same is using a mirror. (I automatically think "medieval" when I hear "magic". This may or may not be relevant to you) Put a screen between yourself and the writing surface, and a mirror so you can see what you are doing. This has two advantages: First, you will be only looking indirectly at the rune, which might be relevant to effect. Second, you are seeing a mirror image of the rune which is likely to have a different effect, if any. Of course, writing while looking in a mirror will require a lot of practice, but you can do that practice on non-magical materials. [Answer] # Signed runes don't harm the person who signed them Magic-users who craft runes will typically include their own [personal seal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(East_Asia)) into the design. This has the effect of protecting the creator from their creation, both during the crafting process and after. The creator can't trigger the effect on themselves, so seeing the rune during its creation isn't a problem. Signed runes have the added benefit of preventing anyone else trying to copy your runes without understanding how they work. At best they might make a working rune, but if they tried to use it against the original's creator, they'd find it quite ineffective. Another magic-user creating a rune with the same effect must come up with their own version which includes their own seal. The resulting rune will be different in a few details, even if the overall design is similar. Unsigned runes would exist, too. They could be used against their creators, and copied far more easily than signed runes. Apprentices would first learn from their master's simpler, unsigned rune designs, before learning the underlying principles and thus how to make more complex and powerful effects. [Answer] Perhaps cover parts of the rune while you are carving other parts. Make a leather cover and carve a two-by-two inch hole in it and move it around while you carve the actual rune. You'll only ever see a bit of the rune at a time, which I assume would not be deleterious, as you aren't viewing the entire rune. [Answer] Do it in the dark. You can practice all you like beforehand using regular leather or the wrong components, until you get it down. Then, find yourself a dark room, draw the rune, and then slip it into a cover until you need to use it. This method also has some story potential: how does the wizard know they drew it correctly? Or perhaps someone turns on the lights and curses the wizard forever, either accidentally or on purpose. ]
[Question] [ Antimatter is relatively easy, but heinously expensive, to make using modern technology. I have two universes with the same problem; energy is free and for all practical purposes infinite, this should make antimatter dead cheap. I want to keep antimatter weapons out of my settings despite this situation because I want to keep the mechanisms of mass destruction to a bare minimum, but how can I restrict its production technologically rather than legally? The settings are going to be surprisingly technologically stagnant, so not having advances within particular key fields is practical. I suppose what I'm asking is: what field or fields of science need to be held back, or even regressed from where we are now, to prevent easy access to and/or weaponization of antimatter? To be very clear I want to restrict antimatter at source because of technological considerations because legal measures can be subverted but if the technological base isn't there to do the manufacturing then wanting, and being willing, to circumvent the law does you no good you still can't have what you shouldn't. I understand that I'm talking about a very artificial measure, I want to know where to put the pressure to keep the measures as subtle as possible. Let me be clear this question is not about what else you could do with unlimited power or the nature or applications of antimatter it is about the technologies that are used to generate, store, and transport antimatter as we know it. Answers should focus on which of these technologies can be restricted with least effort to keep antimatter expensive and dangerous. [Answer] Since your question allowed for the presence of antimatter technology but just not the usage of antimatter weapons, I am going to go into various things that will let you keep your antimatter reactors but avoid the bombs, or at least make them less deadly. ## Antimatter energy release is in the form of gamma rays A lot of what follows hinges on this fact. Well, not exactly, but some of the other stuff decays right away into gamma rays too. For practical purposes, we can just say that the energy is all in the form of gamma rays, and that approximation will be sufficient. Gamma rays are electromagnetic radiation of a certain frequency. The antimatter EM radiation will all be at a particular frequency. ## Metamaterials bend light, and different materials work better for different frequencies Metamaterials are used to bend light around objects. Usually, people think about them for their potential as a cloaking technology. Right now, we don't care about staying invisible... we just want to stay alive in the era of antimatter bombs. Your people could have a metamaterial which works amazingly well for the particular EM frequency that makes up an antimatter bomb's blast. Although an antimatter bomb packs a huge punch, that punch won't be so bad if it goes around you. Put these on all your space ships, space ports and buildings, maybe even your ground vehicles. ## Antimatter, whether bombs or batteries, might be easily detectable Others have stated why antimatter bombs are not feasible because of things such as their massive containment requirements. You could use that in a different way. Contained antimatter in your world could be easy to spot because of its huge containment facilities. It could also be detected by sensors looking for its gamma ray signature - heck, there could be dedicated satellites that allow the government to always know where all antimatter is at all times. So you say your bad guy has put something around his antimatter containment to block the radiation so it's not detected, so he can move his bomb and sneak it into somewhere? Everyone sees the ridiculous attempt because you can't hide a huge, moving antimatter containment vehicle, so there really is no way to get away with it. ## Antimatter bombs are not as dangerous as people make them out to be Don't get me wrong; there is a colossal, unfathomably huge amount of power to be released from even 1kg of antimatter, and I would not want to stand next to it. However, because of the way that the energy is released practically all as EM radiation, a lot of it will be spread around more or even lost out to space. An antimatter bomb might release a lot more energy than a nuclear bomb of the same fuel mass, but a lot more energy will be wasted too. So antimatter bombs are not necessarily the best weapons. ## You might as well not worry unless you're going to worry also about similar problems As mentioned above, nuclear bombs do a better job of transferring their energy to their immediate surroundings in a manner which destroys things. Even discounting nuclear, there were huge bombs even before, but they just happened to be massive amounts of chemical bombs. So whatever your response is for those, you can just do the same for antimatter. If you're just not going to mention nukes or other things, then just don't mention antimatter weapons either. If you are going to go into a big deal about why antimatter weapons aren't available, then you kind of need to do the same for those other things too. Unless antimatter batteries/reactors are a big part of your story, then that makes more sense. ## It has been discovered that you cannot make a reasonable antimatter WMD This one is slightly more made up, but it sounds so reasonable that it would require little to no suspension of disbelief... When you contain your antimatter as a gas in a magnetic trap, some atoms escape if they get too energetic or if a normal matter atom makes it in to annihilate with them. The more antimatter you have in one dense spot, the more this happens. There comes a point at a high enough mass where long term storage is not reasonable, and this point happens to be less than the mass required for a weapon of mass destruction. So there are no antimatter weapons because you cannot keep an antimatter weapon viable long enough to use it. Fortunately, even small amounts of antimatter are useful as batteries. Also, even though a large mass of antimatter cannot be kept together reasonably, that doesn't stop you from having multiple smaller amounts near each other... not suitable for a bomb, but suitable for energizing a system and replacing with fresh antimatter periodically. [Answer] # Redundancy Go the other way. Rather than restricting access to, or use of, antimatter, let it be a thing that's known but not particularly useful in a weapons situation. With effectively free unlimited energy there's no reason why something as difficult and dangerous to handle as antimatter would be a weapon of choice. All you need is something as effectively dangerous which is much safer to handle and possibly even easier to make. Perhaps along the lines of direct energy discharge rather than delivered explosive. If you're in a starship situation then also consider make the standard navigational shields or other equivalent system specifically resistant to stray anti-matter particles and hence also resistant to antimatter weapons without really thinking about it. ### Reasoning Antimatter isn't an energy source, it's a storage system. The difference between using a [PV panel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics) or a battery. With that level of energy available there's no reason to put it into storage, you just use it directly. [Answer] Making antimatter requires a big accelerator and lots of time- with present-day technology, the global production rate of antimatter is measured in nanograms. To make a WMD-level bomb, you'd require somewhere in the ballpark of a gram of antimatter, which would require geological timescales at the present production rate. Even a vast industrialization of antimatter production likely wouldn't suffice to make antimatter bombs common- and if antimatter is being industrialized, presumably a bunch of that is being used for economic ends. Essentially, antimatter shouldn't be an issue unless you posit huge advances in particle physics engineering. [Answer] The energy density of antimatter is unbeatable, but the energy density of contained antimatter is not certain to be at all scales for all conditions. To build a containment system costs mass and volume which could be spent on the heart of a less volatile energy system. Consider the conditions for using gasoline vs batteries; Gasoline is orders of magnitude higher energy density than any battery, but it would be silly to build a generator to power a cellphone. As technology progresses where the cross over point is changes, but the smaller and less independent you get the more sense it makes to use simpler energy storage. If you are killing people only a few dozen at a time kg's (assuming incredible advances once there is interest) of shielding for ng's of payload isn't any better than kg's of payload and g's of shielding to achieve similar effects with conventional explosives. Storage is inherently tricky. It requires large magnetic fields and the currently required cooling systems mean there is a hot side somewhere. Making them readily detectable, potentially vulnerable to interference and continually cost lots of energy. These are not the hallmarks of a good weaponsystem. Similar to other WMD's most of the engineering would be about mitigating how much threat they posed to the user. By limiting the spread of the knowledge about safety features you strongly limit the practicality of using it as a weapon. [Answer] As of today's technology I would hold back superconductivity. Why? Well anti-matter has to be held in some kind of storage as it immediately decays in combination with normal matter. In order to store it you'd need extremely strong magnetic fields, which currently can only be made by cooling magnetic coils with liquid helium in order to achieve superconductivity. So if you can't store it, you can't really produce it. As soon as you create anti-matter it decays. [Answer] > > energy is free and for all practical purposes infinite, this should make antimatter dead cheap > > > First, anti-matter is just the most energy dense battery we can conceive of (except maybe a captive black hole). But it's also the most dangerous and unstable. A good battery has to be both energy dense and stable. This is why petrol is such a good fuel and we're still using it despite having discovered more energy dense substances. Your 1 g of anti-matter is no longer so energy dense if you need 10,000 kg to contain it. As others have pointed out, the problem with anti-matter isn't just the energy needed to produce it. Then you need to somehow keep it from touching matter, that stuff which is everywhere. This means a complex apparatus to maintain as close to a pure vacuum as possible, and a powerful magnetic field to keep the trapped anti-matter away from the apparatus containing it. Not only does this add cost and complexity, it also significantly reduces the energy density advantage. To put some numbers on this, [anti-matter has an energy density about 100 times greater than that of fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(specific_energy)). If your fusion reactor is 100 kg for 1 kg of fuel, and your anti-matter reactor is 10,000 kg for 1 kg of fuel, there's no benefit to using anti-matter. If any part of that fails, *boom. Instantly. Immediately. At the atomic level. Shows like Star Trek make an enormous leap in assuming not only can they store anti-matter, but they can make it so safe they can carry huge quantities of the stuff into battle, near space anomalies, and land it on planets. In the real world we have all sorts of explosives and rocket fuels and chemicals that store huge, enormous amounts of energy; far better than conventional fuels. We don't use them because they're highly unstable or highly caustic or both. They're just too difficult and dangerous to work with that they're not worth it. Or we use them in very small quantities in specialized situations. Books such as Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants, or Derek Lowe's [In The Pipeline](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/01/22/a-hard-look-at-liquid-biopsies) blog, or [Scott Manley's The Most Dangerous Rocket Fuels Ever Tested](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wLk2j7_KB0) video cover numerous examples. This is also why your house probably isn't powered by a nuclear reactor. In your universe, make the opposite assumption from Star Trek: they can't. Anti-matter is just too unstable, the engineering complexities are too difficult and expensive. Any organization crazy and desperate enough to mess with it is too small to contain it. Any organization large enough to contain it has more cost-effective weapons and only uses it in very specialized (and expensive) situations. One paragraph to dismiss the notion is all you need for your story. > > We have all the energy we want, but how do you store it? How do you transport it? Anti-matter? Too bulky, too expensive. All that extra containment, vacuum pumps, magnetic bottle... might as well use a compact fusion reactor after you bolt all that junk on, and we do. Anti-matter? Make one mistake for a millisecond and it blows up taking half the planet with you. Might as well run around in a glass starship filled with grenades. No, we couldn't make anti-matter efficient. Compact fusion reactors are the way to go. > > > [Answer] The way to create anti matter is using beam particles (or wait for radioactive decay if positrons are what you are looking for). To steer and focus beam particles one need magnets and knowledge of electromagnetism. Hold back any development there, and they would be far away from anti matter. It would turn much like a steampunk world, for what it matters. [Answer] With infinite energy available, Antimatter is pointless as a weapon. Antimatter is a compact store* of energy (ignoring containment); if you can produce as much as you want, there is no need to store energy. Simply generate 4 \* 10^20 J of energy (100 GT) and dump it into a sink (say, the ground under your feet); unless it is neutrinos or other weakly interacting particles, that amount of energy becomes a massive WMD-style explosion. Want more boom? Try 2 \* 10^32 J; that'll destroy much of the Earth (as in, turn it into plasma/debris). Not enough? 2 \* 10^41 J, blow up the Sun. Heck, produce 6\* 10^52 J -- the entire Milky Way evaporates from that. Most of the energy misses, goes off into empty space? Generate 10^20 more of it. What form that energy takes really doesn't matter, especially if you can just generate more. Even if you are generating it as Neutrinos -- another 10^100 will make weakly interacting particles interact plenty. (actually it will form a massive black hole; which is just another application of "infinite energy" -- enough energy will form a black hole powerful enough to swallow the universe) Infinity is big. Your question is like someone from the stone age asking "if someone can build an industrial civilization, how do we stop them from developing a longer spear?" If they have an industrial civilization, longer spears are not weapons of concern. If they have infinite energy availiable, antimatter is not a concern. [Answer] Have a field which suppresses annihilation. There was a book where you could project a field that suppressed everything starting from fire and including annihilation, leading to combats between starships full of boardings with cold weapons. [Answer] By forbidding the containment of anti-atoms, you can make antimatter at will, but you can not pack it into a bomb. Today containment of anti-matter is done with magnetic field. But this only works well with charge particles, if you make anti-atoms (for example anti-hydrogen) the result is neutral and really hard to confine at all. If storing anti-atoms is impossible, you have to store positrons or anti-protons in a reasonably small space. However, as I show below, the electrostatic energy contained in a plasma of reasonably close anti-protons far exceed the energy that annihilation would produce, making antimatter bombs irrelevant. To avoid the possibility of magnetically trapping atoms, you need to remove their spin. This will break physics big time and forbid the existence of permanent magnet, but I am sure you will be able to deal with it. Optional math part For the following, let only consider anti-protons as they are more massive. The electrostatic energy due to repulsion of $N$ anti-protons is [given by](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_potential_energy#Electrostatic_potential_energy_stored_in_a_system_of_point_charges): $$ U\_\mathrm{E} = \frac{1}{2} \sum\_{i=1}^N q\_i \sum\_{j=1}^{N(j\ne i)} k\_e \frac{q\_j}{r\_{ij}} = \frac{k\_e e^2}{2} \sum\_{i=1}^N \sum\_{j=1}^{N(j\ne i)}\frac{1}{r\_{ij}} $$ where we used the fact that the charge of an anti-proton is $q\_i = -e$, $k\_e$ is Coulomb constant and $r\_{ij}$ is the distance between charges $i$ and $j$. Here computing this exactly is tricky, so let just consider a lower bound. Define $R = \max(r\_{ij})$, so we have $$ U\_{\mathrm{E}} > \frac{k\_e e^2}{2} \sum\_{i=1}^N \sum\_{j=1}^{N(j\ne i)}\frac{1}{R} = \frac{k\_e e^2}{2} \frac{N (N-1)}{R} $$ Now let's assume we pack $1kg$ of anti-proton in a sphere of diameter $1 m$, thus having $R = 1 m$. The energy of annihilation would be $$ E\_{\mathrm{A}} = 2 m c^2 \approx 9.0 \times 10^{16} J $$ But you need about $N = 6.0 \times 10^{26}$ anti-protons to make $1 kg$. Which gives $$ U\_{\mathrm{E}} > 4.1 \times 10^{19} J $$ Therefore you would release at least $500$ times more energy due to the electrostatic repulsion than due to the mass annihilation. In other words using anti-proton is irrelevant, you would have the same punch by packing $1 kg$ of normal protons. [Answer] "I want to keep antimatter weapons out of my settings despite this situation because I want to keep WMDs to a bare minimum, but how can I restrict its production technologically rather than legally?" The same way we now restrict WMDs: the desire not to kill ourselves, which leads to treaties severely restricting WMDs ]
[Question] [ So, I gave a $100 bill to a homeless person a few months ago who gave me "God's blessings" in return. Apparently, that conveyed immortality and invincibility upon me as I no longer age (I think) and cannot be injured. Think Superman-style iron skin, except I haven't found my kryptonite. I also don't have super-strength or flight. I haven’t told many people yet, because I haven’t decided how to approach this, and the few people I’ve told who tried to go to the media without me were rejected as crazy. Faced with an eternity of boredom, I'd like to become fabulously wealthy. Obviously, I could do this by investing in funds and start-up companies, but I only have ~$20,000 in my bank account and would like to earn my first million dollars as quickly as possible. One of my friends suggested selling "God's blessings" but I don't seem to be able to pass on my powers, and I haven't been able to find the same mysterious person since to ask them about it. I'm okay with being famous if it helps me make a lot of money really fast, but I'm honestly a bit boring - I haven't done much with my life that would make people want to listen to advice I have to give. The few people within the medical community I’ve already told interested (and skeptical) of course, but they’re worries that without being able to operate on me or replicate my initial conditions, they'd be limited to non-invasive scans such as MRIs or EKGs and the preliminary scans we tried didn’t show any significant differences. I'm not especially interested in being perfectly moral, having escaped the "final judgement" problem, but I would prefer that the world doesn't hate me. How can I capitalize on my immortal invincibility to make $1 million USD as quickly as possible? EDIT: For future answers (and any previous answerers who see this and feel like adding it) please provide estimates as to how long you expect your method to take. As of right now it’s very difficult for me to decide which of these is actually fastest. Shoutout to the [Sandbox](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/sandbox-for-proposed-questions) for helping me develop this question! [Answer] Until recently you could have applied for James Randi's prize, which promised a million dollars for anyone who could prove paranormal powers. Nobody won, and it was withdrawn in 2015. <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge> --- Edit: In the comments, Tom K. correctly points out that "Applications for any challenges that might cause serious injury or death were not accepted." This reduces your options for a spectacular demonstration, but minor injuries were apparently acceptable. You could have demonstrated resistance to a pin or blood-sampling needle, and that would probably have won you the prize. It's worth noting that they [nearly](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge#Rejected_applicants) tested someone who claimed to be able to subsist without food, but were unable to agree on a test; this might be a suitable (if tedious) test for you, if you don't like needles. In at least one [example](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge#Example_of_a_test_(dowsing)), a lawyer was present at the test with a check ready to give out, so this should be a quick method (I don't know how long it would take to agree a test protocol). Building your time machine to go back to 2015 may take a little longer, though ;-). [Answer] This is not necessarily the fastest approach, but since you mentioned the concern is the immortal getting bored, I figured some excitement might offset the fact that it's a bit slower. MMA fights. If I look at [Connor McGregor's career earnings](http://thesportsdaily.com/2017/08/26/conor-mcgregor-career-earnings-fox11/), it took him about 3 years to earn a million dollar purse. Obviously you won't fight quite as well as McGregor, but your iron skin might make up for it. All you need to do is play the part (work the crowds properly), and they'll pave the way for you. This also has the added advantage of being a series of fights, rather than a steady job. A real MMA fighter has to spend an enormous amount of time training, but if all you need is your iron skin, you may be able to do other things while you're waiting. You could even take a gamble, and try to make your million some other way, while the MMA fights provide a sure win over a few years. [Answer] I imagine you can do some pretty awesome magic tricks with immortality. My recommendation would be to start figuring out some magic tricks. You'll do this and eventually get recognized as a great magician. With talent shows like "America's Got Talent" and such, you'd be able to get an audience quite easily to perform your trick. Since it's a magic trick, people will assume they're being fooled by an illusion some how, but no one will know how to pull off your tricks and that will make you one of the best magicians of all time. Get a show in Vegas and suddenly you're rich and famous. List of Invincible Tricks: * Bending a sharp blade on your body by pushing the sharp end into yourself. * Shooting yourself in the chest and then displaying the bullet to the audience. * Sitting underwater for extended periods of time. * Pushing objects into your eye to bend them. * Surviving a guillotine by having it fall on your neck and crumple. * Anything freaky that most human bodies can't do. * I mean seriously you can basically just go on stage and find creative ways to try and kill yourself. All of these could be prefaced by showing how the blade / bullet is legit by shooting or slicing a watermelon or something similar. Really get the crazy theatrics and tricks going. [Answer] Become the new Evel Knievel Setup some ridiculous stunt, so audaciously deleterious that the world cannot help but watch. Fired from a cannon, across the English Channel, into a big net. Wing Suit onto a Ski Jump, no parachute. Something nuts. And, miss BADLY, off by a mile. Huge spectacle and everyone gets what they secretly want, to see you get pulverized. Your crumpled body whisked off to a secure medical facility. Wait a barely plausible # of months, then have a full, miraculous, recovery. You're now a household name. Publicize your next insane stunt. Sell sponsorships. BAM! One Million Biscuits! Note: You have to keep your immortality secret for this to work! If everyone knows that you didn't actually get hurt. Well, what's the fun in that? [Answer] Hunt down someone on the FBI or Interpol's most wanted lists. You're invincible, so you don't need to take any precautions. Further, your prey won't know that you're invincible and likely won't really be prepared to deal with a single person who is basically an action movie hero. All of these fugitives have huge bounties on their heads, Osama Bin Laden's for instance got up to $20 million at one point. So all you need to do is catch or kill just one of these people. [Answer] Since your invincibility and likely immortality stems from the God's blessings thing, I would bank on that, become an evangelist And cash in on the chance of one day your followers may too be granted Gods Blessings ' etc. I'm sure you'll figure out the rest. [Answer] The only thing you seem to be able to rely upon is your fame. If you could have a million before your blessing you probably would have gotten it. So the only thing different is immortality and that some people know about it. Now I would have kept that immortality veeeeery quiet. I'm sure that between the genuinely interested you would find your share of extremists who see in you a grand saviour and will try to force you to do their will, or people who would think you an embodiment of Evil in need of a few threats and mishaps, if necessary to any friends and family. And lets not forget that any country who wants to get rid of that nasty thing of writing condoleances to the families of their dead soldiers would be very interested in seeing what makes you tick, for the greater good you know as your one immortal life cant weigh up against all the lives it will save and the patriotism right...? Small edit: and with the above I wanted to illustrate that you could earn money with it but it would also have both personal risks and require large amounts of money for security. So if I were the immortal, I would be more paranoid than I already am and keep it as quiet as I can, just work as I've always done and use that lenghty lifespan to save up enough money. I would probably move to a country with a nice social structure (Norway or Sweden are good candidates I believe?) and lots of understanding of its people as someone (taxes most likely) is going to notice when you've passed the 100 years line while still looking young enough and I am going to want to talk to them about keeping it quiet without the aforementioned greater good happening to me. Just let me be a good citizen and perhaps cooperate with only a few choice tests for a fee thank you very much. Only other option to keep quiet would be trying to pass yourself off as a non-existant child of yours or constantly move somewhere else and falsify your identity. But you would need to redo your falsifying time and again and in all likelyhood get discovered at some point anyway. [Answer] You're immortal. Any money you make needs to be under the radar. The last thing you want is your immortality to be known unless you actually want to be a rat in a government laboratory. I'm not sure why you want to make money really fast because time is the best way to make money and one thing immortals have plenty of is time. Now assuming you have some reason to try and rush things, you need a dangerous job. Now depending on your morals, you can be a hit man for a Mexican cartel, a mercenary, firefighter for someone like Red Adair specializing in oil fires and other dangerous fires or finally just a stuntman. The more dangerous a job is, the more it pays and you can write off your survival off as pure luck. [Answer] I doubt if the immortal person would find life boring if they loved any friends or relatives. Instead their life would be a frantic search for a way to make their friends and relatives also immortal - maybe everyone else in the world if they are altruistic enough - until it succeeds or all their friends and relatives die of old age, etc. And if that search for giving immortality to their friends and relatives fails, the life of the immortal character may become like that of Flint in the episode "Requiem for Methuselah". > > FLINT: And to conceal it. To live some portion of a life, to pretend to age and then move on before my nature was suspected. > > > I have married a hundred times, Captain. Selected, loved, cherished. Caressed a smoothness, inhaled a brief fragrance. Then age, death, the taste of dust. Do you understand? > > > <http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/76.htm>[1](http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/76.htm) I am assuming that Dubukay's immortal character is a man and not a woman or a child who had a $ 100.00 bill in their pocket. 1) If the immortal man is willing to tell the world about his new status. What about selling some of "your" blood to medical researchers to study in hope that "your" blood transmits some of "your" immortality? How about selling small tissue samples? I myself have had several small bits of skin taken to see if they were cancerous or not, and my two brothers have survived having larger parts of their internal organs removed because they were cancerous. People have donated spare kidneys to people needing new kidneys. So doctors certainly know how to remove small amounts of tissue and even entire organs safely for the person they are removed from. What about selling some of "your" blood to desperate rich sick people in hope that "your" blood transmits some of "your" immortality? "You" should be able to get very high prices for it until and unless it soon proves not to work. Presumably "you" are going to cut "your" hair and nails at the same rate as before. So maybe "you" should sell "your" hair and nail clippings as souvenirs or relics of the immortal man. What about sperm donation? Make a deal with a sperm bank to sell sperm from the immortal man. People may hope that the sperm of the immortal man will make his children healthy immortal. 2) Jobs for the immortal man, whether or not he lets the world know about his status or keeps it secret as some answers suggest. I don't know why you talk about an eternity of boredom. But maybe I don't get bored as easily as the "you" in your question. If "you" discovered "you" can't get injured or killed, "you" could plan on getting a series of highly dangerous jobs that are often considered to be exciting. Of course some such jobs should have age limits, and organizations might not want to make exceptions for the Man Who Can't Be Killed merely because he thinks that he also doesn't age. So "you" should list those jobs in order of ascending age range and then plan on working in each one for a few years. So "you" could become a soldier - probably in special forces if "you" can hack it - a policeman, a fireman, a miner, etc. etc. in the order of their upper age limits if they don't agree to make exceptions for "you" once it is proven that "you" don't age. "You" could become a circus acrobat, a tightrope performer, a trapeze artist, a lion trainer. "You" could become a movie stuntman and have a long career without worrying about getting crippled or killed. And it is possible that "you" might graduate to become an actor and maybe even a highly paid star. Some movie stars started as extras, stand ins, and stuntmen. And of course there is obviously a chance that a movie about "your" life will be made and "you" will get to star in it. And someone planning a play or television show that they hope will run for many years or decades might want to hire a leading man who won't appear to age no matter how long it goes on for. If "you" keep "your" condition secret, and are willing to commit crimes, "you" can blackmail one or more billionaires with fake deaths. If "you" have friends "you" trust "you' can arrange that billionaires or their family members have staged accidents in which something happens to "you" that nobody mortal could survive. But "your" confederates agree to hid the body and hush it up if they pay blackmail, and "you" and the accomplices split the money. Accumulating a nest egg of a few hundred thousand or a few million dollars will be enough for an immortal to invest and become the richest person in the world in less than a century. Since "you" had a $ 100.00 bill in your pocket to give to a homeless person, "you" don't seem like a total failure so far but reasonably successful in "your" career, whatever it is. So maybe "you" could continue in that career and try to be as successful as possible as fast as possible while saving as much of "your" earnings as possible and investing it as wisely as possible. The best choice for investment would be funds that invest in a broad spectrum of companies so that returns and also risks are not as high as in some investments. Some investments that are made each year should be marked to turn into cash in 50 years, others, in 60 years, others in 70 years, others in 80 years, others in 90 years, others in 100 years, others in 200 years, others in 300 years, others in 400 years, others in 500 years. If "you" make such investments for at least 100 years then "you" will turn those investments into cash beginning a mere fifty years after "you" start and continuing for centuries. An investment growing at ten percent per year would multiply a thousand times in a little over 70 years. So every thousand dollars invested for a term of seventy plus years would become a million dollars at the end of that term (minus inflation, of course). So if one invests a thousand dollars for seventy plus years every year, at the end of the seventy plus years they will start getting a million dollars a year, minus inflation, year after year after year. Every dollar invested for a time of 300 years at ten percent growth per year would become about a trillion dollars after 300 years, minus losses to inflation, but still many billions of dollars. So it would certainly be possible for an immortal person to arrange to someday have an income of many billions of dollars per year. If an allegedly immortal character really is that immortal, then after their first ten thousand years of life, the decades (no more than a normal human life) of investing to get an income of a million dollars per year, and the centuries of investing to get an income of a billion dollars per year, and the centuries more of investing to get an income of a trillion dollars per year, and so on, will seem very short in retrospect, and it will seem to them as if they instantly became rich. To them the decades and centuries of working and investing may seem no longer than the six years in elementary school seem to an normal old person looking back on their life. They will feel like they became super rich immediately after their childhood. [Answer] The big money is in services. Especially to governments: "Sure, I can end their nuclear program. Don't ask me how, wire the billion dollars into my account upon my return, don't forget the tax exemption, and I'll be happy to live in your hush-hush gated community for a few years afterward. Just live up to our agreement, and I'll continue to be a quiet, upstanding, law-abiding citizen." Of course, if you're invincible and immortal, 'services' can be a slippery slope, too. You can run quite the protection racket: "Nice republic you've got here. Shame if something were to happen to it." [Answer] ## Participate in black markets You may have noticed I already tried answering your question from the sandbox, but I'll expound further why this is the best option. I will be giving my own interpretation of the parameters of the problem you gave, and then a corresponding explanation for the solution I will give in turn. --- 1. You've only known you are immortal and invincible for just enough time to notice, but not enough to do a lot of things about it. A rather lucky situation to start with. You can do pretty much anything from now on, real-life sandbox-mode enabled. Nobody important (at least to your knowledge) knows you are such, and those who tried to let others know are now the unfortunate not-really-lunatics. Conventional bullets and knives can't harm your ironskin, but I assume your internal organs did not receive the same blessings so you still need to be cautious of strong impacts, yeah? (Because then you'd be pretty OP if even your muscles and bones are Superman-ish, and your character would be broken beyond suspended disbelief.) All in all, you have the anonymity and immaturity that even most immortals (if there are in your world) will be jealous of. 2. You want to be rich ASAP, but you know of no way to share your blessings. That's okay. You don't have to literally capitalize on your immortality by selling it. There are at least a million other ways to accomplish your goal, but only a few would be as exciting as the ones I'm suggesting. 3. You haven't done much about your life in general, and you're not really particular about being a saint. The important thing is, now you have the chance to do so. More on what you can do later. 4. You have escaped the judgment of the one who gave you the blessings in the first place. Well. That's just perfect. Heaven and Hell can't touch you for now (and I assume for the foreseeable future, too). Ethics, laws, governments, economics, all the control structures of your immediate world are beneath you. God might as well descended on Earth and took residence in your body. But don't get too excited. 5. You do not want to be hated, but you don't want to get bored. A bit tricky, but workable since you're young. And also, you didn't specify what you feel about being feared, revered, or celebrated --- [Answer] A few ideas: (ETA: Time estimates here are on the assumption that you have 10k in savings, are generally able to make money, and don't have a significant preexisting criminal record). * 3 to 8 months - Go buy a 50 caliber machine gun. (You can get these in PA with a background check and an expensive stamp). Hang out at the southern border of New Mexico and shoot down every small private-looking plane you see crossing the border. Eventually, you're bound to find one full of drug money. Naturally, the cartels will come after you, but you really have nothing to be worried about. If you're shooting at them, the only choice they have is to shoot back or leave. * 2+ years - For that matter, you could assassinate cartel leaders and take over the cartels. A primary weakness of these crime lords is their mortality. Since you don't have to worry about that, you can do this over and over, one cartel at a time until yours is the biggest and only crime syndicate in the world. Before long, you can start performing military takeovers of small countries, and eventually rule the world. * 6+ months - But why not skip the cartels and go straight to conquering small countries? Go to a third world country and extort a rich tyrant. As long as you have plenty of ammunition, you can get pretty much anywhere because nobody can stop you. If you're not interested in conquering the country, you could just walk right into their mansion and demand that they give you a few chunks of their golden bathroom set. It's a small price to pay in exchange for the status quo. * 6 years - If you want to go the legal rout, you could also learn to weld and go work on an oil rig for a few years. Since you don't need to eat or anything, you have essentially no expenses. * 6+ years - Lastly, if you're up for a longer and more boring adventure, but with a much more substantial payoff, go convince Elon Musk to send you on a mission to retrieve [this asteroid](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/01/18/nasa-planning-mission-asteroid-worth-10000-quadrillion/96709250/). Since you're immortal, your chances of failure are significantly reduced. I'm sure he'll be up for it if you can convince him that you're immortal, and if you offer to split the profits. If you're not sure how to convince him that he should listen to you, I suggest bringing a gun and shooting yourself. For that matter, any time one of his employees tries to stop you from proceeding to meet him, just shoot yourself again. I mean, I can't imagine not listening to someone who just walked up to me, shot themselves and lived. I hope this helps! Good luck getting your money! [Answer] * You could sell your services to automobile and airplane manufactures as the best crash-test dummy of all time * get paid on retainer by nuclear facilities around the world to handle incidents without risk of radiation poisoning * start a youtube channel. Your videos would instantly go viral as you demonstrate your immortality and you would maintain a consistently massive audience. * Take a video proving your immortality and then start a bidding war for the opportunity to research you. [Answer] It depends how ethical and moral you want to be. It'd be easy to become a cult leader. There's plenty of cults that went by that were run by someone who could 'talk to god' or had been given amazing healing powers by god. It'd be pretty easy to convince people to donate to your new church if you can prove your immortality to them. You might even be able to take over existing religions or at least cause offshoots of existing religions that now mainly worship you. And of course their new leader would need a monetary sacrifice to join the new church. Religion is a profitable business. [Answer] Make a Youtube video of you getting shot in the head. It'll go viral pretty quickly, at which point you'll have companies crawling over each other to give you endorsement deals. Of course you'll also have governments wanting to capture and study you, but you asked for the fastest route, not the safest. ]
[Question] [ Short Version: If everyone in my army is going to be armed the same way, what is the most effective weapons system that isn't a horse archer? It is understood that this is still not as good as combined arms armies with more specialization, but for story reasons please just go with it. Long Version: To my knowledge, and please correct me if I am wrong, the Mongol Golden Horde was able to conquer a fair bit of Asia with an army made up almost entirely of horse archers (as well as some siege weaponry at times). Their skill, as well as their ability to attack from range and outflank enemies with great speed, made them arguably the greatest fighting unit of the Ancient world. Again to my knowledge, they didn't have any major weaknesses because anyone who was armored enough to avoid dying by arrow fire had no chance of catching them, and if chased they could retreat into the Steppe until your supplies ran out. This has me wondering what the greatest weapons system in an ancient world setting could be, outside of horse archers. In my story there is a nation that arms 95% of their military in the same way for reasons. While this is certainly not ideal, it is their only option. I have considered the entire army just being excellent archers, but I'm not sure that's the best solution. I have also considered Hoplites, but again not sure whether that is the best course of action. The solution can't be horse archers, if only because I want it to be slightly more exotic than the familiar raider stereotype. The uses for this military will be primarily defensive, fighting both in open pitched battle and defending walled cities, with occasional requirements for offensive engagements. They will be facing multiple combined arms armies similar to troops from the Ancient Era. Flexibility and being at least average at most things is therefore a must. With again the understanding that this army on a practical level is at a massive disadvantage, how should I arm them to give them the most realistic chance at defending their nation with only one troop type for 95% of their army? Edit: Nzaman pointed out that the environment is crucial here. Therefore, this is an area about the size of Ireland, with mountains surrounding it. Other than the mountains and foothills, there is a very large almost impassable swamp, and some gentle hills giving way to plains. Bonus points if the answer includes what the 5% "Special Forces" units should be armed with to act in support. Addendum: Possibly unnecessary info, but the world in question has magic to some degree. I would prefer the military strategy mostly avoid using this, but if a little magic can aid in an interesting answer then go for it. [Answer] Macedonian Phalanx My First thought was either Samurai (of the Yari and katana variety) or Legionary (gladius/scutum/pila) but both those exemplars may violate the "single system" requirement. So if you only get one weapon, a Sarissa (pike) is the way to go! Pros: 1:Your style of warfare is defensive\, and the country is mountainous giving way to open country/swamp. This should* allow you to anchor one or perhaps both ends of your battleline on terrain features which would prevent the enemy from hitting your phalanx in the flank/rear. As phalanx aren't maneuverable anyway, these sorts of narrow battlefields are perfect for them! 2: A pike phalanx is one of the most effective fighting formations in history, and it shows. Yari ashigaru came to dominate Japanese warfare in the age of samurai, the various ancient Mediterranean armies, the "Pike and shot" era pike blocks... if you're on foot and need to kill the enemy with a weapon you can hold in your hand, the pike is the way to do it! It keeps the enemy at a distance, while also forcing each foe to essentially fight multiple enemies (as the back ranks can stab past the front one). 3: Deep pike phalanx, with the back ranks slanting their pikes forward over the rear ranks, are actually pretty well protected from arrow fire until the range is near point-blank. The arrows largely plink of the forest of pike shafts/tips above your troops, robbing them of most of their penetrative power. Your biggest problem (as the greeks found out) would be javlins, which are themselves heavy enough to knock aside a pike and still kill the man they hit. But as an offensive weapon 20ft pike is > guy with spear/sword and shield (generally anyway). This is important as you don't have anything to suppress enemy ranged weapons short of running over and stabbing them. 4: Pikes are generally effective against infantry, and essentially invincible to shock cavalry to their front. Contrary to popular fiction, even a well-trained charger will NOT run itself onto spears just because its rider wants it to. What's more, a rider would NOT want his mount to run itself onto spears! So if your pike phalanx is disciplined what'll happen is the cavalry will charge, stop, and mill about in front of the unbroken wall of pikes for your men to stab to death. Add that to being moderately well protected against arrow fire and you've got about as well-rounded a single-system formation as you can expect in the pre-gunpowder era. Cons: 1:Hard to control. Once a phalanx gets going in a direction it's hard to change that direction. Which is why positioning is key. 2: Poor pursuit/coverage. This will be true of any mono-heavy-infantry army, but perhaps even moreso with a phalanx. Chasing a running man whilst in armor holding a 20ft spear is... difficult. And if your phalanx disintegrates its extremely hard to cover the retreat. So you'll both have a very hard time turning a victory into a route/massacre (important to make sure the battle is as decisive as possible) and be more likely to suffer a route/massacre if you're beaten. Given the above, your 5% "special forces" unit should be light cavalry, preferably with bows/javelins and lances. These troops would provide the quick pursuit factor required to turn a win into a massacre, as well as give your beaten forces a screen to retreat behind should the battle go against you. (and lets face it, it's likely to in the face of a solid combined-arms force) They'd also be an okay screen to keep enemy skirmishers off you, but since you'd only have a few of them relative to your overall force it'd probably be wiser to keep them back for a more decisive role. \By "Defensive" I mean the strategic defensive. Once the army is on the field a phalanx does not (and certainly should not) just stand around as a defensive formation. It needs to press forward and grind down the enemy. Traditionally this grinding was augmented with a cavalry charge into the enemies flanks, but you won't really have that option. Such is the perils of an army equipped identically! Still, the push-of-pike should* be enough to get the job done on its own, your losses will just be higher than they otherwise would be. [Answer] # Spears A spear is relatively simple to make, and the wielder can use it as a melee or ranged weapon. They can be awkward in close spaces, but if this is the society's only weapon, then they probably serve as staves, too. Or everyone could carry a second, shorter "backup" spear, similar to how riflemen also carry a pistol sidearm. Spears and staves may also have some room for customization on the individual level. You could wrap some hammered metal around yours for strength, or mark it with paint and dyes for ceremonial, formal, or personal reasons. Spears are also practical for hunting wild game and fishing, although it is definitely "hard mode." Spears can be mass-produced even in the ancient world without modern tech or processes. And if this is their only weapon, perhaps they've bothered cultivating special materials. For example, bamboo is a tough, fast-growing wood grass. Perhaps this society makes their spears out of some bamboo analog that they've domesticated and selected for growth speed, hardness, weight, lack of knots, etc. They probably have "spear fields" where the uncut shafts of not-yet-spears erupt from the ground like fur on a wolf's back. [Answer] ## Biological weapons The invaders rejoice to see that they attack a country of pacifistic believers. The natives have no swords, and pose no resistance: they do as they are told and patiently await divine mercy. They do occasionally tell the invaders that God will convince them to go away. Yet, somehow, the conquerors have bad luck all the time they oppress the faithful. Buboes, boils, diarrhea, croup, black water fever, the sleeping sickness ... their torments seem endless. The locals offer to teach them how to pray, yet empty words seem to do the unrepentant barbarian horde no good at all. Sometimes when surprised in raids the locals can be seen to engage in peculiar rituals: raising flies and mosquitoes in cages, making bitter-tasting ritual cakes out of mold, jabbing infants with spikes and little threads soaked in once-heated putrid matter. Eventually the invaders may get the sense that the locals are using witchcraft on them. A soldier out pillaging, or otherwise entertaining himself, finds himself held down, knocked out, kept for a month in a cage for sick ferrets until he gets sick himself, then they let him go. (On recollection, this was right before the Great Plague started...) Nonetheless, killing the locals doesn't seem to help with the outbreak. Many ancient wars were halted by plague. Who really knows how that came to happen? [Answer] They are all engineers. This is taking something real and making it more awesome. Your soldiers engineer wherever they go. Defending fixed structures is their favorite, and so when they go out they engineer the battle field even as the battle is going. They build ad hoc engines and towers. They dig in. They creatively employ fire, water, landscape and animals at hand. They have a few [giant ape men](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/170225/best-military-use-of-mercenary-giant-ape-men/170278#170278) with them, who do the heavy lifting but who are noncombatants. Military engineers are real and really important from ancient times until now. They get less glory and screentime than the buff dudes with the loincloths and spears. But for a fiction, riffing on this aspect of real military operations would be sweet and also provide more to write about than "Dude2 got clobberized, and with his teeth he bit the earth". Which is fine the first few times but it gets a little stale. [Answer] Any competently led combined army would defeat single type army - you would do so by exploiting inherent weaknesses of single type, as any have it. But combined arms component do not need to be large - you can have 80-85% of preferred type and 15-20% of others. For a broken terrain you describe, I would actually suggest italic and Roman style - shock infantry with big shields, javelins and swords. This would then have, say 10% cavalry and 10% missile troops as support. The problem with such army is the need for very high morale and discipline as most troops need to be aggressive and that is not natural and has to be trained into people. A long answer: The only military system that had close to the ratio you desire was the classical Greece, where armies consisted to a large degree of hoplites. But that was due to specific nature of society in the city states - population was divided into egalitarian citizens and the rest who were either foreigners or too poor buy arms (many of them were slaves). Plus horses were super expensive as they had to be imported from outside. As result most served as shieldwall spearmen, but all hoplite armies had some cavalry and missile troops. In fact this phase was rather short, about 150(?) years. As the time progressed, light forces became more important, in later stages of Peloponesian Wars well trained light troops shown the ability to defeat the best hoplites (Spartans). Another similar system were vikings and English armies fighting them (fe. army of Harold II at Hastings). This was because Vikings going on small scale raids carried no horses and only a few missile troops. In other cases you would always have combined arms to a degree. For example: Ancient Roman triple acies was combination of missile troops (velites), shock troops with missiles (hastati and principes) and defensive shieldwall spearmen (triarii). They always had cavalry (300 per roman legion (7%), more in allied legions). Later, in early empire period roman legions were more uniform and kept only shock component, but this was always supplemented by missile and cavalry that were either allied or mercenary. In fact, even steppe armies used combined arms - both Partians (who defeated Romans at Carrahe) and Mongols had small forces of heavy (shock) cavalry. Their role was to defeat any enemy cavalry pursuit and force their missile troops to hide behind infantry. They would also dismount and fight on foot if it was needed. They were not so invincible, in fact. They could only go where a massive plains were and could only make small scale raids outside such areas as they needed massive amounts of pasture lands for horses. That's why Mongols never reached western Europe, that's why Partians never managed to defeat and push Romans from Syria or Asia Minor. BDW, the land you describe would be unsuitable for Mongol style army. [Answer] My answer would be largely based off classical Greek warfare. I would suggest majority of your army be skirmishers. While in a 1 on 1 with any almost other type of soldier they would would probably lose, one of their large advantages is in quantity as they are far cheaper to equip. Other than mounted units, they would have the most maneuverability, and able to quickly surround heavier enemies. Their mobility made skirmishers also valuable for reconnaissance, especially in wooded or urban areas. Skirmishers also benefited from being able to execute both shock tactics (via human wave attacks with short swords) and fire tactics (through volleys of arrows, sling stones, or javelins). It is key they have some sort of small melee weapon (like a dagger or short sword) and ranged weapon so they can employ the most versatility. Skirmishers, were often considered to have very low status as their hit and run tactics went against the Greek ideal of heroism. While they were mainly ignored by most Greek writers, there were usually many more skirmishers than other types of units. For example, Herodotus, in his account of the Battle of Plataea of 479 BC, mentioned that the Spartan Army fielded 35,000 lightly-armed helots to 5,000 hoplites, but there is no mention of them in his account of the fighting. Nevertheless, skirmishers then chalked up significant victories, such as the Athenian defeat at the hands of the Aetolian javelin men in 426 BC and, during the same war, the Athenian victory at the Battle of Sphacteria. (The dichotomy of elite hopilites against enslaved helots maybe useful for narative) Later skirmisher infantry gained more respect, as their usefulness was more widely recognised and as the ancient bias against them waned. Peltasts, light javelin infantry, played a vital role in the Peloponnesian War, and well-equipped skirmisher troops such as thureophoroi and thorakites would be developed to provide a strong mobile force for the Greek and the Macedonian armies. A key part of their use is the skirmisher is their compliment of a much smaller number of heavy infantry which can be used for them to hide behind. Speaking on the role of defense and defending walled cities, it would seemingly be critical that the large force have some sort of ranged capability to harass sieging enemies. Edit: removed note about Spartans after reasonable doubt of its validity was raised in comments. [Answer] ### This isn't possible. Simply put, it's not possible to field an army composed entirely of a single type of soldier and do well in all circumstances; there is no type of troop which is "average at all things". Different types of soldier are better at different things, depending on the situation they find themselves in. Deciding to specialize entirely in a single type of troop would allow your enemies to find the weaknesses of that troop type, and then exploit those weaknesses to destroy you. Blocks of spear-based infantry are very strong against enemies attacking them from the front, but are weak to flanking attacks due to the difficulty they face in maneuvering. Sword-wielding heavy infantry like the Roman legionnaires are more maneuverable than pike blocks, but have less reach. Heavy cavalry are maneuverable and good at delivering devastating charges, but can become bogged down - and charging into a pike wall is suicidal (but charging into the flanks of a pike wall is likely to result in a massacre). Light cavalry archers can maneuver well and cause damage as they run away, but lack a lot of offensive punch against hardened targets. Longbowmen and crossbowmen have more powerful ranged attacks, but require logistical support to supply their ammunition and are likely to lack training in melee combat - and in the case of crossbowmen, they will have to spend a long time reloading between each attack, while longbowmen require years of training. Siege weapons and artillery can cause a lot of damage to hardened targets such as castles, but it is difficult to maneuver, with larger and more powerful weapons being entirely immobile. In general, the best army is the one that combines together the different elements available to them in a way that allows them to exploit the benefits of their troop choices and the weaknesses of their enemy's choices while minimizing their own weaknesses, and that is likely to require a combined arms approach. [Answer] Why not use slings ? Ammo are rocks, easy to find and gather, basically no maintenance, people can be trained since childhood to use them. On side-arm they could use small hunting knives or close combat improvised weapon. Does it have to be a regular army or is it composed by peasants milicia ? Because they mainly use farming tools to defent themselves, and could be asimiled to ligth infantry The 5-10% could be the nobles people, who could afford buy/making decent weapons, spear, bow or sword, or be educated to magic use/ basic spells. They also could be you chief bodyguard troops. [Answer] Armies are not about weapons and armed the same way does not have to mean only one weapon. I would suggest you look at the Roman style: Vast majority of the army equipped with short sword and shield supplemented by spears. This provides a good balance between defensive and offensive postures that are missing from single weapon armies. Special forces include light and heavy cavalry and scouts/trackers. The greatest advantage that the Romans had (imo) was not their weapons, it was their training, this allowed them to fight in units not as individuals. [Answer] I see 2 additional options: 1.) Greek fire, naphtha or similar, paired with shield against archers that would outrange you. Throw bombs and/or use flamethrower against poor unsuspecting attackers and enjoy the sight of chaos. Remaining 5% are light cavalry to kill or capture the slightly burnt fleeing troops. This is also useful in swamp. Now just hope your alchemists don't blow up your entire civilization and that you have enough material. 2.) Excluding fire, I would pick heavy/shock cavalry - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphract> as the ancient version. You have a large enough area with suitable terrain for that. While all civilizations that fielded them used them as a sprinkle of elite units, this is mainly related to incredibly high cost, not lack of effectiveness. So, it isn't unrealistic because it would be bad at something but because it is far too expensive to be the main battle unit. You really need a lot of horses and a lot of smiths for that. There is one obvious weapon system that defeats them - pike. But against those, you have 5% of folks remaining. Engineers tasked with building siege weapons, removing caltrops and whatnot else. Use catapult against those slow pikes and hope they break formation, enabling you to smash through with your cavalry. This is also helpful when you want to capture a fortified position. This option does not work in swamp, but you say the swamp is nearly impassable. [Answer] [Repeating Crossbows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow), bayonets and lots of fortifications. If the goal is to fight lots of armies, then what you need is a weapon that can take on all comers, and is easy to use. The answer is of course repeating crossbows. Crossbows are easy to use, point and fire, and have enough variation that you can adapt them to different enemy types. Repeating crossbows can output a lot of power, and with poison from the swamps you mentioned kill even armored men. > > The repeating crossbow had an effective range of 70 meters and a maximum range of 180 meters.[7] Its comparatively short range limited its usage to primarily defensive positions, where its ability to rapidly discharge 7–10 bolts in 15–20 seconds was used to prevent assaults on gates and doorways. > > > They can mount bayonets on their crossbows to let them charge and injure enemies, and a well constructed enough crossbow could serve as a dual sword and crossbow, short and agile for fighting behind barricades and walls. A long enough bayonet could serve as a spear to block cavalry charges, while you pump them full of crossbow fire. They have some advantages. You can quickly raise a huge amount of firepower. Crossbows are easy to use, and you can quickly equip your women, children, and old people with cross bows to raise a huge defensive force, enough to output a huge amount of firepower into an enemy. You can kill weaker forces with minimal casualties. Your superior ranged weapons can demoralize and crush weaker forces without exposing your forces to death. They have some large disadvantages. Repeating crossbows, or combo weapons are very heavy. They wouldn't be much use offensively due to their sheer weight. But, they're for defensive operations so that's fine. They're inaccurate and not very penetrating. Supply lines would be hell. This is less of an issue defensively, as they can supply everything from cities. They have trouble with heavily armored troops. Armor can block crossbow fire, and ancient crossbows were not the most accurate weapons. A heavily armored charge might break them. Fortifications would mitigate this, but then they face the risk. You have trouble with longbows. Longbows are hard to make, and train for, but with their superior range and accuracy they can pepper you with fire and stay out of range. Your special troops would be wagons with massive crossbows. Not as fast or as agile as mounted cavalry, these would nevertheless allow you to deliver a lot of heavy firepower where you needed it. Massive bolts to rip through enemy troops, armor, or pick off fleeing enemies. This could also serve to disrupt enemy fortification and heavy mounted enemies. Beasts of the field or oxen could also be used, as the main ideal is heavy firepower. ]
[Question] [ I am working out a situation where an army is invading a heavily wooded land, two large units of regular footmen with sword and shield and supporting archers, against a force almost exclusively of archers. These archers though are positioned in tall, thickly wooded trees, too tall to reach with ground-based archers (think those massive California Redwoods from Star Wars). The archers are also notable for their skills in this world. Tactical errors notwithstanding, as there's to be tragic blunders in my scenario, I remain curious if I have my thoughts right about this. How would such a force tackle the problem outlined above? [Answer] Medieval problems require medieval solutions: FIRE! Either set the whole forest on fire, or just the tree where your targets are hiding (fire arrows were a thing already in medieval time). If the trees burns, you are done. If the tree or the shrubs on the ground do not burn promptly, they will produce enough smoke to allow your men to reach close to the tree and chop them down. [Answer] ### Your enemy has done 90% of the work of setting up a siege for you. Help them finish it. Many medieval battles were fought as sieges - a well fortified position, a superior force surrounding it, and you starve them out. That's what we've got here. Short of burning the forest down, or smoking them out, or cutting down the massive trees, just wait them out. Get your archers set up with a line of sight on the base of the trees, sheltered from the sniping enemy with shields (and / or brush), and just wait for them to starve or die of thirst. As they climb down they'll be very exposed and can be easily sniped. Be sure to have nice cookouts within smelling distance. Pig-on-a-spit will break the soul of an enemy archer whose dying of hunger and thirst as he's been trapped up a tree for 4 days waiting for a shot that he can never take. [Answer] Your Archers Have a Bad Time So my first thought is, "There's no way you could convince archers to do this." Why? Because of three things: 1. Being up in a tree does nothing for them, archery-wise. You can't take a proper stance, because you're on a tree limb and worried about falling. You can't have massed volley-fire, because the tree branches block LOS and the archers are too dispersed. You COULD ambush people (even in urban fights where we 'expect' the Bad Guy to be in upper-story windows people don't look up. That tendency will only be exacerbated in a world where essentially none of your soldiers routinely think about "upstairs.") But the problem with that is.... 2. You can't decisively destroy the enemy force. The Tutenbourg Forest, where German tribesman slaughtered 3 Roman Legions, is a textbook ancient ambush... that lasted 3 days. Your archers are up trees. You wait for The Perfect Moment. You fire! Loose all the arrows! (probably not at your 12-shots-a-minute max speed because your archers are all up trees) Your accuracy.... isn't great. Because it's bow-and-arrow at armored targets, in the woods, with lots of branches in the way. Plus ancient armor is DESIGNED to stop impacts from above anyway. Still, the enemy is disorganized, maybe some leaders are down, and they quickly fall back out of bowshot. Now what? Your archers clamber down 50ft of tree to chase after them? Not fast they don't! The enemy has plenty of time to reorganize themselves. If they even flee, which if they're smart they won't because... 3. A guy in a tree is a dead man, one way or the other. There is a Very Good Reason you don't see this in real life beyond the very occasional lone sniper. That's because being in a tree might be great concealment, but the second the enemy knows you're there you're at a HUGE disadvantage. If the enemy sets fire to your tree, then what? Or if he simply keeps a watch on you from a safe\* distance. \safe being either out of bowshot or within bow-range but under a pavaise of some sort. Once the enemy knows you're there, exposed, on the side of a tree, it's not too terribly difficult to have their own smaller force of archers outflank you. The enemy on the ground has shields, you have a hard-to-move-around-in tree. You get shot. you die. Or they go around you, you starve to death, and die. It's point 3 that really toasts this plan. A small ambush of 10ish guys up trees to kill 10 other guys? MAYBE that works out. But armies? You want me, Joe Archer, to stay in a tree, where I can't run away if the plan goes awry, and shoot arrows? Of which I have.... how many? Not enough to hold my position if THEIR archers kill my 6 buddies. There's 6,000 enemies. What if a larger-than-average force comes at my position? I can't fall back, I can't kill them all, I probably can't even surrender fast enough. No sir, ain't doing it! What you COULD Accomplish* So how do I fight an army of mostly-infantry with a force of archers in a woodlands environment? Simple. I DON'T. Not a smack-down drag-out fight anyway. Can't meet them in a pitched battle, arrowstorms don't work in woods, and without a line of infantry to support me I can't hold a position. So I send half the archers home, they're just mouths to feed and medieval logistics are murderous. Instead I harass their foraging parties, kill their scouts, have 6 guys fire 2 arrows each at the head of their column then have them meld back into the woods, just for another 6 guys to do the exact same thing 10 minutes later. Always always ALWAYS have a fallback position. Have other archers kill or drive away all the game in the area near where they're traveling, then have yet more archers kill the oxen pulling their supply wagons. Find a couple axes? Great! Chop down trees to slow their passage. Which means it takes yet more supplies for them to traverse said woods. The enemy starves, gives up, and goes home. Or starves, stays put, and is slowly attrited away to nothing. A Note on Arrows A consideration when thinking of medieval archery is penetration of your arrows. It's not like Total War where your maximum range is maximum deadliness and the only difference is accuracy. The force of an arrow drops off DRAMATICALLY with distance. To the point where, if your bow can shoot an arrow 100 meters (totally arbitrary number) You're only really dangerous to a man at 50 meters (any further away and a quilted jerkin is likely to stop your arrow) and it's only at 20ish meters that your arrows are accurate and powerful enough to do things like "kill a guy in mail with a shield and a helmet" reliably. Even shooting downwards distance dramatically lowers punch. For more, see [Armor punching myths](https://acoup.blog/2019/06/21/collections-punching-through-some-armor-myths/) [Answer] You said 2 large units of foot soldiers supported by archers. Your big problem will be retaining cohesiveness of any force entering a large/densely spaced forest. A large mass of amour wearing footmen will not be able to remain in formation as they advance through the trees. Neither will their supporting archers (or indeed their baggage train). If your opposing forces are; a) expert archers/soldiers b) familiar with/at home in the terrain and can exploit it to their advantage c) pre-positioned along their enemies line of advance Then they don't really even need to be positioned in the trees (or at least not all of them). This is especially the case if they have prepared the ground in advance by cutting down and bushes and small trees etc and piling them in pre-selected barriers through the forest, digging ditches and using smoke to confuse the enemy. Assuming it is a large forest then unless they are really well drilled troops formation, command and control will fall apart fairly quickly. And that means you can use hit and run tactics to force them to withdraw. Footnote: this strategy would leave the archers 'victorious' only in the sense that you can force the other side to withdraw after taking casualties. If their objective was to capture the forest and/or defeat your archers, they lose, this time. What it doesn't do is eliminate the enemy force as a threat. At best you get a temporary stalemate (they can't get 'in' but you cant get 'out') pending further tactical or strategic developments by one side or the other. [Answer] I'm curious what on Earth are those archers perched in very tall trees supposed to do? They cannot possibly be effective against "two large [infantry] units". Two large infantry units very stronly imply that they are marching on a wide road, or at least through large clearings; there is no way for two large infantry units to march through a forest -- they would lose unit cohesion, they would lose their way, they would stretch for miles and miles. No mentally competent commander would even think for a second of marching two large infantry units through a forest. Which means that the archers are perched on their very tall trees on the sides of the road. And they are shooting downwards at a steep angle towards small targets. The infantry will simply raise their shields and march on, ignoring the foolish archers placed in an ineffective position by their foolish commanders. There is nothing preventing the invading force from simply marching on under their shields. Medieval archers were effective when shooting what we would call indirect fire into the massed enemy force. That was the entire idea of medieval archery: put your archers on some small elevation behind a line of defending infantry, and let them shoot volleys of arrows into the massed enemy who had to come in a mass to try to pierce your infantry line. The enemy could not use their shields to protect themselves from the arrows coming from above on a curve because they had to fight your infantry. All in the open. Archers trying to hit individual soldiers through a forest of trees, no, that doesn't work. [Answer] As others have said, putting archers is trees is not smart. The correct tactics for the defenders would be to let the invaders into the forest then use hit and run ambush tactics against the invaders, starting with their baggage train. The defenders will have no trouble tracking the invaders movements using the tall trees and knowledge of local terrain. Let them into the woods, then kill their scouts, destroy their food, destroy their tents and supplies, and make them afraid to move. The archery skills of the defenders should be used as "snipers" to target anybody who shows any leadership. An invading army is a threat so turn them into a bunch of guys who are cut off from support, hungry, and with nobody in charge to coordinate their movements. In addition to observation, the best use of the high ground in the trees is to drop the occasional gift on the invader's heads. Bonus points if the gift is filled with burning tree sap. For the attackers, their best tools are fire and distance. Burn a large swathe through the woods so the defenders have nowhere to hide and cannot get close to the main force without being seen. Then move slow and steady while protecting the flanks. [Answer] What exactly is stopping the attackers from using a [testudo formation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testudo_formation) to protect a few guys with hatchets, who then fell any trees with archers in them? It seems to me that the archers are trapped. Look up some photos of redwood forests. The trees aren't that close together, so they can't easily climb from one to the next. Sure, the defenders may have built bridges between them, but so what? Every time a tree is felled, any bridges connected to it will fall as well. Imagine 3 trees connected in a line like, A-B-C. If you cut down B, A and C are now isolated. The infantry won't even be under that much fire, because only archers in the nearest trees will have a clear shot; the rest are blocked by other trees. So how this will play out is that first, using the cover of testudo formations, the attackers will cut down the trees with the most bridge connections, the goal being to divide and trap as many archers as possible. At each isolated tree, the attackers will hack away at the base of the tree, being sure to stand on the side furthest away from the rest of the archers, using the tree they're cutting as cover. Any archers who survive the fall are likely to be easily dispatched. [Answer] ### They'd have to take the fight to the treetops. If the archers are living in fortified positions on the tops of these trees, the only real way for the invaders to take the fight to them is to climb the trees somehow, while the tree-dwellers are firing arrows and dropping munitions (hot oil, rocks, etc) down onto them. Fire is unlikely to work, because we're talking about massive, living trees, and they're unlikely to be terribly flammable. Going around them is unlikely to work, because the tree-dwellers will have created methods to travel between these mega-trees without returning to the ground. Starving them out might work, but it's likely that these treetop communities will have some method of feeding themselves without needing to return to the ground (e.g. collecting rainwater, eating fruit, hunting treetop animals or their eggs, etc). So, your invaders are basically reduced to the prospect of storming a giant castle located hundred of feet in the air, while under attack by the inhabitants of that castle. Most of the people involved are probably going to die in the process, simply due to how unforgiving the process of assaulting such a heavily fortified position is likely to be - unlike a conventional castle, you can't just knock down the walls with catapults or tunnel underneath them, so you'll need to pick one of the most difficult methods to take a castle available: scaling its walls while under fire. ]
[Question] [ Inspired by the question [Creating a Species purely for Warfare](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/222275/75), there are plenty of reasons why someone who has the capability to create their own warrior race/species would want to do so... a rapidly-replenishing supply of soldiers, soldiers which are better fighters than civilians, you don't have to recruit or conscript civilians, you don't need to worry about how the loss of recruits and conscripts might reduce your popularity, rapidly available skilled troops with low maintenance requirements between wars, and if you're a vindictive sort, you can give your enemies a slap in the face by [corrupting and defiling their people into your own](https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Orcs), amongst many others. However, assuming that you could create your perfect warrior race/species such as that described in [my answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/222294/75) (and don't have to be a mad scientist/evil magician type, or have to torture innocent beings to do so), and that you have a need for an army, why might you choose not to create your own ideal warrior race/species? What drawbacks might come with a warrior race/species such as mine, and would those drawbacks outweigh the potential benefits? Would these drawbacks apply to certain types of creator (i.e. good vs evil creators) or to all? To give some worldbuilding context, my story's antagonist has his own warrior species, and my main character will soon gain the ability to create their own... but I'm undecided if they should [Answer] Having a warrior species is all well and good until you run out of places to conquer, or stretch yourself too far, and [your](https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/assyrian-empire/) empire [collapses](https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/ancient-medieval/classical-states-and-empires/a/rise-and-fall-of-empires). What happens when your warrior species no longer has a leader or head of state, because the "state" has broken into a group of small, squabbling factions on the level of city-states? Does this induce a civil war within them? Do civilians get hurt? Or worse, what happens when they get bored? Even modern armies don't fight all of the time. Medieval knights [itching for a fight](https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/medieval-knights-werent-the-good-guys-you-think-they-were-a6052cf7feff) were a huge issue. This may not be an issue going by the species you described in your comment. And the context matters too. There could definitely be some public discomfort with a super-soldier species (either due to connotations of enslavement or the worry--justified or not--that they might turn on civilians.) People tend to fear what they don't understand, and a species that exists as a clear and distinct "Other" in society/serving a specialized role could easily provoke some backlash. How much public opinion matters depends on who's pulling the strings and their personal temperament, but these are some broad issues that could be an argument for not having a specialized species just for war. [Answer] Internal Political Pressure Creating a warrior race could have political consequences or at least the fear of consequences that could lead to the prohibition or refusal to create synthetic soldiers by an army. * Creating a warrior species that’s solely and unambiguous loyal to a certain group/person would be an easy route to totalitarian control. Having a powerful army that will never disobey you, depose you or sympathize with your civilian populace is what every dictator dreams of. Therefore strong political opposition could prevent someone from being allowed to create the species in the first place. * Creating a sentient species to exist as slaves could be seen as immoral and untenable by society at large. * A warrior species could be seen as a threat to entrenched military interests. Whether it threatens the prestige of the landed nobility or the profit margins of military contractors who see the self sufficient creatures as a loss of revenue there would be powerful people who don’t want these things to fight. * A quasi Luddite reaction to any kind of labor replacement. If you allow soldiers to be replaced, what else is on the chopping block? [Answer] Criterion 11 is the sticking point In the linked answer: > > 11. Unambitious: The creature should act for the good of its society, not for its own benefit. It should have no desires or expectations for > itself or its offspring (if capable of reproducing at all) beyond its > loyalty to its society and its orders. > > > Glad you thought of this issue to avoid the situation explored in the [Cobra series by Timothy Zahn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Zahn_bibliography#Cobra_series), but it is morally very dubious ground to create a sapient being with this kind of limitation. "Here, we've created you to fight really efficiently in our war, but you can't aspire to have... well... anything except the opportunity to do what you're told." If it is possible to engineer this kind of fundamental limitation into an engineered warrior then ambitious politicians are likely to try to wire it into everyone except themselves. Assuming that this limitation can be imposed at all, what if it fails? Everyone has full trust in the warrior species because they know they can't rebel, which means that a glitched one looking out for itself can take advantage of that trust to literally get away with murder. "Oh, Unit 9753 just killed Mr Smith and took his car, saying that Mr Smith was an enemy collaborator. These units can't be bad, so I guess it must be true." (OK, a silly example, a smart renegade could do much better, especially by taking advantage of the trust of not just the civvies but also its fellow warriors.) Then there is the point where "loyalty to its society and its orders" does not have a clear "right" pathway. People with authority make stupid decisions which are frequently not "for the good of its society". If the warriors are told by their legitimate commander that what they know is a serious virus is just a minor infection and they are not to assist with vaccinations or quarantine measures, do they follow orders or do what is good for society? This is always a thorny issue for soldiers throughout history, but I suggest that it is practically impossible to hardwire in a reliable "moral code" - people can learn, adapt and make new judgements based on changed circumstances (even if they don't always), but a hardwired rule must allow for all possible scenarios at the time it is written. Clever enemies will work out a scenario that will "break" the logic and make the warriors' actions work for them. In short - don't go for designer warriors and don't try to hardwire their motivations. Let soldiers be ambitious, whether for glory or just the chance to return home and stop being a soldier. [Answer] Deliberately knocking yourself down the food chain is never a winning plan. What goes in to a warrior species? You want either be a carnivore or, and this is the better logistical option, a highly aggressive omnivore. It's also got to be bigger, faster, stronger, and/or meaner, but definitely more deadly than the average civilian or it can't do it's job. You probably also want a pack hunter because they're easier to domesticate. You're breeding for aggression and physical prowess then training them to kill people. The existence of a warrior species, as opposed to creating individual killer creatures at need, even if they're made in vast numbers, puts people on the menu. This may not be an immediate danger but any lose of control and containment, however small, and a warrior species goes from guardian to existential threat. [Answer] We have other ways of solving conflicts. Dear Human, First of all I want to say that I'm really quite excited at this opportunity to contribute to your understanding. Alternatives to violence is a topic that's very dear to me, and I understand that you want to know why we have chosen not to create a species more effective at warfare, despite having the theoretical ability to do so. Second, before diving into the answer, I want to admit I'm afraid you might not like this answer. Because in order to understand it you will have to let go of one fundamental assumption that is currently taken as a fact by virtually everyone in your society (based on a cursory glance on your most popular entertainment, newspapers, advertising, religious texts, etc). I therefore ask you to suspend any judgements until you have finished reading. If after this you find yourself triggered, that's ok! Perhaps it will be easier to read at a later time, maybe in another hundred years or so. Now, the assumption I'm referring to is the idea that violence is an effective means for creating lasting solutions to conflicts. Our assumption is quite the contrary that violence in any form, although sometimes necessary, always leads to more conflict. How did we get there? Just like yours, our history is long and full of stories of wars and victors. Long, because it takes time to get to the point where one could create a species for a specific purpose without it going completely sideways. Full of wars, because all civilisations naturally goes through a phase where the ability and technology to control and kill develops faster than the ability the communicate and empathise with each other. So for some time violence might be unavoidable, and from that perspective undefeatable armies must seem like a valid strategy. At some point, however, the question arises if there might not be an alternative to an endless cycle of wars. So we took a long hard look at our history and asked: what was all this violence good for? Not even the greatest victories attributed to the longest lasting peaces (what's left of your roman empire today?) have lasted in the long run. It seems quite pointless and hopeless, but, being giraffes, we know that behind all actions there's a [life-serving need](https://www.nycnvc.org/needs/). What needs might we be trying to meet through war, bigger armies, and more deadly weapons? Is it security? Stability? A need for food and water? Obviously, to some extent, peace and harmony? And haven't many conflicts started because of a need for understanding and mutual trust? How many civil wars haven't really been about respect, identity, and belonging? Surely, in an age where we have the technology and resources to design custom species at will, we can find alternatives to solving conflicts that are more effective (and more fun!) at meeting these needs than deadlier armies. Exactly how that is done is more than I have the energy to go into today. Perhaps it can be left as an exercise for the reader to come up with? As a starter, just consider what would be possible if you instead of 100k elite soldiers had at your disposal 100k elite mediators, empaths, communication experts, counsellors, negotiators etc. Hopes this provided the understanding you were looking for! Warm regards, A baby giraffe [Answer] Diplomatic problems Both internal and external. Within your country, your subjects realize that you have the means to subject them to your will, that no one else has any influence in the matter, and that their loyal service is no longer valued. This does not inspire trust. This is especially dangerous because these are the people you need to supply your forces. Other countries regard the creation of people whose sole function is to serve in an army as dangerous provocation. Obviously you have evil intentions toward them. Why, you might even foment a war merely to keep your soldiers busy. [Answer] If you're a good guy, you'll agree with the following two points ### 1. Slavery = bad They would be slaves, from birth till death. They'd have no choice, no self-determination, no prospect of retirement. They'd be bred for war, educated for war, trained for war, and likely would die on the battlefield, or remain in active service until natural death. ### 2. Racism = bad Even if they were allowed to retire, they're a different species, used to do something your citizens don't have an apetite for. You didn't teach them marketable skills. They'd be considered barbarians, second-rate, a weight on society, unable to contribute. They'd be judged by a nature that was artificially inflicted on them. A nature you chose, by depriving them of any other opportunities, because you decided they were inferior. --- Now even if you're a bad guy, you should be able to recognise that they're ### Too smart to not revolt They value their lives. You've trained them to value it less than their orders, but they value it nonetheless. It follows they value their brethrens lives. They care about each other to an extent. They'll develop a bond, forged in the fire of battle or some poetic crap like that. All it takes is one instance where this bond comes above your orders. One general that goes "wait a minute, why are we taking orders from you?" Why would that happen? They're not dumb. Maybe they're too brainwashed to come up with the notion, but they'd at least be able to understand they're being exploited. Even if they can't come up with the notion, then maybe some exterior force will. Might not even be the enemy. Might be your own people, those of your citizens who don't agree that breeding a slave race of warriors is a very moral thing to do. They're your military. They're the perfect military some might say even. More perfect than any other force you could scrounge up in a pinch. And you brainwashed them into putting your orders above their own species. History is full of dead leaders who thought their military would never pick a different side than theirs. [Answer] # Humans are a warrior species ... with certainly enough wars to prove it. There is a certain genre of movies that illustrates humans being made into 'super-soldiers' by being made into robots, dogs, werewolves, zombies ... if it isn't foreign-sponsored propaganda, it doesn't actually make more sense. The soldiers we have typically spend more time drinking tea with local big shots or burning feces with diesel oil than they do actually shooting people. They have a vast range of technical skills they need to apply. They have to be ready for Red October scenarios. There's no actual way to hardwire them to act a certain way or to put their loyalty under a remote control that isn't going to backfire in a truly terrible fashion. If you have a genetic modification that is genuinely good, makes everyone stronger when they need to be without side effects, well, then you wouldn't reserve it for the soldiers. [Answer] I want to suggest moral integrity and human decency as reasons not to create a warrior species. There are many things that we, humans, can do, but we do not do them because we consider them to be wrong. The proposed warrior species are as intelligent as humans. However, they are treated as mere tools. For example, the OP suggests that they can 'be ordered to hibernate more or less indefinitely' when not fighting wars. In other words, they are shelved just as tools are when there is no need for them. This kind of treatment is even worse than slavery. [Answer] ## What are you going to do with them when the war is over? When you create a warrior species, then your end-goal will usually be to crush all your enemies and achieve peace and stability. But what do you do with them then? This warrior species would be very difficult to integrate into a civil society. They are literally not made for civilian life. Their skillset and mentality would make them more of a burden than a boon to post-war society. When all they can do is fight as part of an authoritarian chain of command, then that's what they are going to do. They will form violent gangs, join terrorist organisations, start an outright organized rebellion and cause all other kinds of trouble, just in order to satisfy their inherent need to take orders and kill enemies. Sure, you could just kill them all when the war is over. But they are sentient, so you (or your constituents) might have ethical concerns with that. And that assumes that they would let you kill them all without putting up a fight. A wise ruler might anticipate all those problems and decide that it's not worth it. --- Real-world analogy: This is actually one (of many) reasons why it is so difficult to achieve piece in the middle-east. After decades of war there are many people who fought in civil wars for all their life. They don't have any other skills except how to fight partisan wars. Sure, no human is born to be a partisans, but that's what they became. And with the lack of economic and educational infrastructure in the region, there is not much opportunity for them to learn to be anything else. So when one local conflict in the Middle East is over, all these people are unemployed and have nothing better to do than to join the next up-and-coming Islamist para-military organisation. This is why after the Afghan-Russian war there were the Taliban; when the US invaded Afghanistan and pushed back the Taliban, Al-Qaeda started to grow rapidly; when Al-Qaeda started to become weaker, suddenly ISIS showed up and now that the Taliban are again getting control of Afghanistan they have no shortage of recruits either. [Answer] In no particular order. Reasons not to create a warrior race (apart from maybe a 'special forces unit). 1. Expense: Wars are expensive full stop! Unless war is the default state in your setting historically most nation states tend to spend more time at peace than they do at war. That means more often than not the your super warriors won't be required. 2. Expense: Normal humans can be re-deployed to other productive economic duties when not required for fighting i.e people can be demobilized your super warriors can't. They're strictly one trick ponies (fighting). So by default they stay on the States 'books' doing nothing else useful until required again for war. 3. Expense: Weapon systems also require maintenance even in peace time and soldiers have to be fed, housed and paid and spend time in the field training. You may not have to pay your super soldiers but you will have to feed, house and train them even when they are not required. And that will not be cheap. 4. Expense: Old super warriors never die. They just get pensions. 5. MAD: A super warrior arms race neutralizes the advantage of having them in large numbers (a saving!). 6. Near enough is good enough: (for government work.) If no other nation has them and your current army of regular soldiers is well trained and equipped and has a war winning history behind it? Are super warriors except perhaps in small numbers for 'Special Forces' really needed to act as a deterrent or force magnifier and is it worth all the costs involved? If you have no overwhelming threat facing you whats the point? 7. Reliability: All weapons system can break down or pose risk to the operators due to mechanical faults etc. What is the 'break down/misfire' rate for these super warriors i.e. Remember the last time a super warrior ate a 2nd Lieutenant for lunch or used some civilians for target practice? Perhaps not the greatest loss an army might suffer but still annoying if things like that keep happening. And remember these type of faults will be biological /psychological and therefore vastly harder and more difficult to manage than just say doing routine maintenance of problem parts in a tank. (Sort of an expense) [Answer] Read the last section of Forever War by Joe Haldeman. ### Killer instincts are no match for efficient cooperation For sure, individual heroes exist - but a good team will always beat a good individual. If warrior instincts come at the cost of being able to work together, then your perfect warriors are going to be massacred one at a time when they meet a squad who fight together. [Answer] If you give one person complete control over an army that has no other loyalties what is to stop him from becoming a dictator? Will the hero be able to be able to resist the temptation to just use his unstoppable army to get whatever he wants? Maybe your hero is a good person and incorruptible, but what happens after he dies? who will inherit that power? Once you have shown that it's OK to create such an army to defeat evil, what's to stop other people from doing it, will they all be as good as the hero? This gives your hero a moral dilemma, he has found a method that will allow him to defeat the evil antagonist, but is using it actually going to make the world a worse place? If you want to spell it out to the readers, you could have it so the antagonist started out with good intentions and fell to temptation after creating his warrior race. [Answer] Because you are creating not just warriors, but a biological AI that can change over time to adapt itself to the problems it faces. The reason your character refuses to build them is because each additional race of warriors added just increases the chances that a group of them will go rogue and start their own country, if not try to annihilate their former masters. Most supersoldier programs in fiction have supposedly fearless warriors. But fearless is the worst trait you can give a living being. A fearless warrior would not hesitate to jump out of a window and break its legs if it completes his mission faster, rather than take the stairs and have a higher chance of success. A fearless warrior would not hesitate to run through fire and chokepoints rather than find an alternate solution. Fear is not terror, fear is about self preservation and the preservation of others. You might consider making your soldiers more afraid of losing their human leaders, but that just means that the enemy could force suicidal attacks by hostaging and trapping humans to bleed the supersoldiers dry. It could also lead to one of Asimov's robot problems, where the robots try to safeguard the humans by preventing them from living their lives due to the hazards it presents. And without that fear they see little reason to preserve the humans. That means you need an excuisite balance of fear in a biological creature designed to adapt itself, including its assessments of what it fears. Meaning that its fears can adapt and change beyond safe parameters. That is just one aspect of the supersoldier. Self-guidance, leadership, ambition and resource management. Each of these has a high risk of changing over time or with genetic defects, if not requiring an extremely fragile balance between how much you give them of each to make sure they are capable of their job and dont break their bonds. [Answer] Fear that they could be turned against you would be one, though technically that is true of any army. Though I would suspect this army is a lot more dangerous…? [Answer] Great damage to people and resources If one nation created nuclear bombs, then many other nations did the same. Therefor if many nations develop warrior race/species then the whole world will be a big battlefield with almost never ending wars or until all the resources are depleted. This could cause a great damage to people and resources. Intelligence and loyalty If warrior race/species are dumb, they can be used against you (just like a weapon, owner is the user). So they must be intelligent enough so that they understand whom to fight for and remain loyal to you. Passion or sentiment If they are loyal to you, they must have a passion or sentiment for you which is absent in this case. After sometime, they will either flee or be against you. [Answer] They would not be worth the cost. The warrior species would still need to be raised and educated. The knowledge of the world they are in and technical knowledge to use their weapons are indispensable. It would be a 20 years long effort, for a creature that beside war is not productive. They would be useful only for a repressive empire that is constantly expanding and is constantly suppressing internal rebellions. In this case the warriors will always, or almost, have to fight somewhere. But that would not fit the profile you imagined for your creatures, they would have to be ruthless and feel little empathy towards the local population in order to scare them and keep them in check. You can look at the example of the [Janissaries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissary), they were taken from their families when they were children and raised to be warriors, that is the closest match to the warrior species you can find (except maybe for warrior chastes in India or some noble families in Medieval Europe). After the European nations allied themselves and stopped the expansion of the Turkish empire the Janissaries became an excessive cost (even the unruly behaviour mattered) and they were disbanded. A cheaper alternative could be a mix of drugs and brainwashing to turn into warriors the normal population. [Answer] Not For Today's War It is a huge overhead to create your warrior race. Decades of genetic engineering to get all the traits you want. Then another decade to grow the soldiers from a bean to an eight-foot killing machine. You do not create the warrior race for today's war. You create it for the war in half a century. The project is only worthwhile if you (a) predict being at war for the next 50 years and (b) predict not losing the war by then, but at the same time (c) we are losing badly enough that we need supersoldiers. The only example that comes to mind is how Israel has been at "war" with its neighbors since it was established. However Israel won all those wars so (c) is not true. We Won the War -- Now What? Congratulations. Last week you succesfully genetically engineered one hundred thousand of these bad boys. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yTM0Qm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yTM0Qm.png) Supremely gifted in warfare, blindly obedient and coordinated, and immune to the morale issues of pesky human troops. They have all the extras. Thick hide, bad smell, strong body, extra endurance, lower food requirement, fast healing, disease-resistant, redundant organs, natural weapons, scary face, poisonous blood, fast reflexes, endurance to heat and cold, fast breeding and growing, and short life span. The following week they steamrolled your enemies, burned down their senate house and ate all the citizens. Now what? You have half a million genetically engineered monstrocities with nothing left to do and no way to reintegrate into the civilian population. On top of that, your country now has a much greater enemy -- whoever you put in charge of the army. In Ancient Rome one of the Emperor's main jobs was keeping the army occupied by having them invade far off countries to slaughter people who spoke different languages. The pretense was those places are a danger to the adjacent Roman territories. The real motivation was keeping the generals far from the city to stop them seizing power. You have the same problem. Yoour general has command of five million unbeatable soldiers. There are no enemies left to defeat. Soon enough they will decide you are their enemy. You cannot defeat them. That's why you created them. Your country is doomed. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rObOu.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rObOu.jpg) [Answer] Why not create a large, powerful, effective, loyal, cheap, disposable army? If we summarise that as "why not create a weapon of mass destruction" then we can look to the real world for answers: most countries don't have nuclear weapons, and those which do have them generally try to work together in order to not have more of them. International attempts to ban certain other classes of weapons have been more successful than that. So in your world, it is generally understood that creating such an army would be a bad idea because of the sheer destructive power it would have, particularly if it got into the wrong hands; and anyway, if a nation-state builds such an army then it will only start an arms race, leaving that nation-state in no better a strategic position than before. So nation-states don't have them, and try to stop them from being created by private actors too. The issue comes when your antagonist, the owner of the aforementioned wrong hands, has the resources to create such an army for himself and can't be stopped from doing so. If a terrorist gets hold of nuclear weapon, you should not get one yourself to use against him, because so many others would suffer the damage too. So your protagonist doesn't create an opposing army for the same reason: such armies tend to cause death and destruction far beyond one specific strategic target. ]
[Question] [ Daemonism is a religion that revolves around the worship of, surprisingly, daemons. Followers practice a form of magic called chaos magic, which flows out of the daemonic realm. While it is powerful, it causes side effects to the user. Chaos magic causes mutations in the individual, making them more daemonic in appearance. The more they use, the heavier these mutations are. Users become more powerful as their bodies become more capable of using and containing chaos magic. There is a faster way to power however. By summoning a daemon from their reality,, one can bind with them and create a new entity called a daemon host. These individuals are semi-gods among men, who can use chaos magic effortlessly. The ritual is dangerous and failure would result in the individuals soul being consumed. Success however will lead to UNLIMITED POWAH!!! The problem is that those who want a chance of succeding during the ritual must be free of corruption. Those who have gone down the path of using a lot of chaos magic and have become heavily mutated will fail in the process. Therefore, only newer imitates who haven't utilized so much magic and haven't become mutated are viable candidates. This is strange because it seems counterintuitive. Those who have utilized magic and have begun changing would seem the most likely to succeed in binding a daemon to themselves, as the entity is made up entirely of chaos energies and the individual possesses a ton of it. But the most powerful mages are the most likely to fail. Why would this be the case ? [Answer] Daemons Are Better At Commanding the Power of Chaos than the Mages Summoning Them When a mutated mage, full of power drawn from the realms of chaos, summons a daemon, he will attempt to control that daemon using that power. But the daemon can just as easily draw on the summoner's power. More easily, in fact! The more power you have bolstered yourself with, the more empowered the daemon will be, even more than you yourself are empowered. Those with very little power in themselves stand a better chance of wrestling with a freshly summoned daemon, because they are not empowering the daemon. Perhaps, in our wold, daemons are initially disoriented and weakened, the way a fish pulled out from the water would be. After the union with a human, a safe link can be established back to the daemonic realms, to establish that "unlimited powah". But until then, the less magic there is around, the more vulnerable the daemon is, and the easier it is to force your will on the daemon. [Answer] Look at the Lord of the Ring, which is more or less canon: powerful magical creatures were all around (Gandalf, Saruman, etc.), nevertheless it took a hobbit to destroy the ring and Sauron. Why? The greater the power one has, the easier it is for him/her to be seduced by a greater power (this is what happened to Saruman). While a huge power to a complete wimp is like giving pearls to pigs. [Answer] Chaotic Energy Moves From High-Pressure to Low-Pressure Areas A normal human is like an empty jar. When I say empty I mean there is no air inside the jar. But there is air outside the jar so when you open the lid air suddenly rushes inside. The binding ritual works like this. You uncap the person all of a sudden, and try to suck a demon inside. Then you quickly screw the cap back on to keep the demon inside. Using chaos magic the normal way involves opening the jar just a little bit, to allow some chaos energies to fill up the jar, so they can be used. Do that for a long time and your jar fills up. They you cannot do the suckedy thing anymore. The slow way involves filling your jar with loads of tiny demons that you then control. The fast way uses one big demon. You fill up your jar all at once but the one big demon will probably control you instead. [Answer] Because magical power isn't the important factor here. Yes, the more powerful the mage the easier it is to bind the daemon, but that's actually not important as the daemon welcomes the attempt anyway. What's important is who ends up on top in the binding and for that the less tainted you are by the chaos the fewer ways the daemon can get it's hooks into your soul, the more likely you are to end up dominating the daemon. What is seen as a failure to bind the daemon is actually the daemon winning the struggle for control, it then takes the soul of the summoner and departs--which looks to an observer like the binding failed. The daemons play along because in the end they get the soul of the summoner either way, either immediately or when the summoner dies. Daemons don't age, they don't mind waiting around to collect the soul. [Answer] Chaos magic and summoning are two routes to the same destination. Summoning is an invitation to a demon to show up and take up residence in the host. The host hopes that he or she will wind up on top and in control. When that happens, it is OK with the demon because it is only a temporary situation. The demons involved with this are patient, and fine with the long game. Eventually the demon resident will see an opportunity and take control, even if it takes centuries. Demons have nothing better to do. Chaos magic is older but ultimately the same thing - channelling demonic powers ultimately means inviting a demon to take up residence. Chaos magic was derived empirically in the ancient past and unlike modern summoners, practitioners of chaos magic did not know that was how it works. But that is how it works - a chaos magic practitioner has a patron demon which moves in a little more each time the practitioner uses her magic. The end result of both - a demon takes up residence in the host, either in a part time vacation home sort of way or full time. Demons have an honor system and so if a host is already taken a new demon will (usually) not move in. Practitioners of chaos magic are already "taken" to one degree or another, and so their efforts to invite in a new or different demon resident will be rebuffed. Very occasionally, a chaos magic practitioner can reset the clock but it requires a discerning chaos magician (most are not) and an especially suitable host (again, most are not). Such a person who has been dealing with a weaker demon or one of a different faction can expel her prior demon (which has been gradually moving in and getting stronger over the years) and replace it with the summoned new one. This is a risk for the new demon which must expel the old. It is also a risk for the host; the current demon inhabitant will not willingly be evicted, and possession is nine tenths of the law. [Answer] Because once chaos energy is utilized to transform oneself, it is unique to the individual and incompatible to other individual's tamed chaos energy. Those who use chaos magic tame the chaos energies and bind them to themselves, mixing them with their own essence. Demons (any reason you are using the ae spelling btw?) also have their own essence and their own individuality, so the tamed chaos energies of the demons are incompatible with the tamed chaos energies of people. When you summon the demon, he gets merged with you, so if you're pure the merge goes without a hitch, but if you have your own tamed chaos energy it clashes. [Answer] When a building is made it has certain foundations. After that point any extra changes to the building (more floors, extensions, bigger doors) either has to be done while respecting the limitations of the already existing structure, or you have to knock down the building and start again. Magic is similar. To use it you first have to lay down mental foundations and create appropriate structures to support your burgeoning magic use. One or two simple spells are like a couple of sheds. A complex set of interlinked spells is more like a house that needs its own water and power lines to work properly. A powerful mage is like an old, sprawling university campus. It’s been added to, rebuilt, remodelled and redesigned hundreds of times. Many buildings are full of explosive materials (or worse: tenured professors), and the utility line maps look more like an arcane puzzle than a useful document. Trying to knock all of it down to dig the foundations needed to support the metaphysical skyscraper that is a daemon is an insanely complex task that risks all sorts of things going wrong even if the daemon is fully co-operative. As it isn’t: you can guarantee that the daemon will burn everything to the ground and not bother taking up residence itself. An initiate is virgin soil. Your binding ritual digs into their soul, lays down a solid foundation on the first try and slams the daemon-skyscraper in place with ease. No muss, no fuss, just daemonic possession. No other chaotic magic to complicate the process, no other foundations of power to get in the way. Neat and clean. TLDR: Previous magic use adds complications that complicate the binding ritual to the point of complicated impossibility. [Answer] 1. Gods want to be worshipped, not serve. A daemon would shy away from anyone powerful enough to control them properly. If the summoner seems innocuous, the Daemon isn't repelled by the attempt. 2. Daemons want to eat souls. They crave them, and the souls of the innocent are filet mignon. Inexperienced people are the lure - the daemon hopes you will fail because of inexperience, and the person's soul is irresistable. 3. A third party (devil/angel/god) blocks the powerful. If an experienced caster could summon a daemon, they might rival the divine being, so it stops the attempt. Lesser summoners aren't a threat, so why bother? 4. Daemons secretly hate evil. Sure, they thrive on chaos, but back before whatever brought chaos, the daemon was a relatively nice entity. You use 'evil' magic, but only let yourself be bound by something you believe will use the power wisely. [Answer] Because the power of the Daemon is directly proportional with the mage that summoned it A powerful mage produces a powerful deamon, which due to some non-linearity in how capable the binding spell is vs the strength of the mage, means that a novice mage can summon and bind a weak daemon without issue. Meanwhile a powerful mage will summon a hugely powerful Greater Daemon and find himself struggling to Bind the daemon. [Answer] ### Daemon's instrinctive defenses are not triggered by apparent humans. Daemons are in contant conflict with other daemons (or at least frequent). Most every interaction between daemons will include something loosely similar to the daemon-host ritual, where one daemon tries to bind and consumed the other. Any daemon not good at this is already gone, consumed by one greater. Indeed this is true to an extent even for the human daemon host ritual, the daemon is largely bound to the will of the host, and some say the human consumes part of its soul even as the daemon consumes the human's. But this is not the complete destruction that comess from a daemon binding and consuming another. So daemons are naturally selected to avoid being bound and consumed by other daemons. When a daemon encounters another powerful daemon this triggers a physiological and theumatological response. Something like adrenaline, before the daemon even constantly aware of what it is looking at its muscles tense and its defensive magics are already rising to the surface. The stronger the the other demon the stonger and more rapid the response, though it is always there. However, at the end of the day counter-binding means starting on the back-foot. One step behind the aggressor, who already has started the binding before you can counter. This is why the daemon's instinctive raising of defenses is so important. Without it there is potentially time to complete the binding before the demon can counter it, definately for another daemon, and potentially for a human. But once a daemon's instrinctive reaction to a threat is started its nearly impossible for a human mage to touch them. However, in this lies their weakness. The instinctive reaction is triggered by perception of a daemonic threat. A uncorrupted human, without visable chaotic mutations, barely registers at all to a daemons subconcious. This is not purely a visable phenomonon, somehow daemons can always detect those chaos magic has corrupted. Do they percieve tge changesz in the soul? Or is it like a scent that leaks out the mutated parts? Can mages learn to do this also? Studies are ongoing. So a uncorrupted, i.e. novice, mage has the best chance at completing the binding ritual before the daemon can rally its defense conciously. --- The question does not make it clear what happens when someone fails to make a daemonhost. But I am assuming it is something like, the daemon consumes the mage utterly, and then without anything left binding it to this plane vanishes, or perhaps rampages until what fuel holds it here is expended. [Answer] Chaos magic works as daemon repellent, because it means trouble Your daemons could have behaviors similar to animal species in which cannibalism is common or food competition is high . That way, a daemon could recognize a summoner more tainted with chaos magic as if another, potentially stronger daemon was already there trying to consume the soul, and thus would deny this risky feeding chance. Less corrupted summoners could have a higher chance if they happened to summon a bolder daemon, who thought their weaker chaos reading meant it could take it on and still have a chance at consuming a tasty soul. Pure summoners on the other hand mean to daemons a friendly invitation to a snack in another world with no threats whatsoever, meaning a larger number of daemons would be willing to take the offer for a potential easy snack (soul) to consume. [Answer] Do you eat your soup out of a bowl, or a sieve? A Mage doesn't "contain" Chaos Magic. They filter Chaos Magic out of the Daemonic Realm, with which to enact their will. The act of wielding Chaos Magic will, by its nature, open you up to its flow - making you more "porous" to Chaos Magic, and allowing you to channel it. As they do so, it becomes possible to "see" the Daemonic Realm through them, like a frosted window, manifesting as the bodily mutations. However, this same property means that any Daemon you attempt to bind has an easy escape route! A successful Daemon Host is a self-contained pool of Chaos Magic - they only need to tap into the Daemonic Realm to recharge, instead of requiring a constant flow. On the plus side - powerful Mages are also harder for Daemons to notice, influence or interact with, becoming little more than a ghost to their senses. [Answer] # Too much power for a Human The premise is that a Daemon Host is much stronger than most Mages, but has to start out fairly weak. So perhaps the resultant Host's power is based on a combination of the Human's power and the Daemon's power. But not a simple addition, but multiplicative or even logarithmic. Why does this matter? Because the Host still has a Human body and brain. And there is only so much power a Human can handle. Or in simple and generic math terms... Human's power = x; Daemon's power = y The total power of the resultant host is (x + 1) \* y. If (x + 1) \* y > 70, the Host will go insane and burn themselves out in a few years. How long depends on the actual result, and to a lesser degree on the Human. And if the result is over 100 (give or take) the Host explodes almost immediately. # Can't have two Daemon at once A Chaos Mage, every Mage, already has a Daemon inside them. The act of learning magic, opening up to Chaos, draws a Daemon into them. But rather than a powerful, sentient creature, this Daemon is weak, young, and has no will of its own. Rather than the Lion, Human, or Dragon type Daemon summoned for a Host binding, a Mage's Daemon is a goldfish or a hamster. At least to start. As the Mage grows stronger, so does their Daemon. It grows in power and intelligence. But because it was basically mindless to start, it's personality greatly mimics that of the Mage, to the point they can barely tell each other apart. A Human can only host one Daemon. So when a Mage tries to become a Host, the two demons fight. If the Mage (and thus their current partner) is weak, the accidental Daemon is easily destroyed, and the purposeful one takes its place. The Mage becomes a Host. But if the Mage is powerful, so is their Daemon. Their magikarp evolved into a gyarados. So when the two Daemon fight, it is not a quick, easy victory. Best case scenario, the fight ends without the Human being destroyed, but the surviving Daemon is greatly and permanently weakened, defeating the purpose of the ritual. Most of the time however, the Human is killed in the process. Liquified, burned out from this inside, torn to shreds, etc. Either way, it is not something a powerful Mage would risk. And naturally, a Host candidate who is not a Mage doesn't have to worry about that. [Answer] Chaos, competence, and predictiblity I watched recently a lower tier Mighty Jingles video (probably WoT maybe WoWS). The commentator noted, that competent players are easy to predict, because if you're competent yourself, you know what you would do in that situation. Rookies are unpredictable, as they can try some really idiotic thing. Now let's see what's with your daemons: When it comes to chaos magic, daemons are very competent players, so are high level wizards. When they try to control each other as summoning, predicting the other's move is easy, and even though a good wizard is almost as good as a daemon, the later one is natural. So when they struggle for control, the daemon will probably win. But this is CHAOS magic! And chaos is unpredictable. So when a rookie wizard tries to summon the daemon, the daemon won't know his next move, and this unpredictibility gives him a better chance. [Answer] You must not lose your Self It might be that binding a demon is such a directed operation from your Self to that of the demon that is is incredibly important not to lose your self in the process. If your Self already has aspects that look demonic, then the demon can make it virtually impossible to tell yourself from the demon. In such circumstances you can easily bind yourself, and that leads to... unspeakable consequences. It takes fluid thought This one is just something that amuses me from the world of amateur telescope making. One of the high arts is making one's own primary mirror. It requires a great deal of care and cleverness to grind a perfectly spherical mirror (which is then ground to a parabola in a secondary step). In the amateur telescope making world, they often say that your second mirror is your best. Your first one obviously involves lots of learning. Your second one is best. By the third one, you've gotten then hang of it... which means your movement lack the randomness that is essential to the process. It takes many more mirrors to "learn" back that randomness to create a truly stellar mirror once again. [Answer] The binding is entirely voluntarily on part of the Daemon. Daemons prefer to bind to uncorrputed, for reasons they don't (or can't?) really explain. Many Chaos worshippers can't nuderstand this - their religion tends to draw in selfish people who believe in power and that might makes right, that a Daemon may tick differently is beyond. To be fair, no one understands just why Daemons prefer to bind to the uncorrupted. You could add a religion that works more like some strands of Buddhism: It's not about worshipping gods as much as about seeking enlightenment. It is understood that, to become enlightened, you have to dedicate your whole life to this end. Some strands beleive that binding with a demon helps, as demons have access to other forms of knowledge, or sensual experience. Others beleive that the act of binding destroys the self of the mortal, and this is a prerequisite to reach an enlightened state. Then again, there's a school of thought that thinks the Daemons are as unenlightened and suffering as anyone else and some bind to humans as part of their quest for enlightenment. Daemons, when asked by some brave soul, deny this but they lie all the time anyway so who knows. You could also add people who don't worship Daemons, in fact they fight Chaos-worshippers, they just think that binding to Daemons is the most effective way to do that. The Daemons find this hilarious. Last not least, since plants, animals etc. usually can't perform magic they are always untainted. Every once in while, they are rumors of immensly powerful cats or anthives or forest mushrooms, doing their cat or anthive or mushroom thing with unstoppable power for a short while before the bound Daemon gets bored. [Answer] For this I will be presuming a different definition of daemon: A spirit between gods and humans, as the ancient Greeks used to use the term. In addition, this premise holds that Chaos Magic is more wild and untamed like raw nature as opposed to random chance and unpredictability. Attempting to tame what cannot be tamed will always have side effects. When a mage summons a daemon to bind to, they get a daemon that is compatible with their purely human soul. In a successful binding, the daemon and human accept each other and a new daemon-host is created. What happens during this time is unique to the pair, but the results of failure are spectacular, though suspiciously silent on what consumes the souls. The daemons summoned might not necessarily be evil nor do they have an insatiable appetite for human souls. They are more so crystallized aspects of the untamed magics that we humans call Chaos Magic. The problem comes in that when a human starts using Chaos Magic, the magic seeps into them, transforming them into something that is no longer purely human. But as stated, the daemon resonates with the human soul, which leads to compatibility issues during the actual act of binding. For newer mages that are not as changed, it is a minor issue that the pair can work with, and bind over. Though the binding might not be as strong as it would be with a pure human soul, or it creates a weakness where the bond the ritual created is metaphysically weaker. But to a powerful caster, possibly half-transformed into a daemon themselves by their own magics? The binding spell that joins two entities together, full daemon and human, has a problem -- either the caster is now no longer human enough to qualify, or there is a sort of proto-daemon within them already that is kind of bound to them. Regardless of the mechanics under the hood, there are severe compatibility issues. If these issues cannot be worked out by the end of the ritual, the failure conditions occur. Regardless of the mechanics of why the failure occurs, the result is the same -- the soul being consumed in the backlash of Chaos Magic. Since the goal is to deter people from trying this, the tales spread of daemons consuming the soul. Do they though? Well, that is a debate for scholars. Another potential avenue for failure is that the ritual, when performed by a powerful, partially transformed mage, summons two daemons -- one for the human that was and one for the being that is, and it is them fighting (or both trying to enter the ritual) that results in the failure and backlash. [Answer] You're talking about making a deal with (a/the) devil. Never a great idea. The devil wants to corrupt and destroy your soul. If you've been making lots of little deals with him over the years, escalating the damage to your soul, the demon doesn't have to give you very much. In the typical deal-with-the-devil story, the point where the character is knee-deep in the consequences of his terrible decisions is where the deals turn increasingly sour. He's ensnared. On the other hand, the devil would offer a much better price to try to seduce a relatively innocent soul that it sees as more difficult to corrupt. Regardless, the deal is always going to turn out badly for the human who makes it. ]
[Question] [ What could allow a spacefaring civilization to actively construct and maintain ships, stations and weapons, but stop them from actually manufacturing the individual components? First, let me try to define "components": I mostly mean more complex devices, like energy sources, advanced computers, space weapons, drives, artificial gravity, etc. They know how these things behave, but they can't replicate them. They are not incapable of building their own basic components, but they are highly inadequate (perhaps on the level we have today). Perhaps, to make a few more clear example: they could know how to build a normal computer, but quantum computers can only be salvaged. They could build rocket-propelled ships, but can't build those fancy sub-light or even FTL drives. They can build a basic slug-thrower or rocket launcher as a weapon, but those don't even come close to the advanced weapons they find in wrecks. Essentially, they have lego bricks; they can stick them together in many creative ways, but can't make their own. Going with the "lost knowledge" approach (like after an apocalypse), that wouldn't stop that civilization from quickly reverse-engineer those components and eventually manufacture their own; especially since they already know how to repair and maintain them on a superficial level. All their components come from scavenging, from old shipwrecks and ruins (from some prior galactic civilization). Existing ships and structures are recycled. Scarcity isn't a bit issue either - there are plenty of these components lying around, like sand on a beach, to the point where they are considered completely expendable. At least for as long as they keep finding new ship graveyards. I was thinking of a few approaches that might achieve this: * All these parts come with some sort of advanced DRM that can't be cracked (yet) and perhaps even damages the part if attempted. * Since a lot of this is military hardware, perhaps they are designed in a way that makes reverse-engineering almost impossible (but would that ever be possible to do?) * Perhaps this DRM doesn't come as part of the component, but instead, as some external force ("call home" feature). Trying to duplicate or modify it results in some AI/drone incursion - that old civilization is gone, but their mechanical servants are still around and watching. * The availability of these components makes manufacturing them pointless, and eventually over generations it just becomes normality. This could work on the surface, but I doubt that will stop anyone from trying to learn more. [Answer] # Can You Build a Microchip? How many people actually know how to build a microchip? An auto mechanic can work with a microchip, install one, possibly even adjust the programming to do something off-market, but they can't make it. The same goes for all the other parts of the car. They can do body work, but don't know how to make sheet metal from raw materials. They can MAYBE recondition a part, but casting the metal or designing the basic engineering is beyond them. Hand a cave man a gun. Spend a day showing him how to use it. That's an amazing tool. So why can't he just go out and make one on his own? Your technology was designed by beings who's basic understanding of the universe was different. Perhaps they understand underlying physics principles that aren't well conceptualized by these people's brains. Or perhaps the engineering needed to make the parts is too many steps beyond the understanding of the people using them for them to have a shot making new ones. # Unique Origin: Unobtainium is made in the heat of a collapsing blue star. The mystery civilization figured this out, and when the chance to use a collapsing blue star came up, they got lucky. Only there are only so many opportunities to get to a collapsing blue star. You can move an entire industrial system to the nearest one that will blow soon, and it will only take you 36,000 years to get there. Or you can wait until the next local one blows. That will be about 2 million years (give or take). # Cost: Unobtainium is absurdly expensive to manipulate. You can make a part for your space cruiser, using up the output of an entire star for three years. The mystery aliens had a growing civilization and needed more parts, so they had to make them. But your people have a vastly smaller civilization. They can just hit the local ship graveyard and take a part for four magnitudes less cost and effort. There's nothing your people need that isn't already there for the taking. Or perhaps the up-front costs of building a manufacturing facility is intense. You need a Dyson sphere (not the cheaper swarm) to build an integrated manufacturing center. All the Dyson spheres were destroyed. If your civilization works hard and devotes their entire output for a hundred thousand years, they can build one. Or they can just (I think you know where this is going). # Your People aren't That Clever: This tech was lying around on your people's home planet. The local equivalent of the ancient Egyptians started building space ships. So your people really don't have any history of reverse-engineering - they just figure out how stuff works. They may not even have scientific theory. If the computer says the ship needs to do this to go from A to B in X days, you do that. If people die when you open the hatch, DON'T. If they live when wearing the red suit, then it's okay. They're making progress. Perhaps in 2-3,000 years they'll figure it out. Someone recently figured out that Grey plague came from little particles in the air. # Retail Sales: Your aliens were entrepreneurs. They had a brisk market in exporting hardware. But the civilizations they were selling to wanted the science, not just the parts. To keep their monopoly on sales, everything is designed to be as difficult to reverse-engineer as possible. Maybe they even built in false clues to make it look like the part worked for different reasons than it did. That burnt-out circuit in there was added for show. But the actual function of the unit works on a completely different principle. Those reverse-engineering are led down false scientific pathways that don't pan out. So your society now believes several completely false scientific principles. I mean, experimentation seems to contradict it, but the aliens made it work, right? # AI: Your parts are intelligent - in a sort-of way. There are thousands of ways each set of components COULD work, but the part knows how to BE a specific one. Being an antigravity auto-feedback initiator is a big job. So the key isn't what the components do as much as what the components *know.* This software doesn't interface. The parts, to be sure they keep doing the right job, will only do that job. The other components signal them what to do and when, and they do it. Try to break it, and... "Hey, this one's got exactly the same parts in it as the other one." [Answer] +1 @DWKraus. There are also processes you cannot reverse engineer; for thousands of years the best we could do in agricultural or livestock is to employ artificial selection and take advantage of random genetic mutations; to make modern chickens for example. But with genetic engineering, we have done genetically what no amount of artificial selection could have done; by transplanting DNA sequences we have made carrots that manufacture essential vitamins, and are correcting chronic vitamin deficiencies in areas that have suffered them for centuries. It is possible your parts are so complex and require microscopic engineering that is beyond not just the capabilities of your people, but currently beyond their comprehension. In 1850, nobody on Earth would have bought that space and time were the same thing and interrelated, or would have bought relativistic time dilation, or would have bought quantum tunneling of subatomic particles -- Heck they wouldn't have bought even the notion of subatomic particles, much less quantum mechanics. Lost knowledge can be lost forever. I had the same idea as DWKraus; it is not remotely possible to reverse engineer a modern x86-64 Intel processor, or to know what an NVIDIA GPU is doing, or to unravel a modern program from its machine language, without any instruction on how to do it or what a programming language or processor even is. They are not going to reverse engineer an FTL engine, which likely has hundreds of processors involved, subatomically engineered materials, and operating on a theory of physics that we, today, cannot even comprehend. As far as we know, FTL is not possible, period. Despite trying for nearly a century, we still cannot reconcile General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and it is quite likely neither is completely true; because they both have discrepancies and unexplained experimental observations (like the mysteries of dark matter, dark energy, neutrino mass, and on and on). Your civilization doesn't even have the scientists or equipment to DO these experiments -- The Large Hadron Collider cost us $10 billion. There are plenty of reasons to think all they can do is reuse what is left, or left behind, of a scientifically super-advanced civilization. [Answer] The old technology isn't just more advanced version of these people's own tech. It is based on theoretical knowledge which they have no concept of. Say, they understand the universe on an atomic level but the precursors had a complete understanding of the universe on a subatomic level. So the precursor tech utilizes materials and states of matter which these people simply don't understand because their own theoretical science is so far behind. It's like if the contents of a modern warehouse somehow ended up in Ancient Egypt. People there would quickly figure out what happens if you push this or that button, and that certain things won't work without batteries and probably that rusty contacts or a broken wire will stop a machine from working. But without understanding of electricity and many other things they will never be able to build any of the necessary components. [Answer] ## Exotic materials Your advanced technologies like supercomputers, FTL engines, etc. are built using materials that simply aren't able to be made under normal conditions. Maybe they need to be made in some exotic location like near a pulsar or black hole. Maybe they require such gratuitous levels of power, temperature, or pressure that highly specialized infrastructure is needed in their manufacture. So much so that despite the obvious benefits of having more of this stuff, that infrastructure is not very widespread. New output is only a trickle compared to demand for super-materials, but fortunately their superior properties can survive being reshaped, salvaged, and remade into new forms. So while it's hypothetically possible to have new materials instead of recycled ones, for most people it's out of reach. Widespread recycling also makes it less economical to expand production (since you'd have to compete with recycled materials in price, and setting up new production is massively expensive). [Answer] # DRM-locked fabricators All of their technology was manufactured by highly advanced automated fabricators that could convert raw materials into whatever advanced technology with the ease of Star Trek holodecks. However, you could not use them without cryptographically-impossible-to-crack DRM permissions, and due to Right to Repair not being a thing in the setting, all those fabricators are rigged to self-destruct if they detect being opened or otherwise tinkered with by anyone who does not have a special DRM permission, as the companies that produced them hoped to profit from monopolising the repairs of their fabricators. Then, due to some cataclysm or other, everyone lost their DRM permissions, taking the manufacturing foundation out from under their civilisation and leaving them with a choice to either go several tech levels back and manufacture things manually or just use whatever advanced tech already exists, which turned out to be much more convenient and so most people went with this. [Answer] # Social Limitations Humans can get a lot of amazing things done with hundreds or thousands of people working toward the same goal. But what if your race couldn't or wouldn't cooperate on this large of a scale? If your civilization is limited on how many people can cooperate on a single task (for whatever reason), then you could easily imagine a scenario where an individual could be very good at fixing or tweaking an existing piece of technology, but couldn't make one from scratch even if they knew exactly how to do it, the job is too big for them. For example, I can fix or assemble a computer with new or salvaged components all by myself with no help, but I could never produce one on my own if I had to start with taking the raw materials out of the ground. [Answer] A somewhat abstract example from history might be mathematics and the Romans; you get what you prioritise, followed by respect for ancient knowledge. Romans took mathematics that was developed by the Greeks, and were able to maintain it and use it for centuries. They had lego bricks, they could stick them together, but they couldn't make their own. They weren't set up to advance mathematics. They sent their brightest sons to be generals in war. As a compounding effect, after some centuries of this, the Greek mathematics acquired a patina of ancient knowledge; when advances in mathematics resumed, it took some time and effort to break that hold. Euclid's Elements dominated the field into the 19th century, and that's with sections that could be used to demonstrate its own inadequacy (eg. list of open problems that could be proved to be unsolvable within the system). [Answer] They lack the tools to make the tools In both scientific understanding and engineering practice they no longer understand how to build the necessary pre-steps in making any of these exotic items. Highly advanced tools must be made to exacting standards and anything out of spec is wasted time and effort. For a current example, building a new jet liner requires there to be facilities to produce nearly atomically perfect ingots of titanium, facilities to make toolheads that can cut that titanium repeatedly to very tight tolerances. So far that's "just" metallurgy and manufacturing. But now you need someone who understands the chemical science of petroleum engineering in order to refine jet fuel. All these disciplines overlap and result in a highly skilled workforce crossing a dozen industries and that's just to produce something that would be considered unimaginably basic in comparison to a FTL drive. [Answer] They can't reverse engineer the devices because they're not actually there. The ancients figured out how to make pocket universes that have different physical laws--that's how they manage to do things that are "impossible" like FTL. Study it down to the molecular level but without an understanding of the part you're not seeing and you'll never figure it out. Make what appears to be an atom-perfect replica and it just sits there. [Answer] TL;DR: Some things are better off forgotten. The Politics of Technology Radio isotope thermoelectric generators are FANTASTIC long term power sources. They just... sit there. And make power. For decades. There's one crucial problem keeping them from being in houses - the best, most easily shielded, longest lasting isotope to use for a heat source is Plutonium 238. The biggest problem with that is, of course, nuclear weapons proliferation. If you have or are developing the technology to produce this material in significant quantities, weapons of mass destruction are within reach. Not only are they within reach, but depending on the scale of the production facilities, you might be able to quickly and quietly build a planet-killing array of weapons. The implications of that change the behavior of whole worlds. A perhaps more extreme example comes from 'The Regiment: A Trilogy' by John Dalmas. As part of the background of the setting, a war had been fought that was so bad, they surrendered the ability to do science. They developed a working set of spacefaring grade technology (dubbed Standard Technology) and a bureaucratic set of cultural and managerial protocols (Standard Management), along with a bit of brainwashing and a dash of propaganda. The people of this fictional society's nations have a difficult time thinking outside the box, because for the most part they can't see the box, and recognizing this 'box' causes something like a physically unpleasant cognitive dissonance. This may not be the direction you want to take things in - not every story needs to talk out loud about the politics of their universe. Regardless, when building your world, make sure you consider not only the ramifications of what your people can produce, but how fast they can produce it, what other additional abilities that suggests, and how others in the story feel about that and respond to it. [Answer] Examples from history: having the science doesn't mean having the industrial capability The last century has shown a lot of places where cars and trucks were used, adapted and maintained but not manufactured, and scavenging (in bad times) or importing (in good times) was the sensible or possible alternative. For example, in Spain in the 1940s, after the Spanish Civil War and while the rest of the world was busy with the Second World War, car factories were scarce or destroyed, although there were engineers enough who knew how cars work and how to make them, given the necessary resources, these resources were lacking. However a lot of workshops were making working trucks from scavenged parts or the few new parts that could be manufactured or imported. Even some parts that were in short supply could be manufactured by hand. Even nowadays there are countries that use cars (and maintain and adapt then when needed) but don't manufacture them because it doesn't make economic sense. If the rest of the world stopped selling cars to them, they would set a factory, but until then it's more efficient to import cars. For your spacefaring civilization it's the same: They know how their technology works, but it's very expensive to set the factories to make it (the microchips example in another answer is great), and they aren't going to set a factory as long as there is an alternative (even scavenging), and probably when there were nothing else to scavenge they would switch to an alternative technology or stop doing some things. [Answer] Space patents The aliens that can make the technology, decide that no one else should be allowed. So they either only give the technology, initially, to people who are willing to agree to make laws saying no one can manufacture the tech. Or, (and probably in combination with the previous one), they fly around and simply kill anyone who tries to build things from scratch. Perhaps these aliens even use the creation of new technology as a sign that their should be a purge (wouldn't want anyone getting powerful enough to defeat them). While simply allowing the reuse of their tech does not trigger a purge. [Answer] # Trade secrets Porcelain dishes and teacups were hugely valued in Europe for centuries, but no one outside of China knew how to make them. Europeans tried to reverse-engineer the process, but some details of how to mix and age the clay are simply not obvious from examining the finished product. These details were guarded by Chinese families as trade secrets for a very long time. Eventually they were discovered with a mixture of experimentation and spying, but it took a lot of effort. In your world, if the technology in question is as common as sand on a beach, there's very little incentive to spend centuries on experimentation and spying to discover a trade secret. [Answer] Environmental Pollution Just like today's technology, manufacturing of specialized components has a high cost in terms of generating a LOT of a variety of environmental toxins. Either you have a huge amount of space and resources devoted to capturing and reprocessing of those toxins or you have access to a huge amount of water to essentially dilute them into harmlessness (or at least flush them out of your responsibility). Either approach generally implies planet-scale access to resources because closed environments cannot tolerate much in the way of toxins buildup. Yes, you can fire rockets containing the toxins into a handy sun or moon but that still requires wasting a large amount of precious resources. ]
[Question] [ As far as I am aware, female mammals cannot produce eggs (as in ova) after a certain age/maturation. How could the female produce eggs for an unlimited amount of time, resulting in a 'queen' mammal similar to queen bees? [Answer] The concept of a menopause is actually unusual, it's known to exist in the wild in 5 species, Humans, Orcas, Belugas, Narwhals, Short Finned Pilot Whales. While some other species exhibit menopause in captivity, others are definitely known not to e.g. cats and dogs. In all other species the females are believed to remain fertile for their entire lives. The only queen mammal I'm aware of is the [naked mole rat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat). > > The relationships between the queen and the breeding males may last for many years; other females are temporarily sterile. Queens live from 13 to 18 years, and are extremely hostile to other females behaving like queens, or producing hormones for becoming queens. When the queen dies, another female takes her place, sometimes after a violent struggle with her competitors. Once established, the new queen's body expands the space between the vertebrae in her backbone to become longer and ready to bear pups. > > > [Answer] [This article, in National Geographic, says women can produce eggs](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/02/120229-women-health-ovaries-eggs-reproduction-science/): > > Women may make new eggs throughout their reproductive years—challenging a longstanding tenet that females are born with finite supplies, a new study says. The discovery may also lead to new avenues for improving women's health and fertility. > > > Who knew? This means that the "finite number of eggs" reasoning behind menopause is not an absolute one in human biology, let alone non-human. [Answer] Women are born with approximately two million eggs in their ovaries, but about eleven thousand of them die every month prior to puberty. Given one egg per month gives you a ballpark fertility age of 158,000 years (give or take 1,000 years). If you're changing human biology enough that this is a normal lifespan, you can change it enough to keep the eggs fresh and only release one per month. [Answer] [Meerkat are mammals that have "queens"](https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/meerkats3.htm) and a hive-like colony. [So the phenomena of queen mammals already exists](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/baby-murdering-meerkat-alpha-females-enslave-subordinates-as-wet-nurses-1207037/). Basically the arrangement is that one or two females do all the breeding for a colony. The rest of the colony look after, feed the children, take care of the "queens", and so on. This is pretty much an identical set up to bees, but with fewer workers, and none of the [haploid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploidy)-ness. There are a lot of intricacies to having a colony that is based around one or two females doing all the breeding that you can look into. For example avoiding inbreeding. However with regard to your specific concern: Meerkats do not have infinite eggs, and don't need them. Infinite eggs are not required for animals that have finite lifespans. These animals only need to have more eggs than they can use in their lifetime. [Wiki link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meerkat) [Answer] The main issue here is that female mammals don't "produce" eggs, they mature them. every egg a female mammal will ever have is already present in the ovaries at birth. To have a mammal with indefinite breeding age, and to reduce the negative effects of age on the egg (older eggs have had more time to become damaged), females must indeed produce eggs on the spot, similar to how the male produce sperm; sperm cells are always new and fresh, since they did not have the time to degrade the way eggs do. [Answer] The reason why women don't produce eggs for their entire life (making that National Geographic article linked in another answer somewhat dubious) is that this is not in any way in nature's interest. Read "nature" as either "evolution" or "fitness", however you like. The incidence of several hereditary defects is directly linked to the mother's age, and goes up exponentially (not linearly). The reason for a 45 year old woman having such a high risk is that, well, her eggs and her DNA are 45 years old. For that same reason, nature doesn't want 50 or 60 year olds to deliver, even if food supply and longeviety allowed for it. There's enough eggs in one woman for a couple of hundred thousand years, so 100 years wouldn't be a technical problem -- but nature doesn't want that. Because what they might deliver would have a high likelihood of being vastly inferior. Nature isn't loving, kind, and altruistic -- she is a mean bitch. Nature doesn't cater for the inferior. If you aren't good, you are undesired (because you take away precious food and water from the more worthy). ]
[Question] [ So, on the planet Qualis, a reptilian species, known as the modern Qualians, evolved about 200,000 years. Before that, most fighting was down with claws and teeth, and the Qualian ancestor that had the sharpest claws was the most likely to survive and get females, and that’s how it was for thousands of years. But then the Qualians became intelligent enough to create weapons like spears and clubs, and having claws became essentially useless. But, I want to have the Qualians keep their claws still. Would it be possible for a body part which is evolutionarily outdated to remain in a species over 200,000? [Answer] Vestigiality Is Common in Evolution People tend to talk about evolution like it is some sort of divine being who snaps his fingers and poofs away adaptations as soon as they are no longer useful or guides a species purposefully along an evolutionary path. Evolution is nothing but the most complex and far ranging game of trial and error we know of. Often times adaptations get left on vestigially. An excellent example of this can be seen in humans with their wisdom teeth and appendix. It has been ages since plant cellulose was a staple of our diet requiring an extra set of molars to masticate plant matter more thoroughly and an extra digestive enzyme chamber specialized in breaking it down. We still have both of these body parts despite the fact that they are performing no vital function and have a tendency towards contracting life threatening infections. (Note: before anyone goes crazy in the comments about how the appendix has been theorized to act as a shelter for beneficial bacteria, this is not a vital function and one can live without with zero ill effects for their health.) [Answer] Evolution by natural selection has two main pathways, features that help a creature survive long enough to reproduce and features that are sexually selected for. (There is overlap of course, as the most commonly used example of sexually selected trait is the peacock tail which also serves to weed out those who aren't as fit due to the trade offs of the tail). Once the best claws allowed your species to survive long enough to reproduce. Then technology came. Yet the females, on average, mate more with the males with those best claws. The survival feature becomes a display feature. I do have to question the time frame though, how many generations is in that 200k years? Yes radical changes can happen pretty quickly under the right circumstances but overall, evolution is a slow process and is slowed further when there is less survival pressure put onto a species which the post made sound like happen when the spears were invented. (instead of 1/10 males surviving to mate, suddenly 9/10 mate, which means more potentially a population boost which weakens the selective pressure because there is just more mating happening etc) [Answer] Sexual selection In the old times when claws were essential hunting and fighting tools, it was obvious that strong and healthy claws were a trait which potential mates were looking for. This got so ingrained in their psychology, that they find members of their species more attractive if they have strong claws, even if they are not all that useful in modern society. Even we humans have behavioral and physical traits which we find attractive due to our hunter-gatherer origins, even though we don't live like that since many generations. The fact that claws are no longer useful or might even be a hindrance, is not a problem. Peacocks have huge and useless tails but [it's still used](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle) to select mates. [Answer] tl;dr: 200,000 is very short - it is very likely, not just possible, that there wouldn't be any changes in the appearance of your Qualians over that period. 200,000 years isn't that much in evolutionary terms. If you take a look at Wikipedia's [timeline of human evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_evolution), you can see that homo sapiens has been around for 300,000 - 800,000 years (depending on how exactly Homo heidelbergensis lineage is classified - basically if we include Neanderthals in Homo sapiens or not...). But if you look back to see when humans/pre-humans started to "lose" their large teeth, you need to go back about 3,600,000 years to [Australopithecus\_afarensis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis) - that ancestor had "reduced canines and molars [compared to the modern and extinct great apes], although they are still relatively larger than in modern humans." Note also that the same timeline states that the first evidence of "deliberately constructing stone tools" appears after the diminishing of teeth with [Kenyanthropus platyops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenyanthropus) at 3,500,000 - 3,300,000 years ago. So, you may wish to make your "modern" Qualian older than 200,000 years, but either way, it's very likely that they'll still have their sharp claws. [Answer] Traits that offer no advantage or disadvantage will persist down generations as long as there is a 50% distribution of traits between the male and female. It becomes statistically rare for a meaningless trait to disappear, because there is always a chance that either the male or female carries the trait. Even if there are several generations that don't carry the trait. Mating with a parent who carries the trait has a 50% chance of reintroducing that trait. That trait then has to go forward many generations before it has the likelihood of being removed. There are also cases where traits can skip generations and spontainly be re-introduced. The trait could then persist since it offers no advantage or disadvantage. The key here is that the trait has no effect on mating. This is important, because when a trait offers neither an advantage or disadvantage it's no longer an evolutionary trait. It becomes a hereditary trait only. Humans have many traits that have no effect on mating, and as a result they persist. We have tail bones, we have appendixes and we have remnant (a space patch of flesh from a second stomach). There are people born without an appendix, but when they have children the trait is often re-introduced. It's why it has persisted for so long even when mutation removes it. Because your creatures used claws as a mating advantage and they never became a disadvantage then there is no evolutionary reason for them not to persist. The claws would be hereditary traits only but since both mating pairs have claws they forever persist down generations. They can no more stop having claws then they can stop being replitans. Unless something happens that changes these rules and having or not having claws changes the odds of mating. This does create some issues since claws could get in the way of tool use, but if the claws were retractable then mates with long or short claws have an equal chance of mating. [Answer] Sexual selection, as mentioned by Seserous, is probably a big part of the answer. There are also analogous situations in some human societies that might apply to an alien society. In some human cultures, long nails would get in the way of hard manual labor, be difficult to clean and probably break off. So, upper-class men, women or both would deliberately grow their nails long and manicure them to demonstrate that they had no need to do any manual labor. Since claws are objectively useful for something, it's possible to imagine other reasons these aliens might consider it a rational sign of status. One of the simplest: brave fighters all keep their claws sharp for dueling, so a male (if their reproductive cycle is more similar to mammals’ than seahorses’) whose claws were blunt or brittle would have gotten attacked by others in prehistoric society and outcompeted. Even by the time tools and weapons could have given reptilians with broken claws a fighting chance, needing them was a sign of weakness. [Answer] Sure. 200,000 years is an eyeblink, evolutionarily. A modern human could live in the society of our 200,000 year old ancestors. Humans have been making stone tools for 10 times that long. And like your lizardfolk, we have retained adaptations that were useful for our fierce ancestors but not so much for us. Like canine teeth. [![smile with canines](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ozZxp.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ozZxp.jpg) <http://www.oralanswers.com/the-functions-of-each-tooth-in-your-mouth/> No way to know for sure, but she is probably not going to fight anyone with those sharp little canines, or hold onto wiggling live prey she has caught with her mouth. But her ancestors surely did, much longer ago than 200,000 years. Thinking claws specifically, consider the [dewclaw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewclaw). Wikipedia holds that these vestigial digits with associated claws have some use but I don't know. I have never seen a dog put them to use. The ancestral mammal that used this digit was surely millions of years ago. It takes a long time to evolve away from something useless. The get rid of it quick it has to become frankly maladaptive. There is no reason your aliens could not have the same body plan as their ancestors of 200,000 years prior. We do. [Answer] They are Climbers The Qualians evolved to live in a forest where the trees have broad flat trunks. Their claws let them climb sheer surfaces like a squirrel. The Qualians invented tools 200,000 years ago but were primarily hunter-gatherers until about a thousand years ago. It's only (biologically) recently they began to industrialise and chop down the trees. Until then the claws had a practical use beside sexual selection. [Answer] Other than the brilliant answers you already received, I'd like to answer to you with a question: Why would they want to get rid of their claws at all? I mean, they're still fine natural weapons, they are useful (tooling, climbing). In fact, they can act as a deterrent when it comes to hand-to-hand fight. If both adversaries are matched in terms of natural weapons, it's unlikely they'd want to go shred each other (unless in a mind-numbing frenzy, of course, but in this case, claws are an extra, they could harm each other anyway). It's as if we had kept our quadruman abilities and would like to get rid of them by performing foot surgery. So, hooray for natural claws! EDIT: I can imagine someone removing their claws because they're pacifists, they actually do not like to be reminded of the brutes they used to be before civilization and prefer to artificially adapt their bodies to a condition of complete harmlessness. (this would include teeth surgeonry, acid sacs removal, etc.) [Answer] Claws aren't just for hunting and/or self-defense in a fight, you know. They can be used for hygiene too. [Echidnas, for example, have a long claw on the second of their front paws. That claw is used for self-combing and scratching, to get rid of parasites and dirt](http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/echidna). If claws serve to keep yourself clean, then they will be positively selected, and will tend to stay as a trait of the species. [Answer] What is the advantage of a club when you've already got sharp claws? Yes, I get that they're different and a club may be better in some cases, but just because you become intelligent, it doesn't mean you stop using your existing weapon. Beating someone with a club isn't more "intelligent" than slashing them with your claws. It may arguably be more "civilised", but civilisation at that level comes a long long time after the rise of intelligence. I would argue that a club only becomes a better weapon when they start inventing effective defences against claw slash attacks. For example, the invention of leather armour. When you've got claws and you're faced with someone wearing claw-proof armour, what do you do? Pick up something heavy and hit them with it instead, of course. Hence the invention of the club. But the claws would still be useful against those without armour, or for finishing someone off after hitting them with a club, and as part of your own defence, so there wouldn't be any evolutionary pressure that all for them to vanish. [Answer] They still need the claws to get at their food. It's hard to be more specific, because you give very little info about your species, but maybe they need to rip off tree bark, dig into the ground (hard clay, rocks), crack coconut-like vegetables, catch prey, climb to reach food (or other reasons), ... ]
[Question] [ I'm creating a post-apocalyptic world several centuries into the future. After the nuclear war whatever is left of humanity has regressed into the dark age. Society: The offspring of those few who survived the radiation and the following nuclear winter live in small tribes. They sometimes cooperate, and sometimes compete with other tribes. Humans are few in number. Technology: Technology regressed to the dark ages. The survivors hate technology and blame it for the fall. Anyone caught trying to learn or recover the before-the-fall knowledge is ostracized or put to death. Whatever is left from the destroyed civilization has been overtaken by mother nature like in [Life After People](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People). Rotting machines are mostly used for scrap metals by village blacksmiths. Food: Food production is limited to small scale horticulture and herding. Hunting and fishing are very important food sources since there are many animals and very few humans. Radiation Many places are highly radioactive and must be avoided. Some are mildly radioactive and people pass through them quickly if they are forced to. There are many dangerous mutated animals. Humans who show signs of mutations are killed. Climate The climate is much colder, with earth just recovering from an ice age. Humanity must rely on many food sources, since climate is very unpredictable. In my story the average man is twice as large as average women. While the differences in modern world are [10-15kg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_weight#By_country), the average 25 year old woman in my setting weighs around 65kg, while the average 25 year old man is around 130kg. Obesity is unheard of. Men are bulky; not like modern body builders but like people who gained their muscles from a lifetime of hard work. Is there a way to explain why dimorphism increased dramatically without resorting to genetic engineering or radioactive mutations? [Answer] You need some kind of environment where its : 1. Advantageous to be a bulky man 2. Disadvantageous to be a bulky woman. For example let's assume that your tribe constantly fights with neighboring tribes, mutants, wild animals, giant spiders etc. Big men are more successful in those battles and win more often, abduct more women and acquire more glory. That allows them to acquire more wives and have more extra-marital dalliances with the ladies. On the other hand thin men tend to die more often, kill less mutants, and hunt less boars. Parents are hesitant to give them their daughters, and few ladies find yoga instructors attractive. So bulky men tend to have more children on average then thinner men. From an evolutionary point of view, it's advantageous to be a bulky man. Unfortunately, the above would also make women grow in size since bulky fathers tend to have bulky daughters. So lets use culture for the second constraint. Since there is so much fighting in your dog eat dogs world, man tend to die in droves and tribal warlord is always short on warriors. So he starts recruiting strong [women](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/dahomeys-women-warriors-88286072/). Bulky girls are pressed into tribal militia where they practice to use glaive & crossbow. Unlike their sisters who must obey their fathers then their husbands when they get marry, the women warriors are granted same status as man. That means they have the freedom to go where they want, marry who they want, vote in the tribal council and even have a chance to become tribal chief themselves etc. As a consequence of their more dangerous occupation bulky girls tend to die more often, they marry later (dalliances for serving women are strictly forbidden) and tend to have fewer children then civilian women. Under above constraints its disadvantageous to be a bulky women, since you will be pressed into military service. This cultural innovation makes the tribe stronger. Since our brave amazons are wo-manning the village walls and protecting livestock from two headed wolves, the warlord has more spare men to raid neighboring tribes. Which gives more loot and slaves. Tribe grows prosperous and conquers neighboring tribes. The remaining tribes quickly copy this practice. Now everywhere you go you hear the stories of glorious female warriors who protected their village from raiding parties & fire breathing mutants. Keep these constraints for multiple generations and evolution will find a way to give you the dimorphism you want. Most likely your humans would be far more affected by the hormones, or smaller couples would have more girls or whatever. Note: All of the men must be warriors. Strong woman are recruited if they volunteer or if there is a shortage of men. Excerpt from [Dahomey Amazons](http://www.badassoftheweek.com/dahomey.html) > > The Amazons were recruited in a number of ways. Sometimes they were volunteers – women who were sick of their bullshit day-to-day lives, poor women seeking battlefield glory, or even the occasional royal concubine who decided she was much more comfortable cutting people in half for the King than she was producing male heirs for him. > > > [Answer] > > In my story average man is twice larger then average women. While the differences in modern world are 10-15kg, average women in my setting weighs around 65 kg, while man are around 130 kg. > > > That's B-I-G big. > > Obesity is unheard of. Man are bulky, not like modern body builders, but like people who gained their muscles from lifetime of hard work. > > > That's not what people look like after years of manual labor, and when food is scarce from a "climate (which) is much colder then now". > > Is there a way to explain why dimorphism increased dramatically without resorting to genetic engineering or radioactive mutations? > > > Possibly, if the only human survivors happened to be descended from American professional football players (specifically interior linemen). Practically, no. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T5oJI.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T5oJI.jpg) [Answer] > > Is there a way to explain why dimorphism increased dramatically without resorting to genetic engineering or radioactive mutations? > > > First off, there is no such thing as radioactive mutations. A mutation may be caused by radiation, but it will be no different from a change in the same gene caused by chance or engineering. Just as if I commit a typo here that gets corrected, the text is no different if it is edited by you or me. Now, the change may be part cultural, part selection. Start with a template where, given a 20th century western lifestyle, healthy people would average 80-100 kilograms. Why? Because these people were selected by evolution after the apocalypse, for whatever reason. Say, if you have to wrestle against bears here and there, or if you have to haul what you've hunted large distances across uneven terrain, then more body mass helps you. Next, all men are either into phisiculturalism by themselves, or forced into it. They've found a way to produce steroidal anabolizants with lower technology (I've seen anedoctal evidence for it, though I lack a source now, so handwave this away) and they eat and exercise a lot. Meanwhile, women are starved. Thus men acquire more mass than what would be a natural average, while women acquire less. This food division is outright cruel, but is a thing in undeveloped countries. There is an educational cartoon from India which, in one episode, [tries to teach people that giving girls smaller food portions is wrong so thay they drop this cruel custom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meena_(character)#%22Dividing_the_Mango%22). As far as I know, the custom has not died out yet. --- Alternatively, a random [insertion mutation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation#By_effect_on_structure) that adds growth-relates genes to the Y chromossome could do the trick. Such mutations may cause a lot more changes than just an increased production of growth hormones - the amount of possible birth defects and reasons for miscarriage could increase. Enlargement of males must be a really decisive factor for human survival for this tradeoff to be selected positively. [Answer] Just look at gorillas. Such large differences in size already exist in an extremely close relative of ours. Gorillas have a large degree of sexual dimorphism and already weigh in at about your desired sizes. Adult male [gorillas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla#Physical_characteristics) weigh between 136 to 195 kg and adult female gorillas between 68 to 113 kg. So, your post-apocalyptic males and females at 135 and 65 kg respectively are well within the realm of possibility both in size and in sexual dimorphism. In fact, males being roughly double the size of females in primates is not uncommon and can be found in [Orangutans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangutan#Anatomy_and_physiology), [Mandrills](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrill#Description), [Hamadryas baboons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamadryas_baboon#Physical_description), and [Proboscis monkeys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proboscis_monkey#Description). Now, the question is how did such large sexual dimorphism arise? In primate biology, there is a well-known relationship between the degree to which males compete for access to females and the relative sizes of males and females. When a male’s reproductive success is strongly correlated to its ability to intimidate or fight other males there is a strong evolutionary pressure to increase in size in order to better compete. So, if you want to drive larger male size evolutionarily you want a societal structure in which the largest and strongest men are able to monopolize the reproductive capacity of many women. Unfortunately, these sorts of evolutionary forces will be hard pressed to produce an appreciable change in such a short time span. I anticipate thousands of years at a minimum would be necessary to naturally grow humans to such sizes. [Answer] I suggest reducing both sizes. In a world where food isn't marketed, manufactured to be addictive, or even plentiful, it might not be unreasonable to have the average woman more like 45 kg. You could then more believably make the average man something like 80 kg. In a world with very limited technology, there would be a multitude of advantages to men to be big and strong. If women were dependent on men for protection and food, they could well end up mostly petite. Remember that childhood malnourishment stunts growth, and being shorter is a huge head start in being lighter. [Answer] 130kg is a really large man, and 65kg is not particularly small for a woman. Most 130kg men are very fat rather than very bulky. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger only weighed around 120kg as a bodybuilder. So let's assume unusually small women and unusually bulky men: Women average 50kg and men average 100kg. This could be achieved without any genetic changes at all, if we assume that all men go through a strict training regime to become bulky, and all women are underfed and small. Girls would be fed as little as possible from birth, and boys would always be fed well and encouraged to fight and be physically competitive. Girls would stay small because they don't get enough nutrition to grow big (they would also be short). Boys who are genetically not able to grow large would often not survive the training regimen. There would still be some small men and some large women, possibly because their families treated them differently from the norm. But the averages could make men twice as heavy as women. [Answer] # Men and Women live apart The most dimorphic (in terms of size) mammals are those that have males and females living apart. Sperm Whales have males in the order of 3 times greater mass than females, male polar bears are about twice the mass of females. In both cases, the males and the females live apart. Living alone, being able to deal with the dangers in the wild, is easier if you have the bulk to fend off any of the nasty creatures the radiation has created. Killing one of those beasts should also provide food enough for a single male to live off for quite a while. Men would live in the more dangerous regions (for some reason -- perhaps to go to Valhalla or something) while women would live in more favourable regions, where there's no real danger. [Answer] It's not very hard to make males big and tall, like [Richard Kiel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kiel). Just introduce some genetic anomaly which would make males generate much more [Growth hormone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_hormone) and you'll have it. But if you want your males to be very stocky without being fat, that would require a more significant change to human metabolism. To stay at 130 kgs weight, regularly tall (say, 185cm tall) human needs to eat a lot (and it has to be a very nutritious diet) and rest a lot too. For hunters gatherers, such height/weight combination would be detrimental. With more handwaving, another genetic modification may preserve muscle mass (today it quickly goes down with a lack of exercise or less nutritious diet), but as I said, this would be pretty bad for survival. [Answer] They may have [Gigantism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantism) due to mutations caused by the radiation. There are some [mutations that can cause Gigantism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantism#Genetic) from early age, resulting in a much bigger and bulkier body in adulthood. If the anterior pituitary gland is damaged by a tumor, the body basically never stops growing. But this mutation is not limited to men, so you would have at least some women with the mutation and some men without it. Or you need to come up with a clever explaination why women with this mutation and men without it don't survive, thereby driving evolution towards your goal. There are several problems with this, though. [Excess im Human Growth Hormone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_hormone#Excess) (which causes Gigantism) often leads to muscle weakness rather than strong muscles. It's also accompanied by [Acromegaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acromegaly), causing joint pain, high blood pressure, impaired vision, Diabetes and reduced sexual function. One of the most popular people with Gigantism is "André the Giant", who was a professional wrestler. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/obFEW.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/obFEW.jpg) [Answer] My answer is cannibalism. That solves part of the protein problem. It also explains why big women and weak guys don't make it. Men fight and eat each other in semi-ritualised hand to hand combat to try to take over the harem of the other guy. When famine strikes they keep up their strength by eating the women, starting with the biggest. Ok, that may be a very different story from the one you want to write. But these conditions would over time lead to strong dimorphism. [Answer] Sexual dimorphism as you've described could easily occur within a few generations, by males having to fight for access to the females. Weaker, smaller males will quickly be killed off, and larger stronger males will be the only ones able to pass on their genes to the next generation. Being larger would provide no reproductive advantage for females though, so they would stay pretty much the same size. [Answer] While the question is already closed I'd still like to give my version of an answer. The early days after the apocalypse radiation was rampant. Many people died of radiation sickness. Many were born mutated or disabled. And as you say those born with mutations now are killed off. But in the early days after the apocalypse people gained mutations that they didn't even realize. A mutation that causes the person affected to grow to almost unnatural sizes. Bulky and muscular as you describe. This mutation affects everyone though. Not just men. But why are women small then? This comes down to X and Y chromosomes. Men have a Y chromosome, which is just an X chromosome with a bunch of information chopped out. This is why color blindness is much more common in men than in women. While a woman can have a recessive color blindness gene, they can also have a dominant gene that causes this gene to stay hidden and not actually give the person color blindness. But this dominant gene exists on that part of the chromosome that is missing in men. A man just needs this 1 recessive gene in order to be color blind. Our mutation can work the same way. Women have this dominant gene that offsets the effect of this mutation the majority of the time. But since men don't even have this part of the chromosome the recessive gene affects all men that have it equally. How would all people in this society get this gene? You only really need it to happen in a few people. And with the majority of humanity being wiped out there's a fairly small gene pool that this gene needs to float through. From here natural selection could favor the men with these genes. The larger men are better able to protect themselves and their families and localized societies. So this gene is preferred as the men with this gene do not die out. And they protect their small community which consists of people with this gene so they don't die out. You can use this to create some legendary female warrior types from cultural legend and even some current characters because they have this same bulky build as the men in your society. [Answer] Malnutrition in childhood is detrimental to height. Perhaps women are thought of lesser importance than men in this society, and always eat last, whatever scraps are left at a table. Man need to be strong, so they get best picks of food, and eat to the fullest, so they grow big and strong. That causes the difference in height. Environmental variables are as important as genetics. [Answer] I think there are a number of links in this chain. ### New food The most obvious problem is that muscle requires protein. Lots of it, in a form which the body can take up easily. We don't currently have any way of doing this. Hunting has a good protein return, but hunts often don't return a win, and hunting anyway favours wiry hunters with either short-distance speed or long-distance endurance. Even in the animal kingdom, there are no big, bulky hunters. The closest you get are bears, and they're omnivorous scavengers. So, we need your mutated environment to have come up with a new food crop. It has to have an insanely high protein content, grow prolifically enough that farmers can get high yields without having to work too hard (otherwise we'll be favouring endurance again), and keep well so that it'll tide them over winter. ### New environment Next, we need to encourage muscle-building. Farming is pretty good for this - there's a reason that armies tried to pressgang farmers rather than city kids. There's a better option though. Back in the day, sailors were the ultimate tough guys. They weren't the scrawny ship rats from Pirates of the Caribbean - every last one was built like an Olympic gymnast, because spending all day climbing rigging will build that upper body strength. So, let's suppose it's not too safe to live on the ground. Humans are now semi-arboreal - not as well adapted yet as an orangutan, but kind of starting on the way there. Even without major adaptation though, just spending most of your life climbing will give you the kind of muscles you need. Perhaps our new food source grows in the trees? Or perhaps we farm the trees and live in them? We're only semi-arboreal though. We haven't yet lost our ability to stand upright, and we haven't yet got long enough arms to knuckle-walk, so our legs are still useful. As an interesting related point, [orangutans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangutan) have a high sexual dimorphism. ### Earlier birth Humans have already evolved for birth to take place well before the child is a viable individual. To be as capable as the average lamb at birth, we'd need more like 3 years gestation. Earlier birth allows for smaller hips, and means the mother is not grossly encumbered by an oversized baby. Many other animals follow the same path, with differing development times. A radically smaller mother could not support a substantially bigger male child - but if the child is born at maybe 7 months then it wouldn't matter so much. If (male) children get bigger, evolutionary pressures ensure this will just happen. If women don't give birth earlier, they and their son will die in childbirth. Women who give birth "prematurely" will become the new normal. And with early childbirth, women can get away with being smaller than they currently are. Maybe they'd average 150cm and 50kgs - which only needs the men to be up to 100kgs, which is totally doable. ### It's a man's world Why would women become smaller though? Absent any health or dietary reasons, we're looking at sexual selection. Suppose the birth rates become skewed, so we only get maybe 1 boy born for every 4-5 girls. This could result in a meerkat-like society where only one chosen female breeds but their relatives help parent their offspring. If men tend to choose the smallest, prettiest woman as their wife, then we'll have sexual selection in favour of small, pretty women. Why might people follow that model, instead of the harem model? Maybe quality over quantity - raising a few children well and reliably is more successful than giving birth to many children who mostly die. Maybe a matriarchy develops to keep other women in line. ]
[Question] [ I created human beings and placed them on a planet full of landmasses, oceans, rivers, forests, desserts, swaps, snow, mountains, hills, animals, insects, plants, fish you name it. But I have a problem: these humans, they're actually quite lovely, tend to stick to each other. Which is in my eyes a problem, I created a complete planet for them to enjoy but now they started building a city, and are spreading the idea of never lossing sight of each other again. They don't seem to be really interested in exploring the land. I want them to spread, but I don't just want tell my people to do so. How can I, as a god, make my people spread and make them settle in multiple places? [![City impression](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dKBWP.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dKBWP.jpg) Impression of the city, not entirely accurate. Image stolen from the internet (if that's a thing). Details: * Earth 2250 BC * Middle-east * The city is surrounded by farmland and other means that provide they city with the necessary goods. People do wander away, but always seem to return. * Population somewhere between 10.000 and 50.000. * The climate and environment is a bit different (in my setting) compared to the current climate in the middle east: there is more green and trees. Biomes that describe this setting the best are probably Mediterranean forests and temperate steppes or maybe even temperate broadleaf forests. In essence the middle east is less dry compared to nowadays. * Humans should start to spread over the earth by some sort of change, for example to the environment, in culture or maybe a small event. Prefered requirements: * I prefer a method that works out quite fast: after executing/applying the solution to my problem, people start spreading within a week or so. * I know it's quite difficult in this context but I prefer answers based on facts or previous events. > > Some clarifications based on comments: > > > * I prefer non-lethal methods. > * Of course humans will start spreading at some point, from an evolutionary point of view this is especially true. But keep in my case these humans think a little bit different, but even more importantly I want them to spread out now. > * The city is obviously supported by farmland and other means. But people never wander far, at most a few days and always return. > * My people do not seem to spread on their own, I have thought of several reasons for this, might be worth a different question. But assume they don't, for example because they think it's better to stay together (culturally, politically etc.) or because they just don't need to for whatever reason. > > > [Answer] ### Option 1: The drought. This is the simplest and least intrusive option. The rains failed, the rains failed again, the land can no longer support so many people and they must go their own ways to survive. One of the great causes of exodus of populations over the centuries and liable to cause another great exodus in the coming generations, climate change, primarily droughts and famine, will uproot a population and send them out into the world. ### Option 2: The Babel option Make them hate each other, "curse" half the population, divide them against each other and and let them go their separate ways, as per the Tower of Babel. ### Option 3: The potato cannon So they really won't move, load them up and fire them off to the four corners of the earth, any god worthy of the name should be able to make sure they land safely. --- ### Moving people quickly People don't want to move, they certainly don't want to move quickly. No matter the disaster, they'll hang on thinking the bad times will pass and then everything go back to normal. It's only when they understand that it's all over and there's no going back that you can uproot entire populations. It will take time, it will take severe discomfort, you will have to kill a fair percentage of them, and even then, some will stay. [Answer] /I prefer a method that works out quite fast: after executing/applying the solution to my problem, people start spreading within a week or so./ You need a prophet. [![moses in the desert](https://i.stack.imgur.com/P8CNT.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/P8CNT.jpg) <https://faithfullyamen.wordpress.com/2014/10/28/israel-wanders/> Moses is a fine example: he led his people out of Egypt and (very eventually) to the promised land. Joseph Smith has been called a "modern day Moses", leading the Mormons to their own promised land in the desert. The Pilgrims were motivated by similar desires. Your pilgrims can be a religious sect, persecuted in their current surroundings. They leave to find a comfortably distant locale in which they can practice their religion without an interfering majority. [Answer] 1) The weakness of one single city and settling one place only are natural disasters. Here are some examples: Floodings can destroy the crops, a classic are fields poisoned with salt. A drought can ruin your year. When there is nobody else to trade with, you either leave or die. A fire can burn down the city. Those things were pretty common back then, but if you must, initiate a small famine. 2) Another reason to leave is because natural resources are usually not all in one place. Show them how to work some metal found far away like copper, iron, tin, gold... they will have to settle another area I order to get that. Once their initial bond is broken, they will be more willing to settle someplace else. 3) Land ownership and resulting social issues. One major issue around that time was that the higher classes, e.g. the priests or nobility, claimed land. At one point, you're gonna run out of land. There will always be that social climber (think Sargon of Akkad) that is willing to change the status quo. So build a new city following a new ruler. That Sargon guy was later called the founder of Akkad - because he apparently moved the power to another city. This sort of thing happened again and again - new king, new center of power needed with a new city. I don't know if any ruler around 2k B.C. actually founded a city and didn't just made an existing settlement better, but you can always have them literally build another city. Cities founded later that fall into that category: For example Saint Petersburg or Constantinople. Reform the government and overthrow those old values that make them stick together There is also always that idealistic king (remember [this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urukagina)?) that tries to change how things are going. If things are not fast enough, find a young lad that looks promising and help him a bit. He might overthrow the social order imposed by the mighty. They sure like sticking together while the poor don't have land. Have reforms (government or religion, both have happened again and again. If you write fiction about that period, read a bit ;)) that helps people spread out. Spreading out is a natural process, in your case it is artificially imposed on them basically by law. Just get rid off that. [Answer] Fecundity, the faster people breed the faster they will spread, give them really high fecundity to the point sex basically guarantees offspring, then make your religious ceremonies as sexual as possible, add in lot of free alcohol and it should work even better. Of you could replace your fake humans with real humans who will spread on their own. [Answer] This may be a bit of a boring answer, but promise them riches beyond their wildest dreams.....but only for those who explore. The easiest way to make this happen is to spread a rumor, similar to the [Gold Rush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush) in many US states. [Many explorers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan) sailed away from their homelands due to [natural curiosity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus) and the promise of finding quicker ways to trade as well as [conquering/spreading religion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hern%C3%A1n_Cort%C3%A9s). In these times, great wealth was obtained by finding colonies of people to bring their prosperity to (read: [enslave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Spanish_New_World_colonies)). These lands [promised untold riches](http://www.miningweekly.com/article/spanish-conquistadors-and-the-looting-of-mexican-and-peruvian-golden-treasure-2012-09-07) to those willing and able to make the trip, and despite being an economic powerhouse at the time, Spain was interested in increasing its worldwide presence to be the world leader in terms of economic viability over the English. Provide your people with the promise of gold and riches in the rest of your world, and show them success in some of these cases to really drive the point home. Due to the natural curiosity and greed of humans, it should be trivial to get them to spread. The time period doesn't really pose an issue in this case however it may require a few technological pieces. If oceans are prevalent, the shipbuilding may need to be advanced enough for long voyages, requiring better woodworking knowledge or knowledge of buoyancy. It's still not impossible however, as a [Silk Road](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road) could easily have been established at any point throughout history (despite it's origins in 114 BCE) given sufficient riches in other locations (gold mines for instance need a town for trade to transport it back). You can obviously offer whatever riches appeal to the people, whether gold, iron, water, or other types of valuable good. [Answer] # Give them a super good river You're a benevolent God, so give your people a nice, reliable, tamable river. I'm not sure what is irrigating your farmlands, but I'm going to argue that a river naturally will get people to move and explore. --- A river will make people want to spread out, gradually extending out the civilization and causing them to build towns and hamlets farther and farther away from the main city. Here's some reasons why: ## Fish Fish are a great source of protein. Fish guts are a great source of nitrates which can improve crop yields or reduce the amount of time a field must lie fallow between usages. Fishers would gradually spread out over the length of the river to try to find different pockets of fish or just to go upstream of a popular spot that is being overfished. ## Farmland A good river deposits nutrient-rich silt and irrigates the landscape, meaning that all up and down its banks would be super fertile, especially compared to the surrounding landscape. Nearby animals would come and graze on the grass growing near the river, as well as drink there, meaning the river banks would become great spots for hunting, too. Any enterprising farmer would want to settle away from the rest of the other farms to try to get more good land to till. ## Washing, Water and Waste I assume your city has people who wear clothes, get thirsty, and use the bathroom. The river will naturally be a super convenient place to dump your trash and, you know, take a dump. I'm sure some of your more well off citizens would want upstream water so that it doesn't taste so... earthy, or to wash their clothes where they know their neighbors don't dump their garbage. This means that more downstream city folks might find themselves more vulnerable to cholera, or in general get a dirtier river, causing more wealthier folks to try to move upstream. ## Trade Eventually, people in the one area of the city are going to realize it's really easy to move heavy objects if you put them on a raft than dragging it along by yourself. This will mean there will be warehouses and markets on the banks of the river. Merchants will associate the river with more trade and more wealth. People will build up their houses around these markets, and then it comes to pass that the only way to really expand your business is to build up more river docks. This and the waste problem will cause people to: ## Riverfront Spreading It's a treat to be able to have riverfront property. The views are nicer, you get better breezes, quicker access to water, your own little private quay. People will grab property on the riverfront, and as your city develops, more and more people will have to build farther and farther up and down the river to grab that good riverfront property. --- A river will also make people move downstream, eventually leading people to an ocean, lake, or sea. Here are some reasons why: ## Floods There will naturally be periods of heavy rainfall, and since lots of people have their houses built on the river (some of them perhaps less well off than others), naturally some of these buildings would be swept away in floods. Since floods cause things to go, you know, downstream, plenty of people will have reasons to go downstream to go look for their loved ones or to try to recover valuables that have been washed away. You don't need floods either, plenty of people might fall in the river after a night of drinking or have boats capsize, for people to want to look downstream. ## Curiosity This is the biggest one. Once it's super easy to go downstream (just get in a raft and go!) people would want to. Some of them might be thieves who want to avoid the law. Some of them would hear about vast treasures to be had downstream. The river, cutting itself through the vast landscape, would be an inescapable lure, pointing itself down and out, away from everything you've ever known and giving you a path to follow into the unknown. --- This means, that as people spread out along the river and travel up and down it and more importantly down the river, you're eventually going to end up at a sea or lake or ocean. Then, everything that made the river so appealing to follow will be cranked up to overdrive as people move up and down the shore in both directions, and eventually people would be so interested in what is beyond the sea/lake/ocean that they build big honking ships to go and try to see what's on the other side. If this whole scenario super plausible that's because this is exactly how early civilizations evolved and expanded. [Answer] Politics and management is your answer. People from the wrong political party will get ostracized. They and their families cannot return to the town because they voted for the wrong ruler, or they took the wrong side in some political battle. They need to take their families and leave or else face punishment. Since your technology is so old, the life of those who work for a living will be really tough. The demands of the rich will increase as the rich have a way of getting bored and demanding more lavish life styles than they already have. Many of the working/slave class will eventually feel so burdened that they'll take their families and escape the city which for them is nothing but a labor camp. If anything, it will get really hard to keep poor people in the city, so slavery will be invented, or upgraded if it hasn't been invented yet. There will always be insane people or criminals and the city folks would want to get rid of them. The simplest way would be to kick them out of the city, if they aren't useful as workers. [Answer] This seems fairly closely related to [Which is initially more favorable; large or small settlements in a new planetary colony?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/95428/which-is-initially-more-favorable-large-or-small-settlements-in-a-new-planetary) - you have a new planet, and it seems that the people have decided that a large settlement is the way to go. As I discussed in [my answer to that question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/95431/6781), the reasons for this are simple - if you do not have sufficient technology to overcome the difficulties inherent to having people be more spread out, then people will naturally choose to live close together. So for a low-tech setting, what do you need to do to make people feel comfortable living quite spread out? Let's look at [Maslow's hierarchy of needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs). At the very bottom, we have physiological needs - food, water, and shelter. This should be easy enough for a God to solve - make the whole world an orchard, filled with easy-to-find, nutritious food, with plenty of natural springs to provide clean drinking water. Next up we have safety needs - if there are large predators, just make sure they don't care about humans and won't try to attack them. The last one on the hierarchy that I think you need to worry about is love and belonging. This is the trickiest one to change quickly - if there's nobody within 100 miles of you, there's no way for you to find a mate. This is fairly solved in today's world just by having enough people to make sure that it's pretty hard to find a place without any people, but if you don't want to artificially increase the number of people on your world I'd suggest extending everyone's lifespan and giving everyone an innate sense of where the nearest other people are. If you know you're going to live for 200 years (and be able to have children for almost all of that time), you won't be in a hurry to find a mate and have children, so exploring will be a less risky proposition. Also, you'll know that no matter how far away you go, you'll always be able to find your way back to other people. [Answer] Ask nicely. Schedule a whole day for it. Go down there, present yourself, do a couple party tricks, then make your will clear. The one thing humans like more than lording over each other is submitting to the will of their god. It's, like, their thing. They'll even make up pretent gods to submit to if you go long enough unrevealed. The one caveat is that their other thing is misunderstanding. You need to be really clear, redundantly clear. Don't worry about being condescending, just spell it out again and again. Give examples. Pictures. Do's and dont's. Distribute numerous copies in writing. The message really needs to get through the first time. [Answer] If you want them to move within a week, you need to destroy that city. You'll need a carrot and a stick. Currently it looks like that is a nice city - if it isn't full there is no stick. Why should people leave? Regular storms that make moving a good idea? Blow it up - they will leave. Failing that, do you have a must-have resource elsewhere to be the carrot? Something that is too far away to transport to your city? [Answer] Throw them out of Eden. Give them some rule, an easily violated taboo and a temptation. When (not if) they violate it, cast them out of the city and post an angel with a flaming sword to stop their return. Not a historical event, but one that was believed to be historic for many generations among various subsets of humanity. [Answer] The obvious answer is controlling the water, as all life needs it. The land is dotted with small lakes. Each lake has enough water(incoming), to support ### say 100 people. After that the lake would quickly start drying up. After learning the limits, people would automatically break off in groups of approx 100 people. Eventually after 100's or 1000's of years they maybe able to have plumbing and pumps to move water around at will, but not for ages. Also overpopulation or lack of jobs is another reason people move. [Answer] Unless you want to follow the "potato cannon" approach from another answer, all solutions need time. But you're a god - of course you have time. What you don't have right now is very many humans. That size of population is just about genetically viable. If you were to split it over 10 centres of population though, those 10 centres of population are likely to end up with significant genetic problems due to inbreeding. Your 10k people barely qualify as a small town, not anything like a city; and 10 small villages would only be worse. So you need more people. Assuming you're not going to arbitrarily create more people, that means they need to reproduce and survive. In a primitive civilisation, this means one thing above all others:- ## Cure all diseases. Historically, nearly everyone who died did so because of disease. When over 90% of your people are dying for no reason, you're not going to increase numbers very quickly. If all the children make it to adulthood and reproduce themselves, you're going to be faced with a population explosion. All those new people will need somewhere to live, and even if they just make the city larger, that still uses up more living space. You'd like these people to move on though, not just stay and make the city larger. The problem for a city is that by definition it doesn't include farmland within itself, so food needs to be imported. The bigger the city, the more food needs to be imported; and ditto building materials as well. As the city becomes larger, it becomes progressively harder to get food and other supplies into the city. Even if animals can be driven there alive and slaughtered once they get there, all crops (grains, fruit, vegetables) need to be transported. So... ## Ensure there are no beasts of burden. A person pulling a handcart has a very limited range and load-carrying capacity. As supply chains become longer, the cost of goods rises, and the power of simple economics will price people out of city living. Even if there are navigable rivers, your city will still expand organically along those waterways up to the maximum practical resupply distances from the water - and of course then they're expanding their range. The natural step then is for people to move out and start farms outside the city. Those farms may initially serve the city, but as more people move past them, they will naturally generate new centres of population beyond the city. And so your civilisation grows. [Answer] Maybe a big seasonal change occurring that is quite drastic and lasts for a year or a couple of months more than 3 (harsh winter / summer drought / galeforce winds etc.) that your people would have to migrate elsewhere. they can still come back but others may not want to so that should spread them out. [Answer] With the level of agricultural technology in 2250 BC, they must start spreading out on their own after reaching a certain level of population concentration in any given place, and compared to modern times, that level is rather low, a few thousand at best, and that is if the city directly surrounded by vast amounts of prime farming land. The ancient cities that have existed thousands of years ago, relied on vast amounts of people spread out in to the land, living in small towns and villages to produce food for them And that's true for other natural resources as well. [Answer] Make them agresive towards each other. They will spread because they're afraid to get killed by other humans. Just like hungergames. They spread all over the place to avoid others. [Answer] The 'evil' solutions ... Introduce something that forces them to leave. Drought, contamination, sickness, predators, conflict among them. Does not wanting to tell people what to do, include just moving them and altering their memory? The 'nice' solutions ... Introduce something that urges them to leave. Green pastures, plentiful herds, riches, beautiful places, spiritual revelations. [Answer] ## You don't have to do anything. They will spread naturally. In evolution organisms don't leave a location because they got tired of their family or want to try something new. They spread out because they get pushed out of where they used to live. This happens as a population grows. When a locations is adequate to support a population the populations grows. It grows and grows until the environment can no longer support the size of the population. At this point one of two things happens. Either the a big chunk of the population dies. Or a big chunk of the population leaves to try and find the resources to survive somewhere else. This is how populations generally spread out in real life. Eventually your people's population size will get so great that they will either choose to die, or leave. Almost always at least some organisms will choose to leave. The organisms that choose to leave then start their own colony that is more like them, and then you end up with more people that are willing to leave to survive even if that wasn't the case in the beginning. <http://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/resource/population-growth-migration-challenge-resource-scarcity/> [Answer] ## The generic underlying issue > > How do I get people to automatically do X? > > > This has two possible solutions: > > 1. Make doing X the best option for them to choose. > > There are benefits to not being around others. > 2. Make not doing X the worst option for them to choose. > > There are drawbacks to being around others. > > > That's pretty much all there is to it. The rest is just inventing ways to stick to this rule. Note that the two options can often be interpreted as the same thing, as one is an inversion of the other. There are fringe cases where this isn't exactly the case, but most of the time it is. --- ## Examples I've separated one particular example, because it fits in with your "hand of god" approach to shaping the world: * Whenever humans congregate, something bad always happens (natural disasters, humans going homicidal, maybe just unexplained deaths). This is your doing as their god, but maybe the humans don't know that. All they know is that when they get together, they are disproportionately more likely to die and they don't know of a way to prevent it. Therefore, they agree to stay away from each other as best as they can. You don't always need humans to know why they have to stay apart, as the above example shows. All they need to be aware of is that bad things happen when they don't stay apart. Regardless of whether they think it's their God doing it or not. * Humans have varying sleep cycles (early sleepers, late sleepers), and are very sensitive to sound while sleeping. Being close to each other makes it very likely that people keep waking each other up. * Humans have their own personal smell, and are very sensitive to other people's smell. The effect worsens when many smells are mixed (which means you won't mind a small group of people, but you will mind a large group) * (true to life) Humans exist in many shapes, sizes and colors; but they also have an innate tendency to dislike those of a different shape, size or color than them. * Much like how werewolves turn during a full moon, let's say that humans go berserk once a month, but every human does so on a particular day (not everyone at the same time). A city would continuously be plagued by a subset of its humans who are going berserk. * A sizable subset of humans has an insatiable desire to kill other humans. This breeds inherent mistrust between humans that do not know each other well; thus resigning everyone to living in small communities where they know everyone personally. * There is a shapeshifting species that feeds on human victimes. Similar to the "homicidal" example above, this incentivizes people to not be around people they don't personally know. * Highly infectious diseases. E.g. as a means to stopping a plague pandemic (which they haven't been able to cure), humans decide to live far away from each other * Humans need meat to eat. Animals are nigh impossible to domesticate and wild animals don't come near a city. * The (noise, environmental) pollution of a high density zone has an adverse effect on plantlife and wildlife, making it hard to sustain a dense population because there's little food nearby. * Humans are not at the top of the food chain. If too many humans congregate, the monsters will find and devour them. * Humans turn into zombies when they die. No one wants to be in a dense residential area, because someone dies there every day. Smaller communities can keep tabs on each other better; plust if one community does fall prey to the zombies, it doesn't immediately spread exponentially across the entire population. * Same as the zombie problem, humans explode on death. Another reason why you don't want to live close to many humans. * There is some sort of weapon of mass destruction, but only a limited amount of them exist. If humans were to all live in close proximity to each other, they could be wiped out immediately. By staying away from each other, they ensure that the limited supply of WMDs will never be able to kill all humans. * Agriculture cannot be sedentary, as the soil needs several seasons of rest after growing a single plant generation. Therefore, the agricultural sector needs to be nomadic in order to keep up production. * Humans are prone to violent outbursts over minor annoyances. Dense populations massively increase the chance that someone inadvertently annoys someone else. * There is a hostile species that occurs all over the world (e.g. an alien insect that arrives from space, or a local insect that burrows up from the undergound). They are harmless at first, but if they build a long-term nest, they can become a severe infestation. Humans have spread out over the land so that they can prevent infestations before they become a problem. * Human technology relies on many different materials, all of which are found in different biomes. Humans must spread out across all biomes in order to have a steady supply of that biome's resources. I've been churning these out one after the other. The list of examples can go on for a really long time. [Answer] You're a god, implant the desire to explore and settle in your people. Freewill is overrated and if you never tell them it's not their idea, they'll never know. ]
[Question] [ I'm working on a military sci-fi piece that involves a lot of exo-skeleton enhanced, well, parkour -- for lack of a better term -- and was wondering how to deal with descents from great heights. The characters want to traverse a city while remaining as high above the street as possible to avoid hostile creatures lurking below, but do inevitably come across gaps between buildings that cannot be jumped even with exoskeletons. They can't just jump down, because even plate armor won't protect you from deceleration injuries and I'm trying to avoid more handwaving than I already have for other components of the setting. I'm trying to come up with a faster, more dynamic way for them to make descents to street-level than just taking the stairs every time. I had them using a material-mode of their protective suits called Sharkskin that essentially coats them in sandpaper. In my head, while discover-writing this as a poor student of physics, I thought the friction would allow them to stay on the wall while slowing their descent. However, with more thought I just realized this would probably result in a tilting effect, with the part of them not clinging to the wall descending faster than the part that was -- leading them to simply fall to their death. They don't have grappling hooks or jetpacks or climbing gear. Am I right in that an incredibly abrasive material would not be adequate for this? If so, is there a way they could distribute their weight to make such a vertical descent possible such as staying flat against the wall? What other sort of materials or suit-attached solutions could be used to descend vertical walls quickly? I don't want them to have more gear than their weapon and a utility tool thingamajig they have. But all creative and engaging solutions are welcome. NOTE: It should be mentioned that I submitted a chapter of this to an online writing group of about 30 people and nobody called bs on this, and it did not seem to break the story for anyone. It was just me, working on another chapter involving this mechanic, that the thought occurred to. But I'd still like to take a closer look at this before potentially disseminating it to a wider audience. [Answer] > > Always be yourself, unless you can be Batman, then always be Batman > > > Batman has a good few tricks up his sleaves for rapid descent, the two that are most interesting to us are the wingsuit and his ropes. Your average modern wingsuit isn't really designed for this stunt, it's more for entertaining yourself on much bigger falls, before deploying a full parachute. Batman's wingsuit has much larger wings ~~which are utterly useless for anything other than looking good~~ ahem which are more suitable for slowing short to medium falls. Rope descenders along the lines of an [autobelay](https://www.castle-climbing.co.uk/access-auto-belay) are a more realistic option, (apart from the fact that they're rather bulky, require a harness attachment and you need to know in advance the maxiumum fall distance), you just hook them onto something solid, clip in, and jump. Just letting go at the top of a wall takes some getting used to. Frankly you're better off doing what special forces currently do and abseiling. Your current plan requiring high friction suits wouldn't work, due to the lack of a force between jumper and building (there's nothing holding them onto the wall), but a parkour style leap from balcony to balcony, or even window ledge to window ledge could be done. Simply going down the stairs may be quicker and would certainly have a lower casualty rate. [Answer] Gummy rollers This system relies on a sticky substance like tar or glue that could be used to slow a descent. I'm imagining something like paint rollers on the hands and feet, which would either be coated in a sticky substance, or slowly exude it from a reserve tank. As the user descends, the rollers peeling away from the wall will sap some of the downward kinetic energy. The rollers could be motorized to control the rate of descent, or even driven backwards to allow a user to slide up a building. Something like flypaper might work, but a static sticky surface will become less effective over time as it accumulates dust or other contaminants. That's why I suggest a slowly oozing, thick liquid, which would constantly be refreshed and not lose sticking power over time. You might need to do some handwaving to get a futuristic nanofluid with sufficient sticking power, however. As an added bonus, your characters will make cool slug trails as they descend buildings! Similar to how combat divers are informally referred to as Frogmen, this special unit might be referred to as Slugmen. [Answer] Super pogo stick. [![super pogo](https://i.stack.imgur.com/am9M9.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/am9M9.jpg) <https://www.pinterest.com/pin/554576141587551724/> Your soldiers carry pogo sticks on their backs. The unobtainium springs capture the energy of their descent, and when they are in a hurry give it right back; when they hit the ground they decelerate over a split second then bounce right back up nearly as high as they were. For long drops you need an exosuit on because it is still a lot of work for the quads. The super pogo will be good for other things too. Of course you can move quickly on it although the exosuit itself is about as good; mostly this is useful if your exosuit is damaged or you don't have it, but you have the pogo. A changed setting will keep the spring coiled and after jumping down the soldier can stay on ground level; the pogo will gradually uncoil the spring if desired or (more dangerously) stay coiled until deployed. A soldier can gradually coil the spring by making a lot of little jumps and storing the energy. That can be used for an ascent, or punching open doors. [Answer] To have any noticeable amount of friction, you need a force that presses both surfaces together. While it seems possible that your soldiers swing over the edge of a roof in such a fashion that some friction is created at the beginning, their fall, or glide, will mostly be guided by gravity, pulling them straight down, leaving (next to) no net force pushing them against the wall. While friction seems to be the least handwavey way of slowing them down, their suits must provide a way to press them against a vertical wall. Maybe thy could have some sort of overpowered vacuum cleaner in their gloves. After all, they must have some unobtanium battery or such to power their exoskeletons, so powering this super hoover should not be an issue. Magnets would work, too, if they could reliably expect ferromagnetic building materials. But the hoover would of course have some massive benefits around the household... Other than that, a wing suit or something similar to that might slow them enough. I don't know enough about wing suits, though. [Answer] # GeckoPack The GeckoPackTM Mk. 3 is a specialized descending device containing two elastic "arms" with a very low spring constant, enabling 10x expansion of each arm. In "descend mode", one arm with a Y-shaped terminator rotates up and over the wearer's shoulders, as both pads making contact with whatever surface the wearer is facing. After contact confirmation, the system sends a safe signal to the wearer's HUD, and they may push off from the surface, descending 10 m in a controlled fall. The wearer swings back to the surface in a smooth arc and the second arm rotates into position to make contact. Upon successful contact, the first arm detaches and the user is free to make another drop. When the pack's built-in IR proximity altimeter detects that the user is on a safe platform, both arms disengage and the user is free to continue on their journey. # Technology While the exact details of GeckoPackTM Mk. 3 are classified, patents indicate they utilize Van der Waal's forces between nano-textured [setae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_feet) on fractal-structured contact pads and the desired surface. This possibility was first demonstrated by the lowly Squamata Gekkota order, commonly known as "[geckos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko)". Note that the pads do not require any consumable adhesives and are, in fact, self-cleaning. # Limitations GeckoPackTM Mk. 3 is suitable for descending any smooth, non-porous structure. Structures with rough surfaces may also be descended, but no guarantee is provided as to the safety of such operation. As always read the User Manual completely before using this product. If the contact pads are not able to generate adequate adhesion force, a "weak contact" alarm will be sent to the user's HUD. THIS WARNING MUST NOT BE IGNORED!!! Please note that the GeckoPackTM Mk. 3 logs all uses and indicator signals for later telemetry recovery. This information is admissible in a court of law should the user misuse this product. Thank you for purchasing your GeckoPackTM Mk. 3, and happy rapid descents! [Answer] The Assassin's Creed series of games had one of its protagonists descend upon enemies using makeshift parachutes that fit inside his clothing. Players generally suspend their disbelief on that one. [![Ezio Auditore, one of the protagonists for the Assassin's Creed series of games, jumping from a tower to a fortification while using a parachute to glide.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gl7S5.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gl7S5.jpg) Your guys may not have climbing gear, but they may have base jumping gear. Base jumping is a lot like regular parachuting, except that since people usually leap from buildings you don't have a lot of time to do stunts before you open the chute. [Answer] Why not have them just wall-jump back and forth between the building they're on an another nearby building? Boing! Boing! [Answer] Since the main issues raised seem to be: * lack of climbing gear * surfeit of gravity's knock on effects (such as, e.g., catastrophically landing) * lack of sufficient attractive force Let's consider a way to assist the friction element of the exoskeleton device. We basically want the wearer to be able to "stick" to the side of a building, which would slow the descent. Ideally we'd like them to be able to ascend the building after dealing with a variety of hostiles. I'd recommend: *Acme Industries' EXKELERATOR MARK-VII!* --- this is a piece of add-on technology, compatible with a variety of manned and unmanned exoskeletal type devices that allows for (relatively) safe vertical descent and ascent. Drawing power from the device's onboard power packs, the EXK Mark VII delivers a bimodal system of vacuum and blower capabilities designed to offset the vertical surface effect. That is, this system allows the wearer to make use of natural friction between device and surface to slow descent and allow ascent. V-Mode -- Powerful suction ports in the gloves, elbows, torso, knees and ankles are fully controllable to allow for strong adhesion with considerable stopping power all the way to minimal suction. The fully controllable system allows the user to move the selected limb from location to location, facilitating a smooth vertical climb. B-Mode -- Powerful blower ports acting in tandem with the suction system assist in acting against the tendency for a person to be pushed away from a vertical surface, either by localised wind or even by their own attempts to "grab hold" of the surface. The automated bimodal systems are integrated with the exoskeletal device's command functionality and its own on-board orientation sensor array. This system allows for the user to quite naturally "stick to" a wall whether climbing up or down. It also allows for certain emergency procedures, such as breaking a fall with one's back to the wall, allowing one to seamlessly flip onto one's stomach for a more effective manoeuvre. --- Writer's PS: I'm guessing that no one called BS on you because "mechanico-exoskeletal assisted movement is an assumed thing in the SF genre. We simply assume that some technowizardry allows the wearer to descend without crashing and ascend without falling again. Though kudos to you for sorting the details! [Answer] ### Bungee Instead of using ropes and harness for a controlled descent, Mr. Gadget can pull out a thin super-stretchy cord, quickly lash it to something and jump, holding the cord. It's more like freefall, but at the end the cord stretches until he just touches the ground. His guesstimation of what length of cord is needed would be handwaved/ignored I suppose. ### Electromagnet on a rope Kind of a tech version of spiderman, Mr. Gadget can have a (again stretchy) cord with a powerful electromagnet on the end. He can throw the cord towards something metal (street lamp, girder, building) and turn the magnet on, allow him to swing (and the cord to stretch a little) and thus greatly reduce his downward momentum. ### Friction won't work * Pressing against a wall will push you away from the wall. * In a narrow alley, pressing against both walls will create enough friction to slow you down. * BUT if you're going from freefall to stationary, that's a lot of friction, which turns your gravitational potential energy into sound and heat. It's likely to be very loud, and definitely will be hot enough to burn you (think sliding down a rope but holding the rope with your hands). It will also tear up the fabric (if the fabric is too tough to tear, then it won't have enough friction to stop you). [Answer] As many other answers have pointed out, the problem with friction is that you need a normal force pushing into the wall. If your suit has one or more wings (or an array of tiny airfoils) that deploy during the fall in the direction of descent it will create a normal force into the wall - like aerodynamic lift but horizontal. If the coefficient of friction can be very high, the system could be designed such that the soldiers reach a constant descent velocity low enough that they would survive impact. It would also be interesting if the suits have nano-generators to harness and store the energy lost in the descent. Since the wings don't require any additional power to work (other than that used for deployment) the suit could actually net some energy through this process. [Answer] # Leg springs You could do something like the long fall boots used by the protagonist in the Portal games: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AH3Rb.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AH3Rb.jpg) These look a little too simple for the job, of course. The way they attach to the legs seems highly insufficient. But you could modify this concept by attaching them to the back of some sturdy boots. (I don't recommend using them barefoot as in the picture.) You could replace the springs with pneumatic shock absorbers for added cushioning. Depending on the length of your fall, you might extend the springs' "feet" several feet below your actual feet when falling. (I could not find a way to say that without using the word "feet" three times in one sentence.) It would certainly take some practice to land on these without then falling over on your face, but these people are parkour experts, I'm sure they'd be able to handle it. [Answer] The rubber on climbing shoes is surprisingly sticky. So long as you're exerting SOME force into the wall, they will probably stick. With that in mind... What I'm imagining is sticky rubber pads on the hands and feet of your exoskeleton. When you want to descend, you jump at the wall of the building opposite where you are standing. When you reach that building (at a lower altitude), the force of your landing pushes into that wall, causing the rubber pads to stick. Of course you can't stay there without some sort of attachment or you'll just fall off. So you push off again, do a half turn as you cross the street, and are now pressing the rubber pads into the wall of the building you started from, again lower down. Repeat until you reach street level. You can't STOP, you have to keep switching between buildings, but you can go down, up, stay at a level (bouncing back and forth), reverse direction (down to up, or up to down), or enter the building via your window of choice at any elevation along the building. As a bonus, it looks cool. [Answer] It is possible with a piece of equipment. Excuse my ASCII art: ``` _______ \o\| n n \| I\| \| \| n n \| \| \| ``` Our guy would have a hard wing made out of some material that can be folded and expanded. In order to scale down the building, he will just jump close to the surface. This requires your sandpaper like system for friction too. Now the problem with the friction descent is that in microscopic level grains in the sandpaper will push you slightly away from the building, removing the friction almost instantly. But the wing being angled will push you back to the wall. This will significantly decrease your terminal velocity to a point where the exoskeleton would be able to handle it. Failing that, you could also make all your buildings angled. You don't need 45° or anything, even few degrees can help. One more idea popped into my mind while reading other answers. You can also require all buildings to have a quick descent gap, which is a 1m² inset on the side of a building where your cops can use both sides to descend safely. Have some sort of wheels on exoskeleton which uses magnetic breaks to slow down the descent. [Answer] The idea of springs or pogo sticks, already proposed by [Willk](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/175682/a-clothing-material-or-other-method-to-slow-free-fall-descent-down-walls#answer-175709) and [Darrel Hoffman](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/175682/a-clothing-material-or-other-method-to-slow-free-fall-descent-down-walls#answer-175800) is interesting. Let's do the maths. The main problem is the sudden deceleration: it's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing. We can limit this deceleration using two methods. 1. Minimizing the terminal velocity: the skydiver should be in a belly-to-earth, face down position. That should not be a problem for trained soldiers, and the terminal velocity is then limited to $v=50\ m/s$ [[ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity#Examples)]. 2. Maximizing the landing duration. Fortunately, contrary to spine-parallel accelerations, humans can tolerate pretty high spine-perpendicular accelerations [[ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity#Examples)]. With a bit of training, $a=20\ g$ doesn't seems to be a problem. The landing duration is then $\Delta t=v/a=0.255\ s$. From the free fall to the stop, the skydiver goes through a distance $d=\frac{1}{2}at^2=6.13\ m$. Good, we need a six meters spring: not totally absurd! The force generated by such a spring on the diver would be $F=ma=20\ kN$ if we take $m=100\ kg$ for a fully equipped soldier. If we suppose that this force is perfectly distributed on one side of the torso, which typically has an area of $S=0.4\ m^2$ [[ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_surface_area#Average_values),[ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_body_surface_area)], that's a pressure of $P=F/S=50\ kPa$, or $0.5\ bars$, which is almost the same pressure as a weight of $10\ kg$ on the palm of the hand: not a problem for such a short duration. The spring in itself would have to be non-linear (for the deceleration to be constant), but that's doable, even today. It could be deployed while in the air, and locked just after the landing, almost immediately ready for another jump. [Answer] # Gravity manipulation I’m not sure how Hard SF you’re going for, but since this isn’t tagged `science-based`, why not fuck with gravity? I figure you have one of two fun options: ## Reduce gravitational pull The lighter you can make them, the more they can depend on air resistance to slow them down, and the less energy they need to shed when they hit the ground. If they could reduce their effective weight — even for only dozens of seconds at a time — they could easily drop down from the tops of buildings without fear. As long as the effect isn’t too strong, they shouldn’t be able to exploit it to get back up. ## ‘Tilt’ gravitational pull The problem with friction, as you noted, is that it doesn’t work at 90 degree angles. So if your characters have a technology that allows them to slightly offset the direction of gravity acting on them, say, by fifteen or twenty degrees, then friction is back on the menu. [Answer] While falling their suits are constantly monitoring their immediate surroundings (small radar/lidar/camera systems built in), their vertical speed, and their height. This system fires a grapple into the nearest wall when it detects the operator is nearing the ground (or running out of valid grappling surfaces). The grapple then slows the user down as they near the floor, cancelling out their vertical momentum in a '[suicide burn](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/suicide_burn#English)' of sorts. This lets your people jump from the buildings without any extra gear past their suit, but still has some tension elements. They need to stay close enough to the wall that they don't slam into it when the grapple deploys (not everyone can use these, they can't be used in all situations), the system could fail or be tampered with etc. [Answer] I was thinking some sort of technology in the exoskeleton so that when it gets air coming upwards through it (from falling) it distributes the wind out the back, kind of like a way of propulsion, and that the exoskeleton also has equipment kind of like ice pickaxes/climbing axes either seperate or built in to the forearms or some area that could be utilised easily. This way, when you leap from the building you get that extra propulsion to reach the other building and could perform a self arrest and then continue to climb back to the top of the building (or even climb back down). The self arrest would be much easier to pull off because you still have the wind pushing you towards the wall, keeping you on it. [Answer] Expanding foam An aerosol of highly expanding foam, which they squirt at the ground below them as they fall. They therefore land into a column of foam which dissipates their energy as they land. They can squirt more or less depending on how much speed they need to loose. The foam would be pretty unstable – it only needs to last a couple of seconds – and dissipate quickly after they've landed. May provide a fun mechanic for your world? [Answer] # Three Things ## Gravity Engine: Considering that this is all fictional, make the exoskeleton an armor-like suit, in its core, place a gravity engine/plasma reactor, which will power the suit. This engine could be connected up to every part of the suit. For the higher-ranking officials, throw ina gravity gun too, which could function as a portal gun too - manipulating gravity to create controlled wormholes. ## Wingsuit: This wingsuit should be designed in tandem with the gravity manipulator/engine, this combination will allow the user to glide more efficiently. The wingsuit should be made out of a material with high tensile strength and surface area, this will make it function more efficiently, allowing for precise tactical insertions. It needs to be collapsible, preferably able to fold away into the suit. Here's an idea: [![Wingsuit Drawing](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IpKn5.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IpKn5.jpg) Either way, it *must* be reusable and able to fold back into the suit. ## HUD and AI A HUD and AI are imperative for this system to work, the HUD will allow the user to view their surroundings and their altitude, target, velocity, and so on. The AI which will be wired to the user's brain will allow the gravity manipulator and wingsuit to work in perfect harmony with pinpoint precision. ## How it will work First, the HUD will display the user's target and the most efficient path to get there. The user will jump off the building, using the gravity engine and wingsuit to quietly glide his way there. Here, if the gravity engine fails, the plasma reactor will go into overdrive, sending plasma down specially designed vents at velocities that will be calculated by the AI, to slow their fall enough that the armor will be able to withstand the fall if stealth is necessitated, then a grappling hook will allow to user to hang on to a point and slowly lower themselves. Next, the user will begin circling above the target, slowly losing altitude as the AI scans the area for hostiles and analyses the landing area. This will allow it to optimize the suit's stealth field generator for that area. Then, the user will take out their weapon and stay upright - toes down as the gravity engine decreases power, allowing the user to fall until they reach 5 feet above the ground, at which point, the gravity generator will kick in, slowing their speed to millimeters per second; when they touch down (in a 3-point landing, the gravity engine will kick into stealth mode, allowing the user to move without making any noise. The insertion is complete. In a pinch the user can overclock the gravity engine, creating an impulse that will allow them to glide to safety. The gravity engine will also allow the user to climb walls like Spider-man. [Answer] Suits made of spongy, bouncy material. Ultra squishy polymer. Suction cup gloves/shoes for scaling walls. [Answer] A safety cushion for emergencies in a backpack. You drop the backpack down and it inflates in one of these: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UFg67.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UFg67.jpg) After that, the team can just jump down on it. [Answer] Just pointing out that no one seems to be thinking about the possibility of climbing down (or up) the corner of a building instead of a flat wall. Still, without hooks of some sort it is not apparent how this would help. I did have one idea, but it does require them to carry a very long rope (ultrathin, ultrastrong etc.). First, use the suit’s built-in laser to measure the distance to the ground, and the length and width of the roof. The rope has a loop in one end; they loop this over a structural feature on the corner of the roof. Next (playing out the rope as they go) they run to the far end of the side of less optimal length. They loop the rope around the outside of a structural feature here. (The rope has length markings on it.) Now — after turning 90° left or right (as applicable) — checking length markings as they go, they run an appropriate distance down the optimally long side, and jump off (holding tight to the rope, of course; this is important). If they measured correctly, they will arrive near the ground with huge lateral speed but minimal vertical. I’ve done my job; now it is your problem to work out how they can get rid of all that speed. ;) (Some physics expert out there can probably say if little wing things in their suits would help significantly or not.) (If they have little skateboards built into their suits, they could travel a fair distance… although again they would lose the rope that way. …Or loop back.) Maybe metal shoes? High-resistance skates? As for the rope… all they have to do is unloop it from the two corners of the building (although this does require running around the building (except see below)). One difficulty is that the typical building might be taller than it is wide. This is not a huge problem (as long as the buildings are not too tall). The protagonist must stand on the roof, at the chosen corner, playing out rope until they reach the right length. Then, they have to leap off and prepare for a sudden jerk when the free-play is exhausted. The real problem here is securing the second loop, given that it is not being pulled continuously. The remote release (as below) might work here. Failing that, the protagonist must hold the rope also at the immediate point, and let it slide away in a controlled way, to maintain the pull. Of course, the idea scenario (from one point of view) is that they might be able to swing entirely to the next building. The problem now is getting the rope back. Amazing flicking skill might be all that is required to get it to release from the second loop… but then it will just hang down the side of the building, still hooked onto the far corner. All I have thought of here is a remotely-activated device that unclips the root loop. Having retrieved the rope, the protagonist manually clips it up again for next time. One refinement is to have electro-elastic rope, but I am not sure that this would be of practicable use. (Actually, I am thinking that, with careful engineering and a great deal of practice, they could activate the elasticity milliseconds after they were going horizontally, and end up with half the speed and a shooort…ish drop. Conversely, this would probably work — if at all — only with a precisely measured scenario.) The ideal would be to have a rope that worked as a bungee from (say) 80m from the loop. The difficulty here is that now we are not swinging… which negates the easy-off looping system (since the rope must either be secured or hang down somewhere such that it would not just fall off). Here, we rely on the remote release idea (or there might be some other arrangement that I have not thought of). Refinement — I shall leave what I have already typed. Another difficulty is that the rope is held reasonably well while the protagonist is on the roof, but, when they are nearing the ground, the (second) loose loop that I have described would probably come off. I am thinking that they would thus have to attach the root loop diagonally opposite this point. Actually, that might make the bungee version more practicable. [Answer] How about futuristic gloves? A "super-battery" not yet invented in a special pair of gloves could create such a strong localized magnetic field that the descender could literally insert his hand into the wall. With one or two hands in the wall, controlling these gloves would make the descent like sliding down a pole. ]
[Question] [ In my universe, nuclear warfare got to be overused and out of hand, this caused crops to die in drastic amounts. Scientists decided to genetically modify plants to survive nuclear radiation, so they tested it on gourd type plants such as: * Pumpkins * Melons * Squash However, something went wrong and caused the plants to become sentient. The newly sentient pumpkins and melons formed an alliance to save the planet by eliminating humans, while the squashes decided to help the humans. Is there someway for this to be scientifically possible, or is this impossible? [Answer] Possible? Sure. We are sentient thanks to our genes so it is, by all means, a genetic trait. # Believeable? No. For many reasons: * We still don't know what actually makes some animals sentient. * "Something went wrong" works pretty much like spontaneous mutation, usually means organism can't live, is sick, or only something insignificant is changed. * Plants do not have anything like our neurons. Nothing similar enough to be changed by simple mutation. Heck, we have no idea how to approach it on purpose. * Plants don't have access to enough energy to run human-size brain. * Your story requires them not only to be sentient, but also to have means of communication and locomotion. This would make them more similar to animals than what they really are, requiring more foreign DNA than DNA that would be left from original, and probably more than they already have, too. For that effect we would probably rather start from a cow or something. [Answer] Speaking as a college professor that works in artificial intelligence, this is basically all impossible. Sentience would require some way for plants to both sense and "model" the world around them using abstractions. To the best of our current knowledge, that requires neurons, in large quantities, in order to think. We call those brains. It is likely that something as small as a mouse has *some* sentience (self-awareness), several experiments indicate they do. But for long-term planning of strategies like you speak of, the human brain is the only one we are aware of that is capable of that. I think your plants would need brains at least the size of a young human. Now those neurons could be distributed through much of the plant, perhaps. But even then, it appears much of our own intellect was evolved in response to our ability to manipulate objects and things. Plants do not have muscles either. By the time you give plants all the attributes they need to evolve sentience, they are no longer plants but animals! So I would say no, it is not possible for plants to be accidentally mutated into any form that can have sentience to the scale that allows them to plan for the future. [Answer] It's a popular misconception, but it wasn't the actual plants that became sentient. Rather, something went wrong with the symbiote that provided the resistance in coordination with the genetic changes. We based it off of a [slime mold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold), so as to pervade the plant and provide adaptive repair mechanisms. This worked amazingly well, but, unbeknownst to us, the symbiote had started developing complex colony-based structures akin to neurons. In addition, it was not just repairing damage from radiation, but actually harnessing it, creating novel nano-structures to concentrate and harness the high-energy radiation and particles for a new form of photosynthesis. These structures also had a secondary function, allowing for higher frequency electromagnetic radiation to communicate signals. Yes, it had evolved biological radios. That was the first stage of their evolution. Things quickly got out of hand when the colonies developed spores and evolved the ability to colonize animal brains, including, eventually, human brains. Combined with the radio functionality, this initially manifested as strange dreams and odd impulses, but eventually developed into a form of 'telepathy', so to speak, with the combined vegetable 'brains' and partially commandeered animal brains turning into various networks operating on different frequencies. This is how the squash made first contact. Most humans were able to retain their cognitive functions and make their own decisions, but we suspect some of those decisions were subconsciously influenced to serve the needs of the 'plants'. Simpler animals were commandeered more completely and the 'plants' were able to use these insects, rodents and other assorted fauna as appendages to exert control over the world around them. And that's when things got really bad. [Answer] The genetic changes made by the scientists to increase resistance to nuclear radiation had the side effect of turning some plant structures into an analogue to neurons. In addition, the scientists made genetic changes so that the plants would cooperate with each other using a shared root system, much like [a giant fungus](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus/). The unexpected side effect was that the individual "neurons" of each plant linked together to form a rudimentary "brain". The chemical process of communicating over acres of land instead of electrically over a few inches of gray matter slows down the thinking process, but it still evolved quickly to sentience. Since each plant contains relatively few "neurons", they function somewhat like a hive mind. As long as they are connected and large enough scale (perhaps an acre of plants linked together via the root system) they reach and maintain sentience. The humans don't realize that cutting off the fruit (a.k.a. harvesting pumpkins and melons to eat, which suddenly becomes a dangerous activity...) does not significantly alter the ability of the plants to think. Only cutting through the roots or killing large sections of the plants will have any measurable effect. The plants certainly include plenty of sensors for light (via photosynthesis and other mechanisms), water, temperature and touch. As for how the plants can affect the environment, and those pesky humans, plants act on a much slower time scale than humans. But they are persistent and widespread. And not necessarily so slow - [bamboo can grow 36" in one day!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo) Plants have limited movement, but some, like the [Venus flytrap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_flytrap) have evolved to attack various creatures, and while the watermelons can't [launch themselves on suicide missions by building catapults](http://inland360.com/top-headlines/2016/06/launch-some-flying-watermelons-with-a-catapult/) they can still do some damage using other techniques. The gourds have similar modifications but somehow manage to communicate with humans, though getting through that challenge was a bit of a gourdian knot. The humans learn how to cultivate large-enough groups of gourds in greenhouses, isolated from the pumpkins & melons, in order to join forces. While humans sleep, the creepy pumpkins keep creeping into human territory, destroying the human food supply, cracking foundations of buildings and generally wreaking havoc. The worst attacks came the day after Halloween as the newly sentient pumpkins took revenge upon humans for mutilating their non-sentient cousins! [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V8fAR.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V8fAR.jpg) Of course, they are doomed to be squashed by the squash, and the humans are perplexed out of their gourd! [Answer] It's rather unbelievable that such a mutation can be produced by "something going wrong" in a genetic research aimed to strengthen against radiation. OTOH needed mutation might be smaller than expected. There are several, quite serious, scientists maintaining plants already have "neuron-equivalent" cells in their roots ([here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_cognition) you have relevant Wikipedia entry while [here](https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-intelligence-may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants) you get a more discursive presentation). Of course from this to self-awareness there's a long distance, but a coherent behavior (anthill-like) is not ruled out. [Answer] This is impossible wit anything science based in mind. 1. Plants are a different Kingdom. We only know animals to have any intelligence. We are not talking about sentience here, just any intelligence as we know it. In a different kingdom puts them genetically as far as possible from animals. The split is approximated at 1.5 billion years ago. Plants have cell walls. This makes plants have to grow from the ends instead of the middle like animals. That is completely incompatible with any idea of neurons. By the time you made genetic changes to get rid of these facts, you would no longer have a plant. You would have changed more DNA than you have not. Your other choice would be to invent new intelligence. At that point you would be making a creature from scratch. 2. plants don't have the energy.The human brain uses 20% of metabolism. We are large, warm blooded creatures, this is what lets us support our brains. Even cold blooded creatures don't have enough energy to be sentient. Plants have a fraction of even cold blooded organisms. this is why they can exist on photosynthesis. A potted plant can barely power an led, forget run any kind of intelligent system, as we know, or other. Fixing this would again most likely would no longer leave you with a plant [Answer] Perhaps this could work if the scientists took some DNA from an animal and managed to combine it in the plant. For example, [naked mole-rat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat) seems to have a high resistance to cancer tumors. This could help the plants survive the radiation. Of course, combining animal and plant DNA is in no way a simple thing to do. Perhaps their pumpkins turned out to have quite a bit of mole-rat in them, but of course it is wise to keep this fact secret if you want to sell the vegetables to general public. [Answer] I am no expert in anything genetic related, though, I think your idea is awesome. You should not give it up just because people can't see the way for it to be done. Let's say those experiments involve saving plants from nuclear radiation, such as you have proposed, how about if it was a boost to their rooting system? Imagine if, by any such handwaving genetics your scientists produced plants with such genetic modifications, which led to their roots evolving into something more than a nutrient acquiring means? Of course the nutrient acquiring feature had to increase several factors, generating bigger, brighter, healthier and tastier plants, awesome stuff to sell, suddenly, they notice they are growing exponentially, there are many more than it should, because, hell, their seeds have changed to something alike polen and are carried by the wind. Getting back to the roots, imagine these plants roots are so developed they begin to create a giant mesh, plants become interconnected under the soil, and through an absorption of radiation from the few who are affected by it, these roots turn into synaptic ways, suddenly, your plants have a hive-like mind with a huge omni-like knowledge in the areas where they are predominant, and bam, they realize the problem are those sacks of meat running around the planet. [Answer] From the looks of much wiser people than I answering I think it's pretty much a no-go from the whoopsie radiation scenario, but all is not lost. You need something mobile, small and unpredictable to bridge the gap. In the small garden beside the gleaming tower of Impossitech (there to "grow-a-row" for the hungry as a pure PR stunt, there are rows of pumpkins, gourds, carrots, lima beans and squash. This lovely little garden happens to be directly overhead of the secret underground Nanobot lab... The Event happens, causing some seismic events and cracking open the lab and causing low level leaks of radiation from the hidden reactor that supplies power to he hidden labs. The radiation introduces a glitch in the nanobots' programming. Keep in mind the code was written by a mad scientist with dubious ethics in the first place. The Nanobots seek out a "suitable" organic structure and go through the crack and infest the plants in the garden. The pumpkins and gourds are closest so are going to exhibit the insanity of their creator more closely. The Squash, however, are separated from the others by several rows of carrots and lima beans. These plants are rejected by the nanobots as being structually unsuitable. The nanobots move on to the squash.... The nanobots get another dose of radiation from the carrots and lima beans, as these two vegetables are [Naturally radioactive](http://www.houstonpress.com/restaurants/8-foods-you-didnt-know-are-radioactive-6410052), a trait that is increased by the apocalyptic fallout. This little burst turns on the failsafe code that the directors made the mad scientist write, but he left it commented (or dummied) out. The Nanobots do what they do, and the plants get up and walk, killing innocent animals and eating other plants along the way to fulfill the caloric intake required for locomotion and thought. The squash go to warn the humans, while the Pumpkins plan the attack! Ok, I admit a flight of whimsy here has generated enough hand-waving to generate a decent, sustained breeze. This is not really even remotely science-based. What it does do is serve the story by giving you a path from point a (radiation is not going to directly create Sapient plants) to point b (Sqaush help humans against ravening gourds) that skirts satire without devloving all the way into outright farce. [Answer] Hypothesis: The geneticists increase the cytoskeletal density of the cells in your plants, creating signaling pathways like brains use. All the plants you mention contain sugars that can produce energy by chemical means, a way of storing energy taken in by photosynthesis and other reactions. Kelp genes and colonization by microbes form memory and assist decision making. There already is a war. Chemical warfare by use of toxins and allergies in plants themselves or spread through pollen and spores. Biological warfare, especially by spreading parasites. Read about Toxoplasma gondii and learn to fear certain plants and cats and how they achieve mind control. Much of our pharmaceutical industry is engaged in fighting this war. Communication is a tricky area. Sure, chemical signaling and all that, but that's usually interspecies and you need your mutants to make alliances and have a specific enemy. Thrumming the ground by various already understood plant mechanisms is possible but range and information density are low. Maybe take a hint from fibre optics and fluorescence and use light? Might also provide a means for humans to ally with the squashes, having someone discover a pattern in their light flashes and decode it. The plants don't have to develop technology, they just need to implement strategies of disrupting and destroying humans. Advanced kinases (see below) traveling spore-like could carry directives of successful methods. The thinking part is not so difficult. Our understanding of "thinking" is being continually updated and neurons aren't the only game in town. Glia, microtubules, cytoskeletons (present in all cells) are all part of how information is transferred. Think of computer chips: CPUs were power hungry beasts to begin with, like our brains; over time with changes in architecture the power requirement has lowered significantly. Glia in the brain helps in a similar way and microtubules and the structure of cytoskeletons represent nearly unpowered filament connections that act like neural pathways. Also think of present work on using carbon nanotubes for conducting signals; can be as efficient as copper and more useful in low power information systems. Memory is required for thinking in terms of selective decision making and that ought to be simple enough to work out as it's basically a chemical addressing system similar to our emotional tagging. Remember, we are basically half human, half microbe (plant-ish) by DNA count. So hosting is part of every complex creature and others have pointed out colonization by other bacteria, etc, would play a key role. [Protists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protist), [kinases](https://www.cellsignal.com/contents/science/protein-kinases-introduction/kinases), [Paramecium](http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artnov14/paramecium-engima.html). Protists are a category that both "animals" (single or multi cellular) and "plants" like algae and slime mold can fit into (quotation marks because by definition a Protist is not plant, animal or fungus). Kinases are proteins that are the directors, like symphony conductors, in organisms and use phosphates (like in fertilizer) to do this. Along with calcium fixing the pathways they can direct traffic. I put in a description below that fits into your story. Paramecium are great in that they have no neurons but seem to make decisions and even exhibit memory-like behavior. I'm having trouble finding a link but Washington state grows a lot of carrots and they have been noted for anti-radiation properties. Around Hanford, where a lot of WWII nuclear work was done, there is much contamination and carrots were planted in an attempt to suck the radiation out of the ground. But [here's a link to studies of plants](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39282) around Chernobyl and Fukushima and a great line: " activation of genes involved in DNA repair and of defence/stress responses following exposure of seedlings to radiation ". -- (this is a bit of the technobabble from article cited above that might fit your story) > > The CDPK family constitutes a group of kinases that are only found in > plants and protists. In plants, CDPKs mediate Ca2+ signals that > regulate a diverse number of pathways including cell cycle progression > and stress responses. The canonical CDPK is composed of an > amino-terminal serine/threonine kinase domain, followed by a junction > domain (also known as the autoinhibitory domain) that connects to the > carboxy-terminal calmodulin-like domain (Klimecka and Muszynska, > 2007). The calmodulin-like domain typically consists of four EF hand > domains for Ca2+ binding. The autoinhibitory domain apparently > regulates CDPK by interacting with the kinase domain and acting as a > pseudosubstrate. Binding of Ca2+ to the EF hand domains relieves the > autoinhibition (Harmon et al., 2000). > > > [Answer] As we have no real clue as to what makes things sentient, maybe plants could develop structures which could think. However, this would take a very long evolutionary process. To speed this process up, maybe the mutations were aided by AI (not a strong AI, just any AI we already could have today), and most of the testing and generational development was done by simulation. An AI could very well help write genes which are effective and produce certain effects. If the writing-testing-rewriting process is fast enough, and the results insufficiently supervised, plants could develop unwanted side-effects quite quickly. ]
[Question] [ There are three true gods in the world: Order, Chaos and Nature. All of them patron a couple of humanoid races that carry their values. While Order and Chaos carry on their petty feud fought by their petty races (humans and monsters), Nature only care for one thing in its creatures (elves): evolution. Evolution demands quantity. If not enough individuals are born, there is not enough mutations to select, thus Nature's creatures are prolific. Evolution also demands pressure to direct the changes, otherwise there will only be diversity, not improvement, thus Nature's creatures also die in decent numbers, both in order to select the good traits and to prevent overpopulation from destroying their habitats. One of these selection mechanisms is their child rearing method: "let the kids play". Elves are not as protective of their offspring as other races (except against infanticide). Elven children play outside with little to no supervision and, as not all children are able to fight off or outrun bears (unless they are in a gang), a reasonable amount of them die. As the less fit kids are the ones that will usually die, the overall fitness of that particular specie increases. However, the "hazardous playtime" gene brings no direct benefit and quite a few disadvantages, while the "I want mommy!" gene increases overall survivability without providing a meaningful disadvantage, thus being likely selected. This cannot happen because little elves running wild in the forest is just to good to not happen, thus arises the question: how can dangerous behavior starting when they are toddlers increase individual fitness? Or how could this dangerous behavior be more or as advantageous as staying safe? ## Notes: * the problem is not "how could this evolve?", the world has enough divine intervention, but "how could this not unevolve?". Even if those imps are just that punk, I can't think in a single advantage in picking fights with wolves, as opposed to staying safe at home where there are no wolves or bears. * elves are magical, but I would rather not make them magically inclined to suicide with extra steps. More over, Nature is darwinistic, it cares for results and overall fitness, not the process and individual adaptations. * elves toddlers are way more independent than human toddlers, and depending on the particular specie they are more capable of defending themselves than most adult humans. * This is not the only child rearing method across all elven kind, there is a lot of elven races, some of with employ this method as the primary * elven toddlers are adorable and adorably vicious, they go home to feed and sleep most of the time, but when its playtime they gang with their friends and go do dumb childish stuff, usually involving tormenting their neighbors or local wild life. Edit: examples of dumb dangerous behavior practiced by little elves. 1. Playing "hunt" (approaching furtively and attacking with sticks and bites) against big herbivores, wolves, bears and other elves. 2. Playing "war": an bunch of children beating each other until one team surrenders or flee. 3. Playing "hold still, I want to try a thing I saw two drunkards doing in a bar", and the thing involves knives and one or more children. 4. "So what it will take us the whole night to get home? Its not like we are some dumbasses that would get lost", said the dumbasses. 5. "Whoa, a step cliff! I want to climb it!", said the toddler about to climb a steep cliff of bare wet rocks next to his friend. 6. Trying to stone his friend, who is climbing a steep cliff 30 meters above the ground. 7. Literally trying to get something to attack him, like pulling the tail of a sleeping lion 8. -"Wait, is that a dragon? Lets go there to check" [Answer] ## Sexual Selection One or both genders of the species select their mates on the basis of their dangerous ill-advised achievements. Those who play it safe may live longer, but are basically "shunned" by the opposite sex when they reach maturity. If only one gender selects mates on this basis, there will be a tendency toward several individuals of the selecting gender engaging in polygamous relationships with the survivors of the opposite gender. If both genders select in the same way, you will wind up with a population of disaffected "incels" of both genders whose achievements are not impressive enough to attract a mate. ## Even Adulthood is Dangerous If either the world is so dangerous, or this species is so low on the food chain that attrition rates remain high well into adulthood, the skills gained in childhood may be necessary to survive as adults. Play in most species offers low-risk practice for skills that will be essential for adults. Children with the "I want mommy" gene may miss out on crucial practice in youth, and be unprepared for adulthood. While fewer of the children with the "hazardous playtime" gene may reach adulthood, once they do their survival rates are higher, and they tend to have more children, and perhaps pass on those skills to their children (if the adults take any interest in the activities of their children). ## Efficient Use of Resources If this is a species with a high fertility rate and a stable population, you can also expect a high attrition rate, which leaves parents with the problem of allocating their finite resources. If they allow hazardous play to whittle down their offspring to only the most capable, they avoid expending resources on children who are unlikely to survive long enough to have children of their own. This is already common in another form in nature (see [siblicide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibling_rivalry_(animals))) where parents allow the larger/stronger offspring to kill the smaller/weaker ones. The children of parents who try to keep all their children alive may be at a competitive disadvantage (worse nutrition, less attention during development, etc.) relative to those whose parents let nature pick the winners. [Answer] If a gene kills three out of four children who carry it, but the fourth child has more offspring than four non-carriers (combined), it will go on. For one thing, "stick to Mommy" can have lethal capacity, too. Suppose elven enclaves are attacked regularly. If the children scatter and can survive on their own, they are more likely to survive than those who cower in hiding in the home. For another, if the woods has many things that require boldness to the point of folly to profit from, or even survive, the gene will ensure that the survivors continue to survive. This can range from their requiring meat to eat even when the animals are all vastly dangerous to the woods being haunted by a monster that preys on creatures by frightening them -- or even psychically devours them through the avenue opened by fear. A third possibility is that the vigorous exercise overcomes a health problem that kills or interferes with fertility. Or that the chemical effect of fear is to sterilize the frightened elf. [Answer] I feel tempted to give an answer different from both the selected answer and the other answers given because I like this question. (although I don't belong to this community). I don't think that it makes sense that the elves here "let their kids play". I also don't think there's any way around this fact. Evolution doesn't select for "fitness" in the sense that it selects the strongest and most capable individuals (who in this case apparently can fend off bears). Evolution selects for individuals (or rather their genes) which allow for the propagation of the greatest number of offspring sharing those same traits. It seems to me that evolution naturally tends away from a culture where people, or in this case elves, allow their children to play and die without supervision. Although I agree that the elves having offspring extremely physically and intellectually mature and (therefore less likely to die due to lack of parental protection in their youth) lends some believability to this scenario, it seems to me that no matter what, there will always be a natural advantage to propagate offspring conferred to the individuals who also have a strong rearing instinct and a parent-child connection. The reason being that in a civilization where knowledge can be passed on, the capabilities of an individual (to propagate offspring or otherwise) are much less determined than their natural-born attributes, but instead the cumulative knowledge they acquire from others (beginning with their parents). Therefore it seems unlikely that in a civilization with language, tools, and technology (even primitive ones in the form of bows and arrows for example) would their evolutionary pathway converge to a culture that allows their children to play unsupervised and wantonly die. If these elves use armor or a sword for example, and these things are necessary tools to their survival, no genetic attribute will allow them to use these tools (or even make them) better than parental protection and education. Defeating a bear is a feat I'm more inclined to believe to be more easily achieved by knowledge, resourcefulness, and skill with tools/weapons rather than natural physical and intellectual attributes. All of which are acquired after or during youth, through training, parental rearing, and education. It seems unlikely to me that the elves most likely to propagate offspring are the ones with kids born with the strength to fight a bear, but instead, those who educate, protect, and teach their kids the means to do so. Even if there was an individual whose children had the natural-born strength and ability to fend off said bear, it seems unlikely to me that in the long run their genes would propagate further and more abundantly than someone with slightly less strong kids but a strong rearing instinct. Overcoming trials, hardship and danger, is one aspect of growth and education, but unless these individuals are born with the ability to instantly use any tool or piece of equipment given to them, natural forces will always confer an advantage to propagate offspring to those that choose to protect and educate their own. At least for me, I would find it rather absurd reading about a race of elves, who are both (purportedly) patrons of the god of nature and/or the philosophy of evolution, and yet have a culture settled in what appears to be an unstable basin in the natural course of evolution. As long as the elves have tools, culture, and a means to store and accumulate knowledge, I don't see any way around this dissonance. [Answer] Dying in childhood is not advantageous but the behaviors that lead to it are. Children learn from exploring, fighting and gain strength from physical activity. Adventurous and physically capable adults are also more likely to thrive and reproduce. However, even if only really weak children die that is still worse than if everyone survives. A weak adult can still reproduce and spread that gene, and a strong child that dies to something an adult would survive is just a waste. While you can try to stop children from doing dangerous things, you probably won't succeed. But dying will always be a side effect, not the intended consequence. [Answer] ## Live and Let Die Nature ("Peggy" to her friends), being the efficient and ruthless deity, has a finite amount of time for all its creations. Peggy therefore periodically smites any creation which is boring and defensive. This is an artificial selection pressure. "N kills this generation, or be killed before the next generation." If Peggy wants "natural" evolution, that means letting social behaviour be beneficial. And knowing what's a risk worth taking for the reward is definitely beneficial. So the little elves will need a reward to go out and risk death. If you want that to happen, Peggy will need a change of priorities, since the social model carries benefits. [Answer] In species like insects or reptiles a "want mommy" gene would bring no benefit, because there would be no mommy around: they lay their eggs in large numbers, and good luck growing up! Your elves can do the same: they produce fairly autonomous offspring in fairly large number, and leave them roam and search for food on their own. Those who manage to reach adult age will be most likely to be the most fit for their environment and thus will be able to carry on their genes. [Answer] > > how can dangerous behavior starting when they are toddlers increase individual fitness? > > > ### Because danger-seeking behaviour is the definition of individual unfitness Remember that "fitness" applies to those who survive to breed. On average, most kids who play "let's poke the dragon" are not going to survive the game, the same way that most baby birds who jump out of the nest too early get stranded on the ground and eaten. The "beta" individuals who survive are those with enough natural caution to not play the game in the first place. The "alpha" survivors are those who risk-assess the game successfully, deciding which dragons are sufficiently asleep for safety, or checking properly for safe routes in and out. The rest are crispy dragon snacks. It should be noted that this is not an entirely unusual attitude to child rearing. Old-fashioned parenting in England, up to the 80s, followed this model reasonably closely (albeit without dragons). It is famously embodied by the father of the children in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons. When asked whether the children can go camping on an island, with limited sailing skills, his telegram back says "If duffers, better drowned. If not duffers, won't drown." Of course that is somewhat tongue in cheek - he doesn't genuinely want them to drown if they're stupid - but it shows how much he trusts them to make their own decisions. Even this is easy-going compared to a few hundred years before that. Today we look in horror at groups like the LRA conscripting child soldiers - but it was entirely normal until well into the Victorian era for 10-year-old boys to be bought commissions in the army or as midshipmen in the navy. [Answer] ## Experience points. On Earth it's hard to come up with an evolutionary reason to take ill-advised risks. Someone mentioned the Spartans, who were a case of the behavior you have in mind, but they did die out in the end. Nonetheless, when you have elves and magic, you have players who do pointless quests to get to Level 2, 3, and 4. You might as well explain experience points in physics terms -- which explains why your characters evolve by killing themselves. When a young elf climbs a cliff, 75% of the parallel universes see him celebrating his "achievement" at the top. The "lifeforce" from the other 25% gets distributed among them. This means he's 20% "stronger" now than he was before. Let's say this is an approximation: the "lifeforce" can't be scavenged perfectly, and the inefficiency increases with the risk. If he took a 75% risk of death he wouldn't get four times stronger, but only 50% or 35%. Therefore, the little elves spend most of their time XP grinding against small threats. The many-worlds interpretation isn't strictly necessary for this, but it makes it easier to explain. Also, a belief in quantum immortality would make it mentally much easier for the young elves to take these risks. [Answer] 1. Hard line Well, you're actually playing with R-strategy for a species with human level intelligence. Within limits it can work, but if you keep it realistic it should also have some more consequences. Lots of offspring. You deal with easy but unstable environment, where you can't do much, but live fast and tend to die young. In real life it could be a hot climate with unpredictable droughts, about which you can't do much. In fantasy setting it would be dragons that would eat everyone in the vicinity. Such environments select in favour of low IQ and antisocial personalities. If parents are not needed, then there is no point in forming stable pairs; a more rational strategy for an alpha male is fertilizing another female. In unstable environments generally long term cooperation makes no sense. 2. Soft line Survival of 99% of kids to adulthood is a very recent phenomenon. In premodern times ~50% of kids didn’t make it to their 5th birthday. So losing some offspring is not only natural, but as long as the lowest quality genes are being eliminated it's highly beneficial (yes, from the industrial revolution onwards our species is accumulating mutations, which in the long run is unsustainable). So if the losses are moderate (let's say 20%-30%), and tend to eliminate ones that were the least adapted anyway, and thanks to not being burdened with childcare, it means that mothers can have more offspring, it would work reasonably well. [Answer] #### Get rid of the no infanticide rule This won't work if you want a fluffy story but you've got toddlers stabbing each other, so it may be ok. Fertile age elves have a strong repulsion to babies. Think severe, violent post-partum depression (maybe it does originate with the trauma of childbirth? Hormones?). Partly because of this, newborns are not considered people, and are treated more like pets or wild animals. Killing one outright is not all that common, but not a big deal; it's understood that it's a sudden inescapable urge and it's not like they matter anyway. Suddenly, the woods seem a lot more hospitable! With nobody to warn them of dangers, toddlers have to explore the world by trial and error. Error being falling down that cliff, petting the big scaly green doggy, trying a game of poke you in the eye with a stick and what have you. I mean, human toddlers do all these things (ok, maybe not the dragon thing) despite supervision, so obviously the self-destructive curiosity of a small child is more than sufficient to get them into trouble. Elders past fertile age are not that affected anymore. Some of them are happy to give small children a space to rest; some even enjoy it and "keep" many of these pets around (think crazy cat lady). But they won't grow particularly attached to them individually, and won't care too much if one gets eaten by a bear. This is how they pick up the language and retain enough of a connection to their community instead of going fully feral. There's also a tradition to leave food out for small children at the edge of the village - like you would feed livestock, with communal piles of relatively unsophisticated food. As they get older, personhood "grows" - the feelings towards children grow from pest to wild animal to working animal to beloved pet, and eventually to full person. Some older children, who are somewhere in the middle of this process, will be sympathetic and sneak treats to the babies, others will hunt them down for fun (although this is considered distasteful and a sign that the child is still "early", i.e. not yet a person themselves). Evolutionarily, the "I want mommy" gene won't help you - being around adults all the time is a liability, and being whiny and demanding even more so. So why do reproductive-age adults have this trait in the first place? It may be a side effect of the hormonal changes that have been selected by sexual reproduction; it may be that an urge to kill all babies, but others' babies a bit more than your own, is a sound strategy. It may have developed at a time of plenty followed by scarcity: abundance raised their fertility, then scarcity made all this offspring unsupportable (fertility could not go back down due to some sexual selection malarkey - every time you have a stupid maladaptive trait, blame it on sexual selection). [Answer] Read up on <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory> Some animals have very few offspring and invest a great amount of care in each one. Modern humans are an example. Other animals produce lots of offspring, but the trade-off is that less care can be given to each and hence many do not survive. Your elves are simply at a different point on this trade-off. This would be because they inhabit an unstable environment where flexibility and the ability to reproduce rapidly in good times is more important for survival than perfecting a single strategy. They are also likely to be smaller, mature earlier, and be inclined to explore new potential habitats rather than just sticking to what they know. In other words, they have a lot in common with the [Nac Mac Feegles](https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Nac_Mac_Feegle) (although Feegles are [eusocial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality)). [Answer] What you're saying is nothing new to biology. Many of our genetic traits, especially those concerning reproduction, are in a state of continuous struggle between survival of the individual and survival of the species. When a fetus is being carried, it's beneficial for it to extract more nutrients from the mother's body to maximize its own survival chances -- and yet beneficial for the mother to deprive it of nutrients to maximize the mother's survival chances. Keep in mind that both extremes are undesirable from the point of evolution -- when the fetus wins, it kills its own mother, leaving no one to care for it, and when the mother wins, she becomes unable to carry to term -- i.e. infertile. The situation reaches an equilibrium where the mother, on average, gives birth to 2 viable infants in her lifetime. Now, concerning elves, we may have the same situation here. Not playing dangerous games certainly increases the individual's chance of living to adulthood, but decreases their usefulness as protector of the tribe. This is particularly true if the threats are bloodthirsty, rather than indifferent -- so "live to fight another day" is not a strategy. Keep in mind that we're dealing with what's called group selection here -- they'll be protecting their relatives first and foremost, i.e. those who carry genes similar to theirs. This means that a tribe with a low amount of "play-with-fire" genes will probably disappear. These genes will thus try to reach an equilibrium between two extremes, one where their carrier is unlikely to reach adulthood, and another one where their carrier endangers other carriers by being a coward. In practice, this is most easily realized through sexual preference. Elves view risky behavior as sexy (this kind of society probably suffers from huge STD epidemics). Keep in mind that humans (and humanlikes) are social creatures -- and so you must add cultural taboos to this. Cultural traits are subject to variation. To demonstrate what kind of daredevils elves are, you can show a tribe which seems to behave reasonably to a reader, and then proceed to explain that this is only attained through fanatical devotion to a cruel-but-necessary cult which goes as far as forbidding children to play. [Answer] There is a very relevant concept called Hamilton's Rule that hasn't been brought up. The idea is that there's no evolutionary advantage to helping another member of your species unless they're a blood relative. So, traits related to parental care can't be selected for unless the parents actually know who their children are! In the case of these elves I would guess that they have no way of knowing who their blood relatives are because of the way they reproduce. That means that they'd have no concept of "I want mommy!" because the young elves would have no idea who their mommy is, and any adult elf that they might approach would be totally indifferent to their plight because chances are they're not a blood relative, and even if they were they'd have no way of knowing. The real question then, is how do these elves reproduce? Not the way humans do, that's for sure! It's a fantasy world, so I suppose the possibilities are endless. Maybe all of the newborns have to be incubated in a big tank or something and they can't be effectively marked or tracked. Maybe they're carved from wood infused with a mix of genetic material drawn from the whole elvish community. Just some ideas! [Answer] In Earth's biology there are a number of interesting things that happen at different stages in a creature's lifecycle. Puberty changes human behavior significantly, as does menopause. In a lot of animals puberty changes the animal's social interactions from adolescent family bonding to antisocial adulthood. At the same time their chemistry changes, effectively removing them from the parent's care once they no longer smell like babies. When we domesticate such animals - such as in the case of the silver fox - that change is altered, resulting in a less drastic mental and social change and extended social behavior. Your elves may have similar drastic changes in their biochemistry, triggered at several points in their maturation. As infants the children are intensely social, developing quickly and learning the basic skills - language, movement, etc. - that they will need in their next stage. During this time the parents are bonded to the children by pheromonal queues, inclining them to protect and nurture the infants. When the child reaches the point where they are able to function independently, they undergo their first biological change. They become aggressive, violent and antisocial and their intelligence is quite limited. Their chemistry changes so they no longer produce the bonding pheromones, so the parents quickly lose interest in the little monsters, sending them out to fend for themselves. The young elves are thrust into a cruel world and have to learn how to survive. Let's just call this what it is: the Goblin years. Those that do survive through early childhood will eventually reach adolescence, when the next biological trigger trips and their brain chemistry alters again. This time the majority of the aggressive and antisocial tendencies are suppressed, allowing them to start forming social groups. Their intelligence increases, giving them a much better ability to reason around problems rather than try to break everything. They can team up to improve their chances, and although still basically feral the socialization they experience during this period helps them to become more civilized. They learn to trade, and some older elves may act as mentors to groups of the adolescent elves. At some point the elves reach sexual maturity. This change not only activates their sexual instincts, it also reduces their aggression and almost eliminates their anti-social aspects. Once they reach this stage of life the elves become particularly susceptible to the pheromones produced by infants of the species. Having a baby around makes them extremely happy, so they spend as much time as possible having and raising babies just for the euphoria of the experience. Before you know it you're knee deep in cute little elflings. Finally, at the end of their reproductive phase, the last biological switch fires. Post-reproductive elves become completely disinterested in sex, unaffected by baby pheromones, almost unemotional and more intellectual. They have graduated beyond the giddy youthful years, and now they can focus on whatever intellectual pursuits catch their interest. They maintain relationships with other elves more for the utility of having people they can collaborate with than any particular desire for companionship. Some amuse themselves by 'meddling' with the younger ones, studying their reactions and occasionally playing little games with groups of adolescent elves. Given this sort of biology, the entire system could continue indefinitely. Any mutation that alters part of the cycle would quickly be eliminated. If a baby doesn't produce the right pheromones the parents will tend to be less interested in it, and will not give it the nurturing it needs to survive the goblin years. Failure to advance to the social adolescence stage will tend to prevent them from being able to reach sexual maturity, and if they do they won't have the social experience to find a mate. Sexually mature individuals that don't have the receptors for the magic baby dust won't produce as many children... and so on. From an evolutionary perspective, once they get into this sort of cycle it's likely to last for a very, very long time. The advantage here, the fitness filter, is all about reproduction. The main genetic line works, and it works pretty damned well. Any deviation from that line is evolutionary suicide as long as there are a lot of other elves pumping out genetically pure babies. Oh, sure, there are some enclaves of genetic misfits that actually raise their children and teach them how to be social, where the children don't go through that distasteful goblin phase... but really, are they even still elves? And of course this is just the way that it was Meant To Be. The gods themselves clearly decreed that Elves would develop this way, so that we... uh, I mean they could become the dominant life form on the planet. Those heretics in the Wood Tribes just need to be re-educated a little. [Answer] How can dangerous behavior starting when they are toddlers increase individual fitness? Or how could this dangerous behavior be more or as advantageous as staying safe? Simply put, it doesn't. Hormonally and developmentally speaking, there is a period in many species lives where the get the intense urge to engage in wanderlust, but this is typically just after they reach sexual maturity and these individuals are physically mature but are often feeling cramped in their parents' territory and set out on their own (aided as well by that mysterious phenomenon known as interest in the opposite sex). This is seen in most large animals with parental care. The reason it works in this context is that the individual is already physically mature, merely lacking in life experience, and thus is not putting the individual in maladaptive situations where they are picking a fight with a predator while not in their physical prime. Juvenile animals are very curious, but the parents tend to be very defensive of them for very good reasons. As you say, this system is going to unevolve almost as soon as you give it the opportunity. All individuals within a species naturally show variation in terms of parental bonding and boldness. You're going to have some children who are shier than others and prefer to stick around their parents, seeing them as at least a passive deterrent to other predators (this is what alligators do), and parents who feel a stronger connection with their child and seek to be more protective of them. This extra support will result in the genes that promote this behavior (likely through genetically regulated production of hormones such as oxytocin and cortisol), as has been described in other animals being favored in the population. In your scenario there are really no benefits to juveniles setting out on their own because they do not benefit by finding new resources. Producing lots of offspring doesn't result in large population size and "being fruitful and multiplying". A good example of this is humans, who have a painfully slow reproductive rate and yet reduced mortality rate to low enough levels that we have become the most common large mammal on planet Earth. Indeed, high mortality rates will result in most genetic variants never having a chance to be selected for, because most will be weeded out of the gene pool before their costs and benefits become apparent. This is the case in marsupials, where the "crawl to the pouch" results in 90% of new genes being weeded out of the population before they can influence survival in the adult animal, which has resulted in marsupial evolution slowing to a crawl. The only thing I can think of would be something like the Saiyans in Dragonball, who have notably next to no parental instincts and send their children off to various Death Worlds as a form of provisioning their young. Because Saiyans increase in strength in proportion to challenges that they overcome, sending them to worlds that are threatening enough to challenge them but not enough to outright kill them results in offspring strong enough to stand alongside them. Goku is a real good example of this: he'll step in if he thinks his offspring are faced with a threat they can't handle, but he's a very hands-off parent because he wants his kids to become strong by facing life's challenges on their own and because he mistakenly believes they like the thrill of overcoming a challenge as much as he does, when in actuality they get the impression he doesn't care. In this case the epigenetic nature of "Saiyans get stronger the more they fight and adapt every time they are beaten to near death" favors them picking as many fights as possible in the name of survival. However, as mentioned above there is significant variation in personality and behavior even within the Saiyan race, which affects how things go. Goku's mother Gine was very nurturing (and Bardock was concerned with his sons' safety in the reboot version) and Vegeta of all people adopted a very protective, un-Saiyan mindset after his experiences on Earth (notably watching Trunks die right in front of him). In the long term these differences (as well as the potential absence of the Dragonballs to undo parental mistakes like getting your kids killed) would be selected upon. [Answer] ## Because that's just the way they evolved to be. After all, evolution's a tree, not a linear path. And Elves are Elves, not just human hippies with pointy ears. If you look at the evolutionary parallels, why couldn't they have evolved to be that way? In your world, the Elves are the race/creatures of Nature- implying that there are also races/creatures of Order (Dwarves, perhaps?) and of Chaos (Orcs? Or Humans? Either way, doesn't make too much difference...) And with the Elves having this sort of society, conceptualizing the primary 'races' in this world and their relationships to one another (with ear morphology admittedly playing a significant role in sparking the conceived evolutionary tree), here's how I'd lay out the parallels between them and hares (and between humans and rats, to plot out their relative development rates and lifespans- i.e, x20). Infant (or rather, pre-pubescent, since they effectively skip infancy) hares are known as leverets, and are highly precocial; left to roam free, exploring their surroundings on their own, and instinctively returning each night to their place of birth to suckle from the mother, as their only form of parental investment, until they're ready to eat solid food (within 2-3 weeks, half the length of the average pregnancy), before being abandoned and left to fend for themselves shortly afterward. Like them, your Elven children (aka Elverets/Elverettes) could essentially be born into the world as toddlers (after a year-long pregnancy, a third longer than humans'), with levels of sensory and cognitive development comparable to a 1yo human, and levels of physical and motor development comparable to an 18mth old human; left to roam free in much the same manner, with the development of bottle-feeding potentially absolving Elven mothers of all parental responsibilities to the same extent as fathers. Going by the same development rates, they'd then be ready to eat solid food only six months later, and subsequently abandoned and left to fend for themselves within the year, with no familial relationships or attachments. And just as Hares can potentially live four times longer than Rats, but actually have a shorter average life expectancy due to far higher child mortality rates, the same could be true of your Elves relative to humans. As for logically consistent reasons why such a system might be in keeping with the ethos of 'Nature'- they could well potentially NEED to, to have a remotely sustainable population in the long-term. After all, your stereotypical Elves always have greater longevity than humans; and continuing the Elves=Hares analogy, have more lithe and slender builds, with little to no body fat, and disproportionately high levels of strength, speed and agility (with hares proportionately being the strongest, fastest and most agile mammals in the animal kingdom; to the extent that they actually evolved hinged skulls to provide shock absorption for their brains, and prevent them from killing themselves with the g-forces generated by their own rapid acceleration and changes of direction). However, if you're looking at real biological creatures, these things always come at a cost- with hares requiring disproportionately high levels of nutrition to fuel their physical prowess, and being far more prone to famines and starvation as a result. Even more so, given their propensity to 'go forth and multiply' quickly. And as the 'creatures of Nature', your Elves presumably wouldn't take the stereotypical, traditional route of being practically asexual and/or sexually impotent either. Reproduction is the root of Nature, and of life, and one can imagine that, as worshippers of the God/Force of 'Nature', these Elves' culture would be unabashedly sexually open and promiscuous as well. However, as both an extremely long-lived and extremely prolific species, if they had human societal norms regarding the aspect of child rearing, you'd inevitably wind up creating a huge problem almost straight away; one which affects humanity, and via us, all other life on Earth today, and has done since the start of the Industrial Period (ever since our average longevity began to surge upwards, with this having only mildly slowed down since the turn of the century due to birth rates having started to fall enough to compensate for any further increases in longevity). Namely, that of the Malthusian Catastrophe. Which, looking at it exclusively from a species-centric, human perspective, we've managed to avoid (thus far). But looking at it from a broader perspective, and the impact upon 'Nature'- i.e, the global biosphere, along with all species on Earth- we absolutely triggered a long time ago. The Elves would want to avoid this, at all costs, because Nature matters most to them. And without managing their population themselves via killing or other methods, such as mandatory abortions or sterilization (Nature is a game of chance, after all, not of intelligent design- and if you can't leave behind a genetic legacy after you're gone, from an evolutionary perspective, you're gone forever), simple negligence and 'meritocracy', a la 'the law of the jungle'/'survival of the fittest', would be the easiest way to accomplish this prerogative of keeping their population in check. [Answer] # Fitness is a group measurement function Things which appear to be good for the individual are not necessarily selected for, like selfishness (which benefits you by harming those around you). Things which appear bad for the individual are not necessarily selected against, like altruism (the reverse): Getting yourself killed is (obviously) not good for you. So why did this behavior develop? Why would evolution keep it around? The reason is evolution isn't concerned with you. It doesn't even care about you. It cares about the population. # Danger weeds out the weak Sure, this is a very noisy selection mechanism. Certain kinds of danger will kill anybody. But many kinds of danger will kill weak or stupid elves much more readily than more resilient individuals. Accordingly, a genetic predisposition to hiding behind mommy will tend to make it easier for less fit elves to survive long enough to spread their genes. In contrast, a predilection for adventurous mischief will tend to get less hardy or intelligent elves killed at a higher rate. In other words, this gene is bad for individuals but good for the population because it checks the spread of, and indeed works to eliminate, other genes which are harmful. ]
[Question] [ I've been laying the groundwork for a New World Campaign based off of works like Powdermage, Greedfall, and Colonial Gothic (and the Witcher- nothing beats the Witcher), and one of the integral elements of the New World is its inhabitants. I have yet to make a full listing of native species and races for this strange land, but I have figured out the 'dominant' one: Elves. See, the land is quite ancient, and the fabric between the material world and the feywild is weakened to a degree where Fey would likely be comfortable living amidst the mighty oaks and tall pines. This has resulted in druids having more effective control over their abilities, and an increase in the sheer power of their- spells, I suppose? I've never played a Druid, so I'm not sure what to call their power. Regardless, with a natural affinity for magic, and the breeding population and intelligence to outlast stronger, tougher beasties, the Elves grew to possess a mighty civilization- Ivory Towers, Marble Arches, Stag-Jousting Coliseum, even a university of sorts. Now, they're naught but primitive aboriginals, trading fine silken robes for deer-skins, proud lances for sturdy bows, the protection of strong walls and steel for high branches and swift feet. What could bring such a proud civilization so low? Bonus Question: Considering I'm basing this World off of North America and a teeny touch of Celtic myth, what other sentient creatures should inhabit my deciduous woodlands? I was toying around with Greek Critters; harpies, centaurs, satyrs, maybe some beast-men, Warhammer style. Edit:For the sake of clarification, I will list some Important information pertaining to the past and current states of the Elves of the New World. These Elves live within Tribal Groups which are more or less at peace with one another, more so out of necessity than mutual respect or camaraderie. These tribes are a crude reflection of the previous order, wherein the Elves were divided into Principalities who fell in line under a High King, chosen by a council of wise-elves, who consulted the Fey and searched for signs in the stars and nature which would point them to their promised Monarch. There were Seven Principalities, one of which was destroyed by another for betrayal, and another which was overcome by a horde of mutants (read 'Beastmen') during or shortly after the collapse. The remaining Five were driven from their cities and became nomads, though they often return to the ruins in time of trouble or for 'moots'. The Elves were Polytheistic, but their worship was centered mainly around Nature and Knowledge. Reverence for the former decayed over time, but has since become the ONLY significant proponent of their daily lives and culture. They still erect totems to Gods of War, Wisdom, Storms, and the like, but Nature takes precedence over all. The Mutant Beast-men are the New World's equivalent to Orcs and Orges, and they are a threat to all who inhabit the land. It has become the de-facto responsibility many elves and centaurs to keep track of their herds and thin out their numbers. Centaurs and Elves have much in common, and often trade commodities and information with each-other. A race of Felnids also inhabit the land, but are rarely seen and do not live in large groups. Giants also roam the edges of the woodlands, hunting for trolls and bears to eat while tending to their Mammoths. Humans do not exist in the New World- not in the North, anyway. The Men from the East, the Colonizers, have advanced to a 17th Century Technological Standard, and are distrusted by the Locals. The Fey used to be allies of the Elves- now they only reveal themselves to Druids, and on specific astrological events, such as the solstice. For the sake of clarification, I will list some Important information pertaining to the past and current states of the Elves of the New World. 1. These Elves live within Tribal Groups which are more or less at peace with one another, more so out of necessity than mutual respect or camaraderie. These tribes are a crude reflection of the previous order, wherein the Elves were divided into Principalities who fell in line under a High King, chosen by a council of wise-elves, who consulted the Fey and searched for signs in the stars and nature which would point them to their promised Monarch. There were Seven Principalities, one of which was destroyed by another for betrayal, and another which was overcome by a horde of mutants (read 'Beastmen') during or shortly after the collapse. The remaining Five were driven from their cities and became nomads, though they often return to the ruins in time of trouble or for 'moots'. 2. The Elves were Polytheistic, but their worship was centered mainly around Nature and Knowledge. Reverence for the former decayed over time, but has since become the ONLY significant proponent of their daily lives and culture. They still erect totems to Gods of War, Wisdom, Storms, and the like, but Nature takes precedence over all. 3. The Mutant Beast-men are the New World's equivalent to Orcs and Orges, and they are a threat to all who inhabit the land. It has become the de-facto responsibility many elves and centaurs to keep track of their herds and thin out their numbers. Centaurs and Elves have much in common, and often trade commodities and information with each-other. A race of Felnids also inhabit the land, but are rarely seen and do not live in large groups. Giants also roam the edges of the woodlands, hunting for trolls and bears to eat while tending to their Mammoths. 4. Humans do not exist in the New World- not in the North, anyway. The Men from the East, the Colonizers, have advanced to a 17th Century Technological Standard, and are distrusted by the Locals. 5. The Fey used to be allies of the Elves- now they only reveal themselves to Druids, and on specific astrological events, such as the solstice. [Answer] Plot Twist: It's Still There. The reason your Feywild and mortal world are so close together is they used to be one plane. This was in the distant past of course, before the gods had hammered out their cosmology. When the two planes were separated (I believe it is customary to call such an event the Sundering) the Elves had to choose which side to attach their civilization to. Obviously most of it ended up on what would become the Feywild. Some parts stayed on the mortal realm. But the owners eventually moved back to civilization. This created what looked like ruins. They're more like boarded up houses. Since then the planes have been moving further apart. It's still relatively easy to hop across onto the first layer of the Feywild. But reaching the Elven civilization is a perilous (and possibly campaign ending) journey into the Deep Feywild. Most mortals aren't aware it's there and the Elves tend not to tell them. So what about these hunter-gatherers? Well they've always been there too. There have always been High Elves who prefer their cities, and Wood Elves who prefer their forests, and voluntarily live primitive lifestyles. It's a style thing you see. These guys can move back to civilization whenever they wish. They probably will in a few decades or centuries. But you won't notice because they will be replaced by different elves when they do. In any case the High Elves are somewhere else and some of the Wood Elves are still here. Since humans only have reason to encounter the Wood Elves, it gives the impression of a lost civilization. But that's far from the case. Edit: The reason these primitive elves don't get guidance from the Fey, is the Fey find the mortal realm hostile. They can only cross over during the solstice etc when the planes get closer together. Likewise a druid can create a summoning circle that is safe for a Fey to exist within for a short time. Other than that, if you want to talk to a Fey, you need to journey back to the capital. Edit: As for other sentient species $-$ since your world is based on North America $-$ one idea is to take distinctively American animals and make them anthropomorphic. For example the Racoon, Bison, Prairie dog, Turkey, Skunk, Armadillo, Bears, Beaver. The Beaver in particular sounds really interesting. Normal beavers have a huge impact on their environment as they flood sections of a forest to create lodges. What changes if the beavers are bigger and smarter? [Answer] I would say there is an almost infinite amount of ways things can go wrong. So I will discuss certain general ideas because your question lacks more context into the empire and it's structure. For example a single dominating family type empire, think Ottoman empire, would have a devastating power vacuum if the ruling family all died. On the other hand a feudal monarchy, like a lot of European monarchies at certain times, would not care much if the king got beheaded as the duke/jarls/lord...etc hold enough power to be able to function on their own. Even better is a stable empire with stable power transition, think current democracies, and stable enough economy and institutes. You will have to go out of your way to bring that one down. Anyway to actual ideas. The fall of the Eldar, from Warhammer 40k. Having grown so much and dominating the entire galaxy they messed things up too much because of how advanced they are. It's quite interesting. Magical pursuit Not far off the first one. But in this one the most powerful wizards of the elven race did nothing but push and push and push their own magical powers to the point that something horrible happened. I mean call a demon with enough ability to flatten the capital, or conjure up a strong enough curse to wipe out 90% of elves, or have your magically connected cities all get burned or frozen or something similar. Again knowing more about them can provide us with enough to create a specific doom or fall for that empire. But anyway like I said magical pursuits gone to far seems an obvious one Famine Lets assume your elves grow most of their food in one valley or country. And let's assume it gets wiped out. This is basically the USSR or China all over again, not politics just referring to things that did happen. Have one terrible harvest and then the government ignore the thing. Next years things are worse and in 5 years your empire can be brought to it's knees as people don't have food. Bonus point if they control most of their landmass or even they drove out the weaker states around them thus making trade a problem. You can describe a famine of such a magnitude that the royal guards new duty becomes trying to secure enough grain for the royal palace. Heck. Add dangerous magical experiments to further ruin the soil and ability to grow crops in the whole empire. Rebellion Oh boy. Ayleids like control of the empire. Humans are mistreated for so long then stuff gets real. Humans are rebelling in every single settlement. And for extra points your ruling elven overlords take a page out of the bad rulers book and handle it with excessive violence. Rows of gallows, rape, confiscation of property, and just total brutality. Congrats. The first wave is done. The what? Yes. The second rebellion is worth. Humans gathered around leaders who target local elven centers of powers. The overwhelming numbers and good coordination means that they can actually manage to overthrow enough places to start being a problem. Now this is mostly in remote or small towns and cities. But few extra ordinary human figures can indeed threaten an empire. Have this rebellion, just saying, be as brutal and intelligent as it needs to be. Humans who cooperated with the elves are brutally tortured to death, elves are subject to good old murder and rape and their wealth is also taken to be redistributed, think Communism or Roman republic political cleansing. I won't bore you with the details as I'm sure you can describe a good rebellion. With the good here meaning successful. Economy USSR or Roman empire basically. Roads degrading, currency is inflated, grain collection is messed up, good administration is completely gone...etc. Maybe you don't have a long list of civil wars. But undermine the economy and your empire starts to degrade until it falls apart. This takes time depending on the strength of the empire. But they all fall. External opposition Duh. Maybe your elves just thought to declare war on god. Maybe your version of Normans landed on the shores and thought: hmmm. This place needs to know of our peaceful ways by force. Whatever it is the conflict destroyed the empire. Human/Elven marriage It's no surprise that marriage is mentioned in the death of nations. Here is my little theory. So with time humans in the empire existed like just little upstarts. Like a newer middle class. Fast forward 4512 years, or whatever, and not a single elven bloodline is pure. Perhaps they are so darn hot that humans prefer them. Perhaps they like us. Or, more likely, that smaller and less powerful elven blood lines mingled with humanity to gain more influence. Those were shunned but after they added wealth to public office or noble right then they started to eclipse their fellows. So the older families join the race and in few generations there are few pure elves left. So maybe a strong enough noble just marries a girl or a boy with ties to the thrones and starts pushing it. Secession war, they win. Elves are a thing of the past. Perhaps it's a civil war at a certain point. Heck. The half bloods, can't find a smarter name now, don't need to win. if they simply establish themselves enough in the state they can gradually gain more power. Or maybe it was more natural with no wars. Just humans breeding and gaining too much power Humans oppressing elves seems like a stable in some stories like The Witcher or Dragon age. So I though to add this. I'm only focusing on the initial fall as it is the most vital. The rest is easier. Anyway with more context we can provide more detailed and tailored answers. [Answer] *No disaster - a return to the true path:* These are elves we're talking about, and super-druidic ones at that, right? Do you think druids are going to go for white columns and coliseums? There was no disaster. The elves decided that ultra-civilization was corrupting their collective spirit. The ones that couldn't give up civilization went elsewhere (another land, another dimension, transcendance - whatever). Classical AD&D has High Elves, Grey Elves, Drow Elves, and most critically Wood Elves. * High elves can be the ones from where your colonizers are from. * Grey Elves are those that moved on from your elvish paradise - maybe there's a lost civilization somewhere like Atlantis with these folks. Make them evil-ish, and you have your Aztec equivalents. I love the idea of an elf with a macuahuitl. [![Macuahuitl](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mwZ9P.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mwZ9P.png) * Wood elves are the ones who decided to chuck civilization out the window and return to oneness with nature. Who knows, maybe they could have fought the Grey Elves and driven them out, but they're elves - everyone decided to part ways. Your new world isn't filled with piles of magic junk because the Grey elves took the good stuff with them, and the Wood elves said good riddance. The buildings were simply abandoned, and are slowly crumbling as nature intended. The Wood elves don't value all the treasure and stuff, but traditionally they were fairly xenophobic. They ARE elves, and remember the civilization, with the greed for wealth and power, so when they meet folks who think that way, they don't respond well. Still, they are elves, and can retain as much civility and tech as you care to give them. Beyond that, it's entirely up to your storyline. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SUlyY.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SUlyY.jpg) [Answer] ## Eggs in one basket Isn't all this free food and energy we get from the magic mountain great? We can spend all day dancing and hunting for fun, we don't need to develop agriculture, teach anybody to read or write, or develop transport or breed horses. We can travel anywhere in our kingdom instantly, and we can have hundreds of children knowing they will be fed forever. What do you mean its running out? Ridiculous! Its been working for three thousand years. Why would it stop now? [Answer] Invaders come, and they brought diseases. The Aztecs were invaded by the Spanish, the Spanish had a technological edge but the diseases they spread were far more dangerous in the end. In your case the invaders are less technologically advanced, but bring a dozen deadly diseases previously unknown to the Elves. By the time the Elves realize something's up it's too late: large swathes of the population are already infected, the magical cures available only remove the sickness and many people are re-infected before they even leave the temple. The mages are simply exhausted and incapable soon and the population is decimated by the diseases. Perhaps there was a chance to rebuild, but the Elves could have seen this wide-spread decimation by sickness as a sign from the Gods, or magic, or they think it has to do with too much populace in one place and refuse to build large settlements as a way to protect against disease spreading again. In the end they ended up as an almost Barbaric race... even though to them it might seem as the only natural way to have a society. [Answer] The forest dwelling elves are spirits. My favorite scene in Guardians of the Galaxy was when StarLord landed on Morag and used a hologram device to view what had been. He could see the old city. He could see people walking along the old paths. The things that had happened left traces, and in some way still persisted. Were they still happening? It is also shades of Stranger in a Strange Land; the Martians could perceive what was but also what had been, because things never really finish, only change. The aboriginals have been there a very long time. They are the spirits of the most ancient elves who once lived that way. In their heyday, the High Elves would sometimes visit these ancient spirits to learn and be renewed. The High Elves are gone but these even older spirits remain. There are things older yet. These spirits do not think of themselves as spirits. They can be killed, but they will return after an hour, or a day, or a century. They can hunt and they can eat and they can love and hate. They have names. If you ask one why it persists in the world while other things are born and then die, they might ask if the questioner is sure about that second part. They might point out that seasons don't fear the Reaper. [Answer] ## Cataclysm Something, either elf-made or natural, happened and it was so utterly and incredibly devastating that out of sheer psychological shock power was invested in extremely conservative, survivalist attitudes. By the time the effects of the cataclysm receded, those cultural mores were deeply ingrained and resistant to change - the past was viewed as semi-mythical, and those who venerated it or sought to bring it back were viewed as best idiots and at worst as revolutionists. Mostly, they are ignored, which means any technology or power they bring back dies with them. Twist: The elves took greater shock from this than other races that exist in this land - the gnomes, centaurs and bescriddni (the scale men) tried to reclaim the technologies of their own lands which while considered lesser to the elves were not that much worse, but were stopped by consistent and relentless raiding by the elves. The elders of the elves, longer-lived than other races, were still shellshocked and eventually such dogma became part of elven culture - that the gnomes and bescriddni would resurrect great evils from the past if given the chance and must be watched, and guided, away from such things. The centaurs can be trusted more (having embraced the elven ideals to make the raids stop) but still must be watched just in case. ## It Loves Us Elven civilization didn't end, it was ended. Only through luck and great sacrifice did any elves survive the gaze of the thing they, in their hubris, woke up. It still lives. And it waits for the first sign of the magics of old, to find the race of elvenkind and show them its boundless love. Horrifying, deadly love. Naturally there are quite a lot of elves who really, really don't want this to happen. Largely they are known as the order of druids, and they don't share this information with regular elves because it's so horrifying that it is hard to live life knowing that only a paper's width separates you from a fate far worse than death, and in fact claims elves yearly (a fact which is hushed up with grave secrecy and deadly seriousness by the elves who know). Twist: During colonialism there is a shadow war going on amongst the elves, of those who want to turn the thing on their colonialist oppressors and those who think that even if they all die they absolutely cannot let that thing loose intentionally. Little do they know that the humans already know about the thing and that is why the empire came here to colonize them - a cabal of secretive mages who sought to harness the 'great power' of the 'eldritch beast' and to some degree succeeded, although, probably, not for long. ## Elves? More Like Schmelves Elves are actually fairly alien rather than just being humans with really, really, really amazing hair. When something becomes passe, they simply lose all interest in it. Civilization was a grand experiment rather than something that truly benefited them, and returning to the wilds makes perfect sense to them. That's not the only place where there's a discontinuity when compared to human thinking - it permeates almost any interaction humans have with them, falling directly into the uncanny valley that makes humans uneasy as all hell. This is why, generally, everywhere the colonial empire goes.. elves die. Twist: Elves are alien because they aren't elves. Something took over the elven race a long time ago, by whatever means, and changed them into the form they currently take today. The purpose of doing so, or what was achieved by doing that, is not known.. but may become relevant when the process of colonialism disrupts the elves' 'traditional' way of life. -- There's a fair few other options. They ran out of some resource that was essential to their civilization and collapsed so hard it threw them back into the stone age, something killed off all elves beyond a certain age (continuously) for a period throwing them back into the stone age, there was a big war they comprehensively lost against a much more powerful enemy that mandated they never again use their civilization-enabling magic, their religion demanded they forsake technology so they did, so on. Generally what you're looking for is something forcing people to give up nice things, or some kind of frame challenge - they don't think of them as nice things. Then you want to make that interesting. Generally you do that with a 'but' or an 'except', although it can also be a 'why'. They lost the war, but unbeknownst to them their war foes collapsed due to unrelated reasons and the rules they are still enforcing are not actually still required. Their religion demanded they forsake technology but actually it was a mistranslation etc. You can start with some pretty boring why's if you then expand it with further questions that make a more complicated (and thus realistic) situation. [Answer] A mighty empire has to encounter a mighty end which makes its cities unlivable. Any kind of war or afflictions like drought and tidal waves, earthquakes and meteorites, locust plagues and ancient feared cataclisms can scatter a people... at 1300bc there were the boat peoples that ravaged the greeks and egyptians, in 1600 there were the conquistadors who emptied the mayan cities and sent the mayans fleeing for the deep wilderness, where some of them still hide from us, like in the marshes of the Orinoco delta. [Answer] You may be thinking about this the wrong way. What make you think that something special need to happen for a mighty empire to go down? Maybe the ivory towers and marble arches were the singularity that could only happen due to a very fortunate conjunction of unlikely events, rather than the side effect of a steady stable state of your elven empire. Imagine a short lived golden age allowed by great leadership, peace and widespread cooperation toward the goal of building these impressive display of power. However, once the leaders got old and died, dissentions emerged and no one could foster the needed ressources towards these projects. They may have been beautiful, but the people had simply other priorities than moving marble blocks over thousand of kilometers to build arches that they did not really need in the first place. Slowly they stopped to be maintained and fell out of use. The elves went back to they old ways. Not because they explicitly rejected the glorious constructions or because the empire was destroyed by some external force, but because no group of sufficient skill ever had the will to reproduce it. It takes way more collective efforts to keep your university running and to build coliseums, than to live in harmony with nature in small communities. Now the elves looks at this ruins with irony, they know they could do it again but despite the sympathy they have for them, they can not understand what kind of madness pushed their ancestor to do it. More importantly even, they do not consider themselves to have fallen, their life is good, albeit simple. [Answer] Through vast expanse of time gone by the elves notice that with the accumulation of knowledge, a culture begins to degenerate. (not 'degenerate' as in a moral term, but as in a 'de-evolution') To counter this they move their culture to a structure more in tune with nature... and distributed to avoid extinction from natural disaster. Add a couple repositories of knowledge that only a few can understand... To the question of other species...possibly artificial life (not mechanical but possibly magical/obscured genetic technology?) that looks just like natural life with some role in preserving the knowledge and culture of those before. [Answer] Agricultural Collapse A somewhat more mundane explanation, but nevertheless a potent one. Elves had such great control over nature and druidic magic that they were able to push their agricultural productivity well beyond what non-magical techniques would allow. Their population exploded (slowly, perhaps, since they are elves after all), and with it, so did their power, influence, and prestige. Eventually, however, the source they tapped into began to run dry. Perhaps the climate changed, or perhaps there was some disruption in the magic they used, or perhaps it was simply the natural result of overusing that magic. They put more and more of their resources into learning and wielding druidic magic; whereas a thousand years before you needed only one druid in a village to feed everyone, now everyone needed to know at least basic druidic magic just to feed their own families. Families which, due to the scarcity, became smaller and smaller. The empire's end didn't come from some apocalyptic war, but an exodus; with food becoming more and more scarce, most elves fled their homeland and mingled with natives in other lands. They realized that their magic was the cause of their decline, and decided to abandon it to avoid repeating their mistake. By the current generation, it's not uncommon for non-elf locals to have slightly elven features, even if they've stopped noticing it. The elves that stayed in their homeland, however, tirelessly weave their magic simply to keep it from turning into a barren desert. [Answer] ## Shorter lifespan The high elves were a simple yet wise society who lived in incredible harmony with the lives of the forest. They lived for hundreds of years, just as long as the most ancient trees of their mighty land, and actually, their whole society was in peace no thanks to complex hierarchy and balances between tribes, but because the savyness of the elven leaders prevented them from unworthy business like war. Then something happened, that made drained away the magical life breath of elder elves, elven society fell apart completely as the youngsters couldn't take advantage of the better judgement of their elders, especially as it used to be so important before. Why did this have to happen? Maybe a magic cataclysm, or an environmental disaster caused by the elves losing their old way of life, or an incident of the kind, caused by a greedy hidden society of sorcerers. ]
[Question] [ So, werewolves only transform once, after they were infected, either by another werewolf or by an unknown disease. From there, they remain in a human/wolf hybrid form with their human mind intact (except for the necessary firmware updates). The "animal side" only takes over either during full moon or when the werewolf is really scared. In terms of psychology, the animal side behaves like a wolf that considers humans prey. That's all. A werewolf, controlled by their animal side, won't necessarily be aggressive; injured and scared werewolves will run, especially when alone. Obviously, since they aren't inherently evil and because they still care about humans, werewolf tribes lock themselves up during full moon. Now, temporarily trapping the tribe has several difficulties: 1. Purebreds: Purebreds are born as werewolves and make up the majority of most tribes, other than that, they aren't different from the ones who were once humans. I never said werewolves were sterile, which means tribes can get pretty large. 2. Werewolves are good climbers: Being stronger and more agile than regular humans, though not to ridiculous degrees, makes them difficult to contain AND keep safe. These are werewolves, not catgirls, if they fall, it's gonna hurt. Similarly, if they try to overcome other physical barriers through sheer force, they could end up hurting themselves. 3. They have to get out of there once full moon is over, and only when full moon is over. 4. They have limited resources: Werewolf tribes avoid humans and in terms of material and intellectual resources, they're also limited. Most werewolves were humans (usually from cities) with various jobs before they were turned. They, of course, pass the knowledge down to their children, but that's all. 4.5. Resources: In terms of resources, the problem is the limited "territory" and nomadic lifestyle. Werewolf tribes usually stay in heavily forested areas, as they're adapted to those and because it makes it difficult for monster hunters to track or pursue them. Using the help of humans is obviously out of question. So, just how could werewolves hole up somewhere and wait out full moon while minimalizing the risk of injury/death of nearby humans or their kin? The world's technology is the same as late-medieval Europe. ## The answer The full-moon festival is held every, you guessed it, full moon. Though drinking alcohol isn't allowed, you can find other ways of recreation, more on that later. The spirit of this event is two-sides, the initial party is for socialization, and the end, like a COVID-19 quarantine, emphasizes on slowing down a little and spending time with close friends and family. The most anticipated part of the festival is, of course, the feast. The feast usually ends at around sunset. The purpose of this event isn't just to have fun, you see, there are incense burners that help suppress the smell of humans and animals and have a mild calming effect. Similarly, most of the herbs that are used to spice up the food are normally used as sleep medication. The doses are low, of course. So after the festival is over, everyone goes back to their homes lock up and go to sleep. Their tents tend to be sturdier than what humans use. Though these tents wouldn't be able to stop the entire tribe, they don't have to, they're mostly a safeguard to keep anyone who wakes up too soon from wandering off. For monster hunters, attacking a tribe after full moon festival is still dangerous. You see, other than being tried for crimes against humanity, there's something else. There are tales of monster hunters who tried to pull off such attacks but all of them went missing shortly after entering the forest. Later, they were found hanging from various trees and heights, kilometers away from where they entered, ~~much to the joy of Logan Paul~~. The ropes themselves were unremarkable. However, every single "victim" had an expression of fear on their faces, and judging by the dirt marks on them, must have been dragged to the tree. The way their necks were broken also seemed strange. Rather than one big fracture, there were many tiny and medium ones. [One can only imagine what could've caused it](https://youtu.be/zmDlvHkFjq4?t=1408). The more paranoid believe that the trees themselves came to life and had violently strangled the monster hunters, but then there's the mystery of the notes left behind, usually stuffed into a victim's bag or pocket. This is what they say: "Let them be and I let you be - Nooser" [Answer] Sweat lodge / opium den. [![sweat lodge](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nmUbd.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nmUbd.jpg) [source](https://ridingwiththetopdown.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/kathleen-about-that-sweat-lodge/) When the full moon is coming, the nomadic lycanthropes build a sweat lodge. Maybe of branches and skins, maybe excavated; it depends where they are and what they have. Then they all go in. They burn certain herbs and the lodge fills with smoke. While in animal form they doze, and have visions. Maybe some howl in their altered trance state. As the sun comes up the fire goes out. They wake to the sun. It is a bonding ritual for the tribe. Sometimes the visions have power. Very occasionally a nonlycanthrope is invited to participate. [Answer] ## Construct a sea-cave that requires two low tides to escape The human-form tribe members can enter into the innermost chamber (which can be quite large) on the day before the full moon. Regardless of the swimming prowess of the hybrids, it should be possible to construct a system of locks that utilize the [tidal range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_range) (0-16m/50ft) either as a strict water barrier, or that lifts some heavy floating material. This shouldn't require more than medieval technology, and you say that the tribes are sizable. There is also a certain romance to it. [Answer] I may misunderstand this, but you said > > In terms of psychology, the animal side behaves like a wolf that considers humans prey. That's all. A werewolf, controlled by their animal side, won't necessarily be aggressive; injured and scared werewolves will run, especially when alone. > In terms of psychology, the animal side behaves like a wolf that considers humans prey. That's all. A werewolf, controlled by their animal side, won't necessarily be aggressive; injured and scared werewolves will run, especially when alone. > > > A house that's large enough could be used. If the werewolves behave like wolves, they won't be opening locked doors. That's all. However, it would be safe to add multiple locks onto those doors as an extra safeguard. [Answer] This is going to be an incredibly boring answer. You said that when they're in animal form that they act like wolves, well, what would a wolf do if it woke up in an enclosure which it felt safe in, felt well fed, and the elders were all laying about grooming eachother? Not much, probably just hang out with everyone else. If you watch video of animals in their natural habitat, they really just sit around a lot when they're fed. So if you have a huge feast as was suggested by other answers, you probably won't even need a complicated lock. Just a cozy environment to spend the night in. I think the key here is taking advantage of the animal instinct that if it is in an environment that it has never associated with negative memories, and it's bodily needs are met. It will usually just stay there naturally. [Answer] I don't think this is as good as other existing answers, but I feel the need to "fix" [nick012000](/users/43757)'s [answer](/a/173991/43697)... ### Chains If they don't have human intelligence, all they need is a chain, a collar/manacle (that will fit their transformed form; this is *really important!), and a really sturdy staple to secure it all. You can use pretty simple locks (read: the sort of warded locks that were available in medieval times) if there are no tools available. Don't use ropes; ropes can be clawed or chewed through. Attach your anchors to rocks; really big ones that can't be moved without tools. (A cliff face or the side of a cave will do quite nicely.) Unless they have some sort of penance fetish, however, your wolves will almost surely prefer to be able to move around rather than being immobilized. It's a lot more comfortable in general, and especially* when nature calls. If they don't understand locks in full wolf form, you're done! I would, however, recommend having two (or more) keys which are also secured to chains so that a) you have a backup, just in case, and b) they can't accidentally lose the keys or kick them out of reach or whatnot. If you need a little more sophistication, put the key inside a puzzle box that they won't be able to open in wolf form (due to intelligence or dexterity or both). Again, just make sure they can't simply break open the box or kick it out of reach, and have more than one if possible. This might still be useful if building an enclosure is a problem. ### Have backups I really can't stress this enough. Whatever you do, build in as many contingencies as possible. Consider whether your werewolves would rather accidentally kill some puny hoomahns (use fail-safe mechanisms) or get themselves killed (use fail-secure mechanisms). Assuming they would rather not die themselves, they should use as many redundant release mechanisms as they can manage, and more importantly, should split into as many separate groups (with completely independent release mechanisms) as possible, so that as long as one group can free itself, they can go check on the rest in case something goes wrong. And again, if at all possible, have someone they trust that is not a werewolf promise to check in on them. There's a reason it's strongly recommended to not engage in dangerous activities without a spotter, and it's hard to imagine a scenario in which this is more true than intentionally imprisoning yourself. ### But wait... Can you trust a normal human? If your "outsider" is just a backup system, then you may be okay. But what if he sells you out? When you're locked up, you're vulnerable. One way you could fix this is by also locking up the human. Leave him the key to release the wolves, and leave the key to release him out of everyone's reach. He can't get free without releasing the wolves (after they turn back, because otherwise they'll just eat him), but he can't get free himself without releasing the wolves. If you can find someone that's actually trustworthy and trusts the wolves in turn, they might even volunteer for this. Alternatively, you can always use slaves and just never release them; if they don't release the wolves, they starve. Again, have backups. [Answer] Bureaucracy, outside help, and an "air raid" shelter. Werewolf communities need to keep meticulous records of population. Who is born, who dies. Who goes off into the woods and doesn't come back. This lets them know each and every person who is around. A few days before the full moon (Since those things can be calculated), they go into a shelter. A cave might work, but caves often have secondary exits and weird places where people can get trapped and lost, so it would have to have such places closed off. The population is checked. Every person is accounted for, and ensured that everyone is in the cave. Someone from the "local" human population would come and lock the entrance, and a few days after the full moon would come and unlock it. Now, why would the "humans" trust the werewolves? Well. For one, the bureaucracy of tracking everyone. And, if someone goes missing, the Werewolves immediately notify the local humans. The locker/unlocker could be a volunteer, or a squad of soldiers, or whatever the local humans deem fit. Now, what happens inside the shelter, and the design of it, depends on how the moon affects them. If they need to see the moon to be changed, then they're fine. They spend a few days in the shelter, carrying on largely as normal. In this case, the lock is largely to make sure accidents and inquisitive children don't happen. If it affects them regardless of if they can see it or not, then the shelter has to be designed around their animalistic selves to ensure there's nothing that would be injurious to them. Nothing that can be climbed and fallen off of. Nothing that an animal would attempt to force and get stuck in or injured on. This even works with a nomadic people - They have several set up, and make sure they are at one of them when the moon is full. The humans "nearby" (I'm imaginging they're not particularly close, just the closest), also knowing the moon phases, could send someone out to assist. Maybe a family member of someone that was turned? [Answer] 1. You can get padlocks & even handcuffs with timers on them, some of them are pretty heavy duty, if you don't want to make a trip to the hardware store you can order delivery online. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xQ3y4.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xQ3y4.png) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/liVNN.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/liVNN.png) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gu8BU.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gu8BU.png) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8qBGY.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8qBGY.png) Combined with a strong cellar door (or a heavy duty steel security door if you must) & there really shouldn't be a problem. Just be sure you put all the tools out of the room before locking yourself in. None of that stuff is particularly expensive & is all pretty easy to get hold of. 2. The other really obvious precaution is to have really big pig-out the day before the night of the full moon, when I say 'big' I mean unreasonably humongous, that's stomach stretching "I'm in no condition to do anything but lie here & be very still in case I hurt myself" huge. You've said they're psychologically like ordinary wolves during this time & wolves don't hunt when they're stuffed. 3. Drugs, off the shelf sleeping pills & whatever else they can get hold of so they sleep through the full moon, a helpful doctor friend (or relative) might be good but so much of this can just be bought online & delivered by post that it really isn't isn't necessary. A practical knowledge of wild herbs can also stand in for this. 4. And finally something topical, "social distancing", go camping. Make sure you're over a day's journey on foot from the nearest people before the full moon & that you've no other means of transport to hand. Of course you can combine all four of these with a good solid concrete bunker somewhere in the wilderness miles from anywhere. > > Edit : A timed lock for the medieval era. > > > You might not think timed locks are very likely or easy to come by in a medieval setting. > > > But, then again, perhaps not. > > > First find yourself a cave. > > > Then you need a big rock (too heavy to move unaided & big enough to block the cave). > > > Now you'll need some rope some wooden pit props a source of water & something to sling your rope over, this all needs to be outside the cave. > > > Sling the rope over your 'something to sling a rope over' & tie the rock to one end & the bucket to the other such that your bucket is hanging in the air over your head, fill the bucket with water so that you can now lift & move the rock, place it over the cave entrance & wedge the pit props under it to keep it there when you empty the bucket, you know have to arrange for water from a nearby water source to drip into the bucket (you're going to need some piping). > > > Enter the cave kick out the props (or tie ropes to them & pull them away) & the rock slams down locking you in until the bucket has filled enough to let you move the rock. > > > Some experimentation with bucket size, drip speed & what have you may be required to get the desired timing > > > After the tragic early cave opening & subsequent village slaughter the first time it rains they'll realise of course that they have to cover the bucket so only the intended drips get in. > > > Voila! & there you have it, one crude water clock locking mechanism. > > > If your werewolves have access to craftsmen or else have the necessary skills themselves the same principles can be applied to something a bit more sophisticated in a normal cellar or they might use a clockwork timer & locking mechanism you set on the outside of the door. > > > [Answer] Perhaps split the tribe into groups and have them locked in a room with doors opened by a pulley system from the other room. That way when the full moon is over the other group can flick the levers or pull the ropes in the proper order or pattern to release the other group [Answer] # Pet Humans Apart from all the other solutions, like an [opium den](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/173954/3391), just give the keys to a few normies. You get in the cages/shelter/dens as a human (with enough props to keep a werewolf entertained?). The non-werewolf closes the locks, wishes them good night and goes to bed. When s/he wakes up they go to the cages/shelters/dens, unlock the doors and wish them good morning as they wake up. You can play around with the meta, like that the non-werewolves also sleep in a cage for when the werewolves break out, they still cant get to you. Or that because the non-werewolf is a nice guy, when they turn and encounter the non-werewolf, they have a deep feeling of security, feeling safe with this human. [Answer] What if they don't need to lock themselves up? What if they found a better way? You said they behave just like wolves, right? This means their brains work like regular wolf brains except without years of memories, life experiences, and more importantly pack-experience. So how about this: when werewolves are in human-form, they domesticate regular wolves and turn them into a pack. They then train the regular wolves to be friendly around humans, and this way, when they turn into wolves themselves, the real wolves can teach their wolf-forms how to act and behave in accordance to the "pack law"—not sure the scientific term—, and thus they learn to be friendly around humans since that's what they taught the pack while in human form. They should also let their domesticated pack have an alpha (and not try to fill that roll themselves while human). This way, the alpha can maintain social order and hierarchy when they turn into wolves. So now, when the full moon happens the werewolves don't lock themselves up. Instead, they do the opposite; going outside to fall in with their personal, domesticated wolf pack. The pack then guides and teaches them 'how to wolf', and the alpha keeps them in line allowing them to safely learn how to behave as animals. --- In this universe, the reason werewolves have a bad reputation isn't because they are just inexplicably-evil killing machines but because their wolf-selves are basically children in adult bodies. Having never lived in a pack, they lack basic animal social skills and don't know how to behave around others. They lash out because they are scared; never having learned otherwise. (Also, being chained and locked indoors each time you wake up is probably terrible for one's mental health and might lead to some anger issues, unsurprisingly...) Thus, waking up into a real-wolf pack and having a knowledgeable real-wolf alpha allows their wolf-selves to function naturally as animals do and gives their tribe high mobility because they don't to be tied down to any location or structures. They are able to live peacefully and can rely on the pack to teach them how to behave and on the alpha to keep them safe and in line. --- Hm... wouldn't it be cool if someone wrote a story about this, except on the day before the full moon some dumb hunter killed their alpha. Imagine the fear and anger—and fear of anger—the tribe would experience going into the night; not knowing the kind of world they will comeback to when they wake up. Who will step up as alpha? Will restraint in the pack prevail? Or, will the loss of their leader set the pack on an irreparable path to destruction? [Answer] # Bondage gear. With the proper rope-tying skills, all that it'd take to restrain a werewolf would be about 50-100 feet of rope per werewolf restrained, and their moderately-superhuman strength would wind up working against them - the harder they pull on it, the tighter it would get; modern-day kinky rope bondage techniques are derived from the techniques that were used by Japanese policemen to restrain criminals. Then, when the morning comes, they wiggle over to each other and untie each other's knots (this is a process that gets much faster once one of them has freed their arms). And, of course, depending on their tech level, they might have access to more advanced bondage gear, and that might make things easier for them. Locks, chains, leather belts, etc. [Answer] Related to nick012000's answer: They tie themselves up, including a muzzle so they can't chew through the ropes. The ropes are actually easy to escape from when the end is loose--but it's not. It goes up, over a beam, over a water trough, then across something that burns well and is tied off. A lit candle is placed on the the flammable stuff and some sort of shield is placed over the candle (keep it from being blown out.) The candle burns down, the rope burns through and falls in the water to extinguish it. Now it's easy to escape, but the werewolf is trapped until it burns down. ]
[Question] [ Assume a guy who has a lump of silver, and needs to get it into really small pieces. Ideally down to dust level, if possible. The technology level of the society around him is comparable to late-roman (200-400 A.D). From my research I already know, that they had no real steel, but high quality iron for the use in tools. How can he produce tiny fragments of metal from a solid chunk? * Will heating the chunk help? * What about other (harder) metals, like platinum or tungsten? Any chance with that? [Answer] Well, one way they could do it is to use a file, essentially a tool-steel bar with an abrasive surface, and rub it against the surface of an ingot of silver. This would produce a relatively fine powder though it would be a painfully long process to get a lot of it. [Here is a video showing how The Romans could have made files](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOw9WqMOHjA) Another option is to dissolve some silver in Aqua Regia, a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid. Adding urea will then consume the residual nitric acid and ferrous sulphate to precipitate fine silver powder which can be filtered out of the solution. Assuming the Romans had access to these chemicals, they could use them in order to create a very fine silver powder. One thing to note, silver is resistant to Aqua Regia at room temperature. In order for the silver to be broken down, the temperature, pressure, or concentration of acid must be changed. [Here is a link to an answer on Chemistry.SE which explains it](https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/a/67205). [Answer] Roman age? I can give you a stone age method: Grind it between two rocks. Silver has a [mohs hardness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness) of 2.5. Granite has a mohs hardness of 6-7. So you can use a rough granite stone to grind silver to dust. It might take a while and take some muscle, but it should work. When you are lazy, you might try to just throw your silver into a grain mill. It should work if the millstones are from a mineral which is harder than silver and if the mechanics are sturdy enough to handle the stress. [The Romans had water-powered mills since the 1st century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbegal_aqueduct_and_mill). [Answer] # The [trip hammer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trip_hammer#Early_history) was historically used for this First, this process is called [comminution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comminution). In the most ancient of days, to break up an ore into small chunks to work it in a forge, you simply hit it with a rock hammer. Eventually, the process improved until some sort of mechanical power could be applied: enter the trip hammer. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cBhrX.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cBhrX.jpg) [Image source.](http://www.mooseforge.com/Tools/hammers.html) A water-powered trip hammer is essentially a very large hammer, mounted on a fulcrum, with one end (the [helve](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/helve#Noun)) moved by a [cam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam). The cam is in turn driven by a water wheel. Alternative, you could have a donkey or ox provide the motive force, though there isn't a lot of evidence that this happened. There is significant mechanical loss in older mechanical systems, lubricated with animal fat and made of wood. A donkey powered trip hammer probably provided no mechanical advantage to a slave with a sledgehammer. The trip hammer was used for exactly the case you describe, pulverizing rocks to find gravel. The gravel could then be reduced in a furnace to extract valuable materials. This is historically how copper, tin, silver, and gold (along with rarer metals like antimony) were extracted and refined from ore. As far as hardness goes; don't even worry about it. You can break up rocks using other rocks. Find a polish the hardest rock you can get, and use it as your hammer head. When it breaks, replace. In Roman times in the 4th century AD in Britain, there is an find of large iron hammer heads used for pounding ore. The water-powered trip hammer is certainly in use in Han China by the first century BC. It is potentially in use in China several hundred years earlier, and there is sporadic evidence that it was used in the Roman empire from the 1st to 4th century AD. It returned to Europe in the 12th century where it achieved its widest use; and the mechanical principles behind its operation were crucial to the Industrial Revolution. An alternative, used often in the Islamic world with limited access to waterpower, was the [stamp mill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_mill), though this was not attested until the 10th century in Central Asia. However, creating a stamp mill is feasible with a Roman/Classical-era technology level. [Answer] Several possibilities: * You could heat the silver, beat it into a thin plate, and then cut it into small pieces using scissors or a knife. * You could probably use a file or iron or stone to grind the silver to dust, since silver is less hard than iron, not to mention stone. * You could melt the silver and make it drip into water and collect the droplets. [Answer] Cupellation: <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupellation> Cupellation is the process of heating ores to separate noble metals (silver, gold, etc) from them. Silver is pretty reactive so finding silver by itself in nature is kind a hard so you are more likely to find it bonded with something like lead. If your silver is still one solid chunk then all you need to do is heat it in a furnace and then cut or hammer it into smaller pieces. Or pour the molten silver into multiple canals that lead to multiple molds. Silver is a pretty easy metal to work with compared to iron and the Romans where already knowledgeable in iron working (Celts were better smiths however) Smelting silver and silver working has been around since the bronze age so to someone with Roman tech smelting silver is a easy process. Heck the Romans where able to make alloys like pewter. [Answer] Silver can be formed into leaf almost as thin as gold with primitive technology. This is easy to break up. Also with a few earthenware jars and dissimilar metal electrodes you could generate colloidal silver. This is of atomic particle size so that should be small enough for you. granted it will take some work to process a few ounces. ]
[Question] [ Is it possible for a group of stone age humans to survive and thrive with a humanist mentality, believing not in supernatural entities and magical thinking, but simple scientific observation and the power of human achievement. I'm not saying they don't have fairy tales and just-so stories, but the ones they do have are known to be lies-to-children (in the Pratchett sense) or outright fictions, even by the children (and those who don't know this are considered pitiful or even downright dangerous). I'm also not saying they don't have wrong beliefs, only that when they discover their beliefs are wrong, they are willing and able to correct them to the "right" ones. The one belief they will not change is the belief that everything is explainable by observable, physical phenomena. They consider all explanations that invoke "spirits" or "gods" to be lies-to-children at best, and all "rituals" must have a transparent connection to their claimed result - that is, one that doesn't rely on placating "spirits" or "gods". To preserve the moralizing effect of the belief in an eternal soul, suppose instead they value genetic immortality in the form of producing children and memetic immortality in the form of raising children, and the society ostracizes those they deem unworthy of both - chief among them those who honestly believe the lies-to-children and cannot be persuaded otherwise. Obviously, there will be splinter groups with a more "traditional" religious mindset that get shunned in their entirety, but will there be enough of the stone age humanists to survive, both genetically and memetically, for any length of time? [Answer] This question is really asking, "Is belief in the supernatural an inherent part of the human make up?" I submit that it is. A key component to the development of humanism is that it arose in the conflict between a number of religions. When everyone around you believes a religion, you will believe it also. When a trader is moving between groups of people and encounters a different religion in each group, that trader gets the experiences needed to start questioning all religions. Western Humanism has its roots in the people who traveled from Europe to many other parts of the world. They saw that different religions could be believed elsewhere. As humans, we believe in a structure beyond the visible. This starts early when a child can start to believe that people out of view are still there. We augment that with language. In short, belief in the supernatural is an outgrowth of our cognitive abilities and language development. It takes effort to not believe. So, in the stone age, people did travel long distances. A person buried at Stonehenge came from Germany. Stones were brought from far away. Thus, some people could have had the experiences needed to question. [Answer] The issue with your idea is that there is no way for the tribe to be able to parse between what we would consider obviously supernatural explanations and physical ones. The reason that humanism became popular is because of the advent of technology that allowed us to prove and disprove certain beliefs. God stopping the sun in Joshua makes no sense in a universe that runs on heliocentricity. Spontaneous generation makes no sense when you can isolate and sterilize something see that nothing grows on it. In a world where you only have Stone Age hunter-gatherer technology, how do you know that a volcano erupting or lightning striking isn't because some god or spirit did it? How can you prove otherwise? There's no way to test either Oog's hypothesis that Vulcan did it or Ugh's hypothesis that it was due to natural processes deep below the Earth's crust. The thing is ancient people weren't stupid. Their beliefs in gods and spirits really were things that made logical sense to them. And in many cases the beliefs did have actual reasons behind them, they worked but not for the reasons that ancient people believed. For example the Chinese Mandate of Heaven may seem silly until you realize that widespread famine and disaster can easily be caused by governmental mismanagement instead of divine providence, and it could be taken as a sign the government is incompetent and must be deposed. In many cases their beliefs became outdated and you had people desperately holding onto them through faith alone, but the original reason they were adopted was not because they were stupid. It was merely because they didn't have a complete understanding of the phenomenon. And to be honest more recent scientists aren't much better, what with historical researchers believing all sorts of dumb ideas that don't make it into the science textbooks (e.g., Newton and his mysticism). Another question you have to ask is what purpose does this behavior serve? The scientific method became popular mostly among Western aristocrats who had enough resources and time that they could afford to sit down and run repetitive experiments to rule out all possible alternatives, or sit on their butt theorizing and writing equations. For a Stone Age society that is more concerned about day to day survival and is working a lot of the time, and who does not have a need for complex mathematics or have access to things like paper or parchment, what good does this behavior serve? In terms of day to day survival, the superstitious person will do just as well (if not better, due to higher caution) than the humanistic one. Additionally, because of their Stone Age technology, your tribe would disregard a lot of ideas that thanks to science we know today are actually real, simply because they lack the technology to observe and visualize them. To put it another way, your tribe would scoff at the idea of DNA/genetics, space travel, other planets, continental drift, and evolution, because it cannot be explained by the physical phenomena that they are able to observe in their environment. [Answer] No, not because they are inherently superstitious and illogical, but because you are putting too many restrictions on them. Apollo and his chariot pulling a big ball of fire is just as reasonable an explanation as living on a huge rock whose insides burns but doesn’t turn to ashes circling an insanely huge amount of gas that is burning an insanely long distance away. And the parts of the explanation where we go “I don’t know” aren’t evidence that the parts we have an explanation for is wrong. And at their level, a belief that everything is explainable by observable phenomena is illogical. Because what they can observe is so limited, and knowledge is passed down through oral reports. Even today, 99.9999 percent of what people know is not known through personal observations or test, but through stories we hear from other people that we trust. Someone saying that Tefnut makes it rain is no more absurd than that the water evaporates, rises miles into the air for no particular reason, condenses and then falls to earth. Less even, as at least Tefnut has a reason to make it rain. If instead, you simply do not have such beliefs and just shrug and say “don’t know”, that works. There’s no reason to claim to know why it rains, and if you don’t claim to know there’s no problem. And if someone claims it’s Tefnut and someone else claims it’s Indra, and your personal answer is “I don’t know”, that works. [Answer] Science, or better a scientific mindset, is not given by just repeating the same "right" information over and over. Doing so is not different from the ipse dixit which stopped progress after Aristotle. Science is the habit of verifying every statement by formulating an hypothesis and experimentally testing it (falsifying it, a la Popper). For a stone age man there is little to do, because there are no means of performing refined experiments: life is a struggle to survive to the next day, the knowledge is gained empirically but there is no need nor reason to move to more complex systems. Don't forget that the first scientific subjects like geometry and astronomy came to be when humans needed to measure land and time because from that it depended their harvest. [Answer] ## Yes and They Exist Today Many Pygmy tribes living in Africa have no concept of gods, supernatural beings, or religion what so ever. This is not because they actively reject religion so much as they have never been exposed to it so they just don't have it. The theory here is that religion requires the passing of religious ideas from one generation to the next. In larger civilizations this is easy because even if a few parents decide not to pass on their religious beliefs, their children still tend to be exposed to them from other people in their society, but if you have a very small society like you see in some stone aged tribes, it is much easier for everyone in the group to just decide to stop teaching religion for a generation and see it completely disappear from future generation's collective consciousness. In this respect, it is actually harder to eliminate religion from an advanced civilization than it is from a very primitive one. [This answer on History.SE](https://history.stackexchange.com/a/7404/46451) cites Will Durant in his The Story of Civilization about the pygmies, but I can not find an original source from Story of Civilization itself to link to. [Answer] It's possible for a people to follow a belief system that excludes the possibility of non-human agents as a matter of faith. It's no more unfalsifiable than the alternative, nor is it going to get them killed (unless, of course, in your world, it is wrong). But it would take a lot of faith, and a fairly advanced understanding of statistics and psychology. Modern humans know that if you randomly drop points in a 2d plane they will appear to cluster, and that if you look at enough pieces of toast you should expect to see a certain number of Virgin Maries by chance. But these pieces of knowledge are themselves technologies. They might be hard to develop, or to teach, without reliable access to machine-generated randomness, the sort of physical security that lets one feel safe in ignoring what might be an omen, or the industrial capacity to have a truly large number of anything. They almost certainly depend on writing. You'd also expect this to affect other aspects of culture. Would a society this dedicated to the idea that only people do things develop the corporation? What would their opinions be on animal welfare or animal interiority? How would they handle contact with aliens? After thousands of years not explaining lightning, would they even have a desire to investigate it when that became possible? They also might have trouble with some modern scientific theories. If they reject invisible deities, why should they accept invisible electric fields, particles that weirdly are also waves, or a table full of a hundred chemical elements with just-so properties and individual characters? [Answer] According to Evolutionary Psychology the sort of development you're talking about is extremely unlikely due to the difference in survival outcomes due to Type I and Type II errors, especially with regard to agent detection. The classic example is the lion in the grass. If you're a primitive pre-sentient animal on the plains of Africa and you see a patch of grass moving you can either react as if there is a dangerous animal in the grass or assume that the grass was moved by the wind or some other non-life threatening cause. The first assumption will lead you to take more care, run, prepare to defend yourself, etc. while the second will not. If it was just the wind then neither option significantly affects your survival probability. If there is a lion stalking you then the first option is much more likely to result in your survival. In scientific terms a Type I error is a rejection of a true null hypothesis, in this case by accepting that there is a lion in the grass. Type II errors involve acceptance (non-rejection) of a false null hypothesis. Type I errors in survival situations like this are survivable, while Type II errors tend not to be. So even before a species evolves to true sentience the ancestors of the species are already likely to have developed to rely more on the assumption that everything is trying to eat them than the more rational but less survivable approach. The result is that early humans are inclined towards seeing agency in the world around them. Since this agent detection is a major survival advantage it becomes embedded deep in the psychological and social structure, and is trained into the children. Everything that happens is more likely to be attributed to some agent, seen or unseen. From there it's a very, very small step to attribute every natural phenomenon to one or more hidden agents - spirits, gods and so on. Even the idea of a soul/spirit can be derived from the same line of thinking. When a person dies they go from being an agent to a lump of cooling meat. Clearly some change has occurred, and it's not difficult to make the leap that something has left the body, taking the 'agency' with it. From there you can start having all sorts of interesting thoughts about what happens to that spirit, whether it goes into the environment or moves on to some other place. Fear of death is such a major survival advantage that it's unsurprising that an intelligent creature would combine it with departing agency, comforting themselves with the idea that they could live on after death. And now we've managed to account for about half of religion, and it's an easy stroll from here to the rest of the fundamental religious concepts. Of course the theory has all sorts of challenges, but it certainly seems to fit the world as we observe it today. Most animals will react to anomalous noises and movement as if it were caused by another creature. Deer will spook at the sound of a falling branch, even insects react to unusual changes in the normal environment. It's the part between animal and human that is slightly questionable, even if it makes sense to us. In order to not develop overactive agent detection your early humans would have to evolve in a very different environment where survival was tied more to their ability to rationally process their reality rather than spooking at every unexpected event. If there were no successful predators around for a few thousand years then survival would perhaps be tied more towards working out how to best gather food. Unfortunately the reduction in survival pressure would also likely result in a much longer evolution, and it may even stall completely without a suitable survival challenge. [Answer] # It's backwards. Hunters are totally, completely rational: like dogs. Let's go with Dawkin's terminology, the "God meme".† The "God meme" is that there is a supernatural, rather than just straightforward, explanation for things. The notion that humans - let's say - 100,000 years ago had the "God meme" is very likely ass-backwards. Hunters and gatherers are as practical and on-the-ground as our good friends the wolves/dogs (from whom we learned to use pack techniques in hunting). When grain growing began, you had criminals (aka "government") who wanted to eat without working. It was a step from there to government's bedfellow in Leading-Not-Working, religion. Hence the "God meme" arrived, taking over from "normal" hunting era humans. --- † For the record I do not* here endorse nor unendorse Dawkins in any way, but his terminology is the best!* ]
[Question] [ Exactly what it says on the tin. How far ahead of the rest of the world could a civilization be before others catch on and start using the newer tech for themselves? For instance: is it feasible for a country to be at a 1890-1912 tech level, whilst the rest of the world is more near 1750-1820? [Answer] When the English began settling in Australia they were at late 18th or early 19th century level whereas the Australian aborigines didn't even have Stone Age technology. A difference of some tens of millennia. (As a commenter observes, not all Australian aborigine tribes had lost stone age technology; some did use stone tools.) When [Cortés](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hern%C3%A1n_Cort%C3%A9s) arrived in Mexico the Spanish had 16th century tech whereas the Aztecs were in the Late Stone Age. Some 6 or 7 millennia of technological difference. In the [First Opium War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War) the English had bleeding edge mid-19th century tech whereas the Chinese had roughly mid-16th century tech. A difference of some three centuries. (This is a gross simplification; the history of China was particularly divergent from the history of Europe from the 13th to the 19th century. But the basic idea is true enough -- they were two or three centuries behind Europe, technologically.) When [Commodore Perry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_C._Perry)'s [Black Ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Ships) arrived in the Edo Bay in 1853, the U.S.A. was about 200 years more advanced technologically than Japan. And don't forget that social, political and commercial know-how is technology too. The Romans did not have much better weapons than the barbarians, but had much better juridical, political and social systems. Closer to our days, from the 17th to the 19th century a [private English company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company) become ruler of India. In the right context a civilisation can be much more advanced than the rest of the world; for example, in the 19th century the European civilisation was decisively more advanced technologically than the rest of the world; about two centuries more advanced than Asia, about five centuries more advanced than Africa. (At that time, the Americas and Australia no longer had functional indigenous civilisations.) This resulted in the vast European colonial empires, of which the collapse left us with the complicated world we have today. [Answer] For the specific time period you cite, yes. But as you get later and later, it gets harder and harder for that to be true. This is because technology advances on [an exponential scale](https://singularityhub.com/2016/03/22/technology-feels-like-its-accelerating-because-it-actually-is/#.WUmdyBgrJD8)--which means what time period you chose is crucially important. It's called [the Law of Accelerating Returns](http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns). In later tech where computers are more of a factor, technology has and will increase exponentially. This doesn't mean that another country won't ever catch up (because, at least while we are on earth, it's difficult to isolate a country completely), but it does mean that tech advances a lot faster, and while a 20 year difference in, say 1650 wasn't that big of a deal, it is today. In modern times what actually happens is a mix. For example you might have cell phone towers in a country with barely any flush toilets. To have a country, utterly and completely be approx. 100 years more advanced than everywhere else would mean: * They have no contact or trade with anywhere else. In real world examples, nearly everywhere was more advanced than say, the Americas when it was being discovered by Europeans. In this case, it was by thousands of years. That's not possible today. As time wears on, and communication networks expand, it gets harder and harder for a country to have that much of a gap--and advancements happen very, very quickly these days. A third world country for instance, wouldn't have to go through all the stages of development for a technology (cell phones are my example here) they just benefit from the more end-stage convenient version, going from no cell phones at all to everyone having one. For your country to be this advanced and the rest of the world not, they would, for sure, have to be isolationists, and somehow have booming economy with no exports or imports beyond a very specific level of tech. And they could not allow anyone in the country from outside. But, it's unlikely for this to happen wholesale. As given in the 3rd world example, other countries might benefit unevenly from their tech while lacking in other areas. In our own history, imperialism, which was rife at the time, succeeded in spreading technologies to less advanced places and gathering wealth to the most scientifically and technologically advanced countries. Actually, as a model country, I would be looking at England from say 1760-1870 and compare that to the US. The exchange of ideas like the cotton gin from the U.S. and various technologies from England to the U'S. and other countries pushed them forward. I can't imagine how that would have been possible for any of the countries without the exchange of ideas. Unfortunately the rule on this planet has mostly been: Advancement spreads, stagnation isolates. And you are looking to the opposite of that in a realistic way--but it's only possible if you build your world in a way that separates countries from each other. That's why the gap between the rest of the world and the Americas existed at the time of their discovery, otherwise it would not have been possible. [Answer] Tech level is a nebulous, reductive, and ill defined concept. There are currently subsistence hunters like the [San](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_people) in southern Africa who still practice a traditional hunter gatherer lifestyle. They hunt using the same basic methods that humans have used for hundreds of thousands of years. At the same time if they have access to such modern inventions as the plastic bag, water bottle or sneaker they will readily use them during these traditional hunts. There is no easy way to apply tech level to such a group. It's theoretical that a country could have a 100 year lead on the rest of the world but you can assume that simultaneously every foreign power is going to be engaging in espionage to reduce that gap as soon as it becomes apparent. An example of this is the westernization of Japan during the [Meiji period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_period). [Answer] I think there is no limit. Beyond a certain point, your visiting tech will simply be unapproachable to the primitive neighbors. If you left your tablet among a group of primitive hunters who lived off the land, they could not even keep it working once the charge was down. There can be trade of individual useful items, like cloth and finished blades. But who cares if it requires 21st century metalergy and fab techniques to make that blade? It might be somewhat better than plain steel but it's not a game changer; it’s still a knife. Likewise synthetic fibers and dyes. There can be various attempts to bring infrastructure in, like the most recent episode of Nova where they expended great effort to bring electric lights to a remote location. But doing so is an effort and there is no reason why that must happen. [Answer] > > For instance: is it feasible for a country to be at a 1890-1912 tech level, whilst the rest of the world is more near 1750-1820? > > > In a world of humans who undertake rational economic behaviours, I would say no, at least in the long-run. For this question, I will also be interpreting 'tech' on the lines of productivity, economic production, and military technologies. Any technologically advanced nation will require large amounts of economic output to support that technology, that society, and the consumption which made that technology possible. In a world where there are lots of people everywhere, i.e. the technologically advanced nation does not have a monopoly on the world population, there are two major mechanisms, which I feel, would be rational to pursue, and which would lead to the diffusion of technology. Colonialism and imperialism The first would certainly fit into a 1890-1912 period. Colonialism and imperialism are results not out of evil persons and character, but rather, the technological, economic, and military domination of a certain society over another. I would argue that something like European imperialism was not caused by Europeans being horrible people, but rather, by the fact that Europeans had a massive technological advantage over their neighbours. Colonisation would lead to the diffusion of productive technologies as the primary purpose of empire is economic and political. Empires cost money to maintain, thus, the metropole will want to extract economic value out of it. Or, they will do so due to political concerns (e.g. British invasion of the Sudan in the 1890s to check French expansion into the same area). This means that railroads and other pieces of infrastructure will be built. This will necessarily diffuse technology, because railroads have to be maintained. Military or political networks require logistics. All of these will require employ of the native population, which will require that they assimilate technological advances from the metropole. Furthermore, as colonialism and imperialism will also be resisted by indigenous populations, those populations will also likely assimilate technologies necessary to strengthen their societies, expanding their economic production and war-making powers. This means that such technologies would also diffuse to nations willing to reform. Foreign investment The second major mechanism would be foreign direct investment. Today, the surplus of labour in developing countries and low productivity means that wages are low. This gives strong incentives for corporations or organisations from the metropole to invest in foreign nations, and therefore, spread production technologies, which would allow for massive expansions in economic production, as we see in places like China and south-east Asia today. Even if there is no foreign direct investment, entrepreneurs from one nation will almost certainly steal or copy technologies from abroad. The production of silk was heavily regulated in China. It travelled to India anyway. The technology of water and steam-powered looms was heavily regulated in Britain. It travelled to the United States anyway. This is simply because a market opportunity exists, and it will be filled in time. Real-world examples The real-world examples of massive technological gaps, like Britain and Afghanistan circa 1912, have to do with the fact that places like Afghanistan are effectively unconquerable and unable to support Industrial age technologies (for various reasons). It would probably break the wilful suspension of disbelief for the rest of the world to basically be such a place. [Answer] Yes, it is possible to be so far ahead the other culture cannot catch up, but your example span is likely not in that category. Just suppose I take my solar-powered hand calculator with an LCD display, the one that can solve differential equations, back to the time of Newton's birth. Not only is the technology beyond their grasp, the entire theory of operation is beyond their grasp, because it will be 30 years before anybody on Earth has any idea of what a differential equation even is. If you are dealing with things easy to learn and clearly analogous to something else, then the natives will catch on and catch up. If your technology looks like magic and is impossible to figure out just by looking at it (with the tools they've got), they cannot catch up. An integrated circuit is one thing that falls into that category: Nothing in Newton's world could have shown him the patterns on an integrated circuit, and even then nothing in his experience was like a transistor, capacitor, binary logic, or electricity. It would be too much, it is too many layers of invention to comprehend without a guide and teachers explaining each one. Seventy years of innovation is one lifetime, and possible to learn by the best and brightest. Three or four lifetimes of innovation, discovery and found applications? That is just too much, at least since the Renaissance and embrace of science, it has been. [Answer] The Amish and Mennonites maintain a lifestyle and culture far from the technological. They do not drive cars or use electricity for the most part abhor most modern tools. They continue a lifestyle that while it works for them, most would find backwards at worst, or quaint at best. They have neighbors who embrace a far higher technology than they do. So it is quite possible. And apparently in some cases preferable. [Answer] 1. This is a question of communication. If earth is more advanced than a planet 20 light years away, then the only way the creatures on the distant planet will know about earth's technology is if they communicate with earth creatures. Other posts describe similar contact between physically remote groups on earth hundreds of years ago and yet no one on earth does not have a cell phone today. 2. This is also a question of ability. Dogs have watched while humans hunted with spears, knives, arrows, guns and yet they have not adopted any of those tools. 3. If you just want to consider humans, then you also have to say this is a question of philosophy or religion. The Amish refuse to adopt all but the most basic advancements of modern American civilization. ]
[Question] [ In my world, I am running into a problem with how to trigger psychedelic experiences in psychologically typical individuals without using psychoactive drugs. I want the means to be naturally based, in that no chemicals or technology is required, because the United earth convention (UEC) has banned all modern technology for consumer use and banned all drugs that are not strictly necessary (due to a war with the Evil Green Men). Physics is the same. It is a really tough time for the average Joe, and the UEC doesn't care, they invest all their resources into building starship, hovercraft, plasma rifles, high end biotechnology enhancements, FTL communication, and the like. So the consumer needs a way to kind of will themselves into hallucinations, to enter another world. ## Is it possible for someone to will themselves into a psychedelic experience, or otherwise experience things that are totally unrealistic, wihout the use of drugs? [Answer] There are some states of consciousness which can be reached by following given procedures which seems to resemble the states induced by consuming psychoactive drugs. Deep meditation is one of them; another one, if I remember correctly, is [Sufi whirling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi_whirling). In addition to the above, using a [sensory deprivation tank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_deprivation_tank) can result in an altered state of consciousness because, in layman's terms, the brain, deprived of the usual stimuli, starts making them up to keep itself busy. [Answer] ## Sleep deprivation Stay awake. Keep staying awake. Watch the pretty lights. A group can keep each other awake much easier than a single person can. Different people have different thresholds for this, but most need at least 36 hours before things start getting interesting. Be aware that this is NOT HEALTHY. If the government wants to find these people they can look around for people walking into doors and such. [Answer] ## Banning Modern Technology Makes Regulating Drugs Harder > > United earth convention (UEC) has banned all modern technology for consumer use and banned all drugs that are not strictly necessary > > > The vast majority of the surveillance that governments do on thier own people these days is done through modern consumer products. Phone logs, GPS, Text Messages, Emails, IoT Devices, Social Media, Credit Card Transactions, Vehicle Checkpoints, etc. are the means by which a modern police force catches you in the act of breaking a law. When you look back to before these things existed, law enforcement was a very difficult and labor intensive matter with a huge window for uncertainty. The problem with this setup is that many mind altering drugs are super easy to make without modern tech. A person can grow mushrooms, poppies, or marijuana using nothing but basic gardening tools; so, the more tech you take away from a person, the easier it becomes for them to hide thier contraband. While the UEC may make drugs illegal, they will still be the main go-to for psychedelics because they are cheap and easy to produce, and your best remaining option after you've taken away any sort of modern or future-tech consumer goods. [Answer] In recent years, there's been considerable press about Trans-Cranial Induction as a treatment for various mental conditions, including insomnia and depression. This treatment works by using electromagnetic induction to induce currents near the surface of the brain that stimulate the region that receives the current. As it exists, it doesn't (AFAIK) produce hallucinations, but if the process could be modified to treat deeper brain tissue it very well might. There are no drugs involved, and the device that administers the induction is comparatively simple (it could probably be built by someone who scratch-builds radio equipment, for instance, though the existing ones use microcontrollers). [Answer] @Topcode's comment made me wonder What is a hallucination? At least in the U.S. I suspect most of us upon hearing the word "hallucination" think in terms of [Timothy Leary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary), [LSD](https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000795.htm), [the 60s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_era), and [tie-dye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tie-dye). What most people don't realize is that hallucinations (which I assume is what the OP is talking about) happen, frankly, all the time for a variety of reasons — and because they don't happen in concert with illegal, life-threatening drugs, we don't think twice about them. Other answers have dealt with many of the reasons for hallucinations. I'd like to present Phosphenes. > > A phosphene is the phenomenon of seeing light without light entering the eye. The word phosphene comes from the Greek words phos (light) and phainein (to show). Phosphenes that are induced by movement or sound may be associated with optic neuritis. > > > Phosphenes can be induced by mechanical, electrical, or magnetic stimulation of the retina or visual cortex, or by random firing of cells in the visual system. Phosphenes have also been reported by meditators (called nimitta), people who endure long periods without visual stimulation (the prisoner's cinema), or those who ingest psychedelic drugs. ([Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene)) > > > Deformity Phosphenes The effect of seeing pretty colors, stars, etc when pressing on your closed eyes (don't have to be closed, BTW) is called [deformity phosphenes](https://www.iflscience.com/why-do-you-see-weird-patterns-when-you-rub-your-eyes-46041) (see also [here](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00165665)). Basically, pressing on the eye physically agitates the nerves that transmit optical sensory data from the eye to the brain, causing them to misfire. The brain, not knowing (or caring) what causes the neural stimulus, interprets the signals as "light." So @Topcode's right, one solution is to rub your eyes. Note that an allergic reaction that causes swelling around the optic nerve will also cause deformation phosphenes. (Allergies would be a good worldbuilding solution to your problem.) Migraine Phosphenes Those articles also point out that migraine headaches and darkness can cause phosphenes. Migraine headaches are not entirely understood and the hallucinations they cause is thought to be due to electrical "static" or misfires in the brain itself. Afterimage Phosphenes Another phosphene comes from looking at things too long. Stare at a black dot on a white background long enough and when you look away, you'll still see the dot. This is called a [negative afterimage](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ghost-hand-illusion/) (there are positive afterimages, too) and it's a hallucination that's not dissimilar to phosphate burn on old computer monitors. Do you remember the days when there was an actual, electronic reason for screen savers? Yeah, they were literally saving your screen, because if the same image was just left there for too long it burned itself into the CRT's phosphate and remained, forever. This is the same thing, just without the permanence or Microsoft. You can see hallucinations because you stare at something too long. The Ghost Hand Illusion Darkness phosphenes are a bit more complex. Have you ever toured a cave when they shut off all the lights and ask if you can see your hand? Some people claim they can. In a few cases, they actually can because they have very light-sensitive eyes and there's enough phosphorescence in the cave (which most people can't see) to produce a barely-discernible contrast (I'm one of those people. Believe me, it's a curse, not a superpower). In most cases (about 50% of the population), the effect is called the Ghost Hand Illusion. Your brain knows where your hand is and in complete darkness will "project" (identify within the brain) the location of the hand. Remember, you're in complete darkness. There isn't a darker color to work with. But your brain knows where your hand is and "identifies" that with what you think is a darker shadow. Which is a fancy way of saying if you can trick the brain into believing something is there, it'll happily help that trick along by creating a false image to support it. The brain is amazing... Similar to the ghost hand illusion is the activity of the brain in a sensory deprivation tank. Just as the brain knows where the hands are, the brain knows something should be going on. In normal circumstances, there is always some sensory input (even when unconscious or in a coma). In these instances, the brain supplies its own sensory input — just as it did for the hand. And... Other Phosphenes Out on the fringe of thinking (I can't actually verify this one) is the idea that light comes from more sources than the sun. Fireflies are [used in the example of this article](https://theswaddle.com/seeing-colors-when-eyes-closed-phosphenes/). It's suggested that the human body (specifically the retina) also has some bioluminescence, and when you close your eyes, your eye's sensors start picking up on that. Well... maybe. I'd like someone with better credibility than blogs to chime in on this one — but hey, this is worldbuilding and imaginary worlds is what we do. [Answer] Fall asleep Although dreams are not typically considered "psychedelic experiences", they're an extremely common way to experience something divorced from reality. There is some evidence that one can affect the likelihood and vividness of dreams by their diet, bedtime routine, sleep environment, and mental state. Dreaming is almost certainly the most common way for people to "enter another world", and requires no special equipment whatsoever. [Answer] ## Huffing solvents Disclaimer: This answer is probably not what the OP wants, but is viable in world (as described, until the plot hole is plugged). You can get as high as a kite sniffing glue or petrol or some other completely essential solvent while not measurably\* decreasing the volume of glue or petrol that you have for gluing or driving. \Outside a lab, anyway. [Answer] /Like seeing spirals everywhere, or watching a leaf fly in circles, or hearing electronical sounds when there is no electronics/ [![psychedelic vr](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKoocm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKoocm.png) <https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/24/psychedelic-vr-meditation-startup-tripp-raises-11-million-series-a/> Your person enters a VR world with visual and audio components. Attendants also hold tubes of various intriguing odorants under the noses of these people and cats walk on them. Cats walk on the VR people on their entirety, not just the noses. Or your people can go the other way and float in a sensory deprivation tank. Probably someone who has never heard of sniffing glue will be unfamiliar with the film [Altered States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_States) but when you float in the tank many a strange vision ensues. Also William Hurt turns into a chimp man which is maybe something you can use. [Answer] [Ganzflicker](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34172274/). Coincidentally I just learned about this from [this article](https://www.inverse.com/science/ganzflicker-effect): > > FOR MILLENNIA, people have used mind-altering techniques to achieve different states ... Perhaps the most powerful technique of this kind is flickering light, called “ganzflicker.” Ganzflicker effects can be achieved by turning a light on and off, or by alternating colors in a rapid, rhythmic pattern (like a strobe). This can create an instant psychedelic experience. > > > > > Ganzflicker elicits striking visual phenomena. People can see geometric shapes and illusory colors but sometimes also complex objects, such as animals and faces — all without any chemical stimulants. Sometimes ganzflicker can even lead to altered states of consciousness (such as losing a sense of time or space) and emotions (ranging from fear to euphoria). > > > Ganflicker effects were documented over 200 years ago. > > Ganzflicker’s effects were first documented in 1819 by the physiologist Jan E. Purkinje. Purkinje discovered that illusory patterns could appear if he faced the Sun and waved his hand in front of his closed eyelids. > > > [![ Jan E. Purkinje’s documentation of the subjective visual phenomena he saw when he waved his hand in front of his closed eyes.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iZgoz.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iZgoz.jpg) Shown above is Jan E. Purkinje’s documentation of the subjective visual phenomena he saw when he waved his hand in front of his closed eyes. This technique is reported to have been practiced by North African tribes for much longer. You can even try it yourself with the ['Dreamachine'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamachine). [This article](https://www.reshannereeder.com/gysins-dreamachine) contains links to instructions on how to create your own. WARNING: Ganzflicker effects should not be viewed by people with photosensitive epilepsy or other nervous disorders. The ["Dreamachine Plans"](http://mindcontrol-research.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/14_2_dream-machine-plans.pdf) describes one such 'trip': > > "One person I know who exposed themself to its spinning glare came out of their semi-hallucinatory state talking seriously of visiting another planet, complete with aliens, cavepaintings and children" > > > To explain how Ganzflicker is an answer to the question "Is it possible for someone to will themselves into a psychedelic experience, or otherwise experience things that are totally unrealistic, without the use of drugs?", Ganzflicker is explicitly claimed to allow people to cause people to have psychedelic experiences, or otherwise experience things that are totally unrealistic, without the use of drugs. [Answer] One of your comments, > > or hearing electronical sounds when there is no electronics > > > gets the very point. Although the term psychedelic music* is used for an electronic music style which evolved in the drug scenes in the 1960ies, putting oneself into the state of trance by means of music was known long before. Listening to the rhythm and certain sounds which are produced by African percussion instruments or the Australian didgeridoo are perfect for putting people in trance. These sounds may also be accompanied by a certain dance, like the Whirling Dervishes (as @L.Dutch already mentioned). Disclaimer: I have never taken drugs. What I write about is being in an altered conscious state rather than having hallucinations. [Answer] This might fall under the case of "meditation," as suggested by several other answerers, but you might look into something called Holotropic Breathing. This is a practice of breathwork that was developed by psychiatrists Stanislav and Christina Grof in the 1970s to achieve altered states of consciousness (without using drugs) as a [potential therapeutic tool](https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-3204.33.1.114). It's got a very New Agey reputation and a lot of folks who engage with it approach it with a spiritual mindset. Basically, you do a specific pattern of quickening and slowing your breath and, so the argument goes, throwing your blood oxygen and CO2 so out of whack induces some mild hallucinations. Oh No Ross and Carrie, a podcast that investigates these sort of things, has a [two part](https://ohnopodcast.com/investigations/2017/10/21/ross-and-carrie-high-perventilate-holotropic-breathwork-edition) investigation on this, if you want to hear the perspective of two science-minded people going through the practice. This might be a good resource for writing about it, too. [Answer] I see 2 requirements to the question: (1) low/no-tech (2) no drugs. For the first part, remember that humans have found ways to alter their consciousness for thousands of years before the modern time, using various more-or-less easy-to-obtain substances and techniques, even for hunter/gatherers and agrarian peasants. For the second part, how does one define a drug? I understand that special extraction or synthesizing operations are out of bounds, but some common food substances do have some psychoactive effect. For example, see <https://food.ndtv.com/photos/9-common-foods-that-can-make-you-hallucinate-21227> - more can be websearched. (Although admittedly these examples all seem pretty mild...). And it is hardly noteworthy in some places to find someone that has a half dozen or even a dozen cannabis plants in the back yard in between his tomatoes and beans, or somewhere out in the sticks off the well-trodden paths. So one could have the production of some apparently completely innocent foodstuff, but by some (deliberate but deniable) accident in production (and/or storage) it is much sought-after by trip-seekers. I wonder if it could be possible that some strain of e.g. mushroom or cheese culture is "improved" through selection... Imagine, for instance, a rye bread if eaten as normal is just good nutrition, but if kept under "just the right conditions for a few weeks" (that the initiated know about) is a real treat for those seeking escape. (Not sure if rye bread is still a poor person's bread in some parts of the world as it used to be, in my locale to get 100% rye costs a pretty penny.) [Answer] # [Lucid Dreaming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream) When you dream, you are vividly hallucinating. It's possible, with some practice, to become "lucid" and recognize the unreality of what you're experiencing. It is also possible to make changes to the dream world (e.g. cause yourself to fly around, summon specific objects or people, erase objects from the world, etc). There are a number of techniques people can use to trigger lucidity: * Ask yourself throughout the day, during waking hours, if you're dreaming. If you get in the habit of doing this, you'll start doing it while dreaming. * Use LED goggles, timed to start blinking around when you'll be in REM sleep. You'll see the blinking lights in the dream, and hopefully remember what that cue means. * [Polyphasic sleep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biphasic_and_polyphasic_sleep) may make you more likely to experience lucidity. * Playing video games immediately before sleeping may also make lucidity more likely. Given the world you've described, I imagine that video games are probably not available to the average consumer. LED goggles may still be possible though, especially if there's lots of e-waste to scavenge. Having personally experienced lucid dreams, it does take practice to get right. If you become too lucid, you'll just wake all the way up and the dream will end; if you fail to maintain consciousness of the fact that the world around you is unreal, you'll lose lucidity and go back to dreaming normally. With experience, this balance gets easier to sustain. In a world where everyone is trying to find escapism wherever possible, I could see lucid dreaming techniques becoming quite popular. [Answer] The strict answer is no, since psychedelic experiences are mediated by endogenous chemicals in the brain. For instance, one of these is DMT, a very powerful hallucinogen linked with lucid dreaming. I can imagine a lucid dreaming sleep spa that secretly harvests DMT precursor from customers' pineal glands; then they sell free base on the black market. Other ideas I haven't seen others mention yet include congenital schizophrenia, flagellation, exhaustion (sex magic, fasting, dancing), hypnosis, or near-death experiences. Many would consider trance-like states, even those induced by immersive experiences like skilled storytelling or a good movie/book, an altered state of consciousness, if not strictly psychedelic. [Answer] Many cultures have a sauna or sweat lodge tradition. The combination of heat-induced dehydration and sensory deprivation can cause vivid hallucinations, without needing anything but a closed hot room. [Answer] There are many ways to do this, they just require more effort (or are more unpleasant) than drugs: * breathwork (especially holotrophic which was designed as a replacement for LSD when it became illegal) * meditation * shamanic drumming (rhythmic sounds) * kasina / tratika (staring at patterns) * lucid dreaming * sweat lodge * long periods in complete darkness * sleep deprivation * mental illnesses (eg. schizophrenia & mania) * near-death experiences * dream machines (very low tech, but not no tech) ]
[Question] [ I'm writing an urban fantasy story revolving around, among other things, vampires secretly living in the United States in 1998. And since the first two vampires came into existence in the area that is now known as Romania in around 1450, a question I need to have a solid answer for is when, exactly, they came to America, and more to the point, when that would have been physically possible. Sea travel is a bit of an issue for vampires, you see, for two very important reasons: 1: While the strongest of them can do things like fly, manipulate the weather and control human minds, they have a weakness to both the sun and open water. The celestial energies Earth radiates out from its core take on different properties depending on what non-gaseous material they last passed through. If it was more than three feet of water followed by less than three feet of any other solid matter, it will be as if a vampire were standing in direct sunlight. Either sunlight or open water on their own would rob a vampire of all of their advanced powers. Exposure to both at once would further rob them of their strength, leaving them weaker than the average human (and those are the most powerful; to any lesser vampire a combination of sun and open water would be utterly lethal). So no flying across the ocean; they need a ship. 2: In my setting, magical beings such as vampires cannot under any circumstances stray from human civilization for longer than a month, specifically during the full moon. A phenomenon known as moontime occurs every full moon, and it keeps the supernatural population in check by making any area that's seen excessive immortal foot traffic (more than 1 in 1,000 humans on average over the course of the month) exceedingly lethal for the immortals caught there during the full moon. Being caught out at sea with nobody nearby but the humans on a single ship, therefore, would be a death sentence. So the journey across the sea has to take no more than 30 days. I don't expect provisions to be an issue for the voyage. Vampires require a pint of blood every 12 hours they are awake, but can hibernate during daytime and they possess a magical method of preserving human blood in glass bottles, so no need to start draining their crew. With these facts in mind, when is the soonest that human seafaring technology could have allowed a vampire to survive the voyage from Europe to North America? [Answer] Your vampires can get from Europe to North America as early as you want by flying over artic sea ice in the winter. As you mention above Ice does not count as open water. This means that before the 20th century and anthropogenic climate change reduced the extend of sea ice in the artic, a superhuman can easily get from Europe to North America by crossing the artic sea ice in wintertime. The only real barrier to this is that your vampires would need to either be genuinely curious about what's out there across the ice or have some knowledge that there's another continent out there worth traveling to. [Answer] 1500 Pedro Cabral discovered Brazil in 1500. The trip across the Atlantic took 30 days. If it helps as regards number of nonsupernatural people, he had a fleet of 13 ships. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_%C3%81lvares_Cabral#Departure_and_arrival_in_a_new_land> > > The fleet under the command of the 32–33-year-old Cabral departed from > Lisbon on 9 March 1500 at noon... It sailed onward to Cape Verde, a > Portuguese colony situated on the West African coast, which was > reached on 22 March... The fleet crossed the Equator on 9 April, and > sailed westward as far as possible from the African continent in what > was known as the volta do mar (literally "turn of the sea") > navigational technique. Seaweed was sighted on 21 April, which led the > sailors to believe that they were nearing the coast. They were proven > correct the next afternoon, Wednesday 22 April 1500, when the fleet > anchored near what Cabral christened the Monte Pascoal ("Easter > Mount", it being the week of Easter). The spot is on the northeast > coast of present-day Brazil. > > > The Portuguese detected inhabitants on the shore, and all ships' > captains gathered aboard Cabral's lead ship on 23 April. Cabral > ordered Nicolau Coelho, a captain who had experience from Vasco da > Gama's voyage to India, to go ashore and make contact. He set foot on > land and exchanged gifts with the indigenous people.. > > > The Portugese colony started and there were already indigineous people there. Now your vampires are going to be stuck in the early Portuguese colonies for a good long time while things are built up farther north. I have to think that this would be a fine setting for a vampire fiction! [Answer] Based on this [page](https://outrunchange.com/2015/11/27/time-to-cross-the-atlantic-500-year-history/) listing the time for the transatlantic crossing, it seems around 1845 it would be the earliest moment. > > here is a recap of the above-mentioned transit times: > > > * 1491 – over 2 months > * 1620 – 9.5 weeks > * 1700s – six weeks > * 1845 – 14 days > * 1952 – 3.5 days > * 1957 – 14 hours by propeller plane > * 1958 – 8 hours – average of first trips by jet > * 1960s – a few hours > > > [Answer] Bering Strait. Go East, not west! If you want the really earliest, the answer is some tens of thousands BCE, in the pre-history of Homo Sapiens, during the last ice age. That's when sea-level was lower and there was a land bridge across the Bering Straits. This is believed to be how human beings got to the Americas in the first place. (Might Vampires have been involved in the horribly bloodthirsty Aztec religion? Perhaps, as gods or priests? Just a passing thought). More recently, the Bering straits is a chain of sparsely inhabited islands. ISTR the longest sea crossing is 80km. One can walk over ice in Winter, or one can cross in a canoe. How feasible this is for Vampires, you will have to decide. [Answer] They could follow the Norsemen in the 1400s from Norway to Faroe Islands to Iceland to Greenland to Canada. None of those individual journeys should last more than 30 days and there were humans in those places that they could consume for fresh blood. Just rest in each of those islands until the next full moon and set off afterwards. They would hear the stories of Leif Erikson finding a far off land to the west of Greenland 400 years earlier. The question is what counts as human civilisation. Faroe Islands and Iceland were settled by then. But they would have struggled in Greenland at that time as the Norsemen were gone due to changing climate. So they may need to go direct from Iceland to Canada. Could be doable. Ideally the journey would have happened a couple of hundred years earlier when Greenland was more hospitable. The last Norsemen were gone by 1450 as the climate cooled. There were Inuit, but not in the numbers required. If the Vampires existed around 1300 they probably could have survived Greenland during a full moon. There were between 2,500 - 5,000 Norsemen at different times between 1000-1350. I'm not sure how long it would then to take to get to the settlement in the Americas of sufficient size at that time though. [Answer] As others have suggested, you could just go north. This would require a flight of over 2200km (e.g Hammerfest, Norway to Alert, Nunavut). If a vampire can fly continuously as fast as the fastest bat (160km/h) that is only 14 hours. However, why do it and how would you know there was a safe destination? Alternatively, just go east, and then island hop across the Bering Strait. Just by flying up and exploring a little you'll always be able to see another island to try to reach. The strait is only 90km wide at its narrowest point. Instead of one huge leap into the unknown, just do a series of small steps with your destination always in sight. With a desire to just go east and starting in Europe, you'll get to the North American continent. Why stop in America? Well there are no handy islands to hop across the Atlantic so America is as far east as you can get without a huge leap into the unknown. [Answer] Although the timeline isn't quite clear, a vampire may have been able to travel with Columbus on his third voyage. While the complete voyage took several months, Columbus stopped over in Madeira, the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, and then traveled to the northern edge of South America. So each leg of the westbound trip was relatively short. Unfortunately, it isn't completely clear just how short the legs were. Of course, that doesn't answer the question as to when these legs occur. From the description, it appears that the condition isn't just "30 days per leg" but rather "must reach land by full moon" - which is a much tighter condition. So this trip would only work if Columbus reached each of the intermediate stops exactly at full moon, which is not very likely. Another question is whether there were enough people even at the destinations. It sounds like your vampires can only survive in cities, even rural villages might be a problem. Columbus wouldn't have reached any substantial cities, maybe not even on the intermediate stops. As for the second condition: the vampire could have traveled in a casket or similar, both to protect him from sunlight, and also to ensure at least 3 feet of solid material between himself and the water. Of course, you would probably have to answer the question why there would be a casket on board of the ships on that voyage. These were very small ships barely big enough to hold all the provisions needed for the trip. Edit: another option might be traveling with the Vikings. The Vikings settled in Greenland and Iceland until about 1500, so your Vampires would have to set out on the voyage very soon after the 1450 creation date, and then island-hop from northern Europe to Iceland and Greenland. Crossing from Greenland to the North American mainland would involve crossing many very short stretches of water, most only a few miles wide. [Answer] ## The 18th Century (1700-1799) Although it is confusing to sort out (because it is variously talking about sailing dates, publication dates and re-publication dates at the same time), this article from the Royal Museum: [18th century sailing times between the English Channel and the Coast of America: How long did it take?](https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/blog/library-archive/18th-century-sailing-times-between-english-channel-coast-america-how) which briefly summarizes official merchant and mail ship sailing logs from England to America in the 18th century makes it clear that the crossing time dropped well below thirty days sometime during this 100-year period. This quote describing the contents of one of the editions (reprints) of these sailing logs is relevant: > > This edition mentions that typical passage times from New York to the > English Channel for a well-found sailing vessel of about 2000 tons was > around 25 to 30 days, with ships logging 100-150 miles per day on > average. > > > Exactly when during this period it got under 30 days is unclear, but sometime around or after 1750 seems a safe guesstimate. ]
[Question] [ One thing I've always admired about The Legend of Zelda series of video games is how fairly modern technology and even groundbreaking futuristic technology is intertwined into a fantasy setting so well. Inspired by the Pictograph Box from Majora's Mask that's essentially a primitive handheld greyscale camera, I want to do something similar with my world. In real-life the camera didn't exist way until the 19th century, many a century after the dark ages came and passed, and even then it was long before the advent of the handheld camera or colored pictures. I'm not quite sure if I want my fictional culture having colored cameras yet, but I definitely do want them to have handheld ones that are capable of printing photos. In terms of other technological advancements they've made, they're pretty much what you'd expect. Melee weapons are the go to form of armaments, but they do own very primitive firearms. They have the knowledge to create such contraptions such as catapults and trebuchets, but they have no knowledge of electricity outside of magical electricity. They make up for their scientific simplicity with vast arcane knowledge. Magic is very integral to their culture, as well as their day to day lives. They could use their magical aptitudes to enchant or imbue physical objects with things like lights, or maybe even alter the physics of items. Maybe the camera could be less of a technological marvel and more of a magitech creation. Dunno how it would be able to print photographs though. [Answer] [Take a page from Sir Pratchett:](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Iconograph) > > An iconograph is a wonderful device that allows you to make "instantaneous paintings". In fact, an imp with brushes, pencils and a good eye for colours is put in a box, and when you push the button, you open a little window on the box and the imp draws really fast what it sees through the opening. Salamanders are used when more light is necessary for the imp to paint a good picture. All but the cheapest of today's iconographs can paint in colour. > > > Imps have no imagination whatsoever, and as a result, paint very accurate pictures. They do whatever they are told so long as it is within the limits of their training, such as being able to "zoom" in and paint in very small detail, or even to paint the picture of a cart and its number if it exceeds the speed limit. > > > (...) > > > Theoretically the lifespan of the imp is endless, but the imps of the cheaper iconographs seem to disappear rather quickly. Independently of this, the painting colours used by the imp have to be refilled as they are used up, and the imps themselves require regular feeding, though they seem to be able to survive without any form of sustenance for several weeks. > > > Normally, the user of the iconograph is called "iconographer", but another term could well be "Photographer". > > > [Answer] [Camera obscura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura) is an actual predecessor of a camera that evolved later into what we know as a camera. Note that neither camera obscura nor camera requires any electricity. If you take a simple camera obscura and add some magically created, replaceable photosensitive material where you can block the photosensitivity (again with magic), you essentially get a basic camera. It doesn't have to be very big so it can be portable. The image quality will be lower than that of modern cameras (it's enhanced by lenses) but that probably shouldn't be a big problem. If it is greyscale or colour will depend on the photosensitive material so you can modify it according to your needs. Since your photosensitive material is magical, you can play with it a lot, including e.g. making it textile based. The concept of camera obscura is very old. As Wikipedia suggests, the earliest written description of a similar device is dated before the 5th century. Combine it with a magician, who accidentally created a photosensitive material (considering it a failure in some other magical discovery, e.g. creating something edible) and left it inside a camera obscura (it could be just a box that had a hole just by accident) only to discover it "saved" the picture that was outside. Yet, the picture disappeared shortly after removing it from the camera obscura (box). So he started trying to find a way to preserve the image eventually finding a way to stop the photosensitivity. He then experimented a bit to get better quality photosensitive materials and you have your camera pretty much as early as you want. [Answer] In a very magic orientated society, where enchantment are common, surely someone has enchanted a piece of charcoal to sketch something on a solid surface? An artist wanting a self portrait, for example? And a telekinetic paintbrush can't be that much of a stretch either; Maybe someone had to paint a wall but couldn't reach the top so used magic to paint rather than build a ladder? Or maybe someone wanting to graffiti without being caught? If magic is widespread and common it will be used to solve mundane every day problems like this Theres a progression from this to more accurate magical drawing, drawing faster, drawing with thinner tips, using paints, mixing the colours closer to the real world visuals. If theres motivation, printed photos could develop from any process which enchants auto drawing in a marking tool. And there would be motivation, the record keeping of family and important milestones, same as our world. That's all a printer is really, an enchanted tool which drops tiny drops of ink. The enchantment is done in our world using electricity, why cant an enchanted quill dot out a photo the same way? Surely magic is capable of microscopic, highly accurate quill positioning? [Answer] Arcane magic offers several options to create photografic images. ## Scrying projection The concept of scrying and the associated implements is very old and widely spread throughout different cultures. With a few tweaks you could cause your scrying implements to create a permanent image: * A crystal ball emits such intense light that it can burn the image into a slab of wood or piece of paper (like a magnifying glass) * Instead of tossing bones or rune stones, you toss tiny pieces of charcoal that paint the image on the surface they land on * Thin oil paint is dropped into a scrying bowl filled with water (the oil will float on top of the water) and magically forms the image. A piece of paper can carefully be laid on top of the bowl, picking up the paint and capturing the image. * A spell causes a scrying mirror to rapidly oxidize and capture the image it's currently showing [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GCMuj.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GCMuj.jpg) [Answer] I love the magitech ideas (especially the Discworldesque idea - Sir Terry is definitely The Man for all technological things made magical). However, keep in mind that, even in our own history, we had alchemists. And while they may not have discovered a method to convert lead into gold, they did many chemical experiments. In looking up historical photography techniques, it's not inconceivable that one might have, through empirical experimentation, stumbled upon a method of treating paper (or glass) with silver nitrate and potassium iodide, such as was used in the [calotype process](http://www.ntm.cz/projekty/fototechniky/en/index.php?text=five), which is one of the earlier techniques, used as early as 1839. It might take a bit of hand-waving to plausibly move that invention earlier, but Leonardo da Vinci, for example, experimented broadly. What if he had devised such a process? At that point, photography is invented at least 320 years earlier, making it a Renaissance-era form of art. What if that had happened a few centuries earlier still, by some monk in a monastery? For example, I know that silver nitrate is occasionally used to remove sulphur compounds from wine. I don't know enough about historical wine-making, but if it was used for this (or other processes in winemaking), a method of photography could have been created through an industrial accident - a chemical spill, after which said monk made some observations, which he then tried to recreate in a more controlled fashion (contrary to popular belief, the Church as an institution has never been anti-science, and medieval monks were engaged in preserving knowledge). Many discoveries or inventions have happened through a similar process. [Answer] Viewing through parchment 1. Take a sheet of very thinly scraped parchment. Hold it up in front of your eyes. Through it you will see a fuzzy and dark picture of the scene beyond. 2. Stare very intently at a particular spot in the parchment where you can just make out something you are interested in. Gradually an image will start to form in that area. To you it will appear as though the parchment is becoming transparent. In fact, the opposite is true. The transparency is being replaced by an image on the parchment. Possible problems You must hold your head and the parchment very still otherwise the image will be blurred. If there is movement in the picture it will be very difficult to capture it. Human subjects must hold a pose for some time as you scan them with your eyes. You must be able to stare very strongly and with focus at the parchment during the process. It is possible to do this in more than one session but not easy unless the subject is inanimate. You can make stereo photographs this way but they will only work for people with exactly the same eye-spacing and eyesight as you. It is much more common to close one eye as you stare so as to get a flat picture. Scientific/Magical explanation When you stare at something, "seeing rays" come from your eyes as normal (see diagram below). The difference is that they pass through the parchment in both directions. Where they meet, they react with the parchment to make an image. Johann Zahn, ‘The Radiating Eye’ from Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium (1702) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uTO7U.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uTO7U.png) References 1. > > The eye has been the subject of conflicting interpretations since > antiquity. Many ancient physicians and philosophers believed in the > idea of the active eye. Plato, for instance, wrote in the fourth > century B. C. that light emanated from the eye, seizing objects with > its rays. > <https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/eyespages/eye.html> > > > 2. > > The above is backed up in more modern times. > > > Image of man using very concentrated seeing rays. > > > <http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111126061207/youngjustice/images/0/06/Superman_powers.png> > > > 3. > > Adherents of emission theory cited at least two lines of evidence for > it. > > > The custom of saluting is said by some to stem from the habit of Greek > soldiers putting their hands up in front of their eyes to "shade" > their eyes from the powerful "light" shining from the eyes of their > commanders[citation needed]. The light from the eyes of some animals > (such as cats, which modern science has determined have highly > reflective eyes) could also be seen in "darkness". > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory_(vision)> > > > [Answer] There is a cave far on the edges of the known kingdom. Inside this cave are crystals and a type of plant that has large, dark leaves. When exposed to the sun, these leaves will bleach out to white. However, if you were to contain these leaves inside of a box, where the only light is adjusted by a small lever that snaps a shutter in front of a crystal from the cave, the light coming in would burn onto the leaf, in a pale, correctly-colored hue. The pictures would not be highly defined. Once the image is burned in, the leaf dies and no more light can affect it. Over time, the leaf will become brittle and decompose. There is a technique to press these images over onto paper, essentially damaging the leaf beyond repair. There is only one copy of any image and it can not be duplicated. The device could be easily developed by anyone. There would be no focus until glass and lenses are common. [Answer] Have someone discover the chemistry and physics of photography several generations earlier than happened in our world. Why is that difficult? It’s true the camera didn't exist until way into the 19th C but don’t you think that’s a co-incidence? Why could it not have been discovered/invented, say, 500 years earlier even in this our world, let alone yourn? Zelda contributes what, here, please? Can Majora contribute something, or is your primitive greyscale what most people know as a black-and-white camera? (Did you notice the 19th C is vastly more than a mere century after the dark ages?) Again, don’t you think handheld cameras or coloured pictures could by luck and random chance have been discovered/invented generations earlier even in our real world, let alone yourn? When you’re not sure what you want, what might it take for you to get sure? What does “handheld cameras capable of printing photos” mean, please? Are you going back to the Polaroids of the '70s which could literally print their own photos, or what? Whatever “Melee weapons” means - axes, daggers, maces, swords and the like, or what? - how could weaponry change photographic technology? If you were an ancient warrior with access to even “very primitive” firearms, why would anything less be your go-to weapon? Again, how might weaponry impact photography? With or without the knowledge to create catapults and trebuchets, how might weaponry impact photography? How might knowledge of electricity impact photography? If you’re allowing “magical electricity” why not “magical photography” alongside “magical (anything else)”? How does it matter that your people make up for their scientific simplicity with vast knowledge, “arcane” or otherwise? Why would your “magitech” camera be less or more of a marvel than an ordinary camera relying on nothing more than chemistry or physics? How could you not know how your camera might be able to print photographs, with or without magic? Why should your magician need more than to snap her fingers? Why should your technical photographer need more than the fairly simple science used in our real world? ]
[Question] [ Imagine somewhere in the universe there is an intelligent species that is as intelligent as our stone age fore-brothers and sisters but will never establish the concept of past and future events. They won't remember any history nor are they be able to do divination/prediction such as no weather forecast etc. Our hunter gathers used to hoard seeds and water in case of emergency which could happen in the future based on some tragedies such as long period of drought and famine that occurred in the past. I am wondering how could such a species farm anything if lack the capability to compare any 2 events that may happen either simultaneously or across different times to develop agriculture? [Answer] If they have no sense of past or future, they live in a continuous present, answering the stimuli they are getting right now: pain? move away! hunger? eat! Thirst? drink. Nothing more than an amoeba. I highly doubt that such a species could satisfy any definition of intelligence, let alone developing something as complex as agriculture. Don't forget that homo sapiens has been intelligent (about 130000 years) for way longer than it has been a farmer (about 20000 years). [Answer] Offering a dissenting opinion on those that say the concept of time or even only the perception of causal relationship is necessary to develop habits that show traits common with agriculture (or other "long term thinking" activities) the humans engage in. First at all, a couple of definitions on my choice of terms (to address some points raised - rightfully - in the comments): * [agriculture](https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/agriculture) - "The science or practice of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products." * [practice](https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/practice) - "The customary, habitual, or expected procedure or way of doing of something." Nothing in the above require planning, or the use of technology or a sense of time. Granted, the chance of doing agriculture right without them is small... but I'll endeavor to show that is not impossible. > > I am wondering how could such a species farm anything if lack the capability to compare any 2 events that may happen either simultaneously or across different times to develop agriculture? > > > In the same way on which: * squirrels gather and hoard nut "crops" in caches, [house mice hoard cat food in delicate glassware (or pianos; or jewellery boxes)](https://www.familyhandyman.com/pest-control/crazy-things-mice-have-done-in-homes/) * [ants cultivate fungi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%E2%80%93fungus_mutualism) - note the "ants actively cultivate fungus much like humans farm crops as a food source" * [ants are herding aphids](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009212548.htm) - "Herding Aphids: How 'Farmer' Ants Keep Control Of Their Food" * bees [clean](https://bees.techno-science.ca/english/bees/life-in-a-hive/cleaning.php) [their hive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cPy_q-8hVw) and/or [each other](https://hienalouca.com/2018/09/01/worker-bees-clean-friend-after-she-fell-into-honey-in-michigan/). Granted, not an example of agriculture, but still a complex beneficial activity (sanitation) which has a cost but ensures a long term survival advantage for the colony That way? By natural selection. --- No, neither agriculture nor sanitation need to be rooted into an economic (or other "rational") reason to be practiced - survival is enough. --- Now, looking to the issue of intelligence: the examples above do show unintelligent (by human standards) species engaging in activities that humans do "intelligently". Suppose such a species which ends (by evolutionary pressures) in adopting "long-term-effects type of behaviour". Because of this, their individuals grow stronger and/or live longer and/or are able to direct the extra energy into something else. Also assume that the species evolved a brain over a critical mass. Is it impossible that the intelligence they develop to come as an effect of the species "habits", rather than intelligence being the cause of their habits? (e.g. farming fungus and having the physiological needs secured free the time/energy that lead them to develop and use tools) --- Speaking of intelligence/reason/rationality - humans are expected to be this way, right? Then explain to me the [irrationality of the stock market](https://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T052-C019-S002-is-the-market-rational.html) [Answer] Hyper-instinctual savants: Your beings would have to be skirting the limits of what WE, at least, define as intelligent. It would mean that the individuals would need to be performing complex tasks out of an instinctual drive, but still be intelligent. The species would be VERY rigid in their ability to respond to problems. My answer would not meet the criteria most people would consider, but it's the best I can envision. Your aliens are essentially performing a series of problem solving tasks that they abstract from their instinct. PROBLEM: flint absence. SOLUTION: flint-seeking (see clay subroutine, access memory) MEMORY: Clay deposit with flint. PROBLEM: seeking behavior for flint SOLUTION: walking to the clay bed. (see clay bed memory). Ooh! flint! (see pick up subroutine) PROBLEM: I am not in the village. SOLUTION: walk to village. MEMORY: village location. PROBLEM: I am carrying flint. SOLUTION: make a tool. PROBLEM: I am making a tool from flint. SOLUTION: access tool prioritization subroutine. You would have the equivalent of brilliant problem solvers who wouldn't know why they were solving the problems. They might abstract cause-and-effect, but only to answer questions, not because they cared about the outcome or understood what they were doing. They would look a lot like the clever ants we were discussing. Not everyone would define this as sentient, but I know people who don't think extremely autistic people or even babies are sentient. Computers would function a lot like this, and perhaps this might be what machine intelligence could look like. [Answer] Offering an alternative... Most answers consider they lack a concept of past/future because they just haven't developed it. To me, it seems vital for development as we know it. However, there's another alternative: They have no need of the concept of time. Consider if they, as a species, were unbound from the flow of time. Past and future would look very different to them. It wouldn't be thinking about the future, it'd be reverse-engineering the future to get the desired result. They might not know why spreading manure helps plants grow, but they actively see the results of their actions as they do them, so farming is less like planning and more like painting and tweaking until you're looking at the desired results or drawing with a spiralgraph. Depending on how time works in your setting, they may even have a bi-directional relationship with time, and they may even do things in the future to change the past. [Answer] ## [Stigmergy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy) Lack of the concept of past and future essentially turns your species into operators of [finite-state machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-state_machine). While FSMs have limitations, you can do quite a lot with them. See [this article](https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/StateMachineInRealLife.html) from an example in real life. Say your intelligent aliens want to water their crops every 10 days. Here is a simple scheme that they can use without requiring any internal memory: (by "memory" I mean writable memory; they need to remember something to have intelligence) * If there are stones next to a crop, take one of them, throw it away, and move on to the next crop; * If there are no stones, water the crop, put 9 stones next to it, and move on to the next crop. You can add more rules, such as "if it's rainy then put 9 stones next to the crops and move on", etc. The point is to move the memory requirement out of the aliens to some external representation of "state", like stones in this example which signal the number of days before the next watering. How could they have developed such a complex scheme, you ask? Natural selection would be an answer: each individual mutates their operating rules of stepping the FSM a little bit (maybe putting 8 or 10 stones would be better than 9 stones?), and only those works can survive. [Answer] Short answer: yes. # My interpretation of the species These are my assumptions for a plausible species that would classify as intelligent and verbal, but have no concept of past or future. The creatures have brains that can process time, and form memories, at an autonomic/emotional level, but not a cognitive one. This means they have no reasoning, logical, or verbal capacity when it comes to memories, recurring events, and outcomes of their actions. Their cognitive abilities are otherwise normal, including learned facts that don't involve time, and abstract reasoning. They can identify familiar places (perhaps even attach names to them), and have fears based on past experience (perhaps even visualising those bee stings), but cannot reason about any past facts or future outcomes. For example, if they want to want to drink, they will feel a subconscious attraction to the river (and their brains have some innate sense of direction that doesn't require thinking, which I think nearly all animals have to some extent). But they can't plan to avoid the beehive on the way. They can't plan to avoid the giant fallen tree. To be clear, they can reason about "stimulus-response", just not "result". They can remember what they should do under certain conditions, and reason about the conditions and the actions. Just not the expected outcome. # Development of knowledge Knowledge and technology develop slowly. Elders can teach the young ones what herb to rub on a rash. This fact can be verbalised and remembered without any reference to past or future. But how was that knowledge found in the first place, given that when someone tried the herb, nobody remembered it when the rash got better after a few days (or even hours)? The answer is that members of the species just do random things a lot. They don't remember what they've tried before. At a subconscious level they form "associations" with what went well and what didn't, and over time, given a situation they will "feel like" doing something. Slowly they become confident of the fact, "when abc, I do xyz". Crucially, there is no "... then efg will happen." Stimulus-response, but no consequence. (If the herb isn't there, another fact is `when [Rash + no herb] do [walk around and take the rashy person with you]` so they don't forget what they are looking for.) Young ones will then repeatedly put into practice the advice of elders, and over time form associations of which elders have the best advice. This ensures that mostly good advice is passed down generations. They can't remember who told them something, but their brain will form subconscious associations, because that's one of the most basic things animal brains do. # Agriculture This is really just the same thing at higher complexity. It must develop very incrementally. At first, facts like "if you have fruit pits, bury them", later, "if you see a fruit tree and it looks wilted, put water on it". "At sunrise, do xyz" will ensure something happens once a day. (They can identify sunrise, just not predict it.) "Twice a day" is meaningless (but can be simulated with the stone-system proposed by [nalzok](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/175619/9277).) You can do a lot with stimulus-response if you have sophisticated stimulus classification and if the responses can refer to parts of the stimulus. I think simple agriculture is definitely possible, and complex agriculture is plausible. [Answer] # Non Temporal Species The only way I see this working is if the creature is a non temporal species kind of like the [Prophets from Star Trek](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Prophet) that do not experience time in a linear fashion like we do. For this species there is no concept of the past, present, or future since to them all of it is present tense and is currently happening. From the time they are born to the time they die they already know everything they will do or have done, and it cannot be changed. ## Predicting Future Events They do not predict future events nor plan for them in the way we would, since to them the future is happening right now. They plant seeds because that is what is happening just as harvesting the crops is happening at the same time. They do not necessarily understand causality in the same way we do. For them they could be unharvesting the crop so that it would shrink into the ground to produce seeds. They would not necessarily be able to tell a creature experiencing time linearly which event happened first or whether the even happened before or after the event of them interacting with the creature. ## Language Construct Since they would have no concept of past, present, or future their language also would lack these characteristics. Their conversations to us would sound very confusing since they would be talking about an event and it would be impossible for us to tell if they are talking about something in the past or future. Any literature they write would also not flow linearly and work under the assumption that you already read it. ## No and All History at the Same Time History much like literature would be extremely no linear and impossible to parse. Much like how human history gets past down to the next generation they would be able to pass history up to the previous generations. This would result in history books being absolutely convoluted mix of past, present, and future events. As such to prevent massive volumes of gibberish from piling up they likely would not even bother recording it. ## Concept of Life and Death Since they know their death as well as their birth, they are experiencing their entire life all at once, but since they have no concept of time their life is perceived as being eternal. To them their birth would be viewed in the same perspective as their death, it just represents the other end of their existence. As such they would not necessarily fear death nor be concerned about what would come after it in the same way we do not fear our birth or what would happen before it. Just hope one of them does not greet you and says "Your end of existence celebration is lots of fun, and I am enjoying it greatly." [Answer] <http://www.exactlywhatistime.com/philosophy-of-time/ancient-philosophy/> Concepts of time, as philosophy concept, postdate agriculture. Ie "will never establish the concept of past and future events." I suspect you want even less cognitive ability, but I don't think you need to understand time to have an understanding of cause and effect outcome. I don't think a dog understands time, but understand getting a leash means walks. A chimp still builds a nest to sleep in. Unless you want to say they have no memory of their action to associate with the effect. In which case I'm struggling to see a pathway forward. [Answer] For a being that cannot understand the concept of past and present , simply will not be able to develop agriculture. It is because they cannot co-relate the event of spiting/burying/dropping a seed to sprouting of a plant. Also a being which does not remember the past cannot collect knowledge and can never pass it on.For example though octopus have very high cognitive functionality they are not able to take over the world because they have a short life-span and do not stay around to pass on the knowledge to their off springs.So a being which has no memory and forethought about the future , will have to keep reinventing the wheel. But still this being could leverage autotroph.That could be from a way of a symbiotic relationship , where a being capable of autotrophy gets inside of your species (by eating) or grows on top of your species. However the latter is unlikely.The advantage for the autotroph is that it could get access to its energy source(sunlight) , protection and also spreading. Read : [The Endosymbiotic Origin of Mitochondria](https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-origin-of-mitochondria-14232356/) [Answer] Let's briefly review key points of the question. Context of the question: There is a species, and it is intelligent. The species has no concept of past or future. What we want to know: How could this species farm something? EDIT: Asking this part actually requires that the species farm as part of the context, so I can't argue against their ability to farm - only about the way they could achieve it! First thoughts: doubt about the species's supposed intelligence - They don't have a concept of time? How could they be intelligent? Unfortunately for me and likely others, following this line of thought would turn my answer into a strawman argument, since assuming the species is actually not intelligent would mean that I would actually answer some other question, and not the one at hand. Moving on. Natural selection - Regardless of why the species does things, the better ones survive. This means that even if the species had no notable intelligence, and simply operated on instinct, the species would evolve in a way that was generally beneficial. Natural selection could shape this species into one that practices agriculture, even if unlikely. Their instincts alone could achieve this with the right circumstances. A community of the species that benefits its food source will survive better, even if they did not act based on intelligent thought. I feel that we can assume that, regardless of their intelligence, it is possible for the species to develop agricultural tendencies, since they don't necessarily have to be thinking about it. If we were wondering how they could actively develop farming techniques in manner that was based specifically on one generation of the species and thus without evolutionary influence, my answer might be different. In the context of world-building, they could be a species that is not well-understood by others because of the supposed paradox that they represent. After all, it's very counter-intuitive that they have farming practices when they don't have recollection or prediction of events. The truth could just be that they simply farm because its "hard-wired," and not because they decide to. As for how you were to describe their intelligence without referencing ways they predict or recall? Can't help you there. EDIT\* Actually, you could describe their intelligence as an understanding of what things are... not as a mental construct, like "shovel," where it's an understanding of what abstract actions its used for, but an innate understanding of the exact structure of the item as it is in that instant. They would likely not be able to understand the concept of a shovel though. Not completely sure if that counts as intelligence. [Answer] I think that there'll be a bit of trouble with definitions, semantics, and philosophical aspects of the question. In my opinion, the very comparison of given species to the mentally-butchered form of our ancestors isn't perfect as a problem statement, since the created gap is so huge, that - at least to me, currently - it's hard to establish whether the hypothetical species would be closer to an animal, computer or some exotic (and probably desired by OP) form of an alien human-equivalent. It's easy to make the question easier by altering the environment to simplify the process of agriculture. The only problem is, how many elements can we remove before defined the process stops being agriculture? We can make the environment to always have perfect weather, natural irrigation, fertile lands... so on, but at some point, it might stop being less like agriculture and start to be more like a combination of gathering and incidental pollination (seeding) that evolved into its instinctive counterpart. If I could remove the requirement of 'development' - which in itself is a problematic aspect to define, then for me, the easiest answer would be species with an in-built computer equivalent. Since it was never stated in a problem statement that species were to be developed naturally, we could simply apply the idea of a higher-intelligence who assists the species or engineered their biology, for example: * Based on the currently observed state of the environment - (the more 'sensors', the better), species 'intuitively' perform actions determined by their biological or external circuit. * Example A: Engineered tree-like species with wide roots that inspect the soil and search for water, with perhaps hairy leaves and numerous eyes that act as the above-ground sensors related to weather conditions or detecting pests. They could act in an energy-conserving mode for most of the year, then refill their biological battery (fats) at the time of (likely a very massive) harvest. Perhaps, they could also have a biological system that allows the preservation of food, like submerging collected fruits in resin - I'm not into chemistry, so I don't know how it could work, but well... as stated earlier, we can always cheat and make products of our agricultural work almost never rot (think super beans/rice). * Example B: Your typical caveman carrying a computer/device that tells him what to do. However, that doesn't answer the original question, which concerns the aspect of development. We could substitute the 'instant' engineering with a progressive one or teaching/conditioning over time, but does that count as 'the species developed agriculture'? Develop: 'to (cause something to) grow or change into a more advanced, larger, or stronger form'. To my understanding of the English, the species would cause agriculture to develop, but only indirectly, more like slaves than the mind behind the idea, but I guess it would still count by a technicality. IMO, the better idea would be the evolutionary roadmap, which ensures independence, example: Start: Beetle-like creatures who accidentally carry seeds between their spiky hairs, like pollen. Goal: Digging holes/rows for seeds Evolution step: Some beetles evolve a talon under their belly, which breaks up the soil as beetle moves. The advantage in the process of natural selection is the extra combat ability, ability quickly to burrow to hide from predators, a bigger chance for accidentally burrowed seeds to develop in the home area - more food. Of course, it expands a lot of energy to constantly fight friction/soil, so it can be substituted just by digging holes for protection and in that case, the talon could be replaced by a horn, like in case of rhinoceros beetles. Another benefit is burrowing eggs for protection. Goal: Digging rows Evolution step: Eggs burrowed separately can have a higher chance to survive/give offspring. For example, because due to varying circumstances, predators have to expend more energy to dig them out separately than it takes to burrow. Offspring isn't forced to compete for food in clusters, instead, each gets its own patch of land. Goal: Irrigation Evolution step: Beetles could naturally choose to live close to water, to avoids deaths related to dehydration. Water could also be related to the development of eggs, perhaps beetles could instead start as water or hybrid creature (think frogs). Accidental tunnels could turn into structures derived from natural selection, that facilitate breeding and allow parents to take better care of offspring. Of course, we also remember the default advantage of more food due to a better chance of seed sprouting. Goal: Fertilizer Evolution step: Could be like a byproduct of dung beetles and accidental fertilization (think substances like pollen/syrup/water plant residue/the current carrying dead water creatures to irrigation tunnels/traps like spiderwebs and hunting/killing more than necessary - also, might be not for food to not overwhelm agricultural aspects, but eg. prey might be inedible/poisonous and our species might be territorial). Maybe an idea with using crushed shells? Carrying these for protection, eg. like hermit crabs. Goal: Pest Control Evolution step: Default advantage + more food Goal: Weed Control Evolution step: Creatures may use plants for clothes, hives, or structures. Using exclusively weeds leads to default advantage. So on... so on... luckily, it can always be altered by simplifying the environment. Still, the question that arises again is - did the species 'develop' the agriculture? To my understanding of the English, due to technicality - it would be 'YES', but it's more like the main 'author' is the sole process of evolution and (again) species acted as 'slave' to the process. I've kind of wanted to discuss the concept of creatures in relation to the Turing machines, where memory could be compared to the machine's tape or creatures could create 'notes/guides' (for themself, or future generations), but it's kinda late, so I can't elaborate on that and I've kinda messed some details due to time anyway, so just giving a general idea. The concept is to write the notes in such form, that there's no hint or intent of planning for future or extrapolating from the past, but rather something like a written communication of ideas/results between two creatures, which would later develop into a kind of social framework/dogma, with no relation to past/future, but rather as the establishment of (perhaps nigh religion-like) facts (commandments). There're some issues to discuss, as to how far can we take writing into memory before it counts as related to past/future issues, controversies with awareness - eg. DNA kinda establishes the concept of past/future events but creatures are not aware of it, the same can apply to other types of memory and you can, of course, bypass many issues by making the creatures, for example, deluded af. [Answer] The answer gets already accepted but I am obliged to disagree. First: is it true that time consciousness may appear as a requirement for intelligence. But intelligence is a really hard notion to define actually there are several definitions of intelligence IQ being only one of them. In my point of view, intelligence is the capacity to adapt to change in environment. This definition is as same as the other as its flaws. But if you get rid of what you expected intelligence to be and consider this definition then IMO is it actually possible to make some basic agriculture. How? First let's compare to what exists, what species do you know that does agriculture except for man? ant. ant still have from what we know time perception. I doubt they are conscious about it but they perceive it. If your individual perceive time in the sense of being able to register an immediate change to their environment, which is IMO the bare minimum to be able to adapt to change then they may be able to make agriculture without realising it themself. We all have innate behaviour most common for human are basic need sleep, food, water, sex. But we are also innately good at living with others. The point is that maybe they don't even know they doing agriculture but some of their innate behaviour make them do so, very basically. Let's imagine their brain when it starts to get warmer (spring) will make them search frenetically the soil (labour) then they tend to poop, or throw their waste there or other behaviour that will make them somehow seeds. that what we will call agriculture, very basic one, low yields for sure. If they developed that behaviour and selected them, in an evolutionary sense, that may mean it works good enough for them. and the one that didn't have them disappears long ago ... [Answer] Basic Agriculture does not require intelligence, memory or a notion of time. Natural selection is, by definition, entirely sufficient to encourage instinctive behaviours that increase the species chance of survival. It isn't likely to look like what we think of as farming - specific areas designated for farming are much less likely. But for example, scattering seeds from plants in appropriate places, cutting back unhelpful plants, and chasing off pests are all entirely feasible. The fact that they don't know why something is good, does not necessarily prevent them from doing those things, though it is likely to be a lot more haphazard in appearance. --- Can they be intelligent? Intelligence can be defined as extremely good pattern matching. Preventing that intelligence from considering patterns that involve temporal aspects does not prevent 'extremely good' pattern matching from arising, though it does significantly limit the number of avenues it has to 'prove' that it meats the qualification of 'extremely good'. It is probable that their non-temporal pattern matching would be better than ours - much like how a blind person is often better than a sighted person with their other senses. [Answer] It is most unlikely, but it would generally be possible. Not being aware means that you have no notion of "memory" or of "cause and effect". But! But! There exists genetic memory, and your species might very well have that. We do, so why wouldn't they. For example, human males (basically all higher animals) know exactly what they are to do with a female, and females know exactly -- in accordance with some specific, individual parameters -- that they are to tolerate that. They know without someone telling or showing them. Why? Well, because those that don't function that way do not reproduce and die out. Most animals fear thunder and lightning, and they fear fire. Why do they? There's no reason, is there? Who told them? They fear it because those that don't have a reduced chance of getting old enough to reproduce. Avoiding instant death is a very sustainable strategy, with a high selectional advantage. While it's rather unlikely, your primates could very well have that kind of genetic memory, only with farming. Why not. They wouldn't need to know the sequence of events (or have any sense of causality) for as long as they know "put seed in ground when sun stands there, and climate is like this" and "harvest when sun is standing there and climate is like that". [Answer] 2020 and there still exist human tribes with no concept of agriculture and no idea on how to start a fire. 2020 and there still tribes of people living 1.7 million years in the past, just like monkeys. So yeah, i strongly believe your creatures wouldn't do much better than those human tribes (sentinelese to name one) ]
[Question] [ In my part of this (Earth-like) world, there is a stable community of completely isolated pre-industrial humans, numbering perhaps 1,800. They live at an altitude of (at least) 25,000 feet (7620 meters) in a very high inaccessible valley, possibly adjoining the caldera of an extinct volcano. What geological/ecological conditions would need to prevail in order to support a thriving community? Stipulations: * No goats. Yes to liquid water and thriving plants. * If Reinhold Messner can climb all 14 peaks over 8,000 without oxygen, and do Everest 8,848 m (29,029 ft) twice in two years without it, once solo, then a civilisation can happen at that height. [Answer] > > If Reinhold Messner can climb all 14 peeks over 8,000 without oxygen, and do Everest twice in two years without it, then a civilisation can happen at that height. > > > That is false. Messner wasn't depending on running water or forageable food at those heights: he was bringing it all with him. He wasn't staying any appreciable time at those altitudes, either. There's an astounding difference between one incredibly well prepared guy momentarily scaling all those heights and a community enjoying day-to-day existence at those heights. Please read [this wiki article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_high_altitude_on_humans). The highest permanent human settlement is 5,100 m and the tolerance is 5,950. Therefore, we already have a problem. Your Earth-like planet... isn't. * There's not enough atmosphere (especially oxygen and carbon-dioxide, which plants need) at those altitudes. The atmosphere would need to be thickened. * The [tree line](https://northernwoodlands.org/articles/article/why_is_the_treeline_at_a_higher_elevation_in_the_tetons_than_in_the_white_m) is approximately 3,050 meters (10,000 ft). The [highest altitude moss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisms_at_high_altitude) (thought to be the highest altitude plant life) grows at 6,480 meters (21,260 ft). Animals come close, the [Yak (with two coats of fur!)](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150428-secrets-of-living-high-in-the-sky) can make it up to 6,100 m (20,000 ft). But nothing lives at 25,000 ft without help. What, then, can be done? 1. You can increase the density or mass of the planet such that it retains a larger atmosphere. Gravity decreases as you increase altitude... but not that much. So you'll likely have a high-G race. You're also going to have a higher percentage of low-altitude deserts as a thicker atmosphere will increase sea-level temperatures. This is the only natural solution I can think of and the consequences are very high (which is to be expected). Note also (thanks to Arkenstein XII), that as the mass of a planet increases, the tendency is for mountains to be lower, reducing the plausibility of the scenario. 2. You can bring man-made structures into play: plumbing low-altitude atmosphere to your settlement. You'd be moving a LOT of air, but it wouldn't necessarily create wind (just volume). It would dissipate quickly, meaning your settlement would have defined limits, and if the surrounding climate pushed the wind speed up, it would be easily blown away. You could do the same for water with heating at the top of the pipe. However, none of this would allow plants to grow — too cold. 3. Underground, in a dome, sealed away from the environment (L.Dutch's answer). 4. Seriously change your race such that it's not human anymore. Capable of living at very low atmospheric pressures (would die at sea level), capable of horrendously high UV (might even need it for photosynthesis), capable of living off of lichen and eating snow. Very happy at very cold temperatures (like the Yak, maybe two coats of fur... again, would die at sea level). Etc. The more earth-like your planet, the less possible your goal. [Answer] Liquid water at that height is going to be a challenge: at the Equator the limit for perennial snows is 5000 meter above sea level, so you see that there will be no liquid water in the open. You could go around this if you have some sort of heat source, which can provide local warmer conditions. You mention an extinct volcano, so it might be possible to have some geothermal water source, creating warm oasis in an otherwise barren and frozen land. The lack of a sufficiently dense atmosphere is the second hurdle, both for plants and animals (humans included). At that height you are at the border of the death zone due to the severe scarcity of oxygen, therefore the only solution I see as viable is to have some sort of sealed cave system where a higher atmospheric pressure can be maintained. Gases might be supplied by volcanic activity, mostly CO2 which is then converted in O2 by the plants. But a cave has a lack of light. You might handwave a bit around this, giving a ice dome sealing the volume you are interested. The ice being transparent would let some light in, and would seal the gases from a quick escape to the outside. Volcanic heat could explain why the ice has a dome shape. [Answer] I believe this is not possible for a pre-industrial society. The highest permanently inhabited 'settlement' is indeed at around 5,200 m. But from my experiences in the Himalayas (husband of a doctor who worked at high altitude settlements there), the highest altitude villages are usually considered to be seasonal and the inhabitants need to descend to below around 4,500 m at intervals, in order to 'stay healthy'. Furthermore, in such communities, pregnant women almost always drop to still lower altitudes (from memory below around 4000 m) to give birth as babies do not 'thrive' above that altitude. I guess that over a very long time period people could evolve/adapt to those conditions. But after several thousand years of adaptation, populations in the Himalayas and Andes are still more than 2000 m below your target altitude. [Answer] [![Lobuche](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8usrA.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8usrA.jpg) This is Lobuche. It's located at 16,207' in elevation in the Khumbu region of Nepal. It's the last stop before the Kumbu glacier on your way to Everest Base Camp. As you can see, there is no real vegetation. Moss grows here. Some small ground covering plants. Most plants stop growing around 15,000' rocky tundra begins to give way to snow fields. Moss will keep growing up to 21,000', but that's the upper limit of where you will find vegetation. Some mammals like yaks can be found up to 20,000'. In fact, they don't do well below 10,000'. Snow leopards live between 10,000-17,000'. Rodents like the Pika do not generally go above 14,000'. Nepalese and Tibetians live and thrive at around 15,000' and it's possible to be born, live and die in this area and never go lower. However, it should be mentioned that they have a genetic mutation that allows them to thrive at high altitude that most of humanity lacks. Oxygen is only 60% of what you would find at sea level. Villages like Naamche Bazaar are at 11,000' look like any remote village. You could live here after acclimatizing and carry on with a normal, if not treeless life. The biggest problem with your group is the elevation. At 25,000' they are clearly above the high altitude habitats where humans can survive. The biggest problem is that oxygen levels drop as you rise in altitude. At sea level, the usable oxygen is about 20%. At Naamche Bazaar, the effective oxygen level is 13.7%. At Lobouche, it drops to 11.4% and at 25,000' where your people will be living, the oxygen level is at 8%. You're at the upper limits of extreme altitude, above food sources and in a zone where long-term survival is pretty remote because of the caloric and water intake needed to sustain your current weight. You need a lot of calories to maintain the body. There is also an issue with altitude sickness that starts with people above 8,000'. Later in life, Sir Edmund Hillary, the first documented human to climb Everest, damaged his health and was unable to go above 11,000' without becoming very ill. I actually talked with him about this very subject on a ridge overlooking Naamche Bazaar many years ago. He was there dedicating a school and we attempted to get him to come with us to Lobuche. His spirit was willing, but he was already at the upper limits of where he could function without getting altitude sickness. It's remotely possible for your group to exist at 25,000', but to make this story realistic, you are going to need a solution to food, water and how they maintain pretty good health. One thing is for sure, few people lowland are going to bother them. Good luck. * <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisms_at_high_altitude> * <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_adaptation_in_humans> * <https://www.higherpeak.com/altitudechart.html> [Answer] # Double the relative amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Presumably, this still falls within the realm of "Earth-like". As already noted, entire populations of humans have already [adapted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_adaptation_in_humans#Tibetans) to live at ~15,000 feet, and trees grow up 10,000+ ft where [atmospheric pressure](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-altitude-density-volume-d_195.html) is about 69.6 kPa. The altitude you want is 25,000 ft, which has an average pressure of 37.6 kPa. Let's focus on the altitude trees thrive at: 10,000 ft. The problem with high-altitude life, as everybody else has mentioned, is that the air density is too low to support life; the air density at 37.6 kPa is too low for large organisms to live. In particular, the problem isn't low air density overall. Humans need enough oxygen and plants need enough carbon dioxide to live, so it's the density of these two gases we care about. So if you can alter the composition of the atmosphere a little bit, you can achieve the same density of these two gases on Earth at higher altitudes on your Earth-like planet, while still keeping atmospheric density about the same. Using a little [ideal gas law](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-chemistry/chapter/partial-pressure/), for any gas in a mixture, when we try to achieve the same density at two different pressures, we get: $$ \chi\_2 = \chi\_1\frac{P\_{T1}}{P\_{T2}} $$ where $\chi\_1$ and $P\_{T1}$ are the molar ratio and total pressure at the higher pressure, and $\chi\_2$ and $P\_{T2}$ are the molar ratio and total pressure at the lower pressure, respectively. The molar ratio of the three gasses of interest [in Earth's atmosphere](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-composition-d_212.html) are ~78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and .03% carbon dioxide. When we stuff the numbers into this equation, we get a new atmosphere which is about 61% nitrogen, 39% oxygen, and 0.06% carbon dioxide, and the atmospheric pressure at 25,000 ft is still the same as Earth: 37.6 kPa. This calculation assumes that the temperature is the same at both altitudes, but we would of course expect a lower temperature at higher altitudes. If we drop that assumption, the equation becomes: $$ \chi\_2 = \chi\_1\frac{P\_{T1}T\_2}{P\_{T2}T\_1} $$ which means decreasing the temperature at the higher altitude actually makes it easier to achieve our desired oxygen and carbon dioxide densities, so you don't actually need to double the amounts of these gases. # Dealing with the cold Incidentally, the first equation above also enforces the same temperature at both altitudes, so doubling both gases will also keep the temperature at 25,000 ft on your Earth-like planet the same as 10,000 ft on Earth. You can also use the second equation to play with the temperature at your higher altitude to achieve some desired combination of temperature at 25,000 ft and sea-level conditions. Sea-level conditions follow from your new relative amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide. (See side effects below.) # Resulting ecology The primary factor we've changed is the altitude range that large mammals and plants can survive and thrive at. This means the ecosystem should be similar to those seen in mountainous environments near 10,000 ft on Earth. An important caveat here is that land life evolved from ocean life, and there's obviously a large distance between oceans and 10,000+ ft mountain ranges. Thus, whatever early amphibious life evolved would need to deal with much higher oxygen levels at sea level. # Side effects Just as the temperature on your new planet is equal to the temperature on Earth at a lower altitude, this means the sea-level conditions of your planet will also be some combination of higher pressure and hotter than on Earth. This is because increasing the relative amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide will make the atmosphere more dense, overall. This means the oceans will necessarily be hotter, as well. The effects of this can be complicated, but it would be easier for life to emerge due to greater energy abundance. # The planet as a whole is almost identical to Earth The above approach doesn't change the mass or size of the planet, so it's gravity remains the same. Average sea level is almost completely unrelated to atmosphere composition, so you can have the same land and ocean topography. [Answer] > > what conditions are needed to support a human community? > > > Bearing in mind the criteria that you stipulate. > > * a stable community of completely isolated pre-industrial humans > * They live at an altitude of (at least) 25,000 feet (7620 meters) > > > The conditions needed will be at least one of the following three options. 1. A lower altitude or higher atmospheric density so they're effectively living at lower altitude. 2. A significantly higher knowledge of & ability with scientific principles than would normally be associated with a pre-industrial society, to provide artificial conditions to live & grow food in. 3. To not be isolated from lower altitude settlements that can provide them with food & other supplies, because nothing grows naturally at that altitude. So in short, you're going to have to give a little on at least one of your chosen criteria. If you use option 3 you need a reason other communities supply them, if there's no commodity found exclusively in the mountains they can trade for supplies some sort of religious community like Buddhist monks might fit the bill, but I suspect isolation is the last criteria you want to surrender. Perhaps the easiest way around things is to say that they live in a valley at a comparable altitude to the highest known permanent human settlements but that the only access to it is through a pass (or route) that climbs to the altitude you want. Some significant altitudes & the effects of altitude on humans. [Armstrong limit altitude](https://www.google.com/search?q=armstrong%20limit%20altitude&rlz=1C1NHXL_enGB711GB711&oq=armstrong%20limit%20altitude&aqs=chrome..69i57.7871j1j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) 60,000 to 62,000 feet. [Death zone altitude](https://www.google.com/search?q=death%20zone%20altitude&rlz=1C1NHXL_enGB711GB711&oq=death%20zone%20altitude&aqs=chrome..69i57.7274j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) 26,247 feet. The altitude you want 25,000 feet. [World’s highest plants](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2114856-worlds-highest-plants-discovered-growing-6km-above-sea-level/) 20,177 feet. [Highest altitude humans can survive](https://www.google.com/search?q=What%20is%20the%20highest%20altitude%20humans%20can%20survive%3F&rlz=1C1NHXL_enGB711GB711&oq=What%20is%20the%20highest%20altitude%20humans%20can%20survive%3F&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.2695j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) 19,520 feet. [Highest permanent settlement in the world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Rinconada,_Peru) 16,700 feet. [Snow line altitude](https://www.google.com/search?q=snow%20line%20altitude&rlz=1C1NHXL_enGB711GB711&oq=snow%20line%20altitude&aqs=chrome..69i57.5343j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) 15,000 feet. [Organisms at high altitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisms_at_high_altitude) The [Himalayan pika](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_pika) lives at altitudes up to 13,800 feet. [Treeline altitude](https://www.google.com/search?q=treeline%20altitude&rlz=1C1NHXL_enGB711GB711&oq=treeline%20altitude&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4431j1j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) 10,000 to 13,000 feet. [Effects of high altitude on humans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_high_altitude_on_humans) Taking those details into account perhaps the highest plausible altitude for your community is 19,520 feet & they will need considerable acreage per person to sustain themselves on plants that can grow at that altitude as those plants grow extremely slowly (in part due to the cold), that they might have domesticated [Yak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_yak) & [Pika](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pika) adapted to the altitude for meat, wool & milk etc seems reasonable. *So in summary, perhaps set your community in a high valley or plateau in the mountains with an average altitude of around 19,000 feet that can only be accessed from high passes through the mountains with altitudes of around 25,000 feet at their highest points?* At that altitude the things that are going to form the base of your food chain are lichens, mosses & [cushion plants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cushion_plant), nothing else grows at that height & you'll have no trees for wood. [Answer] The highest settlement on Earth is supposed to be at 16,830 feet or 5,130 meters, which is only about 0.6732 of your altitude of 25,000 feet or 7620 meters. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_cities>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_cities) I doubt that there could be a human settlement at 25,000 feet, 1.48 times the record, on Earth without advanced technology like in an Antarctic base or a Moon base. Thus conditions on your Earth-like planet should have to be less than 100 percent Earth-like to make it possible. It would help if that Earth-like planet has an atmosphere significantly denser than Earth's. Thus it is noticeably denser at any altitude than Earth's atmosphere is at the same altitude. It would also help if the Earth-like planet had a weaker surface gravity than Earth. Thus it would pull down and compress the atmosphere a bit less and the atmosphere would thin out a bit less with increasing altitude. As a general rule, astronomical objects with lower surface gravity and lower escape velocity are expected to have less dense atmospheres, not more dense atmospheres. But exceptions are possible, and in fact there are two exceptions in our solar system. Venus has slightly lower surface gravity and escape velocity than Earth, but for various reasons has an atmosphere about 90 times as dense as Earth's. Titan has much lower surface gravity and escape velocity than Earth, but has an atmosphere a bit more dense than Earth's. Another factor which might help would be to have a higher proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere of this Earth-like planet, so that the thin air in the high valley will have a bit more oxygen in it than Earth's atmosphere at the same overall pressure. So I imagine your Earth-like planet might have a little more than 90 percent of the surface gravity of Earth, and a little less than 110 percent of Earth's atmospheric density, and a little less than 110 percent of Earth's percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere, and that might be enough to have sufficient atmosphere and oxygen at a height of 25,000 feet or 7,620 meters above the sea level of that world. And any Earth people who might be in the story might describe the planet as Earth-like, with less than a ten percent difference from Earth conditions. In most parts of the planet the different conditions will have little effect on the various ecosystems and the differences will only be significant at extreme high altitudes. But you might want to have someone calculate the atmospheric conditions at 25,000 feet in such a world to make sure that would be enough. Added 01-29-2019: If necessary you might have to increase the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere to much more than 1.1 times that in Earth's atmosphere. Dry air on Earth contains 20.946 percent oxygen by volume. > > The amount of oxygen in the atmosphere has fluctuated over the last 600 million years, reaching a peak of about 30% around 280 million years ago, significantly higher than today's 21% > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Third_atmosphere>[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Third_atmosphere) Thirty percent oxygen would be about 1.428 times the present concentration of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere. > > Since the start of the Cambrian period, atmospheric oxygen concentrations have fluctuated between 15% and 35% of atmospheric volume.[10] The maximum of 35% was reached towards the end of the Carboniferous period (about 300 million years ago), a peak which may have contributed to the large size of insects and amphibians at that time.[9] > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen>[3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen) Thirty five percent oxygen in the atmosphere would be about 1.666 times as much as the present concentration. And those examples of actual oxygen levels on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago prove it is possible for an Earth-like planet to have significantly higher percentages of oxygen in its atmosphere. An otherwise Earth-like planet with 35 or even 30 percent oxygen by volume in the atmosphere would not be described as Earth-like by any visiting Earth people who might be in the story. Humans can suffer from oxygen toxicity when they breath too high a concentration of oxygen, although at 30 percent or 35 percent oxygen the atmosphere would have to have several times the sea level density of Earth's atmosphere for oxygen toxicity to affect humans. I suspect that if your planet has a significantly higher percentage of oxygen in its atmosphere Earth humans might need to wear respirators at sea level, and find the atmosphere at higher levels invigorating and enjoyable, and have great difficulty breathing in your hidden valley at 25,000 feet and probably need respirators up there, since they wouldn't have the biological adaptations that high altitude humans on Earth have or the natives of the hidden valley have. Another thing which might make your high valley more habitable would be lakes heated by volcanic heat. The lakes would warm up the air around and there could be aquatic planets and animals in the lakes and many more plants and animals in the valley than would be expected at such altitude. And possibly there would be slight concentrations of volcanic gases in the atmosphere of the high valley,not enough to be poisonous but enough to increase the concentration of greenhouse gases and raise the temperature. Of course in such a scenario it would seem probable that sooner or later the valley would be wiped out by a volcanic eruption. But your story might not be affected by what might possibly happen centuries or millennia in the future. [Answer] I cannot comment so i just have to start a new answer. It is specifically about JBHs answer. You are wrong in one point. More mass=higher gravitational force will make the atmosphere more dense but also smaller. So what you need is actually a planet with a lower gravity so it's atmosphere reaches farther out. Also the density of the atmosphere / the pressure does not decrease as fast as on a high gravity planet. Your argument of high gravity for more atmosphere is also not valid. While the planets in our solar system tend to have more atmopshere the more mass they have, there is no physical law that prevents moon from having an atmosphere. The only problem for terraforming moon with an atmosphere is, that you need hilarious amounts of atmosphere gases to reach a point of enough pressure for humans to breath. That is of course because of it's low gravity. So simply spoken you have gravity \* amount of gas = air pressure. But also the more gravity you have on your planet the higher the pressure gradient will be - means the pressure will fall much faster. But there is a configuration of planetary mass and atmospheric mass which yields a earth like biosphere and climate on sea level but also provides sufficient breathable atmosphere at 7km altitude. So contrary to JBHs answer i propose your planet is exactly as i described. Less mass then earth but more atmossphere gas. Another problem is temperature. But you mentioned yourself maybe those guys live in a vulcano caldera. Maybe a caldera which is still thermal activ. Under perfect conditions there will be a stable mircoclimate in this caldera with enough air pressure to breath and enough heat to live. For plants as well as your people. [Answer] You could make it work by lowering the sea. Earth gravity, mostly Earth-like, with Earth-descended species, but the oceans are either mostly gone, or the average bottom of the ocean is lower, so there's a lower sea level. Lower the sea level by 2-3km, and you can have your isolated tribe at the height above sea level you want. You'd probably want to drop the ocean by more than 2km, because dropping the ocean that much would have atmospheric consequences. Though, as Arkenstein XII stated in a comment, you could also raise the overall O2 concentration. How could the sea level drop? 1. It's not actually Earth, it's just mostly Earth-like. It didn't have that much water when we arrived. 2. Aliens took it. 3. In an effort to regain farm land, we dredged the seas for all the soil that had eroded there. It was expensive removing the salt from the soil so that it could be used for farming, but we wanted the salt anyway. After we'd recovered all the soil that we'd lost within the past couple thousand years... we just kept going. We made arable land enough to cover the deserts of the US, the Middle East, and Asia. We made arable land for Africa. And any new land made accessible by lowering the ocean floor. And in addition to removing all that dirt from the ocean floor, we also pumped out water and desalinized it enough to irrigate all of that land, and provide swimming pools and artificial lakes for all. 4. Humanity has been using hydrogen/oxygen fuel for their rockets so much, the planet has run low on water. Obviously, when these rockets are firing directly at the Earth, no real loss of water happens, because we recover them. But after humanity reached the point of colonizing other worlds, reaching the asteroid belt, and traveling to the stars, their travels more and more had their rocket thrusters pointing sufficiently away from Earth that the water exhaust was not recovered. 5. The people of Earth in the early 21st century were concerned about the perils of global warming. While their concern was real, and it was difficult for them to get traction with enough of the rich and powerful to have any effect, in the end, they were successful. Too successful. The Earth is now in another ice age, even worse than the ones before humanity became the dominant species. 6. Fearing the rising oceans due to global warming, the governments of earth started building super-massive reservoirs, to hold all of the excess water. And then some of them had the idea of controlling the population by controlling enough of the water, so they built bigger reservoirs. 7. We colonized Mars in a major way. One of the things we needed to do to accomplish that was fix Mars' lack of water. It had to come from somewhere, and we had plenty at home. 8. Several of Earth's governments made massive underground building projects, to provide enough housing for Earth's trillions while still recovering some farm land. And this worked fairly well, for a long time. But we built too close to the oceans, and an earthquake caused massive leaks in the walls of our underground homes. The earthquake also knocked out our power, so we were defenseless against it, and 90% of everyone drowned. 9. Geologic disaster of some kind. Maybe a mad scientist did it? It's late, I'm going to bed, most of these ideas are crazy, but they're just to give an idea of the sorts of things that could be done. They could, for what it's worth, work together. The average depth of the oceans is shallow enough you would probably need to do something about it, rather than simply removing water. [Answer] All current answers are missing a major element. They all focus on how humans could survive there. What they (and you) are missing is a deeper question. # Why are they there in the first place? Humans certainly have colonised a wide variety of landscapes. However in all cases there have been good reasons for humans to move into those landscapes, by expansion from existing inhabited areas. Whilst settlers would need different specialised skills to survive in, say, the heat of California and the cold of Alaska, you can see a clear gradation of those skills in people living between the two. Even with that though, populations don't expand into places which are too challenging to survive. You don't just need to be able to survive sitting still, you need to be able to carry out farming, raising a family and so on. Where there may be good reasons to use risky areas, such as transhumance moving herds to higher pastures in the Alps, only the herders travel and the rest of the population stays in a "safer" area. The only reason to migrate to a more challenging area would be if there was no choice; or if the area itself changes over time and there is no way to leave. Penguins in the Antarctic for instance are trapped by their location, and have evolved survival strategies as the climate in their location changed over time. If there is a way to leave a less-favourable location, then that location will usually be abandoned pretty quickly (or perhaps more accurately, populations started by individuals who leave will almost immediately become larger and more successful than the original population). So, with that in mind, why are these people up there? Was there some event which rendered the lowlands uninhabitable or poisonous? How is the valley inaccessible, given that humans are naturally well-suited to climbing, and various areas of the world have high paths which are routinely travelled by the local tribes' children? With people trapped in the valley, have they adapted to existence there over millennia as geological events have pushed the mountains higher? Lots of questions, because the answers are all going to have to be things you work into your worldbuilding and plot! [Answer] Earth-like is of course a relative adjective. It would be easier to have a thriving biome if the world in question is one with greater than earth-normal atmospheric pressure at sea-level. Quite apart from things needing to breathe you're going to need to have rain clouds high up to provide your bowl with hydration. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- This question does not appear to be about worldbuilding, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/97716/edit) This world has the following characteristics: * Futurist world where death is already cured and our bodies are full of nanomachines that improve us. * These nanomachines record everything we do. Ex. Steps walked, hours sleeping, people killed, farts thrown, money donated, smiles, current height, known languages ... * The statistics are public and global. You can look at them freely. * You can see them at any time, thanks to the augmented reality. * The statistics are numerical, there are no audio-visual recordings or descriptions of the facts. We assume that a crime has been committed. A murder. The defendant has described what happened, declaring himself innocent. Procedurally, an agent has analyzed the latest updates of his statistics, and considers, facts in hand, that he is the killer. Would a trial still be necessary? If it is, what could the accused can bring to the court to be declared innocent? [Answer] # Trials are records of findings Even if someone has admitted guilt to a particular crime, there's still a court proceeding to record that. Before a trial, everyone is legally considered innocent. It is the trial that makes the legal determination that someone is guilty. Trials translate private facts into public knowledge. A corner stone of modern free society is that there is no private justice. Private, unrecorded trials are considered a bad thing. A legal judgement has to be (well should be) made on the facts. In this world, a great many facts are easy to gather but they can't gather all the facts nor do they determine intent. As the OP states, there's no audio-visual recording and no mention of what the person knows, only what they do. A trial is a time honored place to gather those facts, analyze them and make a determination as to guilt then pronounce punishment. It's also an opportunity for mercy but that doesn't happen very often. The difference between manslaughter and murder in the US is intent. If you intended to kill someone, that's murder. The [penalties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_(United_States_law)) are radically different for murder vs manslaughter. Manslaughter starts with a fine and a max of 8 years imprisonment. Second degree murder starts with a prison term of years leading up to life sentences. # Social Implications While it doesn't really apply in this situation because of the large group of people this legal arrangement exists in, small communities have trials as an important social function of maintaining social coherence and affirming social order. Unless, of course, this is Judge Dred in which trial and execution are immediately adjacent after determining the facts. Then this whole discussion means a bit less. [Answer] # The purpose of a trial is for justice to be seen to be done. * Consider the internal government point of view, the system is correct, the recordings have been seen and confirmed. The guilty person is taken away and disposed of. High efficiency, low cost. * Consider the public point of view. Something happened, government agents declared this person guilty, took him away and that was the last anyone saw of him. Oppressive government, no justice. Now this government can maintain control quite effectively, but we would align it with Soviet Russia or DPRK rather than with Western freedoms. The trial needs to be public, the evidence shown, and a jury of his peers to make the call. Unless of course, totalitarian oppression is the effect you're looking for, in which case go for it. ### Guilty of murder, or something else In terms of what he could do to prove himself innocent, consider the various degrees of murder, manslaughter, death by misadventure, death as a result of gross negligence, death caused by self defence. There are many ways and many reasons why it may or may not be murder. An absolute statement of the actions taken, does not take into account the intent behind those actions. "Murder" is defined by both intent and action, not action alone. The jury must be shown that murder was planned for such a conviction. [Answer] > > Would a trial still be necessary? If it is, what could the accused can > bring to the court to be declared innocent? > > > Yes, absolutely. Consider that it's entirely possible the agent simply doesn't have access to all of the facts - and may not even know that some are missing. Bob and Mary are in the kitchen making dinner. Mary is cutting strips of meat with a rather large and very sharp knife. Bob takes a step towards Mary, she turns toward him, raises her hands and the knife edge lands in Bob's heart. We'll add another wrinkle: they've been arguing. Based on evidencial review by an Agent: Mary is determined to have killed Bob and therefore goes to jail. Now, let's get Mary out of jail with a bit of exculpatory evidence: Earlier in the day Steve performed work on the kitchen floor. The floor is such that the wood part is screwed into the subfloor. Steve failed to fully seat one of the screws. When Bob took a step towards Mary he had slightly stumbled. Mary had raised her hands to prevent Bob from bumping against her. In the immediate confusion, she still held the knife and it plunged into him with no malice on her part. If the Agent didn't know that Bob had tripped then Mary's guilt would seem open and shut. The Agent might not even be motivated to search for additional data because the information he had was quite clear. Even if the Agent wanted to search for additional data, finding out that a handyman failed to finish putting a screw in might not be recognizable as relevant. However, Mary would have the motivation to show that she never intended to hurt Bob. She would likely know that Bob had tripped and be able to point to the spot he tripped at. The story of the exposed screw might even save her. Moral of the Story: Having near perfect data about the actions of the participants might not be the whole story. You have to let the defense have a turn to present another viewpoint. [Answer] # Recordings are not perfect * They can be tampered with(especially by people that control/maintain the system) * There are rooms that prevent electronic transmissions * There will be (security)bugs in the nanobots programming * It could be that the recording is not enough. (e.g. kill from sniperrifle 3 km afar) # Laws are not exact * Even if the recordings are clear it is sometimes not clear if the prosecuted has done something illegal * The punishment is also often variabel [Answer] The purposes of a trial are: * Separate the guilty from the innocent. The witnesses, or nano-cameras, or whatever are there to gather evidence. One purpose of the trial is to evaluate the evidence and apply actual judgement against (a) the facts, and (b) the law. There is some uneasy friction there, which requires the ritual. * Provide closure. Specifically, the notion has grown up that the trial settles the issue. That's why courts and trials are better than "citizen justice", as it puts the official stamp of closure on an issue, and avoids retaliation and blood-feud. I'll suggest that for psychological reasons as much as anything else, people will require the ritual of the trial, even if in most (yes, most!) cases the evidence will be overwhelming and unarguable. Also, bear in mind that people would likely prefer to be judged by humans -- who understand mercy, and extenuating circumstances -- rather than rule-based automata. [Answer] Facts do not prove you committed a crime. The key point here is the need of an agent to analyze the facts and draw a conclusion that can logically prove you committed a crime. Facts do not speak on their own. They need to be combined to prove, without a doubt, that you did the crime. Just like our legal system, the agent might not smart enough to draw the dots on the facts. The agent might overanalyze and make assumptions. The flaws of today's persecution will still apply, thus without a doubt trial is still needed. [Answer] Yes, a trial would still be necessary, because the defendant has declared himself innocent. There are a number of possible defences: a. That he could not have done it b. That there is sufficient doubt that he could have done it c. That the death was brought about in circumstances that cannot be considered murder, e.g. accident, self-defence Data may exist, but data can be faulty. The more data that exists, the greater the likelihood of inconsistencies. The greater the reliance and trust in the data that exists, the less checks applied to that data. Even data degrades. Data alone is not proof. The data needs to be organised into something which can be used to demonstrate proof. The prosecution will make their argument, and the defence will make theirs - even with the same original data, the conclusions and arguments may be different. A single set of data may have a number of alternative explanations, even if it is completely reliable. [Answer] Personally I would accept the death penalty as an escape from that world Any how there are 2 options I see at the moment 1) You said the statistics are publically available- but perhaps they were tampered with prior to the arrest by a database admin. 2) perhaps a virus/ hack tampered with statistics in real time. any nation believing in due process would still have court judgements as a means of solidifying the facts and giving the accused the chance to speak for themselves. Even if the case is overwhelming in evidence. [Answer] The premise reminds me somewhat of Minority Report where people were judged guilty for actions that hadn't happened yet. The judicial system serves two purposes: 1. Prevent wrongdoers from continuing to create problems in society 2. Provide justice to the people and thereby restoring order. My thoughts are that both would be satisfied in a world in which there is little doubt that a person committed a crime if the judicial system were skipped entirely. After enough time with the new system, most people wouldn't even question the system. If Roger from the office gets taken away by the police, nobody in the office would raise a finger, including Roger himself! Of course this clearly presents a problem. How would you know the government isn't using it as a means to eliminate opposition in secret? This fortunately would present a problem to this system, as you genuinely would see people protest to this. However, this is easily avoided by having a kangaroo court wherein a quick process where evidence is shown in the form of a digital report and a single judge quickly reads it and then announces aloud the recommended sentence written on the report. The trial wouldn't take longer than 30 seconds, and nobody would claim to be innocent except the very desperate. [Answer] You say that nano-machines record action, but that there are no sounds or videos to go along with it... in reality, with a computer examining the numerical data the "video" and the "audio" could be recreated because the nano-machines record all of the muscle movements (including vocal cords). I assume that the victim also has "living" nano-machines that could reproduce the "audio and video" from their own perspective. In addition, in a court, the nano-technology could be used to determine whether the witness is lying or telling the truth. There would need to be a great deal of detail in order to determine the facts including GPS position (or whatever future equivalent). For example, determining who had the killing shot when a victim stands before a firing squad takes into account a lot of details including the position of each person involved. Expand the range to 1000 yards with a dozen snipers all firing at the same target... could your nano-technology determine and account for variations such as wind, etc? A knife thrown in a general direction does not make a murderer... only if the victim was also in that position AND the intention of the killer was to kill (an accident). So can there be a murderer who gets away with it? It all depends on the capabilities of your nano-technology. If the circumstances allow abuse or there are flaws in the technology, there will probably be people that take advantage of it. Here are some questions: 1. What happens to the nano-technology when the victim is no longer living 2. Where is the data stored? 3. Can the data be intercepted and manipulated? (a question to be answered regardless of WHERE the data is stored) 4. What happens to the data of nano-machines which are destroyed? (Such as blasted away by a bullet or bomb) 5. Can data be "blanked" out such as a result of other technology or radiation? 6. How long does the data remain? (ex: expires after 1 year) What are the limitations on recording? 7. Does the nano-tech record what the host sees? (If no, does that mean the host can kill via pushing a button while watching a live video?) 8. Does the nano-tech record thoughts, or only the body response? [Answer] Yes. However not to establish guilt but to decide on his punishment. The defendent could argue that his special circumstances Demand a lighter punishment then what is usually given to criminals who have committed murder. Perhaps he Pleads not guilty by reason of insanity. [Answer] It depends on what the main goal of criminal justice is considered to be in this society. Is it 1. justice / revenge 2. rehabilitation (making the guilty able to function and contribute) 3. protecting people from being victims of new crimes made by the same perpetrator 4. something else I think it is a fair counter question because I suspect the attitudes of what the objective of the criminal justice system in such a society could radically change as compared to a society where there is doubt. If there is perfect information gathering then the nanobots would also be able to measure things like stress level, probability for every individual of having a psychosis or a crime-of-passion incident in every possible situation perfectly well. You could then calculate mathematically exact how many percent of a persons action they could be demanded to take responsibility of in any given situation and exactly how many percent insane they were at that moment. ]
[Question] [ A common sight that can be seen in Sci-fi is the sheer amount of people who have prosthetic limbs. Even characters who are apparently live in conditions implying they are poor are somehow able to buy a prosthetic that would cost thousands of American dollars. After noticing this trend I wondered, how cheap must those prosthetics be?! Assuming that somehow a society built extremely advanced prosthetic limbs, how cheap would they have to be for the poor, lower people citizens to be able to afford them? What reasons, other than cost, could explain why poor, poverty stricken citizens can have such advanced prosthetics? [Answer] ### They may have not paid for it Prosthetics may be considered to be reimbursable by your healthcare provider. If there was a big war (that could leave a lot of landmines), or some natural disaster that would cripple a lot of people ("thanks to our new safety systems, nobody died, they're just broken a little"), or just enough lobbying from the robot industry (which is actually very likely if it starts being cheap). ### "Everybody has a smartphone" Everybody, everywhere (actually not, but smartphone ownership spans over most social stratifications). Whether it's a low-grade one, a stolen one or a "I've-ruined-myself-but-it's-totally-worth-it" one. If your social status depends on it and there is a way to get one, getting one is a chance to get out of poverty or at least forget it for a while. I don't think any poor person wants to be seen as such. ### "Special" payment plans A very honest prosthetic seller said this to me one day: > > Here, I'm giving it to you for 10 $. Just sign this contract, oh, > don't read those tiny lines about you being indebted for life, they're > here for technical reasons. > > > I was not poor at the time. Now I am. I'm not allowed to sell my prosthetic back. I'm actually legally bound to publicly say that it is great and I could not live without it. [Answer] Prosthetic limbs are actually becoming cheaper, even in the real world. People are currently [3D printing](http://3d%20printing%20prosthetics) prosthetic limbs. The technology behind human/prosthetic [communication](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=mind%20controlled%20prosthetics) is becoming better as well. The electronics arent that complicated compared to other technologies. In the future, I would expect getting a prosthetic limb would be as simple as going to a clinic. The doctor/tech would use a computer to size and print the limb, use mass produced electronics, give you an instruction manual, and shove you out the door. 80% of the world's current population has a cell phone. Why? Because the technology and manufacturing is cheap. Even people without working toilets have cell phones. [Answer] It's not a matter of the poor being able to afford prosthetic limbs, the government gives them to the disabled. Why? Because it's cheaper than paying out welfare benefits. This way the poor can get back to work again. Pity about the likelihood of them losing more limbs in the oppressive sweatshops where they're forced to work. No-one wants them living off the State. Why waste good tax dollars on social welfare for the poor when there are richly deserving corporations that need propping up and safeguarding against the incompetent decisions of their executives, that periodically bankrupt them. EDIT: I forgot to mention I assumed the prosthetic technology is mature, development costs have been paid off, and manufacturing costs have plunged. [Answer] For technology, most of the cost of making something is in the research and development, not the actual manufacture. The research, development, design of both the device itself and the means to manufacture it is a once-off cost and once it's paid for, it's simply a matter of churning out millions of the devices, and assuming you can sell them all you can sell them quite cheap. This is why you can get a smart-phone, which is a highly advanced computer which can also do advanced telecommunications, take photos, etc. as well as fit in your pocket for under €100 In other words, your robotic limbs can be affordable by even the poor as long as enough people use them [Answer] Can your society afford not to give people prosthetics? Consider the two very widespread forms of medical device that huge majorities of the population have: eyeglasses and dental fillings. First-world healthcare systems make these available to everyone for either nominal fees or completely free for those that are unable to pay. Why? Because not having them is debilitating and potentially removes the ability of someone to be a useful contributory member of society. It might also be worth questioning in both your future society and the present where the need for prosthetics might come from. The UK's Paralympic team has a large contingent of ex-soldiers in it. The Iraq war caused a large number of limbs lost to mines. Society can't really abandon its wounded veterans any more than it could charge for battlefield medicine. [Answer] Assuming the story happens in a first world country, they would likely have free public healthcare. The government pays for the prosthetic as part of the treatment for whatever injury they suffered. Also, I don't think a mass-produced robotic prosthetic would be all that expensive, compared to many other modern day treatments. In a highly robotized world, things are not expensive, human labor is. [Answer] It all boils down to two necessities: energy and manufacturing capacity. 3D printers could, in theory, create pretty much anything if you feed it the right goo. However, this process is likely to be very energy-intensive, especially if you are creating more than an intricately shaped piece of plastic or metal. This does assume that the research has been done to create sophisticated robotics and other items with a Star Trek-style replicator, however the facts of science and engineering are not dependent on time or society, so if the knowledge exists and is freely available (which is to say, not constrained by patents or other intellectual property laws), then one could imagine that the printer goo could be delivered in a form where it can be broken by the 3D printer into the base components necessary to create pretty much anything, and can be pumped in and out of a dwelling like water and electricity. A technologically advanced civilization may have abundant energy, resources, and the scientific understanding to create advanced mechanisms cheaply, but if we were to base this civilization from what we know about our own, the most expensive component may end up being intellectual property royalties and/or licensing. This is not unlike the pharmaceutical industry, where legal monopolistic production allows medications that can be produced at $10 per dose be sold exclusively at a price a hundred times as high. [Answer] Let's assume, for argument's sake, that these prosthetics are $5,000 (in today's world, that's fairly reasonable for the lower-end models), and that, just so that I don't duplicate anyone else's answer, this is a very un-generous society that refuses charitable acts such as giving one of these to someone for free. Most poor people probably could afford to spend $1 a week on such a thing, if they really felt they needed it. 5,000 weeks is about 96.15 years, or 96 years and 1.8 months. That would mean that according to this theoretically viable payment plan, albeit a ridiculously long one (on which either party might insist on the right to back out at any point before the payment is complete), the person with the prosthetic, and probably his children, would be paying for this thing for their entire lives. Yup, much easier for everyone just to fork it over. [Answer] I was recently a juror on a lengthy medical malpractice case involving an amputee. I'm nowhere near an expert, but we had to learn quite a bit about prosthetics in the course of the trial. My biggest surprise was how often adjustments and fittings needed to be done to get a good fit for the individual person. If the fit is not just right it results in some very painful blisters, and best case you're back in a wheelchair while it heals, worst case you require surgery on your limb. I think that constant readjustment and refitting by a professional is really what drives the cost up. If you want to bring the cost down for a mass market, you'd have to create a technology that would take that professional out of the loop somehow. Just pick up a kit at your local drug store, have it scan your residual limb, and it auto-adjusts for a perfect fit. [Answer] Sophisticated prosthetics as we currently know them are almost always prototypes or custom built high performance devices like the carbon fibre feet paralympians use. They require custom parts, custom materials, hours if not days/weeks/months of skilled labour to design and construct; I am emphatically not including 3D printed prosthetics in this category. The manufacturing processes used to create prototypes and one-off devices is completely different to the processes used in mass manufacturing. A silicon mold cast may take hours to set and cost hundreds once you include the cost of making the mold, the mix-&-set resin and the labour cost of the skilled craftsman. Whereas an injection molding machine can create the exact same thing from cheaper materials (ABS) every few seconds, reducing the cost of manufacture to little more than the bulk materials cost + shipping. The same principle applies to almost every component, only a few specific metal parts will need to be individually machined and automated CNC mills and lathes already exist, really the only thing preventing them from being mass manufactured now is the relative infancy of brain-computer interfaces. Once these "augmentations" are popular/mainstream the companies that build/sell/market them will want to create ever increasingly desirable models to convince consumers to buy their products again and again, like how Apple releases a new phone every other year or so. This obsolescence by fashion means there will be a thriving after market of second hand and out-dated prosthetics, eventually culminating in perfectly functional yet undesirable prosthetics ending up in the trash. I used to work in retail and I remember throwing dozens flip phones that were the height of 90s fashion in the bin, the packaging hadn't even been opened. [Answer] how cheap something has to be for someone to afford it doesn't make sense to me. Any any price point, there will always be somebody who cannot afford it! Consider if prosthetics were available for $500, at that price point a lot of people could afford it, but then there will always be a proportion of people (albeit smaller population than before) who will not be able to afford it. Maybe, what can be done is increase the variety of prosthetics available at various price points (with obvious price:functionality tradeoffs) so that many more people can afford them. Expecting health insurance or govt to foot the bill is not a solution on aggregate societal basis. It is just transfer of costs within society members (and not always fair). if funds can be invested in material and design science, maybe it could be possible to produce reasonable functional prosthetics at much lower price points that present. [Answer] Suppose one defines poor, as 'struggling to get basic neccesities'. In this case I would argue that something is affordable for poor people if one of the following two points apply: # 1. It is a basic neccesity Hopefully this derives from a social perspective (rich societies consider it a basic need, so they subsidize). Possibly this derives from a survival perspective (you need prosthetics to survive, so you simply won't see any poor people without prostethics as they fail to survive). # 2. It does not cost more than basic neccesity In order to survive, poor people will have to be able to come up with funds to get basic neccesities like food. If they are (just) capable of that, than most poor people should be able to get prostethics at some point if they don't cost more than a few cheap meals. # Conclusion If prosthetics are a basic neccesity, they could cost anything. But otherwise not much more than a few cheap meals. ]
[Question] [ In real life, there are weight classes in combat sports. In my world, there are sixteen species from the Homo genus: 1. Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens); 2. Marine humans/Merfolk (Homo maritimus); 3. Winged humans/Angels (Homo angelus); 4. Horned humans/Demons (Homo demonus); 5. Magic humans/Wizards (Homo magicus); 6. Arboreal humans/Elves (Homo macer); 7. Trolls; 8. Gnomes; 9. Ogres (Homo corpulentus); 10. Giants (Homo gigas); 11. Halflings; 12. Dwarfs; 13. Hematophagous humans/Vampires (Homo haematophagus); 14. Furry humans/Therianthropes (Homo pilosus); 15. Green humans/Goblins (Homo viridis); 16. Tusked humans/Orcs. These various human species have an EXTREMELY high phenotypical variation between them. Some examples include: 1. Merfolk are as massive as belugas with females larger than males, they have a seal-like blubber, and bison-level strength, and, while they do have hands and feet, they are syndactyl (webbed digits) (sorry, I do not want a psychedelic-like species like merfolk from a famous Disney animated film). 2. Giants are as massive as polar bears with females larger than males, and they also have a seal-like blubber, and they have moose-level strength. 3. Ogres are on average as tall as the average real life NBA player with females larger than males, they also have a seal-like blubber making them weighting on average 140 kilograms, and they have gorilla-level strength. 4. Gnomes are as small as domestic cats, and they have raccoon-level strength. 5. Angels are as large as wandering albatrosses, they have bat-like wings, and beaver-level strength, and they can fly as well as African grey parrots. 6. Demons have goat-like horns, weighting on average a metric ton, the queen is always the largest individual in a demon colony (they are eusocial like naked mole-rats), and workers weight on average only one kilogram. 7. Vampires are as large as common chimpanzees, and they have chimpanzee-level strength. 8. Therianthropes are as large as orangutans, and they have orangutan-level strength. 9. Orcs are as large as American black bears, and they have wild boar-like tusks, and zebra-level strength. 10. Wizards, naturally, can use magic, but without it, they have dog-level strength. So, the question is: how could interspecies wrestling fights be fair if all the various human species are EXTREMELY different both in terms of size (volume, mass, and height), and in terms of physical strength? [Answer] # Compete with teams of equal total weight Rather than having each match 1-on-1 with vastly different weights, increase the numbers of the smaller creatures until their total weight roughly equals that of the larger creatures. Some examples: * Let's say the average merfolk weighs 1500 kg, and the average giant weighs 1000 kg. Then it'll be a match of 2 merfolk against 3 giants, for 3000 kg per team. * The average ogre weighs 140 kg, and the average gnome weighs 4.5 kg. That'll be a match of 1 ogre against 31 gnomes, for 140 kg against 139.5 kg. * The average therianthrope weighs 125 kg, and the average vampire weighs 50 kg. That's a match of 1 therianthrope against 3 vampires for 125 kg against 150 kg, or if you prefer 2 against 5 for 250 kg each. Now, some may raise concern about injury and death to small creatures. A single ogre blow may fatally wound a gnome. I say, that's part of the appeal for the crowd. In the same way our crowds would enjoy watching John Cena do a triple backflip onto someone's skull, the more brutal the better. [Answer] You don't want the fight to be fair, you want the fight to be entertaining. After all it is professional wrestling! Set the fight on a ring with one random picked environment, or with two environments, each where one of the two fighters has an advantage or a disadvantage. Make things interesting and fun for the public. Fairness isn't not always so. [Answer] Robot avatars. Instead of wrestling in person, they strap themselves into harnesses and engage through metal proxies. In the old days of formula one racing, the car was everything, the team that had the most money to throw at development and refining the cars had the clear advantage, but the rules got tighter - now the cars are much the same because the rules are so strict and the race comes down much more to the drivers. It can be much the same with the mechs used to fight with. Or if you want to take it further, the metal bodies can all be totally identical, taken by random choice from a standard pool of slave-robots for each fight - the only difference between them being the colour or numbering scheme. It could still be exhausting for the individual players as the master-harnesses they strap themselves into could require quite a bit of strength to use, and have haptic feedback - all proportional to and standardised for their race to prevent any clear advantage. This would still technically allow for attempted knobbling, the remote-control systems could be hijacked, the players fitted-up with performance enhancing potions etc. - but the referees would be keeping a keen eye out for that sort of thing. [Answer] # There's no such thing as a fair sporting event. The whole point of a sporting event is to be unfair. The big guy, the tall guy, the guy (or we could go into the topic of transgender women...) - always, there's someone with an advantage. If the advantage starts making the contest too predictable, maybe you split it into categories. That is always arbitrary, and no matter what some politicians say, there's no "right" way to do it. Someone is going to have a future in the sport and someone is going to have it taken away because of some purely arbitrary way you decide to write the rules. Contests between species are usually spiced up with empirically defined rules. A classic example is the [bear baiting](http://theshakespeareblog.com/2013/01/bears/) that competed quite well with the Globe Theater where Shakespeare's plays were performed. A bear was chained to a post and four dogs were set upon it, with a satisfying variety of outcomes for bettors. Now to be sure, in pro wrestling I would rather expect a troll to set on a halfling with a breakaway chair until it is quite tired, only to be topped and pummeled by the little fellow, until his ogre lover in the audience leaps in to save him, leaving the halfling dangling from the scrying crystal that broadcasts from the ceiling. Fear not, that halfling will fall back into the battle at a turning point in the next bout, and quite possibly walk away with the belt. [Answer] As Other have pointed out, Pro wrestling is scripted. As a performer it is abut their ability to sell a move, tell a story and not be dangerous (for real). If you are after classes or groupings you can go down the route of many titles. In pro wrestling titles are used as a stepping stone on the way to becoming the world champion, as a reason for all competitors, even the less popular to aim for something and titles are great for merchandising as fans love having their own replica belt. Some sort of world/universal champion is the top title, Intercontinental/European is the lead up title, this prepares performers for becoming a world champion and below that you have less important titles such as light weight, hardcore and tag teams, although those titles can still be occupied by fan favourite performers. The same system is used in most pro wrestling companies but with regional names and specific novelty titles that are better suited to the company. Some of the best stories in wrestling have been where the smaller beats the larger guy. One of WWE's most watched moments was Hulk Hogan picking up and slamming Andre the Giant, due to the success of that story and how it made Hulk Hogan the biggest star, the story has been repeated decades later with other stars, such as Brock Lesnar picking up the Big Show, or John Cena lifting other giants, partly because the company owner Vince is stuck in his ways and not very imaginative and partly because everyone loves the David and Goliath style story. But picking up a giant takes strength, so you need performers who are very strong but not as big as the giant they are lifting, there is only so much help a performer can get from their opponent to sell a move, so in this case they need to be strong. The other route for your smaller fighters that are not very strong is the Rey Mysterio route, like how martial arts movies have sold the audience on believing acrobatic fighting can defeat large opponents, the performers use speed and dazzling moves to overcome the larger stronger opponents. So the sizes and genders of the performers should not affect their ring ability as an unlikely winner can often be the best storyline. [Answer] Teams and Ranking System The wrestlers have teams. Teams of large people fight other teams of large people. For example a giant fights three trolls. Teams of small people fight other small people. Five halflings can fight nine dwarfs. But a giant cannot fight 500 halflings because a single blow will kill any halfling. Each team has a score based on number of wins. They fight other teams with similar scores. Not all fights are fair. Bigger teams have an unfair advantage over smaller teams. Similar to weight categories in real life, this leads to different divisions. This is not a problem. In the real world, some people prefer to watch heavyweights and some prefer lightweights. Some watch both. The fact that most heavyweights would trounce most lightweights does not damage the sport. Likewise some people in your world prefer to watch the 0-100 division which is based on individual skill and athleticism; and some prefer the 900-1000 division which is based on tactics and team cohesion. [Answer] Balance your species... In real wrestling (not WWE), strength is only one factor in wrestling ability. I wrestled for around 11 years, and relied on endurance and technique against stronger opponents, with general success (made it to state every year of high school, placing 4th once). I ran cross country, just so that I had the energy for the last period, and won a lot of matches then. There's also speed and agility for measurable skills, along with a predator instinct and an ability to activate a flow state - both absolutely invaluable in a real contest. Give your less-strong species of similar weight balancing characteristics, like speed, technique, endurance, or agility, and they will be able to hold their own, under correct circumstances. ...with help from contest rules. Just like real wrestling (not WWE), use weight brackets. Within any species, there will be an extremely large range of strengths, skills, and sizes (Athletic humans can easily range from 100-300 pounds), enough to necessitate weight classes on its own. Match weights for a start. But then, also, adjust contest rules to help weaker species. Make rings large and matches long, so they can move around and wear out stronger species. Make all dangerous moves strictly illegal, so no one gets injured, forcing contestants to use real technique, rather than goring each other. Optionally, add obstacles to buff speed and agility. For weaker flying creatures, make the ring roof a reasonable height, so the contest will continue, but the flying creatures can get a break if they need it. It'll require some groundwork on your part to develop the skills of each species, beyond strength, and techniques for each to beat each. And even then, at the end of the day, don't even bother trying to cross weight classes significantly. That difference is really hard to make up in a wrestling fight, where intentionally injuring the opponent is illegal (unlike more violent martial arts, where you can disable your bigger opponent). Addendum - I know that you might prefer a way to avoid weight classes, but if you mean a real, physical, fair, one-on-one wrestling match, you just can't do it with your range of creatures. The raccoon-strength creature couldn't physically turn over a dead beluga onto it's back, let alone a live, struggling one. [Answer] ## It's a fair fight if both contestants agree to it... and there are lots of fun ways to arrange the required mutual agreement. Imagine a large screen that displays the prize being offered for the next fight, which increases throughout the night. Contestants indicate which other contestants they'd be willing to fight for that prize, and a fight takes place whenever there's a match. [Answer] Rules of various wrestling styles (no hitting, kicking, scratching, biting, ...) rather exacerbate weight differences. Fighting an opponent that weights 100 kg more then you - with winning conditions like "force their back on the floor for x seconds", "shove them out of the combat area" or "apply a joint lock till they give up" - will be extremely one sided for the heavier opponent. Now, in your case you might have opponents that weight 5kg and 1000kg respectively - a cat-sized gnome vs a demon. There is no way to let them wrestle it out, simply because the gnome will not be able to move even a single finger of the demon. To illustrate, at that weight factor, you could roughly put a human against a small guinea pig. The guinea pig might be able to tickle the human by licking their feet, and that is probably the most impactful attack they can manage. On the other hand, the human might be to large to interact with the smaller opponent within the rules - how do you apply a choke hold on such a tiny being without outright crushing its neck? For meaningful contest you need completely different rules, to the point they resemble nothing like what we know as "wrestling". And still, with such large weight differences, accidental death (of the smaller opponent) is a huge risk as long as they are in close physical proximity. [Answer] Empirically. This would all be 'back story' so you don't have to show the whole tedium, but the idea is to run prior test matches between individuals of different species. For the species that always wins (it will be one or the other most likely, and if not, you have a fair fight as it is), administer a drug that slows down their physical reaction and/or mental reaction time. Tweak the amount of the drug during the test matches so that half the time one species individual wins and the other half of the time the other individual wins. The type and amount of drug will remain consistent henceforth, so if one species starts winning most of the time, it means they are more motivated. [Answer] You can use artefacts to make the wrestling more even: An extreme example would be to wrestle with bows, at distance: in such a situation, all species would have the same chance. Any other weapon could be used to make the fight a little more fair: swords, axes.... You can also change the environment: imagine the species are fighting in the sea: they could only swim and win over the other by sending him down. In this situation, species would be more equal than on a classic MMA wrestling. [Answer] In any game, one person will always have an advantage compared to the other. In your case, I would make it even more fun by giving them different weapons and tools for fighting! Of course, we would give them tools at random and see how they fare with it! ]
[Question] [ Why would a species that lived in tunnels deep under the sea, where there was no light, and never had been any light, react to the presence of light from an explorer? [Answer] Because it can still feel temperature differences. Light is energy. Depositing energy on the skin (or deeper in the body, if the skin is transparent, as it often is for deep sea creatures that live in the dark) warms it up. The creature feels that as heat, and can tell that part of it is being warmed and other parts aren't. Plausibly, it might even hurt. After all, they have no reason to have developed any resistance having their biomolecules damaged by exposure to visible-spectrum light. [Answer] ## UV / Sunburn New Zealand has quite high levels of UV. Europeans who come here in summer often burn themselves horribly. The actual UV is only 50% % higher in intensity, IIRC, not orders of magnitude. Some creature with skin that's never been exposed to UV, has no melanin, and no mechanism for repairing damage will take horrible damage. If they can feel the damage, they'll react. Intelligent creatures may be able to learn the warning signs after an exposure or two even if they don't notice the first time. [Answer] # Vestigial eyes: Your species evolved from one that could see. Their very distant ancestors lived in the light, and their nearer ancestors had huge eyes to see tiny glowing worms and molds that attracted bugs to spread spores. So while the species never saw the light, and their eyes might barely function, there is still a vestigial capacity. There might be no understanding, but there is a reaction. [Answer] When you say there is no light, do you mean no light from the sky, or no light from any source? Some creatures can produce their own light by chemiluminescence. Light is an important means of communication for some deep sea animals even though they may never see any light from the sun. They would probably be blinded by an explorer's light at close range. At a distance, they might interpret it as a signal of a food source, predator, intrusion in their territory, or whatever information they are used to obtaining from light signals. [Answer] Not being ever exposed to light means it has no pigments.of any sort to protect against it. When exposed to light it will cause pain or something similar to it, and that will cause a reaction. Same way as we don't feel radioactivity but we feel the heat caused by it. [Answer] Being sensitive to light is not a big deal, really. The visible light is special because its photons have energies comparable to the energies of the common types of chemical bonds. Just like any exposed electronic element is sensitive to light (sometimes unexpectedly), most neurons should be sensitive to light in one way or another. Creatures living in total darkness are highly likely to be a great deal transparent. Even if their ancestors were long ago exposed to light, their pigments would be naturally selected away. Pigments have biochemical cost and one can save precious energy by not making them (and the energy is likely to be precious in a lightless environment). One may just feel some common excitation, just like when using regulated substances. Maybe different wavelengths impose different effects. And, high intensity light will be poisonous. [Answer] Let's turn that question around: Why would a (ancient to pre-1900) human that has never been exposed to microwave radiation react to intense microwave radiation, e.g. being put into a microwave oven? Humans have no dedicated receptors, no "eyes" for microwaves. But they would react to being slowly or not so slowly cooked, the intense radiation can raise the local temperature, cause burns, destroy cells ... On the other hand, you'd not react to the microwave of your wifi, phone, bluetooth ... despite them using the very same 2.4 GHz ISM band. What would most likely happen in a world where there is no light, ever, is the detection of light by indirect means. The same way that humans do not have any sensory equipment to feel "wet" or "dry", but still can detect it ... wet clothing feels different from dry clothing (and is heavier), a wet finger (usually) has a cooling effectin air --- the same mechanism is used to detect the direction of a weak wind using a wet finger stuck up into the air. The following senses make sense in a completely dark underwater world: * pressure and pressure variations (the side line organ of fish) * heat variations of water (skin) * passive sonar/hearing (ears) * active sonar (dolphins --- they actually can use [2 independent beams simultaneously](https://neuronresearch.net/hearing/files/dolphinbiosonar.htm)) * electric current detection ([European Eel](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/512967/)) * passive electric field reception (nerves do cause electric field changes ... and [it is a pretty common sense for fish, 16% of fish species have it](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jfb.13922)) * active electro-location (electric field production and reception, e.g. in ["weakly electric fish"](https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/216/13/i/11361/SEEING-AND-COMMUNICATING-THROUGH-WEAK-ELECTRIC)) * capacitance detection, resistance detection (weakly electric fish [like Eigenmannia](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225137842_Capacitance_detection_in_the_wave-type_electric_fish_Eigenmannia_during_active_electrolocation)) * chemoreceptance ("smelling"). (Piranhas are well known to detect a drop of blood in crazy amounts of water, sharks have quite the nose ... some catfish are a [full-body taste system](https://asknature.org/strategy/fish-body-is-a-swimming-tongue/)) * magnetoreceptance (e.g. [Japanese eel](https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/207/17/2965/14842/Magnetic-sense-in-the-Japanese-eel-Anguilla)) * probably a good number I have not even thought about ... It is obvious that an electrical light needs an electrical current and thus produces a magnetic field. There is also a electric potential field, even if electricity does not flow, with a battery, or a power cable (unless all wires are detached to what the ground is at he deep end). Unless the lamp is completely fixed, does not interact with or move though the water, and also creates no water currents by, say, being warm and thus making the water be a bit warmer and rise ... all of these could be detected. And they can easily be interpreted by "reacting to the light" even when they are reacting to a proxy change in environment. [Answer] # It depends How bright the light is and for how long the light is set on the creature. From what ive read from this study ( [https://montereybay.noaa.gov/research/techreports/trkochevar1998.html#:~:text=The%20few%20studies%20published%20addressing%20effects%20of%20light,effect%2C%20to%20temporary%20%28recoverable%29%20effects%2C%20to%20permanent%20blindness](https://montereybay.noaa.gov/research/techreports/trkochevar1998.html#:%7E:text=The%20few%20studies%20published%20addressing%20effects%20of%20light,effect%2C%20to%20temporary%20%28recoverable%29%20effects%2C%20to%20permanent%20blindness). ) if the light is kept low and for a short amount of time the creature will be fine, but if the light is very intense it will cause damage to the creature. EDIT: I realize that the question was not IF they would react but WHY they would react. With that in mind, i can think of a few, but the main one is that they still have eyes. Not good, or maybe not even functional eyes, but they have been left over from a time where this creature used to live higher up and experience light. While their eyes may or may not work/be good, the light still could hurt their eyes. ]
[Question] [ In 1948, Wernher von Braun wrote [The Mars Project](http://astronautix.com/v/vonbraunmarpedition-1952.html), in which he outlined a scientific expedition to Mars involving 70 crew members who would stay for around a year before returning to Earth. Since then, innovations in spaceflight technology, political and economic changes, and a better understanding of the science have led to constant changes in space agencies' various designs. NASA mission profiles, in particular Constellation, have proposed a relatively small number of crew for scientific missions, with larger numbers reserved for base-building in the far future. And while SpaceX plans to eventually move hundreds of people to Mars at a time, they don't seem to be focused on research for the time being. My current story idea takes place in an alternate universe with a research-focused round-trip expedition setting off roughly around the present day and returning after a year's stay. It is fairly similar to von Braun's in basic mission design, except relying on more modern technology (e.g. powered landing instead of gliding, use of drones for aid in exploration, better propulsion, etc.) and fewer vehicles to carry a similar number of crew (40-70). Notably, it is the first mission that actually succeeds in putting boots on the Martian surface in this universe, though it doesn't have to be the first manned spaceflight to Mars to begin with — flybys and orbital missions and such may have already happened. Presumably there are practical reasons that a von Braun-style expedition is no longer in vogue. Why, then, with minimal subtractions from modern technology and a point of divergence no earlier than 1960 or so, would this be the first successful approach? [Answer] ### Because they're not all coming back At the same time they're travelling there to form a colony too - because it's a waste to lug all this stuff to Mars and only use it once. There will be rockets travelling back and forth over the following few decades carrying cargo and people, and it's going to be easier if there's manned bases at both ends. Humanity is going to Mars to stay. Some of them will return, so for some people it's a round trip exactly as the question asks, but for the rest, they'll die on Mars. Hopefully of old age. The first few rockets were unmanned and automated, they had robots and equipment on them which built the colony, set up power, fuel, water, and oxygen production, built a viable colony, and reported that everything was good to receive humans. The savings in cost for combining the research expedition that returns with the permanent settlement is just enough that both can be done under budget. Economies of scale with the rockets, better utilisation of the lunar fuel production base, and such. If it's 100 billion for a settlement, 80 billion for a 1 year return mission, and 110 billion to do both at once, why not do both at once? After a year on the surface, one of the rockets blasts off with samples, the results of experiments, and a chunk of the crew to return to earth. The colony is large for a few reasons: * Genetic diversity - more humans will arrive over the following decades to help dilute the gene pool but the less inbreeding at the start the better. * There are lots of jobs to do: + There are service jobs that shouldn't be done by specialists. Barkeep. Grocer. Warehousing. Shopkeeper. Your lead botanist shouldn't be manning the bar every night. Your chief engineer shouldn't be distributing food. + Engineering is a pretty complex field. One person can't specialise in refrigeration, software engineering, hydraulics, robotics, and electrical engineering. For a large base, it'd be best to have specialists for all these fields on site rather than have to rely on 40 minute round trip for consolations about every problem. + The medical needs of a small colony increase when you're trying to make kids, especially the first in lower gravity. While a small Mars mission may need 2 medics (so they can treat each other), your mission will need gynaecologists, midwives, nurses, pharmacists, paediatricians, medical imagers, surgeons who can do a caesarean, anaesthetists, and the like. These roles may be partially merged for trip #1, but will still be more than what 2 medics can do. * Interpersonal conflicts can develop randomly, and they will destroy any small team - a team of 60 is large enough that 2 people who hate each other can avoid each other for the rest of their lives without destroying productivity. [Answer] Standing watches without exhaustion One of the principles of standing watch in an infantry context is that wherever possible there is at least a double-staggered piquet. Let's say 8 soldiers need to stand watch on the gun for 8 hours overnight (from 2000 until 0400), their shifts look something like this: * Soldier 1 (split shift) 2000-2100 * Soldier 2 - 2000-2200 * Soldier 3 - 2100-2300 * Soldier 4 - 2200-0000 * Soldier 5 - 2300-0100 * Soldier 6 - 0000-0200 * Soldier 7 - 0100-0300 * Soldier 8 - 0200-0400 * Soldier 1 (split shift) 0300-0400 This way (assuming there is no contact during the night): 1. everyone gets six hours of sleep (albeit broken into two periods for all but 3 soldiers); 2. there is always someone relatively fresh on watch with someone who is in their second hour; and 3. if something happens, one person can stay on the gun while the other moves around waking people up. The problem is that this is an exhausting way to live, which is why front line units need to be periodically rotated into rear areas to rest. (It is also something not adequately considered by many survivalists, who do not realise that if their apocalypse scenarios do come to pass that the routine they and their 3 friends may manage for a practice weekend is not a feasible way to live the rest of their lives.) Now let's look at a spacecraft. Whether correctly or not, there is a perceived risk that automatic systems are not up to the job of handling emergencies and that there must always be an emergency crew of three people in spacesuits ready to act at all times. In an emergency, one handles control and communications while the other two move to and deal with the micrometeoroid impact (or whatever). Once the expedition arrives, the "3 people in suits ready to respond" principle also applies to the surface team. Which means that between the (orbiting?) ship and the ground party, there must always be six people ready to go. Yet the expedition cannot safely operate while sleep deprived, as this leads to mistakes and space is an unforgiving environment. Work out how many people you want on the expedition, then work out what watch-standing arrangements are required to justify the number you want. The only requirements are: * the resources are available to send so many people in such a high-capacity spacecraft; and * it is perceived as too risky not to have walking, talking people on watch at all times rather than drones/automatic systems. This is best explained by one or two past disasters in which automatic systems were inadequate to manage the catastrophe but people ready to act in spacesuits would have saved the day. [Answer] It is not the first approach of this sort. This one just succeeded. After North Korean leadership gave up on their nuclear program, they turned to the space race as a source of national pride. Their unorthodox approach was surprisingly effective, if wasteful. The 70 Korean cosmonauts who succeeded in reaching Mars were actually in the third ship sent up, the earlier two having each failed to reach Mars in different ways. Why the Koreans want so many cosmonauts on Mars has to do with their motivations in the first place. The photos of the arrayed cosmonauts on Mars are indisputably more impressive than a handful of individuals would be. The Korean approach is the successful approach because it is the only approach. No-one else is trying, especially after what happened with the second Korean attempt. For the Koreans themselves, the failures only increased their resolve. [Answer] OP here: this is my own, not-quite-complete answer, which I'm posting just because no one else got to it. Obviously I won't accept this one, don't worry. Project Orion The first idea I had while writing this question was that the mission architecture made sending a large crew no more problematic than sending a small one. What immediately jumped out at me was [Project Orion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)), the nuclear-pulse spacecraft that blows past any of the strict mass limits that space missions tend to have by instead getting more efficient for large payloads. Rather than worrying about assembling a flotilla of spacecraft in orbit over many years (and political shifts) and spending so many billions on launch vehicles, the whole thing could be done in one fell swoop from launch to Martian orbit (depositing landers and return craft on the surface) before returning everyone home. It could also cut transit times dramatically and make the notion of getting it all done a little more logistically convenient. The rough timeline would look something like this: * The point of divergence is in the early 1960s, where the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty carves out an exemption for nuclear propulsive units detonated under certain safe conditions (e.g. far from civilization and/or in orbit). * Orion gets much farther along the development branch, but isn't ready for a Mars mission by the time the Apollo program ends and NASA funding gets cut back. * The infrastructure for pulse units stays in place, at the cost of a Cold War extension, and thanks to a different sort of climate around nuclear technology, the political and industrial viability of the project isn't totally killed during the intervening decades. It still likely proves controversial when it goes forward. * It takes until the 2010s, when a sufficiently ambitious/unafraid-of-controversy president (e.g. Trump or alternate-universe analogue) calls up NASA to put together the already-well-fleshed-out Orion Mars plans, perhaps as part of a political gambit or, if something longer-term like a large base is on the itinerary, a jobs program. * The whole mission can then be executed with one vehicle of the size and capability to efficiently move 40-70 people plus equipment to Mars. [Answer] Cost Like everything it comes down to cost. Now if you have a job to do and ten people cost X to send but twenty people cost X + 10%, sending 20 is worth it. Thirty people might be X + 15%. Seventy could just be the sweet spot for the best return on investment. What a seventy man team would be is the majority of the team remains in space in a self sustaining space station and only the landing crew goes up and down to minimize fuel use. Crew aboard the station could instruct the landing crew to do tasks or remote pilot drones. Other crew could be working completely in space such as sourcing ice asteroids for water for fuel or metallic ones for construction. You'd have agronomists for growing the food hydroponically. Engineers, metallurgists, geologists, doctors, IT specialists, drone pilots, astronauts, comms experts etc. The plan would be to establish a self sustaining orbital base that would remain in place to support a proposed planet side base. By having a space station, crew could be stationed there without the fuel cost and danger of landing missions [Answer] # Seven months is a long time That's the approximate time to travel to Mars — seven months. That's a long time! A lot of things can happen in seven months and any one of them could rationalize a larger crew. Maintenance: One of my favorite movie moments comes from K-19: The Widowmaker when, during a missile launch simulation, a burn-out occurs. When some bureaucrat demands to know the name of the person responsible, Liam Neeson responds, "Why would I know the name of the jackass that supplied a 30 kopeck insulator to do a 50 kopeck job?" Think that's unreasonable? Think "Apollo 13." No ship is perfect, and no space agency would send a ship on a seven month cruise without an ample supply of spare parts and the people to maintain it. (Why don't they do that today? For one thing, the Space Shuttle's longest mission was only a bit more than [17.5 days](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions).) Emotional Health: Even the most introverted person needs occasional human contact. Emotional stress on such a long journey would be enormous. And you'd be surprised how easy it is to fashion something into the shape of an axe. You might not justify 70 people this way, but you'd justify a few more than 3-5.1 (This builds on @KerAvon2055's answer, which I upvoted. If the ship can be flown by three people, you'd want at least twelve because someone must always be monitoring the ship and that would get incredibly tedious.2) Economy of Scale: When the world's national space agencies formed the Global Space Initiative (GSI) in 2031, they realized that economy of scale was very much their friend. The Mars mission ship was already humongous due to basic life support, power, and engines. Not to mention the cargo of equipment to be used on Mars. But that's inefficient! Why not use all that equipment en route, and even add a bit more to do cool things like analyze Space in transit? Need a few more scientists or engineers for that? No problem! Add a bit more living space, a little bit more fuel, food, and oxygen and we're good to go! (This builds on @Thorne's answer, which I upvoted. While governments tend to spend wastefully, NASA and other space agencies have demonstrated the ability to make the most out of the little they get. There would be a fair amount of pressure to make those seven months very, very productive.) Supporting Labor: The more people you have, the more you need supporting labor. Cooks, janitors, admins (of varying types). It's a nice theory that you could get away with just a few people on that ship, but every person you add means you need to help them live their lives. Remember when three people for seven months would really need to be twelve? Now you need fourteen (at least), two people to care for the other people who need their chance to do their jobs, eat, sleep, and relax. The compounding of labor adds up quickly, otherwise you need to deal with the stress of individuals doing multiple jobs: navigation and cooking, communications and cleaning the bathrooms (so to speak). There's always a price to be paid. If you send 70 people to Mars, you can bet that 15 of them are supporting personnel — the people you never see in the movies because, apparently in Hollywood, space ships clean and cook for you.3 Political Intrigue: OK, the GSI wasn't created in 2031. In fact, due to a massive international financial collapse in 2029, the only space agency left operating is the South African National Space Agency — but that hasn't dampened all other nations' hopes of working in space! The competition to get on that Mars mission is fierce, and South Africa isn't a fool. Rather than risk being bombed by someone for not letting their ~~pet~~ favorite astronaut join the crew, they simply built a bigger ship (with a bit of a donation from those cash-strapped nations) and loaded not one, but *ten* full crews onto it. One for each participating nation. And, yup, by treaty, each crew gets its turn at the proverbial wheel.4 Biological Necessity: Ten years after the COVID-19 panic of 2020 the world is finally vaccinated — but politicians and scientists who spent the decade calming fears know an ugly truth: that virus can mutate *a lot more* than the public was ever led to believe. Those 70 people aren't on that ship because there's actually 70 jobs that need to be done, they're there because the mutation and mortality rate simulations suggest that when the ship re-enters Earth's orbit two years later, there will only be three living people on board. --- 1 And if Hollywood has proven anything, it's that there's always an axe. NASA could go out of its way to be sure there were no axes on the ship and someone would find one anyway. Call it karma, call it fate (call the Ghostbusters!) but 210 days into the 215 day mission, someone would go ape berserk and suddenly there'll be an axe. There's always an axe! 2 You might consider reading Frank Herbert's Destination: Void. He did a good job of imagining what space flight might be like when there's too much to do. 3 You know, I get the idea of Star Trek replicators, but they never show anyone actually cleaning. Do you have any idea how many people would be necessary to clean a ship the size of Enterprise? 4 It's a mistake to believe that the crew must have mission-related reasons to be on the ship. Frankly, you could justify a dozen people as tourists, the launching space agency having used the funds from the over-priced tickets to pay for the mission. 2001's first space tourist [Dennis Tito](https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/space-tourism-20-year-anniversary-scn/index.html) started a [very real trend that you could use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism#List_of_space_tourism_trips). [Answer] # Contributing nations want representation. A dozen or so of nations contributed to remotely building the Mars base and the Lunar launch station. It was a large, multinational collaboration to make the Mars mission possible, and each nation that contributed was willing to cover costs for their astronauts in order to gain the recognition for putting the first boots on Martian soil. The Martian mission committee decided it would allow this because each astronaut's additional costs would be covered by their respective sponsors, and increasing the crew size allowed for a much more diversified (and redundant) skill set. [Answer] The point of the mission is to take as many people away from the Eatth as possible. You are not simply building a base - Mars is intended to be the next Alcatraz. Most of the crew are inmates who will help build their cells. The very first expedition is a proof of concept, and if successful the criminals will either be pardoned or have their jail time reduced upon arrival back on Earth. Any trips after that will have many people due to economy. The more people and material you can transport in a single trip, the more efficient your business is. [Answer] ##### Get rid of the rich. A lot of rich and influent, to the point of being cumbersome, people offer to finance the mission provided they can join the crew. Some young engineer making a review of the mission plan find a lot of issues which might add unforeseen risks and the planners decide to accept all the contributions on offer. [Answer] The initial supply and colony building missions where more successful then expected. People had planned for a very high failure rate, so had launched many robotic missions ahead of time to build the initial colony. But surprisingly everything worked fine. So now there is this well stocked, well provisioned base with plenty of space available. So people decide to make the best of it and send a larger crew to take advantage of this (with all the benefits the other answers give to having more people). [Answer] We're Not Alone With additional probes and surveys, it becomes clear that there's life on Mars. Life sophisticated enough that it's possible that there is or were intelligent beings that have retreated below the surface. The possibilities for study are endless and so is the potential payoff. You need at least that many people just to represent the obvious research disciplines, handle diplomatic issues and provide for defense. [Answer] The mission is twofold: * do science stuff on Mars * 'practice' living on mars The mission setup will be to send robots ahead to build a base - as far as robots are able to do so! - then the human crew will follow. Quite a few will work on making the base self sufficient. However the basic assumption is that a lot of unknown unkowns will make a self supporting colony on the first try hard. So the mission plan is, from the start, to ship everyone back. The life support systems are left in place, with a few pigs to simulate the humans and see when and how life support fails. [Answer] # First mission failed It was a smaller mission, and it failed due to a mixture of exhaustion and failure to be able to handle emergencies locally. On the trip there where multiple close calls before complete mission failure. # We built it in space Before humans get to mars, we have built automated orbital factories. We have robots tearing apart metal rich asteroids and constructing things, sending what where once precious metals back to Earth for the cost of atmospheric breaking in the atmosphere and retrieval. Space has full (automated) industrial capacity, and the Earth-Mars ships where built in space. The failed first mission was intended to be followed up with annual resupply runs. But when the first mission failed, they kept on building the resupply ships. # Dress rehearsal Multiple antarctic dress rehearsals where started, with various mission mixes and simulated disaster rates. In some cases, actual interplanetary drone ships where sent to Mars, and whatever went wrong on those ships where used to simulate the disasters back home. The dress rehearsal with 50 people in it succeeded. Almost all of the smaller ones failed. These dress rehearsals took years to complete, as they went all the way from a simulated launch, a simulated trip, a simulated landing, a simulated time on Mars, and finally a simulated return journey. The failures where due to a lack of local specialists, exhaustion in harsh conditions, lack of astronaut emergency response teams, etc. With the multi-hour lag time relying on Earth-based experts wasn't reliable enough over the 2+ year journey. # We have the ships In the time it took for the investigation into the original 12 person disaster to complete, they built multiple interplanetary ships in orbit. Original plan involved sending a new ship every orbital alignment; they chose to not stop building them just because the first mission failed, as most of the material involved in making them where mostly waste products from space mining anyhow: Space mining's limit is how much atmospheric braking the Earth can afford, heating wise. They kept on going to Mars and dropping off more supplies with a modest failure rate (but too high for actual astronauts). Those that returned, well, they are still functional. The fleet has and supplies on mars have grown to the point where sending 40-70 people is well within the transport budget and base supplies and rations. # Politics, not Economics There is little actual reason to send people to another planet like this. Automation is a better solution. As this is the safest way to get the mass of people there, the cost is relatively cheap. ]
[Question] [ I wonder whether the birds or other flying animals heavier than air could evolve without trees of other protruding objects? [Answer] Trees were not involved with the evolution of flight in birds. Birds did not evolve flight from gliders but likely from [ground running predatory jumpers](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1690052/), birds and maniraptoran dinosaurs are about the most poorly designed climbers you could imagine there is zero support for tree climbing in early birds or their ancestors. So yes bird flight can and did evolve without the use of trees. I should note birds are the only group of flying vertebrate this is true for, pterosaurs and bats did evolve from climbers. [Answer] The first tree is probably [385 million years old](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree#Evolutionary_history). The first winged insect is probably [400 million years old](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyniognatha). These numbers are approximate, but our understanding of geology and palaeontology should mean these are accurate enough. Insects seem to predate trees by 15 million years. That is a lot of time - about the same distance in time between now and the release of the last book in the Game of Throne series! To be honest, though... About [430 million years ago there were fungi whose fruiting bodies could reach up to 8m in height](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites). They could have served the same role as trees for insects. And they predate insects by about 30 million years, or about the timespan between the roman empire and the release of Half Life 3. [Answer] Probably. The most accurate answer to a question like this is always going to be “We don’t know.” Evolution is an incredibly complex and fundamentally random process so there are no definitive answers here. But, that said, I think there’s good reason to believe flight probably would have evolved even without trees or other protrusions. Flight is thought to have evolved 4 separate times on Earth. In insects, pterosaurs, bats, and birds. This suggests that flight isn’t extraordinarily difficult to evolve and serves as a useful adaptation in a variety of environments for a variety of organisms. While trees certainly play a large part in the lives of plenty of birds, many birds thrive in treeless environments. Waterfowl like ducks spend their time swimming and generally build their nests on the ground. Seabirds like cormorants spend their lives fishing and often nest in colonies on the ground. There are also ground birds such as quails that nest and feed on the ground often in treeless areas. In all of these cases, some of the birds in these habitats have lost their ability to fly which implies that in the absence of trees flight isn't perhaps as critical to their survival. But most of these bird species living in treeless environments have retained their ability to fly which implies that it remains a useful ability for these organisms to find food, escape predators, or migrate. Birds certainly tend to take advantage of trees when they are available but their success in treeless environments tells us that the safety of trees is not the only advantage of flight and suggests that there is ample reason for flight to evolve even in the absence of trees. [Answer] Well, flying fish evolved without trees or other protruding objects to help lift them out of the water, so I'm going to say "yes". And the initial motivations would probably be the same: to better avoid predators. [Answer] While I agree with the existing answers, what it comes down to is the question of what benefit does a creature get that makes the adaptation of flight worth it? There are two basic benefits that I can see that a flying animal may have over a land based animal; protection and ambush. The first is obvious; if you can take flight, you can scan a larger area for threats, but also you can escape those threats if you're on the ground via a vector your attacker probably can't follow. As for the second, well if there aren't a lot of other fliers out there yet, perhaps your prey doesn't know to look up from time to time and won't see you coming. Of course, this makes the most sense if the energy tradeoff is small, therefore it follows that the first flying creatures would be as small as is practicable, taking advantage of the square cube law. It's little wonder therefore that the first flying creatures were small insects. [Answer] Since plants need light, and the tallest plant gets the best light, then if there were no trees there would inevitably be very tall plants that aren’t technically trees. However, they would function much like trees for ecological purposes, and animals would still climb them, jump between them and fall off them, so the evolution of flying animals of any kind would be unchanged. If you’re going to arbitrarily change the way evolution works to rule out tall plants, then you can equally arbitrarily rule birds in our out, depending on what you want — you’ve already given up on evolutionary plausibility. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/191160/edit). Closed 3 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/191160/edit) Ceres is the largest asteroid in the belt, and in my world building, is a booming mining hub, supplying water-ice and cheap minerals to other destinations in the solar system. For gameplay purposes it would be great to have a small moon in orbit around Ceres. Something with a diameter of a few hundred meters up to a few kilometers. What hard-science reasons are there to justify the work and economic cost of moving a rock (from the surface or somewhere else is the belt) into Ceres orbit? You can assume a near future level of tech. No fantasy fusion drives, FTL, or inertial dampening fields.. Perhaps an effective mass driver or other engine on the rock, but the way it got there is less important than WHY it is there. What benefits are there to colonists, traders, orbital shipyards, etc. [Answer] You don't need to find a way to tow it there. (It was possibly made to generate power, see the end of my answer.) ### It's a slag heap! You have already determined mining on Ceres is a booming, and mining produces unbelievable amounts of [slag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slag). It's basically everything you dig up from the mine minus the stuff you want, and consists of rock and non-useful metal compounds. Growing up in a town with [one of the longest running mines in the world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falu_koppargruva) this was my first thought, as slag heaps are a dominate part the landscape there. Getting it into orbit doesn't need to be that hard. Part of the solution could be placing some sort of railgun near the equator and throw it up piece by piece. (Edit: I use "throw" instead of "shoot", as you need to fine-tune the firing speed so that the speed of impact is minimised) This, like @NuclearHoagie points out, needs to be combined by some mechanism to redirect the orbits to prevent them from falling back down. At least before the moon's gravity becomes large enough to be of use. Also, you may need to cover the first few billion rocks in something sticky (or Velcro?) to make them stay together, but if your aiming is good enough you could eventually get them to clump together by their own gravitational mass. (Edit: Using similar calculations to [this answer](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/8752/how-much-mass-does-an-object-in-space-need-to-keep-a-human-on-its-surface)) on Astronomy SE you likely need at least a few billion metric tonnes of slag, so I assume we're not in a hurry...) You then need either a reason why you want a moon, OR a reason you don't want slag lying around. For the former, you could use some of the other suggestions or one of the following. 1. A moon would stabilise Ceres's rotational axis. This could be useful if you want to build launching sites that regularly point in a good direction. Or maybe an observatory or some communication devise? 2. A moon is nice to look at and provides some sense of familiarity for those who grew up on Earth. Some populist politician realised this long ago and made the construction a pledge for their campaign; the rest is history. 3. It's simply a billboard. The moon is regularly visible to all of Ceres and is really the perfect place for advertising. Sure it was a large investment for the company who put it there, but the dedication itself is good PR. 4. The moon has been built over centuries as part of a yearly celebration. Shooting things into orbit is akin to the Earth tradition of [Celebratory gunfire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire), and various local groups compete to send of larger and more numerous rocks in closer intervals and cooler patterns than their neighbours. To avoid ending up with a dangerous cloud of pebbles that would interfere with traffic, the Moon Act dictates that all fired projectiles must be placed in the same orbit. The larger the Moon became the easier it was to aim at, and today the Moon Festival is a huge event, the height of the Ceres tourist season. Coincidentally, it's also the off-season for tourism TO the Moon. Edit: As a final note, launching a moon from a planet(oid) WILL affect its rotation. This provides a fifth reason to do this: 5. The moon is a by-product from a project to change Ceres' rotation speed or axis. The current real-world rotational period of 9 hours is rather quick, and humans really prefer longer nights to get proper sleep. There are other reasons to slow (or speed up) the rotation as well, perhaps related to spaceship travel or telecommunication. Maybe they'd even want to make Ceres tidally locked? A motivation for the latter could be to get large differences in temperature between the two sides, and use this to generate power using [Stirling engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine) or the like? I actually really like this last idea, as it would provide a means to generate energy without being dependent on import of solar panels or fuel from larger planets! [Answer] Space elevator counterweight A tensile space elevator requires a large counterweight at the far end of the cable, which is what holds the cable taut and upright. A captured asteroid could feasibly serve as the counterweight for such a system. If you don't want a space elevator in your setting, perhaps it's in the early stages of construction and the counterweight was just recently put into orbit. The lower gravity on Ceres makes a space elevator perhaps a less worthwhile investment than on a high-gravity body, but might still be worthwhile for a booming mining colony that frequently ships heavy raw materials off-world. The per-launch savings might be lower, but in the long term, space elevator launches will be cheaper than traditional ones. A space elevator is feasible with current technology (particularly for low-gravity environments), but it is a massive undertaking to construct one. [Answer] You needed to build a Skyside Terminal for your spaceport. Ceres may have only a thirtieth of a gee of surface gravity, but that's still surface gravity, and in most hard science settings, spacecraft that are efficient at moving interplanetary freight are generally not built to sit dirtside, that's what shuttles are for. So you need terminals. Warehousing. Passenger support. Immigration. Shipyards, entertainment facilities, housing and the like to support the people and cargo that are coming and going, so you build that in orbit over Ceres. Use the rock as building material, and if things get up to the point where you need to build a Space Elevator, you can put it in Synchronous orbit, and use it for that. [Answer] (answer cloned from Nuclear Hoagie, then expanded and somewhat quantified.) # Space Elevator! If your Ceres is "booming mining hub, supplying water-ice and cheap minerals to other destinations in the solar system", then you want the cheapest and easiest way to lift all those resources off-planet. erm, off asteroid? Sure the Escape velocity of Ceres is only 510m/s, but that is still delta-v that needs to be paid for. So if you could get it for free, why not? And if you could get some more velocity for outbound cargo containers for free, double bonus! A [CeresSynchronous orbit around Ceres is only 722 km above the surface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_orbit). So if you build a [Space Elevator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator), the center of mass need only be at or very slightly above this altitude. A heavy orbiting rock near this altitude serving as anchor for a space elevator would serve as an excellent base. Now for real planets Space Elevators are tricky things. You have atmosphere, and slow rotational speeds, and huge gravitational wells. This imposes such demands on the elevator tether material, that you end up having to build your tether out of exotic materials and with a ridiculous taper, resulting is a very heavy and expensive construction. And the elevator could be made out of ordinary steel, much less any fancy material! With Ceres' feeble gravity of 0.27 m/s² , and a tether length of only 722km, you could even use a Kevlar untapered cable and have a strength margin of more than 2-to-1. A Decently tapered cable (someone else calculate please) should give an even better ratio. Similarly, you can extend a cable from the anchor rock up to as high as your material science allows you. At least several thousand km. And cargo allowed to whip up the high end cable will exit it with a completely free velocity of a few km/s. You can even use the outward acceleration to generate power, sacrificing some speed for a lot of energy for your system using very simple linear induction motors. So: Your rock orbiting Ceres is the massive anchor for a Space Elevator to lift bulk cargo from the surface. Its mass provides stability to the system. It provides an excellent zero-g storage, manufacturing and staging area. It also serves as a similar anchor for outgoing cargo slings, and possibly for power generation from these slings. It is effectively a Port City for a rather large country. With all the support infrastructure, housing, entertainment, bureaucracy, crime, and everything else that a big port City has. And all you lose is the initial construction cost, and a microscopic amount of the rotational inertia of a very heavy (10^21 kg) Ceres. [Answer] Ice Ice Baby! "The Glacier" is nearly pure water ice, uncontaminated by brine or ammonia. It has a characteristic taste but you can drink it straight. Water is valuable stuff in the Belt. The Glacier was towed here once its nature and value was realized. [Answer] A few possible reasons -- feel free to pick and choose as you like ## Rotational Management At some point it was determined that the period or axis of Ceres' rotation needed to be adjusted, and whomever made the determination decided that the most effective/safe/cost-effective/religiously-acceptable/your-reason-here way to do it was to bring in another rock, set it in a very precisely defined orbit, and then let the gravity of that moon gradually adjust Ceres to the desired spin. ## Security Platform The moon was brought in to act as an orbiting military/security base. This can be both/either to protect Ceres from outside forces or to defend certain factions on Ceres from others. It's a barracks, docking port, surveillance station, artillery platform, and the ultimate high ground for any action happening on Ceres' surface. Why not just put the forces on Ceres itself? Maybe there are some treaty or other legal restrictions preventing the operators of the moon base from doing so, or they just want the additional security of being on their own separate rock. ## Separate Jurisdiction Something isn't permitted on Ceres. Someone with more money and spite than political capital wants the thing anyway. They decided that the most expedient solution would be to just drag a rock into orbit around Ceres and declare it to be its own separate jurisdiction where the prohibited thing was, in fact, legal. Of course, they then imposed some perfectly-reasonable taxes/fees/what-have-yous on the thing so that they can recoup their investment. ## It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Back in the hey-day of early interplanetary settlement however many years ago, there was a lot of enthusiasm for impressive-sounding projects with dubious revenue streams(\). Someone had the "brilliant" idea to put a moon in Ceres' orbit and drummed up enough support and resources to get it done. They then proceeded to lose their space-shirt when the theorized space-bucks failed to roll in. Fast-forward to the time of your game and, of course, the moon is still there. It's not like anyone is going to pay to put it back! (\- this is definitely not a reference to the 2001 dot-com bubble. Not at all.) [Answer] ## It was the bootstrapper Space is dangerous for squishy life like us; radiation, solar flares, micro-meteoroids, etc. A hollowed out asteroid is one possible avenue for "low-tech" long-term space habitation. And building a mining colony on Ceres is definitely going to be a long-term task. When the decision was made to colonize Ceres, construction of a gigantic, well protected ship to send out and stay there for the years before Ceres is habitable was simply not possible/too expensive. Instead, they sent out an unmanned probe with a big engine to capture a smaller asteroid, push it into Earth orbit, and mine it out locally (with modern conveniences like "food", "water", "air", and Earth's magnetosphere). After construction was completed, a small colony of workers board the "spacecraft", containing all the ingredients necessary for indefinite life in space. The asteroid is pushed out into solar orbit by a built-in engine, and after a few years of travel, is decelerated by the same and put into a stable orbit of Ceres. Then, construction begins on the permanent home of Ceres, with shuttles being used to get down to the "surface" and back. The massive engine was designed to be disassembled for parts after they reached their destination, and now, decades later, the bootstrapper asteroid floats quietly in space, unable to move on its own. In the mean time, of course, technology has advanced to the point that "low-tech" solutions to the many dangers of space are no longer necessary, allowing ships to come and go as they please with little notice of the "moon". Depending on your intentions, this also has some flexibility - maybe the asteroid was abandoned as its tech aged and became unreliable, leaving a juicy derelict ruin for exploration/salvaging/etc. Maybe the asteroid has been maintained, and there is political tension between the "powerful" government of Ceres and the "weaker" government of the moon. [Answer] # It's where the miners live Humanity that has colonized the Asteroid Belt has naturally mastered [O'Neill Cylinders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder), deep-space habitats which provide a mostly Earthlike environment, including spin gravity, and which require only materials that can be sourced from asteroids and 20th century construction technology. Higher technology allows the construction of larger and nicer habitats. A problem with Ceres is that its gravity at .03g is much too low for long-term habitation without health problems, but high enough to interfere with the construction of rotating habitats providing good spin gravity. Instead of building on (or under) the surface, then, they put their habitat in orbit, where the conditions are more favorable. While it's possible to build a habitat that's shielded from cosmic rays and debris impacts, the best shielding is really just an adequately thick layer of rock and ice. The colonists build an oblong blob of rock and ice (held in place by a semi-rigid scaffolding net) from locally sourced mining waste and leftover construction materials, which surrounds the habitat in which they live. This is also an excellent place to build warehouses and spaceports, as other answers have mentioned. This combined structure could also serve as a counterweight for a space elevator, providing fuel-free transport between the surface and the habitat. Most of the colonists probably wouldn't use it very often, though. Only those colonists who are actually miners (as opposed to logistics staff, lawyers, spaceship pilots, doctors, children, etc.) and who can't work by telerobotics would have to actually set foot on Ceres. [Answer] Frame challenge: There doesn’t have to be a reason. On today’s Earth somebody can have a 4 ton boulder transported from China to the top of a 3km mountain in Austria for 50k€ without any reason or purpose: <https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/181516/Man-carries-four-ton-rock-up-a-mountain-and-calls-it-art> People have also built countless monuments for thousands of years without any purpose and for no reason at all. [Answer] ## Mining The rock was captured from the asteroid belt and moved to orbit in order to mine rare minerals from it. The mined ores are then processed on Ceres and later sent to appropiate places in the Solar system. [Answer] ## Because it wants to be there Once you've got mining and manufacturing in space, plus a whole lot of material already there, it probably becomes kind of trivial to change the orbit of an asteroid. If you're willing to wait a long time it should barely take any energy at all - just a little push here, a gravitational assist from another asteroid there - as long as you're not trying to do something crazy like take it out of the asteroid belt, you should be able to put pretty much anything wherever you want it. Because of this, there doesn't really need to be much of a reason - it's easy to do, so why not? Others have suggested that the 'moon' is rich in some resource that's needed at Ceres, and I think that's probably the most realistic reason to do it. But here's another: The 'moon' is actually a colony in its own right. Possibly based on mining or possibly something else - the important thing is that a bunch of people live there. Since they have the ability to move their home around at will at very little cost, it makes sense that they might decide to live near the bustling metropolis of Ceres. Perhaps there's a good economic reason, or perhaps they just want to enjoy the nightlife in the big city, or maybe they just had a vote and that's what they ended up with. Or maybe they just want to get good ping times from servers hosted on Ceres. I can imagine this being a fairly compelling reason actually, since all communications are limited by the speed of light, and if you're not near another population centre any communication will have several minutes' delay. But the point is there are many possible reasons, and any reason will do. [Answer] If this is a one km. moon orbiting 940 km. Ceres, you have a problem explaining the attraction, the orbital speed, the orbital distance, the escape velocity, and such. Seems to me the best solution you have is to make it a tether, with reaction mass drivers on it. This would for sure tidally lock the moon to Ceres, and Ceres would end up rotating on its axis at the same rotational speed as the moon is orbiting Ceres. I would suggest a counter-weight moon tethered on the other side of Ceres, to prevent Ceres from wobbling all over the place, bringing the center of gravity back towards the center of Ceres. In fact, the purpose could be to move a lop-sided center of gravity of Ceres more towards the center, to stabilize its rotation for gravitational purposes (build the habitat so that the gravity is OUT, not IN.) That is, tether a counter-weight to Ceres to balance its rotational spin, like they balance car wheels. I would suggest they could also put the reaction mass drivers on this moon, with a very strong rigid (compressive) tether, so the reaction mass drivers would cause a rotational torque on Ceres, and cause it to spin, like a pinwheel. The length of the tether perpendicular to Ceres should give some mechanical advantage to the applied rotational force. However, it would again be very adviseable to put a counter-rotation moon and tether on the opposite side. Otherwise, I suspect the wobble would make Ceres uncomfortable to live on - like being on a planet with a continuously shaking movement. Whiplash, anyone? Maybe they could market it as the newest and best ultimate amusement ride on a gargantuan scale. Maybe spin the moon around the axis of the tether, as well, to give an even better discombobulating experience. Rein in the moon along the tether, then let it 'free-fly' out to its length, again and again, spinning all the way. For the penultimate adrenaline rush barf experience, before you die, on the last trip, you get ejected into space!!!! Game over!!!! Is that wild, or cool? [Answer] It's Vesta. Dragged (as an act of independence and to a great disappointment of governments of the Earth) into the Ceres orbit in order to ease the production of something that needs ingredients from both places. Some mass (as well as some people) lost in the process. [Answer] Separate Jurisdiction otherwise illegal services As mentioned first [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/191191/581), to serve the Ceres population with something forbidden by the local laws. For example, in the real world we have boats providing [abortions](https://www.womenonwaves.org/en/page/493/abortion-on-our-ship) and [gambling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_ship) barely outside of the territorial waters of jurisdictions where they would be illegal. a spying outpost Too obvious? Well, the thing is there's no need to hide it at all. Here in the real world, some countries assert the right to operate their spy planes barely outside the territory of their targets, or over disputed areas. E.g. [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident). a military outpost In case things get hot, or to deter things from getting hot. [Answer] Big Spacecraft Factory A giant spacecraft is being built, and needs convenient access to the refined metals from Ceres, but not the gravity. So it's orbited at some distance, perhaps 100km above Ceres' surface, where the orbit is not so close that mass concentrations disturb the orbit, but it's still visible and convenient to fling raw materials to. There were some earlier comments about slag heaps. I counter that Ceres is the BEST place to put slag, because humans need places with higher gravity. Mine out some spots to significant depth, then cover with slag from other operations. Slowly increase the whole mass of Ceres. [Answer] To increase Cere's spin rate: In order to provide artificial gravity within subterranean (subceresean?) habitats. A long cable is dropped from a passing asteroid and securely connected to Ceres, whipping it around in a long orbit that is slowly tightened to increase Cere's spin rate. This is the opposite of the orbital energy process that occurred with Earth's moon and slowed Earth's rotation. As tidal forces acted on the moon energy was removed from earths rotation and added to the moons velocity, increasing the size of it's orbit. Pulling on a tethered moon would reverse this, as the moon drops into a lower orbit the additional energy is transferred into the rotation of Ceres. ]
[Question] [ The beginning of 22nd century. Temperatures on the globe rose by 30 degrees Celsius over decades, because humanity was unwilling to stop greenhouse gas emissions. How would the surface of Earth look by that time? [Answer] It is very unlikely that the Earth would warm by that degree in such a short period of time. However if it did then many parts of the planet would be uninhabitable outside of specially constructed habitats. Any areas which today have temperatures normally reaching 20 degrees C or more for an extended period would become uninhabitable without such habitats. The sea level would dramatically rise by many metres so many coastal cities like New York, Boston and London would be flooded. The temperature differences created would encourage huge storm systems that would devastate large areas. The majority of species on Earth would go extinct as their habitats become too hot to sustain life and 99%+ of humanity would also die of starvation as food crops such as wheat and rice died. Heat exhaustion, disease and war would also claim millions of lives. Civilization as we know it would come to an end. Many might survive in the far north and far south but finding food would be very difficult as it would be no easy matter to find suitable land for crops after the ice had retreated. Many areas would be barren rock, swamp or covered in masses of dead trees and there would not be enough resources to establish large enough agricultural areas quickly enough. [Answer] This is a map of the average temperatures year round. Everything above 40 is already highly dangerous (something that happens to Red/Orange countries a lot during the summer). Having that the whole year around will be devastating to the flora/water supply making it even harder on the people. So Red/Orange they are just uninhabitable areas. Then we got the lightest shade of blue, again this is averages so a 30 degree increase would make summers impossible to survive without specialized equipment or measures. Medium shade of blue would vary much on the location itself but most spots wil be hard living during the summer. Darkest blue would have some livable areas but don't forget Canada and Russia are huge and it's average by country so the actual living space will be a slot smaller. The landscape itself would be changed drastically, Coastal cities and areas will be flooded by the melting of the polar caps. Areas without a steady water supply (like the Nile River) will wither and burn much like is the case in Australia now. Eventually smaller rivers will dry out spreading the desert even further. High mountainous areas will have the benefit of staying relatively cold but would also risk become desolate because the plants there won't have enough time to adapt to such a shift in climate (Humans could introduce flora that is better suited to take on the heat). So eventually you are left with a world that is mostly a burned out desert with large chunks (Not water world level tho) below the waters. With mountain oases here and there across the northern hemisphere. [![Temperatures](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fwupR.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fwupR.png) [Answer] > > Temperatures on the globe rose by 30 degrees Celsius ... How would the surface of Earth look by that time? > > > It would look like Venus, because a 30 degree rise in average global temperature will trigger a water vapor driven runaway greenhouse effect. <https://www.technologyreview.com/s/426608/how-likely-is-a-runaway-greenhouse-effect-on-earth/> [Answer] Such a rise in temperature will cause all polar ice, glaciers, and permasnow to melt, and sea levels will also rise due to thermal expansion of the water (though this is likely to be a slow, ongoing process). Sea levels are hence likely to be as much as 250 meters higher than today, similar to during the late Cretaceous, but could be even higher - the historical maximum ca. 450 milllion years ago might have been 400 m above the current level. In the Cretaceous, ocean temperatures were 17C higher than today, and thermal expansion with +30C will be greater, but may take centuries or even millennia to take full effect. With sea levels 200 m above current level, everything that is green in the map below will be under water. With 400 m, so will everything yellow. In either case, this is where 95-99% of the world's population is living today. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dLFXj.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dLFXj.jpg) On the positive side, Greenland and Antarctica will rise significantly when relieved of the weight of their ice caps, and with +30 degrees, these areas will be temperate. People will live here and on mountains in North America, Chile, North Asia, Australia, and possibly the southernmost Africa. Higher altitudes will mean cooler and more survivable climates. With less land area, the oceans will replace farmland as the most important food source. Seafood and seaweed will form the basis for most meals, supplemented by meat and milk from hardy mountain animals. Evaporation from the seas will be far higher than today, leading to more clouds and more rain. More clouds will cool the surface, since more sunlight is reflected back into space - otherwise, temperatures would have risen even higher than the +30 degrees. Superhurricanes will be far more common, making living near the new coastlines very dangerous and requiring sturdier infrastructure everywhere. This will also make seasteading nearly impossible - floating structures are too vulnerable to hurricanes. [Answer] It's pretty much impossible to get that hot, certainly on that timescale, and probably on any timescale. What a lot of people do not understand, is that we evolved during an ice age and are living in an interglacial period. The planet's climate is unstable with respect to perturbation in either direction. There is a very real danger that we will trigger run-away global warming that will end the ice age. The mechanism would be a rise in temperature in Arctic regions covered with permafrost, causing permafrost to melt. This releases methane trapped by the permafrost. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and then decomposes into CO2. This increases global warming, which increases permafrost melting, which increases global warming. It has happened several times in recent geological history, with no artificial help at all. It's positive feedback. Once triggered it would probably be unstoppable. The end-point would probably take several thousand years to reach, because as far as we know Antarctica can't melt faster than that. After that time we would have a planet with no sea-level ice anywhere, and a stable, hot climate. Stable, because any increase in greenhouse gases would cause evaporation of more water, which would create greater global cloud cover, which would reflect sunlight. This is stabilisation by negative feedback. This is also the state of the planet during most of the evolutionary history of complex life, so we know quite a bit about it. It's a really bad place for large mammals which evolved as chase predators with a high metabolic rate during an ice age. (That's us humans). The tropics would be too hot and humid for human beings to survive. We die of heatstroke above certain levels of temperature and humidity. We would be restricted to the poles (and I'm not sure even there would be safe ... they would get pretty hot and humid during the several months of continuous sunlight and it would take only one plume of extreme heat and humidity to be fatal to us). It's a great place for giant reptiles. I fear that we'll carry on ignoring global warming, until a city somewhere is killed by an extreme heat/humidity excursion, and a power failure so that air-conditioning cannot save people. A million or more people suddenly dead will convince all the global warming deniers to shut up, and start trying to cover their tracks before they join the CEOs of fossil fuel companies who will face the mobs and end up dangled from lamp posts by their necks (or worse). A great cry will go up that something must be done, but it's probably far too late at this time. But this is Worldbuilding, so you can imagine geo-engineering solutions, which might succeed in arresting the runaway warming ... and might then throw us back into a glaciation event. Unstable, remember? [Answer] More importantly the question is, I would argue, not what the earth looks like, but what is left of civilization on this disrupted earth! It is not an incremental water level rise or the increasing temperature that is likely to be the immediate threat in some of our futures. I suggest one studies what happen to the essence of civilized man in communities hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in Lousiana in the aftermath of the storm. Even though many knew for sure that things would get back to normal, in a matter of weeks, as people became short on food and drinking water, people started to individually rob their neighbors, or in combination via gangs for survival. That scares me more than a new high temperature on my porch's thermometer. Actually, having experienced an air conditioning outage for a week, I also discovered, first hand, what it is like to suffer from heat exhaustion. Many of us may indeed fall victim to it before any unwelcome neighbors arrive. Once, I also tried a juice fast for a week, with all the juice I could drink with also vitamin and mineral supplements. In under five days, I felt like a walking zombie. So locally, one might expect as (or when) food chains become disrupted by increasingly more powerful storms from, say, over-heated oceans 'civilization' itself may also start to melt, and short on air-conditioning and food, you may not be yourself either. [Answer] Such a rise of temperature in such a short time is believed to be impossible. But let's suppose it happens anyway. A [2013 study suggests that each 1ºC degree increase in the average temperature of the planet would cause a sea level rise of about 2.3m](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23858443). I think this relationship should only be so linear for the very first few degrees, but let's do roundings and assume this is true. 30ºC would then mean the sea level would be 69 meters higher. This does not bode well for many coastal cities. The graph below is the closes approximation I could find. It is for a 80m rise, which is about 12% more than my prediction, but it does give the impression I'm aiming for. [![Oh the humanity](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0HZPP.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0HZPP.png) Source: <https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/when-sea-levels-attack-2/> Take a really careful look at the map at the top right corner. Southeast Asia, most of Africa and most of the Middle East remain, but everywhere else loses more than half their total land surface. Whatever remains above the sea level will be expletively hot for today's standards of whomever lives there. See [A.bakker's awesome answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/165043/21222) on that. Also consider what [Slarty had to say about crops](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/165041/21222). The areas that are still unflooded might become deserts, and food will be very hard to grow anywhere. The picture I have in my mind is the Fallout series of games, without the mutants, but with constant inclement weather. [Answer] If humans manage to survive, most survivors would live in Antartica and maybe Greenland. We would probably go back to early medieval tech levels. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/69548/edit). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/69548/edit) ## Let's say a psychotic alien race come across the earth. They are technologically advanced, having near total control over matter at a molecular level, perfect understanding of biology in all its forms making them capable of manipulating and creating any possible living system, and being capable of enormous feats of astroengineering (dyson swarms, moving/destroying planets) and more. Bear in mind however, they have no significant control over the fabric of space-time (no time-travel). --- Being psychotic and sadistic they want to maximize the amount of fear felt by the indigenous intelligent population (humans) but they *don't* just want to induce it by flooding their brains with neurotransmitters or by electrically stimulating the amygdala (both of which they could indeed do, but they just don't want to and don't ask me why: they're crazy). In addition fear really is their thing, their sole goal is to increase it as much as possible not pain or suffering or things like that (though of course they don't mind causing such to reach their purpose), thus killing large amounts of humans goes against their intentions (you can't make dead people scared). Further more, while indeed psychotic they behave as one, there is no in-fighting within the species and they act rationally to achieve their objectives. --- So, if such a species did reach the earth in the present-day, what, using their available technology, would be an effetive method to terrify the population? And what, if any, would be the reactions of the worlds governments (besides fear)? --- Note: I'd really appreciate answers that take advantage of the great technological capacity of this species... [Answer] So your aliens are anti-utilitarians? Cool. Unless they have a deadline, the first thing they're going to want to do is maximize population size. More humans = more opportunities for terror. At the same time, you're going to want to keep a constant, low-level anxiety in all those people, because terror eventually loses enough novelty that it stops working. If you need a spike, you might do a jump-scare, but for sustained performance you're going to top out more like anxiety. With a giant population and a constant, oppressive atmosphere, you're looking at a fairly generic dystopia. Probably, your aliens do something like move in and institute Stupid Communism. No-one owns anything, everything is terrible, and people are required to beg permission to do anything, probably in triplicate. Punishment for everything is draconian, but not random, so everyone is forced to work hard constantly for fear of Terrible Things. So, you're looking at something like V for Vendetta or Brazil, but cranked up to eleven because they don't have to care about preventing revolt or having society produce anything useful. [Answer] They should kill the leaders of the world every few days. This way the humans all over the world won't have anyone to command them. Nobody can make decisions and unite the people. Everyone will be terrified and trying to stay alive. Furthermore by declaring that you kill like 500 people every few days everyone will go crazy that they might be the next ones to just disappear. Of course 500 people is not so much for the whole human population, but people won't think rational when there is an alien race in the sky killing all the important people and destroying the whole society in a matter of weeks to months. First the people will struggle and try to fight. Our leader is dead? Okay, let's move on with the new one and together we will nuke those things down! But the nukes will probably be useless against an alien race as advanced as yours. This means that the leaders will die and some nukes have gone. Okay, no problem, let's try again! And this time we will use: more nukes! After some rounds nobody who is capable will want to take responsibility, because all important people die. Therefore society will fall apart. We are not cut out for total anarchism. Most people don't know what it means to be on your own to survive. Without any laws nobody will be able to uphold society. And we are far too many. Without a legislative system and some rules nobody can use advanced techniques to feed so many people. So people will turn against each other. All in all: kill a few important people a few times, survive some toys they throw at you and see them round around headless killing each other just to survive another day until nothing is left. Not much to do, many specimens left that can feel fear and months to years of alien fun until there are not enough specimens left to fight each other! Then you can just change to Mars or some other solar system. All hail alien overlords! [Answer] Oh, there are just 3 simple steps, which are used a lot in politics nowadays: 1) Form an image Present to a public an entity of unspeakable violence and power. In your case your "aliens" can just transmit via TV an image of bio-synthed PREDATOR. 2) Demonize Let your predator appear in public. Let it move right into the center of some crowd, pick a prey, kill it in front of a crowd and just move away. Bonus points for people/police/armed forces ineffectually trying to stop it (like shooting without any visible harm). 3) Just use it After a couple of "predator shows" from step 2, you can actually start using an image even without letting your predator slaughter someone. Now you can instill fear just by mentioning the predator or just letting it to appear somwhere on the horizon from time to time. [Answer] ### These aliens wouldn't have to do anything special: Just use the innate fear of the human species for everything and anything by: * Appear as arachnids or anything else on the [top 10 list of phobias](http://www.fearof.net/). They can look whatever they want; broadcasting themselves as arachnids would be good enough. * Pretend that the planet is naturally destroying itself (Global Warming? Super volcanoes erupting?). E.G. Provide scientific reports exaggerating human misconceptions / Have them simulate a few volcanoes erupting / ... * Pretend to want to save the planet by taking 100 specimens of each species! (100 ants, 100 spiders, 100 elephants, 100 humans, ...) Have them involve a few celebrities/politicians (promising these a ticket on the mother ship) to speak for them. * Appear with only one mother ship pretending to have only limited load capacity * Pretend to fly away for a month (hide behind the moon?) Then they just have to sit back, relax and enjoy the show and watch humanity destroy itself and Earth is theirs and then they can show up with all of their ships and take over at their leisure! [Answer] Fear, in part, can be not knowing what will happen next, with the vague idea that it's going to be something terrible. Regular torture in the same routine becomes commonplace. But, varying the horror, making it unpredictable, that's what makes a person afraid. Anticipation of a horror can be effective, but it's most effective when it's a horror that hasn't been experienced over and over again. Human beings are nothing if not adaptable. On a basic level, you might want to look at the dynamic between an abuser and the abused. The abused are most fearful if they don't know what will set the abuser off, if they don't know how bad it will be. You seem to want the answer to be about the tech--but you're talking about fear. And with that, it's the same, primal song, even if you use different tools to achieve it. And the best way to do that is to establish regular patterns of terror, punctuated by disruptions in that pattern. The Holocaust, while it was happening, wasn't as scary as it should have been because it was so--orderly. People walked to their deaths because there was an order and a pattern, because there was PAPERWORK. What you want is the opposite of that--the creation of blind fear and panic, and for that, you need chaos. [Answer] > > In addition fear really is their thing, their sole goal is to increase it as much as possible not pain or suffering or things like that > > > You do not say whether they want to harvest all the fear in one fell swoop or if they could be contented with a continuous, but lesser supply. In the second case, they could land and offer the world their friendship and technological help (up to a point), provide a reasonable explanation why FTL travel doesn't agree with humans to the point of invariably killing them horribly, and then show they only have FTL technology or very slow interplanetary technology - so they can help make the Earth a paradise, but no one can visit even Alpha Cen, so sorry. And then proceed to supply Earthmen with enough technology and help to clearly show they're friends. Okay, you saw this coming: they won't be believed. The more they act friendly, the more people will know the other shoe is gonna drop. They can also foster this foreboding by restricting some clearly worthless information in the most suspicious way possible. A classic would be that they'll never let themselves be seen when eating ("it is a very private process for us"). There won't be civil war or rioting (or not much), but the whole world population will be certainly be scared witless. When that fades, for it will fade - you'll have people go around their business even if you start decimating the population - they can adopt some other tactic; some alien plague escaping that's uncannily similar to a zombie apocalypse maybe. Or whole towns' populations disappearing overnight. That (apart from worldwide terror) will also serve to reinforce the certainty that the aliens are up to no good. [Answer] The aliens would create unsettling duplicates of every human, thereby doubling the population with slightly different, but very similar acting human replicas. Families would confuse who their loved ones are, wives would accidentally love another - everyone would feel like they don't know anyone for real anymore, which would bring ultimate fear, especially because the replicas aren't conscious creatures, they merely react and have no real human depth of emotion or intellect. The government would aim to kill these replica species, but would accidentally kill real people and uncontrollable chaos would ensue. [Answer] Heroin touches the most visceral instinct in humans. If necessary by force, get everyone addicted to heroin. On a daily basis, make it free and widely distributed. Finally, start to randomly cut-off the supply for random time periods. People will be terrified as to whether they will be able to get their next injection. I saw this happen to a person in hospice care (with Vicodin, not heroin, injections). She was allowed an injection every 3-hours. She was so fearful of not getting the injection exactly as the last second ticked-off, she always wanted someone bedside. Seeing someone as knowledgable and powerful as she was reduced to having nothing but fear of missing a Vicodin injection was shocking. I think what happens is that even when in the euphoria of an opioid shot, you can still be terrified of missing your next injection? I've never used recreational drugs, so I'm not sure. [Answer] Given that most people are at least spiritual if not fully religious, staging some sort of diabolical ceremony and broadcasting it on the media should freak pretty much everyone. The aliens could be present themselves as demons, horns, hoofs, etc. Even if you are not religious, if you are the most level headed logical person ever, a bunch of aliens show up and start doing bloody ritualistic killings will surely scare the hell out of you. [Answer] First, severly limit global communication. Talking and reasoning out the problem will weaken the stimulus. Second, dole out the stimulus in a geographical area so it's not constant. The brain can only handle so much before it gets oversaturated and shuts down. After a while the fear will just lessen as the danger becomes normal. Vary it. The real fear is the fear of the unknown. When watching a scary movie, the monster that you don't see is scarier than the one that you do, and the monster that you can see but not understand is scarier than the one you can look at and understand. People were able to get used to bombs falling during the blitz. So on Sunday you enclose the earth in a shell that blocks the sun, moon and stars, and selectively block all the satellites and other forms of communication. This will make people afraid because they won't know what's happening, or why, and so rumor will spread fueling the fears. Occasionally allow the 24 hour news coverage through when talking about no one knowing what's happening or why. The inside of the shell will have giant sky spanning timers slowly counting down with a one week deadline. On Monday you start playing around with peoples vision. Make everyone on earth blind for a few seconds, long enough that people will get off the roads and land planes. Killing lots of people is counterproductive. Repeat this blindness with increasing duration randomly throughout the day. Throw in brief flashes of carnage and demonic figures so people will think they are having visions. Hearing can also be played around with, injecting the sounds of screaming, smell with brimstone, touch with burning sensations, etc. Continue this throughout the week as other things are happening. From Tuesday to Thursday create flying creatures that are larger than clouds, with tentacles that reach down and grab stuff as they go by. It doesn't have to be grabbing people, but just whatever. Give them high shrieking cries, and also human like screams. As a bonus make them able to show images by altering their skin like a cuttlefish, and display images of people being torn to pieces. Start letting more of the news networks through as they are showing images of chaos and destruction, so that people will know that there is no where on earth to run. From Wednesday to Friday send other creatures closer to the ground. Bird types, animal types, but all [Gigeresque](https://www.google.com/search?q=gigeresque&tbm=isch). Make them invulnerable to harm, and if someone attacks one then the creatures retaliate strongly, so that no one will get bravery just because they have a big gun. Showers of blood would be a nice touch. On Saturday as the timer is nearing zero, override broadcasts with messages about the earths impending destruction. On Sunday, with the fear batteries full, head on to the next pit stop. This timeline can be stretched out as needed, since a timespan for this to take place was not specified in the question. [Answer] Using their advanced biology/engineering skills, construct attack ships/drones that resembles each nation's god/pantheon or mythological figure. So you can have drones look like Zeus, Budha, Kali, Ra, etc, each striking/destroying the appropriate city/monument. Imagine... Zeus levels Acropolis/Athens in Greece, Ra destroys the Pyramids/Kairo, Kali lay waste in Taj Mahal or Delhi, Jesus statue in Rio lay waste to the city... and this being broadcasted worldwide. With the diversity we, as humans, have in our history/religion, its easy for the aliens to find the proper "form" to create. [Answer] Don't forget that the most fear comes from something where you can do something about it, but you can never do enough to be sure you're safe. We all know we might die of cancer, but we don't live in constant terror of it because we feel there is nothing we can do. Think of Five Nights at Freddy's, if there was absolutely nothing you can do it wouldn't be as scary. There is something you can do but it's not enough so: 1. Make it something that one can do something to control, but that measure is weak and not enough to be totally secure. Another element that is related to this is a lack of sufficient knowledge. Again, you can't put this to zero or people just deal with it. If you are stuck in murky water where you can see nothing you're scared but you get used to it. If you can kind of see and feel stuff moving down there but not enough to really be sure where it is, that will keep you in constant terror. Also combining this with the first one, there should be some way to gain information on the threat, but one that is insufficient. This will keep people checking constantly. Because there is something they can do, but it's not enough. So second: 2. Make it possible to constantly try to get information on the threat, but never enough to really help one be safe. In corollary with that, you want to make information on it unreliable, to cause paranoia. For example, it can make people you know assist it, but you can't be sure. You can't even be sure if it's affecting you. This will keep people constantly questioning everything. This relates back to 1, if there is always something to think about you will never stop questioning and worrying. 3. Make it so what information can be gained on it is not really reliable. Now to actually use some of the technology you mentioned. What if it is something you cannot shield yourself from. It can pass through walls. You could be in your car with the doors locked, in your bed all wrapped in blankets, or locked in a bank safe. It's something that can always get you. There may be signs that it is around, but relating back to point 3, they are unreliable. For example, people say they heard thumping in the walls before it attacked someone, but others say you feel static electricity in the air, others say someone who stutters is being affected by it. 4. Make it so there is no real security from the threat And finally to reinforce all of this, obviously whatever it does should be really awful. If it's something not only painful but which attacks the basic things we assume about our humanity all the more frightening, but I don't even want to get into that. You're the one writing this. So fifth on my list: 5. Whatever it does when it does actually decide to attack someone is really horrible and highly visible. How bad you want to get with this is up to you. It might make sense to add that when this thing picks a victim no one can help. If they do try it usually happens to them too, for example. I'm being intentionally vague and generic here because this could take all sorts of forms, from ghost-like blobs of nano-machines to huge looming creatures. [Answer] I think the most horrifying situation with aliens is when they look like humans. Take Hitler for example, he led an entire nation out of fear. Isis filled the world with fear. It's scary because they are human. your aliens need a human leader. then a group that has a drive for Hate for some minority. the group will be scared of that minority and the minority will be scared of that group. It might evolve into war, and everyone is scared of war. If your aliens can build humans they can place them in government locations before hand, so when the time comes, the wrong choices can be made to instil more fear into society. [Answer] They'd just have to create a "Matrix" type environment where each individual experiences their own world. This would not have to be a technology hookup like in the Matrix movie as it could all be mental experiences in the real world allowing them to perform eating, drinking, and other bodily functions (that were allowed, as the mind can control many bodily functions that are assumed to be natural occurrences such as producing chemicals, hormones, acids, fluid retention or expulsion, etc.) * Although each individual would be living in the world with others their minds could be altered to not see others making them think they are alone (one of the biggest fears that has proven effective on prisoners, and other captives to make them go insane). * On occasion they could be allowed to interact with others if desired, only to then be shown images that produce fear of something happening to the others that then are no longer viewable from their minds. * their minds could be made to hear and see what is most effective in producing fear for each individual thus the entity (or entities) could experiment to find what is the most fear inducing concept to each individual. * A concept not explored in the Matrix movie, that would have been effective could also be explored if the entity(s) were really devious and wanted to sow disaster after they left the planet, would be to alter something that the human body does so that once disconnected from their fear inducing environment the population would not be able to communicate and fight back; something like talking with their noses in a different language. Could you imagine talking a foreign language that only you knew (but was translated in the environment) through your nose, only to be disconnected from the environment wanting to fight back and trying to communicate with other disconnected individuals by speaking jibber-jabber with your nose? LOL. Or in the environment you feed yourself through your ears (in your mind although physically you were using your mouth). Another concept would be to believe that you lived and breathed in the water and air was toxic in "the fear environment" when in reality you were walking on land. There are many places you can take people in their mind without killing them, or allowing them to escape and fight back with such advanced technology. ~Raptor [Answer] Random "small scale" killings/threats. Using your high level technology, maybe you can tell what other people are thinking. Maybe not. But you can certainly pretend to. Every night, people who harbor "rebellious thoughts" against the new alien government are murdered, or at least have their molecules painfully "vibrated" as a form of torture. Perhaps you even install a camera and microphone in everyone's homes. If anybody speaks poorly of the aliens, a voice comes out of the speaker, the threatening them. And people who report their neighbors are obviously more loyal than those who do not. Of course, none of this has to be real. As long as one or two people are randomly chosen and killed every few nights in every few towns, the remaining population will be terrified that they are next. [Answer] Don't forget to wipe the subjects' memory periodically, lest they become numb to the horror or the emotion shifts to flat despair. With that, you don't really need to be all that creative with the actual reason for fear. Whether it's any of the other excellent ideas; helplessness awaiting torture; undiluted awareness of the place of life in the universe, you get the most fear when learned expectations turn out to have been laughably optimistic. Refresh those now and then and you get a much better result than what you get on fur farms. Now, the other parts of the question: world governments? Well, anyone with some influence who isn't in denial would try to make the best of it. Mass suicide wouldn't fly for various reasons, but these would: * trying to appease the aliens by volunteering to be wardens in that circus of horrors * searching for ways to alter humanity so that we could tolerate it without actually going against the aliens' desires (a terrible idea, raising the roof on the possible fear level) * exploit the citizens who e.g. are in denial to numb their own anxiety * trying to obtain an advantage the aliens don't know about, or, at least, lessen the power gap * thinking outside the box (hoping to stumble upon a less obvious idea) Of course, EVERYONE(\) knows it's a pathetically loser thing to revel in tormenting LESSER races. ANYONE can do that. \) you know too, right, aliens? Of course you do, you're just keeping it up to see your peers embarrass themselves. And they're so into it! Like getting publicly excited about a pencil eraser fetish! [Answer] "Too much too starve, not enough to live" principal applied to the atmosphere's oxygen content. Areas of high and low and shifting concentrations. Everything you do may kill you and everyone else. Could you sleep? Breed? [Answer] If you are talking about a very advanced race then climate change could work, turning out the lights or never turning out the lights, creating a low-level sound that makes everyone jumpy, adding hallucinogens to the water supply, controlling food supply, separating families and friends, taking people for no known reason and experimenting on them or killing them, killing children en masse, killing adults en masse, choosing an oppressed minority to be intermediate administrators and separating them from their support systems, too. I guess it all depends on why you want to shake things up and make everyone afraid. [Answer] As Human we are INSECURE...we can't run away from this fact Only thing that is keeping us alive in all these uncertainty is the hope. So for these SuperPowerful Aliens, they need to just read each human. After that, they just have to play some silly games and pull strings. Watch humorously how human reacts,how they are running away from it and how there hopes are fading away. Till humans learn to fight these fears and aliens carry on forming new fear to carry on this vicious cycle. ]
[Question] [ So basically we have zombies. And they are not just normal zombies... they are walking human corpses reanimated by slime molds growing around their bones! The zombies are moved around like puppets by the slime molds as they chase down, bite, and kill the living. (They track prey down using the receptors of the slime molds) Then the spores of the slime molds (spread by the bites) grow around the dead victim's skeleton, eventually making another zombie. Hooray!! Since slime molds don't have any brains, you won't be able to kill the zombies via headshot. To make things easier for the heroes I decided to add something else: if you do enough damage to the zombie's torso or head (stabbing, shooting, or bashing will do) they will be rendered unconscious, but after a few hours (4~6?) they would get up once again unless you burn them or smash all their bones, making them immobile. There's a huge problem with this though: people in real life get knocked out because when they get hit their brain gets moved out of place, in the process disconnecting some neural pathways. (I think so, can't remember the details) But (again) since slime molds don't have a nervous system I can't think of why this would happen to them. QUESTION: Why could zombies reanimated by slime molds get knocked out when they don't have any brains? EDIT: The zombie mold is engineered as a bio weapon by the way. People are assuming that it's naturally evolved which could lead to some confusion. [Answer] > > they are walking human corpses reanimated by slime molds growing around their bones > > > If the hits cause enough damage to disconnect the bones, they zombie has little to no capability of moving. Disconnecting the hand from the forearm is less disabling than disconnecting one or two limbs from the torso. This explains why the damage has to be given to the torso: it increases the chances of disconnecting arms or legs, turning the zombie into the [black knight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grail)... [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hfeYo.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hfeYo.jpg) ... until the mold manages to recompose the skeleton, which is why the effect is only temporary. The zombies are not actually unconscious, just incapable of moving, which is practically equivalent. [Answer] Humans have a dedicated set of sensors to detect the environment, the balance of its body and the position of its body. Your slime molds need a similar replacement for all these tasks to operate the body. Some things are simply best placed in the head or torso: a gland to assess the balance of the torso for example. Or eye like contraptions if you want fast zombies that can navigate terrain. If you kill or damage the glands that handle any of these critical things your zombie will need to repair and recalibrate them. A child is build with human body balance in mind but it can still take years for that function to be complete enough not to stumble everywhere. This is going to be even harder for your slime molds but I suspect you want to wave that away. [Answer] Slime moulds have something, even if we would not recognise it as a nervous system. If they are going to make a blob that moves like a slug, then need some sort of internal communication so they don't try and go in two directions at once. The brain has some limited ability to repair itself. There are cases where people have lost their sight due to a brain injury, and then regained it as the brain has re-purposed some nearby part to handle the missing function. But this is rare, and it can take ages to work. Most of the time any injury of that sort is fatal. Your slime moulds have developed to recover quickly from major trauma. So your cut up slime mould might send out feelers for neighbouring parts. "Hello! I was the top part of a leg". "That's handy, I have most of a torso here, including a part of an arm. I can try and find you. Let us know when you feel an arm." To answer your question - the mashed up slime mould will have to check all its neighbours to work out what is missing, first on the cellular scale, then on increasingly larger scales. This is the 'being knocked out' stage. When it is a fair idea what resources it has left, and what it can make of them, it can start sticking itself back together. I don't know how this would re-attach an arm well enough so the skeleton functions. But we can assume it does, and it will be particularly zombie-like if it doesn't make a particularly good job of it. [Answer] How does the slime mold find their next victim? > > they are walking human corpses reanimated by slime molds growing around their bones! > > > Based on this sentence the slime molds are hidden under tissue layers (skin/muscle etc.)or clothes. Meaning the slime molds need some way to spot there next dinner and steer their puppet towards it. Lets assume the slime molds hijack the nerve-system of their hosts, using the human sensory systems to know were to go. Overloading the nervous system would incapacitate the zombies, for example trauma to the body, disjointing nerves (cuts), an electric shock or chemicals that disrupt the nervous system. A human body) can recover from the last two mentioned options. The zombies would not be completely defeated by a headshot, but this solution will introduce human frailty to a certain degree to your zombies. [Answer] My immediate thought was [fainting goats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fainting_goat). They don't faint because they got hit in the head. It's just a hereditary condition triggered by over-excitement or being startled. (If you read through the wikipedia page, it may be evolutionary selection in the sense that the local farmers preferred goats that fainted.) So I'm thinking you can apply a similar concept to the slime molds: it's not that the physical damage incapacitates their nervous system. It's that "fainting" is an automatic, hereditary response, perhaps one that developed as natural selection from being zombies. The ones that didn't faint would get mashed to a pulp or burned until they were well and truly dead. The fainting molds became dominant because "whew, we killed it, look, it's not moving". Or you have a horde of zombies coming, you shoot them all, and the fainting ones lay there in the tall grass and "survive" while the non-fainting varieties keep coming until totally destroyed, ending their line. After a few hours, this effect wears off and the surviving "fainting slime-molds" get back up and resume their hunt. [Answer] It's a biological fact that each slime mould is a single cell. As long as the nucleus of the cell is in the head, you can easily knock it out by smashing the head. Even if your zombies are infested with more than one slime mould, we can still imagine that they go for the skull as the safest shelter for their nuclei - just as the bone-armoured skull is the safest place for our brains. > > The slime mold Physarum polycephalum has been puzzling researchers for > many decades. Existing at the crossroads between the kingdoms of > animals, plants and fungi, this unique organism provides insight into > the early evolutionary history of eukaryotes -- to which also humans > belong. > > > Its body is a giant single cell made up of interconnected tubes that form intricate networks. This single amoeba-like cell may stretch > several centimeters or even meters, featuring as the largest cell on > earth in the Guinness Book of World Records. > <https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210223121643.htm> > > > [Answer] Punctured Membrane. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TqcGe.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TqcGe.jpg) A slime mold is like a wet garbage bag. Give it a poke and it starts leaking nasty bin juice all over your clean carpet. The bin juice (cytoplasm) is full of free-floating nucleases and other nifty organelles that make the slime mold go. The organelles are supposed to stay on the inside or else the slime mold has a really bad day. For zombies, the garbage bag is safely contained under the flesh of the rotting corpse. But smack him hard enough and the slime mold springs a leak. The leak damages the hydraulic action the mold uses to control the cadaver. The slime must shut down and go into repair mode until it has the leak fixed. The zombie stops moving for a few hours. Then it gets back up and chases you some more. [Answer] I think that you sort of answer your own question. The question you have answered already (albeit implicitly) is "how do single slime molds, which are brainless, turn into a volitional organism?" - how does the community of individuals develop a central nervous system as a group? Bees have nervous systems - but the hive itself is said to have a mind of it's own, which itself has greater cognitive ability than any one bee-mind. Of course, such intelligence is driven by evolutionary collective conditioning - but then one could argue the same is true of primates. Or, consider the amoeba Toxoplasma Gondii - completely brainless, but which is able to make rats think that cats are their best buddies: effectively generating a set of hormones and neural connections in rats that lead to them becoming suicidally friendly to their natural enemy. One could argue that there is an emergent central nervous system, rather than a biological one, and this applies to your zombies: The zombie is able to walk, determine routes, meet the goals that it has been conditioned with, etc, because there is an emergent/hive consciousness that arises from the community of infested bones. Why not? Then the means of 'knocking them out' is to do with creating some sort of disconnect along their means of communication such that the network - the hive - ceases to be established. Needless to say, the molds being buried in the bones makes them quite resilient - but we would have to consider the connection points of each bone - I'm guessing that there's a sort of fast hormonal messaging happening between slime-mold-inhabited bones. Or, for instance, it could be that the budding/invasion method (from one bone to the next) the slime mold uses transforms into a synaptic connection whenever such bones turn out to be inhabited already. In this sense, then, a slime mold seeps into a bone, then sends out (biologically driven) fruiting tendrils which seek (and find) corresponding bones, which are then inhabited by child slime molds, gradually extending to the entire skeleton. But when such 'brainless' fruiting tendrils find a (now / or prior) inhabited bone, then they establish a synaptic link between those bones. Therefore, the way to knock out a zombie is to hit it on it's joints - where such a sudden shock may temporarily break the bonds between connecting bones - A sudden hit to a hip or shoulder joint will detach 30 of the 208 bones - effectively reducing the cognitive ability of the zombie by about 14%. Hitting all four such joints will reduce the cognitive ability by 58%. Not good enough. Let's try another: A good knock on the back of the neck takes out the 28 bones of the head. A knock at the lower back will separate the upper body from the lower body, splitting the two legs and the hips (about 63+ bones, depending on which of the vertebrae were hit). We will still need to hit the shoulders also - this then dislocates the slime mind into five separate clusters - the largest of which are the 63 bones in the lower body - and a hit to either hip joint will split them roughly evenly. The largest cluster, at about 36, will be the middle part of the body. Therefore, I would suggest the following (if we accept that a hard blow to a joint can temporarily sever the ganglion-connection between connected bones): 1. Hit the zombie in the lower back. This will slow it. 2. Now hit it in the back of the neck - this will disorient it. 3. Now hit a hip - this will immobilise it 4. Now hit a shoulder joint - it will lose access to one arm. 5. Now hit the remaining shoulder joint - it will be totally disassociated. Until the connections recover - maybe five minutes? That's really up to you to determine. But it seems like one could go on zombie knockout training! Needless to say, you could choose a number of bones which is the critical mass for gaining an emergent consciousness - if that were set to, eg, 78% of the bones must be connected, then a sharp hit to the lower back would be enough. [Answer] # Slime mold cell structure The slime mold is made by a lot of multinucleate amoeba-like cells. They are multinucleate in order to get better surviving chances if a cell is chopped in two halves. But they aren't very dense in the number of nucleus to avoid consuming too much energy. The cells have a lot of signaling mechanisms, like neurons do and also are capable of differentiating into different specialized cell types. Also, the cells have some chloroplasts in order to get some energy from the sun and melanin in order to get into the sun and be protected from UV rays. Further, [the slime cell also features an immune system similar to the one existing in plants, and the chloroplasts are important for that](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloroplast#Plant_innate_immunity). In fact, it is not a simple slime mold. Since they are genetic engineered, they are very complex transgenic slime molds organisms with genes coming from fungi, animals, plants, bacteria and some novel ones created specifically for it. # Infection level 1: Breathing skin The slime mold would also need to breath oxygen. If it doesn't have access to oxygen, it would have to have a very slow anaerobic metabolism and it would make the zombie unable to walk and also unable to self-mummify quickly enough to fight off body decay and co-infections. So, once established, the first thing that the slime mold would need is to get access to oxygen. Also, since it lacks a circulatory system, the slime mold would need to diffuse oxygen from cell to cell. The best way to get enough oxygen is to wrap around all the skin with specialized respiratory cells. Also, since the skin or an open sore is the most probably place where the infection starts, this might start right from the start. So, to simplify the biochemistry, let's assume that the slime mold is simply unable to grow without oxygen. Once established on the skin of the victim or into an open sore, the slime mold reproduces very fast in its skin border areas in border in order to conquer all the skin. To get enough energy for that, it would also need to consume some flesh in those border areas. However, since it also needs the most preserved flesh, it eats just the minimum necessary. Further, in order to optimize its energy and oxygen needs, those skin cells are large in area but thin in thickness. Also, they are actually double layered: One layer is over the skin and another one under the skin. Between those cell layers there is the host dead skin or perhaps some other exposed host tissue. Both cell layers are purposed in conquering the skin. The outer layer also have the purpose of getting oxygen, giving oxygen to its neighboring slime cells, exporting waste dissolved but concentrated in water (like sweat or urine). The inner layer is purposed to regrow the outer layer if it is removed (e.g. by washing, showering or abrasion). Further, both cell layers communicate in a way that if the outer cell layer is intoxicated or damaged (e.g. by soap or gelified alcohol), they break their connection until the outer layer gets better and restarts orderly or the inner layer regrow an outer one. The connections are small synaptic-like or hypha-like threads between the cells. Since those cells are large in area, they don't need too much of those threads to communicate, and this also avoids overcrowding the host skin with those threads. Since breathing would consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide, this means that breathing loses carbon. They solve this by having chloroplasts, get sunbathing and doing photosynthesis. The photosynthesis absorbs almost all of the carbon dioxide, at least during the day, it also consumes some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Working chloroplasts are multiplied in the outer skin areas only when they get sunlight. Slime mold cells that don't get sunlight keep just a few inactive chloroplasts. Also, the slime mold drinks water when the zombie enters a river, a pool or a sewage. A zombie kept with no access of water would die from thirsty. The result is that the zombie breaths like an hybrid of a plant and a amphibian. Also, they have greenish skin. Also, they have foul smell since their excretion is all through the skin. Finally, when conquering skin area, the slime mold would eventually enter the mouth, the nostrils, the ears, the eyes and the anus. By conquering the lungs surface, it gets a lot of breathing area. # Infection level 2: Flesh zombification Once a patch of skin is conquered, the slime molds far from its borders enters its second level of infection: Mummify the area. The slime mold produces substances to preserve the body and fight off co-infections of competing bacteria and fungi and also slow down the body decay. I.E. a zombie is self-mummifying. A way to make that happen is to produce a lot of nasty toxic chemicals that only the slime mold itself is immune to. This also have the side effect of poisoning and killing its host if it happens to still be a living person. Further, this also works as an immune system for the zombie. Zombie-skin cells in this state reproduces much more slowly in order to avoid consuming the body too quickly or getting depleted from water, oxygen or energy. The outer layer just mostly supply oxygen and photosynthesized food for the rest of the slime mold. But the inner layer detects if there is non-mummified tissue and produce mummifying toxins that they release into those tissues. Further, they get the raw chemical materials for fabricating those toxins from the very non-mummified tissue that they are mummifying. Note that a patch of infected skin would have borders in the first stage and its center in the second stage (or further stages). It isn't all in one stage. Each cell has its own stage and they look into their neighborhood and communicating with their neighboring slime-mold cells in order to determine their own stage and function. # Infection level 3: Getting to bones Once a skin cell has no nearby unconquered skin and all the nearby flesh is mummified, it enters it third stage: Look for the bones. The slime mold inner skin layer cells will project hypha-like threads down away from the skin. When they find a bone, they create a specialized bone-bordering cell that have the purpose of controlling the skeleton. Also, those hypha-like threads will create ramifications in order to mummify the flesh. They also supply oxygen down into the bone-bordering cells. Once the bone-bordering cells forms, they start to spread in order to conquer the bone surface just as the outer cells did. The bone-bordering cells signals each other with the purpose of measuring the bone if the bone is completely conquered or not (bone-bordering cells that feels a unconquered area answer a loud chemical NO to that signal and the other cells around the same bone spread out that NO). Once the NO signal don't get answered # Infection level 4: Connecting the bones Bone-bordering cell without nearby unconquered bone-border area nor without neighboring hypha-like threads from skin-layer cells will try to find other bone-bordering cells that aren't immediate neighbors. They do so by projecting out hypha like thread until they find another bone-bordering cell. Once two bone bordering cells contact, they will try to pull back and shorten that thread but not with enough force to break it. If necessary, the thread anchoring can slide under the cell surface in order to find the best anchoring place. This also have the purpose to make the connecting thread as short as possible. If the thread ends being a very short almost-zero-length bridge from two neighboring cells, it is deemed as unnecessary and broken down. Those bone-bordering cells try to contact nearby bones quickly when they are newly formed and their conditions for doing so happens. But once they are long enough in that state, they quiet down and only for once in a while they tries to connect to another bone. Instead those old enough cells focus most in doing the next task: infection level 5. # Infection level 5: Making out slime-mold muscles Muscles are necessary to have force. So, the bone-bordering cells that completed their level 4 tasks and couldn't connect to other bones starts to consume flesh in order to create muscle-like cells around them and those newly formed muscle-like cells do the same until they are signaled from the slime-mold skin cells that they are too close. # Infection level 6: Making out slime-mold nerves Muscle-like cells signals each other in order to elect which one would turn into nerves-like cells. Locally, they can survey the neighboring cells in order to determine in which plane the bone-bordering cells and the skin-cells are, and the cells elected to be nerves should be in a layer in the middle of these. Surveys are done by sending cell-signals into nearby cells, amplifying those signals into other nearby cells and comparing signals received from one direction to signals received from other directions. With this, cells can roughly determine which ones should be turned into nerves and in which direction the nerves should run. With those surveys, the cells should be able to roughly measure the bones, and then, those nerve-like cells will try to connect with each other in the direction that the bones are the longest. Further, once the nerve-like threads forms, they will try to rectify themselves with both cell-migrations and re-elections. Nerve-like-cells that are deemed unnecessary revert back to muscle-like-cells. Since those surveys occur in the muscle-like-layer only very-roughly knowing where the bones and the skin, it is able to jump over different bones and eventually connect the entire body. The cell-surveys also have the purpose to make nerves lose ends join together to reconnect or perhaps determine that they are the actual nerve endings in the tip of the fingers or toes. Y-shaped junctions will also progressively separate into disjoint threads. In order to know in which direction they should separate (i.e. a Y-shaped connection in the hand connecting two fingers and the forearm should separate in the direction of a forearm, not in the direction of one of the fingers), they survey for knowing in which direction is the nerve-endings in order to disjoint them into the opposite direction. With this, nerves will eventually a net. They will connect the toes and other loose endings in the feet and legs through the spine in the direction of the head. Endings in the torso will also be guided by the ribs to find their way to the head. Nerves in the arms will connect the fingers and other loose endings in the hands and arms through the shoulder and neck into the head. # Infection level 7: BRAINS! Zombies don't need brains to live, but those that have brains are much tougher and better than those that doesn't. When the slime mold gets into the brain, it tries to conquer it as quickly as possible. Neurons have structure and that structure will decay quickly if nothing is done to preserve them. And here, the slime mold try to attack the neurons and imitate their structure as quickly as possible before it decays. Once the slime mold can possess the brain, mummify it, eat it and imitate its former structure, we will have a zombie that have some memories, some knowledge, some abilities, some intelligence and possibly even be capable of speaking. Also, since the slime-molded brain isn't immutable, it also even have some learning capability! Of course, since the brain-conquering process is inherently imperfect and must be done very quickly in order to work, brained zombies are still stupid and have only a fraction and the behavior of their former selves. Also, the imitation brain works much slower than a true brain. But this might be enough to: * Have a zombie walk in a house chasing victims without stumbling over walls. * Have a zombie getting a [street cone and using it as a helmet](https://plantsvszombies.fandom.com/wiki/Conehead_Zombie). * Have a zombie using the elevator and knowing to which floor it wants to go. * Have a zombie getting a ladder in order to jump over a wall. * Have a zombie with a crowbar smashing a window glass and a locked handle in order to enter a house. * Have a zombie posing as a beggar in order to approach victims without making them notice that until it is too late. * Have a zombie saying "Breeeiiinzzzz, Iii wwwaaaant breeeeiiiinzzzz!" * Have another zombie saying "Ssstteeeeeveee, uuu'lll jooooinn uuuzz nnooooowww!" * Have a zombie writing a letter to a victim ["Hello, This iz your Muther. Please come over to myhouse for "Meatloaf" Leave your front door open and your lawn unguarded. Sincerely, Mom (not the Zombies)"](https://plantsvszombies.fandom.com/wiki/Note?file=Fog_Note.jpg) * Have a zombie driving a car without crashing. * Have a zombie grabbing a gun and then saying "IIITTSSZZ PPLLAAAYYYTTIIIMMEE! HAA HAAA HAAAA!" * Have a zombie writing a love letter "Carol, come back, please! We lived together and now we can unlive together!" * Have a zombie opening its e-mail and looking for how to reach its next victim on facebook. * Have a zombie ordering stuff from Amazon and paying with a credit card. When the intended package arrives, it also tries to kill the deliveryman and rob the truck. * Have a zombie telling an human: ["Wweee aaarrr ddeee zzooombiiis. Uuu'lll beee aaziimmmiillaateeed. Reeezziizzttaansee iiizz ffuutiillee!"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg) * Have a zombie telling his wife: "Liillyyy, Iii loooovveeee uuuu! Kiilll mmee anndd rrruunnn! Ssaaveee uur ssooonnnn!" # Infection level 8: Expiration Eventually, the slime mold will need to eat all of the flesh and will starve. The zombie could still try to find something to eat, possibly an animal, and by being able to eat, it can feed the slime mold. [Vegetable food is also possible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plants_vs._Zombies), but without a working digestive system, that type of food is very hard to consume for the slime mold, so they always prefer flesh. Also since even the best zombies have poor coordination, poor intelligence and are very improbable to get sufficiently fed by living humans, most will eventually starve. Fat zombies tend to unlive more than thin zombies, exactly because the mold will get fed on dead fat. Also, although they can eat and digest food in their stomach and intestines, they might also eat by just attaching the food somewhere in the skin and waiting the slime mold do its job. Finally, zombies very much prefer to attack living victims in the neck or in the head in order to make the slime mold gets into the brain as quickly as possible and conquer it with the minimal possible decay. It even evolves and gets natural selection for that. # And animals? If the slime mold conquers the body of a dog, guess what? It becomes a zombie dog! A cat body? A zombie cat! And also zombie fish, zombie rabbits, zombie cows, zombie horses, zombie snakes, zombie frogs, zombie elephants, zombie turtles, zombie mice, zombie lions, zombie bears, zombie tigers, zombie giraffes, zombie sharks, zombie monkeys, zombie whales... However, in order to make the zombie animals breath efficiently, they would shed most of their fur. We could also have zombie birds, but due to their poor coordination and the shedding of their feathers, they would be unable to fly. Zombie insects probably won't happen because they are too small and their exoskeleton don't play nicely with the breathing requirements of the zombies. Zombie plants also won't happen because it is hard to be digested. # Damaged zombies: How they recover? Bone-bordering cells that are frequently disturbed and injured will eventually decide that it is enough and will turn into a hard wood-like substance. Also, those wood-like cells glue themselves into the neighboring bones and other neighboring wood-like cells. This make broken bones eventually reconnect. Damaged skin just needs to be reconquered. Damaged flesh will grow new hypha-like cells. Damaged muscle will regrow. Cut-down nerves will reconnect since nerve cells surveys the nearby tissue with the very purpose of forming, reforming and reconnecting. If the slime mold don't find a brain, it will make an improvised one somewhere in the body where the nerves converge. The improvised brain is poor, but the slime mold have the needed structure encoded in its DNA. It is enough to form a brain-imitation with the complexity of a fish-like, mouse-like or bird-like brain, which is enough to give it an animal-like intelligence and behavior sufficient for walking, finding food and water, avoid enemies and dangers, search for victims to infect and have a minimal intelligence and memory in order to survive. But it won't be able to talk, drive vehicles, operate machines or use a computer. So, if you cut out the head of a zombie, the zombie head continues to try to behave as a zombie, but it would be unable to do much and would run out of oxygen very soon. The body will fall down and the slime mold would start to construct a new brain somewhere in the torso. When the brain is powerful enough, so you might see headless zombies walking around. But the zombie head would not die quickly or easily. Since the flesh is mummified, it well-preserved. When the slime mold runs out of oxygen, it goes into a dormant very-low-metabolism state instead of just dying. So, the zombie head would not decay or will do so very slowly and it still can be reanimated. Also, a zombie head, although not having enough oxygen for complex thought, still has enough for a minimal metabolism. Also, it have the ability to form eyes. It may just mummify and zombify its host former eyes. But if the eyes are missing or in a very bad shape, the slime mold knows how to grow new eyes and know where they should be. A blind person that is zombified becomes a sighted zombie! # Self-frankensteining! A headless zombie will grow eyes somewhere in the skin where it receives sunlight and is far from bone-joints. So headless zombies might have eyes in their arms, in their necks, in their backs, in their chests, in their bellies, in their butts, in their legs... And also, they can have a lot of eyes. Further, zombies parts might rejoin. If a headless zombie finds out a head, it might get that head and hold it firmly over its own neck for some hours or even a few days until the slime molds in both parts join and create muscles, skin, nerves and connecting wooden-bones and make it firm enough to not break easily. It doesn't even needs to be its former head, it could be the head of some other person or even the head of some animal. If you cut out an arm, the slime mold will try to create a small brain in that arm and you might see an eyed-arm crawling around by moving its fingers. It will also perceive itself as too small to be functional and with try to find a more functional zombie somewhere to join into it. Also, in order to improve the joining process, it can grab some materials like wood planks, sticks, bamboo, iron bars, duct tape, bandage, water tubes or whatever that it can use to hold the two bodily pieces together more firmly. It may also fill voids and holes with beef, raw hamburgers, fish-fillets, rat-flesh or anything like that. An incapacitated zombie with what would be a fatal wound for its host is capable of re-raising after some time. This is the time the slime mold takes to reconnect and repair its tissues and remummify the flesh if needed. However, it might need to consume some flesh in order to do that, so a very badly damaged zombie might be incapable of re-raising again. Also, a zombie can't be re-raised an indefinite number of times if it does not eat, find filling flesh or join with other zombie parts in the mean time. Also, some zombies may turn out into very horrendous monsters by joining parts of different bodies: * A [Goro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goro_(Mortal_Kombat))-like four-armed zombie monster is possible! * Two-headed zombies? No problem! * What about three-headed or four-headed zombies? * What about a centaur zombie, half human-zombie and half horse-zombie? * A zombie [human centipede](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Centipede_(First_Sequence))? * What about a monster with 8 heads, 3 torsos, 27 eyes, 5 butts, 13 arms and 9 legs, with not all of that being human parts, and it fights with swords, axes, hammers and guns all at the same time? * What about a zombie that after having its brain taken over by the slime mold, have the slime mold grow and improve the brain until its become an [ultraintelligent zombie](https://plantsvszombies.fandom.com/wiki/Dr._Zomboss)? [Answer] If the mould is distributed through the entire body, not localised in the head, and you want it to be knocked out by a blow, then the blow needs to ripple through the entire body [like the time Wilder hit Fury in Rd 4 of their 3rd encounter](https://i.ibb.co/st1DswG/ezgif-com-crop.gif). Say your mould is sensitive to shockwaves and gets knocked out by these ripples. [Answer] What if the mechanics were changed from the slime mold itself moving the bones to the slime mold coopting the nervous system? In that case a taser may disrupt their ability to integrate with the nervous system, temporarily bringing the person back (unless they've died) and then they re-zombify. Not sure how blunt force trauma could do it other than what other answers have said (dislocating joints, slime mold membrane puncture, blast overpressure causing mold to detatch temporarily, lysol/chemical attacks) [Answer] EDIT: I misread the question and this answer is unrelated to the main inquiry, read on if you want musing on interactions between zombies and modern weapons. --- Modern firepower Since you speak about "headshots" I assume you have at least recent historical period in mind. The thing that is easy to underestimate about modern weapons is that they are very lethal ("modern" here means using high explosives, roughly 1900 and onward). A standard issue [M67 grenade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M67_grenade) is expected to seriously mess up anything in a several meter radius. Unless the slime mold is functionally magic, it is unclear what it is going to do with the little barely connected pieces of shredded charred human flesh and bones. Obviously, the lethality of larger high-explosive payloads (artillery shells, RPGS, ...) is substantially larger. [Thermobaric weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon) as well as large shells are also going to create a noticeable blast radius where the heat alone is enough to efficiently destroy slime-mold biomass directly. And we haven't even discussed the use of armor, vehicles, flamethrowers, ... Note that winning over zombies in the long term is actually quite easy: you just need to inflict more than one (completely) dead zombie for each dead/infected human. And the zombies can't be very lethal themselves - a couple layers of thick cloth is sufficient to completely prevent damage by bites/claws. So even an "artisanal" approach where you use an AK-47 (or rope if you are feeling adventurous) to immobilize the zombie and then put it on a manually maintained pyre is likely enough to keep things under control. If you have access to heavy weapons, then casualty ratios of 1000:1 or more in favor of humans are completely plausible. Sorry, zombies are just hard to be actually workable without serious handwaving. (my source for the main ideas is <https://acoup.blog/2021/08/06/referenda-ad-senatum-august-6-2021-feelings-at-the-fall-of-the-republic-ancient-and-medieval-living-standards-and-zombies/>) [Answer] Lysol filled tranq darts. On the other hand (I love the black night reference +1 for L. Dutch) Physical incapacitation is just that. Picture the poor chap before being zombified, had a bad PCP habit or something... In the old days of COPS, there was an episode of those "Uncensored" reels you could rent on VHS. I remember one where a perp on PCP tried to evade cops by leaping off a second story balcony at full run. Shattered both legs but kept trying to get up and run. That is about as close to reality as you can get with a "not consciously driven human body" it still has mechanical limits. Just like slime molds also have inconceivably small amount of motive force to impart on the body, mechanical limits here would dictate that to move a human corpse would like, have to be a HUGE blob of extremely dense mold with the body suspended in it. And let‚Äôs face it, if we saw that we would not run, we would pull out our cell phones and live stream it. Toss a little bleach on it to end the show. I have always laughed at the whole concept of zombies anyway, each iteration of the mechanism by which they spread and animate is based on the theory that a human body has the muscular strength to move itself. Muscular strength is based on cellular respiration. Holes in body = air/fluid loss = no muscle movement due to no oxygen or nutrients. Not drinking water = no fluid replenishment = dehydration. No fluids also mean no digestion (So does no internal organs that have spilled everywhere) so if they are eating brains or toenails, does not really matter. So anything that "zombified" a human would be bound to maintaining the health of a human or betting on hosts availability. As its own survival would be contingent on one or the other. Think virus and bacteria, even humans; they spread until they have nowhere else to go at any cost, without regard for what happens when the host environment expires? All three are operating under the assumption that their spread will when the numbers game. But unless humans live long enough to colonize the stars, all of them are wrong. The more virulent it is the shorter it will live ultimately. super contagious + super lethal = self-curing through host elimination. And let‚Äôs just assume that something like a parasite like that did exist? It implies a very complex symbiosis. Outside a few romanticized religious fables, complex life like that does not poof into existence, that is WAY past a mutation, and would require millennia of evolution in a host that could not detect or apply any defense measures, from medicine to quarantine. In the zombie movie 28 days later, one guy had it right, he had one chained up and said... "In a way. He's telling me he'll never bake bread, plant crops, raise livestock. He's telling me he's futureless. And eventually, he'll tell me how long the infected take to starve to death." -- Major West If someone wants to invent a true zombie, it would be short lived, start in reality. Maybe a mutated strain of rabies, syphilis? YOU have a virus and a bacterium to play with there, maybe a wild genetic leap that made rabies infect and make syphilis a transmission vector? Then make it highly transmissible (Because world ending from bites is simply laughable), and a very low incubation period. Cross species ensures better distribution, making both excellent candidates, alone or together. Both of those can lead to hyper aggression, mania, general psychotic behavior, etc... Spreading would be a side effect, not conscious goal of the contagion. And both the hosts and the contagion would be susceptible to all the normal control measures (Kill the host, sterilize the environment, etc) One wave of original genetic aberration leads to a huge outbreak and just like covid, then results in a large number of variants, one leads to TEOTWAWKI. Starts with sick people, then sick violent people, fear sets in, both fear of being discovered and infection leads to further unchecked spread. Society collapses, martial law/military rule, badlands outside that where people take their chances with a contagion vs the scarier option of walled in cities full of different psychopaths... You know, basically every zombie movie, just a different back story and opening sequence. Lol, zombies, I better get credit for this book/game/movie :-) ]
[Question] [ In many sci-fi worlds, though mostly Star Wars, the main weapon of choice is some form of "laser" weapon that fires bolts that are way below the speed of light. In said universes, some factions have the, apparently, good idea of using ballistics weapons that have some form of energy that encases the bullet (usually some form of plasma). The main question I have is why? Aren't good old slug throwers like what we have on Earth not good enough? And what advantage does adding such complex parts to a gun and projectile that justify its existence, if any? Ignoring artistic consistency, of course. [Answer] ## Armor penetration Conventional bullets all work the same way: by applying kinetic energy directly to a small area on the target and punching through it. This is relatively easy to armor against: hard materials to resist the initial impact and then energy-absorbing materials that deform under stress in order to take the brunt of the hit. State-of-the-art armor for tanks right now can handle pure kinetic impactors of any reasonable size, which is why you see anti-tank rounds that e.g. create a jet of molten metal on impact that is designed to cut through armor. Right now, for infantry, the materials arms race is in favor of bullets over armor but there's no reason to assume that will continue. Body armor keeps improving, but pure-kinetic bullets don't have much room to do the same: you can manufacture more powerful guns than are routinely used but they have human factors and usability problems like weight, recoil, and ammo supply. So, you need to turn to something more exotic to punch through the full-body armor that tends to prevail on the Battlefield of Tomorrow in fiction. Whether by application of heat or some more exotic process (electromagnetic? radioactive?), the "energy casing" weakens armor sufficiently that the bullet can punch through. [Answer] Ammunition Bullets weigh a lot and need to be carried. An energy weapon really is limited by it's battery capacity. Currently our battery tech is rubbish so any sort of energy weapon simply isn't viable. If you have some sort of magical almost infinite energy system that is tiny and portable then energy weapons become possible. Simply, the way tech currently is, you get more bang for your buck from bullets. [Answer] Carry capacity and weapon handling. The recoil of a weapon quickly goes up the more powerful your bullets become. A .50cal mounted machine gun would bruise your body if you fired it by hand. But if most of the energy isnt mass but for example heat in the form of plasma then the recoil you experience goes down as well as the neccessary size of the bullets. That means more ammo and easier handling of a more powerful weapon. [Answer] # They're plasma projectors These guns fire a short jet of superheated gas, that on impact vaporizes armor and kills by sending the body into shock from the combined explosion, pressing the molten armor into the body, and in case there is no armor, just leaving the body with horrific third-degree burns. This is fatal. Some armor just about manages to prevent a deadly impact, but still, such exposure leaves the body crippled. [Answer] Shield Harmonics [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RYCVvm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RYCVvm.png) The plasma envelope allows the bullet to penetrate energy shields. This works because the shields are made of the same sort of plasma. Two possibilities. 1. The plasma envelope pushes the shield to either side (easier than smashing it) so the bullet has to penetrate a thinner layer of shielding. 2. The plasma is set to vibrate at a frequency that interferes with the shield frequency. For example the energy shield is not always on. It flicks on and off once per nanosecond and is only active for 1/2024 of the time. If it detects a bullet in that time it remains powered up. However if it detects a plasma packet that also oscillates once per nanosecond it gets confused and doesn't register it as a bullet. [Answer] ## You can find energy anywhere conveniently you can not find gunpowder as easily. In a sci-fi environment, it is likely for a group to touch ground on one planet, then a couple of weeks later we touch ground on another. It is impossible to know how much ammo we are going to need when we touch down on the second planet because we will never quite know what is waiting for us. (Even if we have been there before) In TV series, its common for the main character to be shot at by people who used to be allies. So logically you wouldn't need to bring ammo for that trip, but in reality you needed it then the most. What you will always have readily available is energy, particularly of the plasma / laser variant because we have no way to synthesize propellant of any other kind without creating matter. But using nuclear fusion or fission we can develop long lasting energy, or better yet, the sun(s) on local planets can charge our ships and we can bring that energy with us on our laser guns / battery packs. So energized bullets in this case actually makes sense because of a naturally abundance and necessary recourse we need to travel. Energy. [Answer] # Shields What is different here is that shields are everywhere. Large ships, tiny fighters to even some small drones have them. The goal of firing a laser is in general taking something out of the fight, so you gain more control over the surroundings. Normal lasers might not be effective against shields, nor are physical armaments. I mean in a universe where faster than light travel can definitely destroy an armada with a single ship, you want to have some convenient [plot armour] device that can deflect it with minimal effort. It might be a question of easy deflection, or simply not enough energy applied to the target. Though physical limitations can be a factor. How do you get an effective railgun without it taking up too much space of the ship? The slow moving lasers solve all of this. The turrets can project effective high amounts of energy against the shields compared to other weapons. They only need a connection to the reactor of the ship, making the required infrastructure relatively small. They might be more complex to make, but at a certain point technology has processed so far that it hardly matters, or is even easier than the less complex stuff. In our world we print out millions of computer processors. Making the old transistors that were bigger than a man might be less complex, but the microprocessors are now made with such ease that it makes no sense to build the old ones. The lasers themselves is much like oil. Instead of just throwing water against someone you can throw burning oil. Besides the kinetic energy you are releasing a lot of energy into the target, in this case the shields. This destructive force doesn't need to be heat. It can have any number of interesting processes that negate or weaken the shield. If it does penetrate the shield it will release the remaining energy as heat upon impact, often explosively. The slow lasers are simply the most effective energy transport vessels through space to destroy shields, which will be the greatest part of the fight. If the shields are down they are good enough to destroy the target as well, although physical means can then be much more effective. [Answer] # Gyrojet Plasma Rocket: This idea has all of the appearance elements of your weapons, is based on real engineering, and would represent a superior projectile weapon with distinct advantages over conventional guns. It's basically all the advanced designs people have looked for in conventional guns, but with the engineering problems solved. The gun is actually quite simple, but the bullets are the thing. Your bullets have a self-consuming ammunition, a tiny exploding solid fuel rocket the equivalent of a caseless [gyrojet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet) projectile. The bullet slowly consumes itself at the back end continuously accelerating. Once the projectile strikes a target, the rest of the projectile converts immediately to plasma in an explosion. Perhaps this explosion even works like a [shaped charge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge), and a jet of plasma is blasted into the opponent. It is thus armor-piercing. Because it is a self-propelled projectile, it has little or no recoil (like you'd expect from a ray gun), so it can be fired from a drone or in zero g. This also means it can be fired in a vacuum. It will be appearing to move slowly at the firing location but rapidly accelerates. The appearance will be like a glowing streak, or "plasma bolt." A satisfying flash and explosion go off when the bolt hits. There is no left over bullet (or possibly a blob of melted copper, depending on the design). Because there is a bigger explosion at short ranges, the effectiveness at short range improves and compensates for one of the major weaknesses of the gyrojet design (short range effectiveness). In its simplest form, none of the projectile is wasted - it is all either fuel or explosion. The closer you are, the bigger the explosion. The further you are, the faster the projectile is traveling and the harder the mass hits. [![gyrojet](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2GQez.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2GQez.jpg) # Advantages: Why this concept is better: * Simple gun (a recoilless rifle) easily built under any conditions. * [Caseless](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caseless_ammunition) design allows light ammo, simplified gun design. * little or no recoil and self-contained propellant (good for zero g/vacuum) * no/low recoil allows man-portable weapons in almost any "caliber" * Armor-piecing shaped charge. * Complex ammo, but made of simple materials potentially 3D printable. Potentially made easily anywhere people have 3D printers (in the future, everywhere?) * Usable from drones and other light platforms (even large 'calibers') * Effective at a wide variety of ranges. * Simple Visual aiming - rocket with flat trajectories, and like [tracer ammunition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracer_ammunition), each round is visible. * Gyrojet design potentially allows [smart ammunition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_bullet) * Appearance of guns (see above), firing, and utility all match "blasters" [Answer] As an author, I would make those anti-matter sheaths. Absolutely the most known "bang for the buck" we know is matter/anti-matter collision, 100% of the mass is converted to energy. But the only way we (currently) know to contain antimatter is in a "magnetic bottle" around a vacuum that contains nothing but particles of antimatter. So the much-slower-than-light brilliantly glowing projectile is actually not the super dangerous part of the projectile: The projectile is actually a machine producing a magnetic bottle and emitting highly energetic particles to protect the antimatter inside from any stray atoms it may encounter on its way to the target. Upon impact, the magnetic bottle collapses, antimatter meets matter and they completely annihilate each other. Using this idea, you can even justify light-sabers: They generate a streamed "loop" of magnetically contained antiparticles, if they touch anything they annihilate it. But of course the magnetic loop cannot be sustained just as far as you like, the meter or so shown in the film is just the maximum extent such a tall thin cylindrical magnetic bottle can be extended. Heck, that stream of circulating antiparticles may itself be just the thickness of a thread, the magnetic bottle just shines as if the cylinder is an inch across. The anti-particles themselves are stored in the handle, you don't need more than an ounce to power the light saber for centuries. [Answer] # Tracer shots In such sci-fi works, the troops shooting such "laser" weapons are already [redacted] by the laws of tropes: * [Conservation of Ninjutsu:](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu) In any martial arts fight, there is only a finite amount of ninjutsu available to each side in a given encounter. As a result, one Ninja is a deadly threat, but an army of them are cannon fodder. This also applies to gunfights, so replace ninjutsu with marksmanship and ninja with shooter. * [Conservation of Competence:](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfCompetence) There is only so much competence a given faction can distribute amongst its membership. If you are to give the bad guys at least a semblance of a chance, you need to give them [tracer ammunition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracer_ammunition) (emphasis below are mine): > > Tracer ammunition (tracers) are bullets or cannon-caliber projectiles that are built with a small pyrotechnic charge in their base. When fired, the pyrotechnic composition is ignited by the burning powder and burns very brightly, making the projectile trajectory visible to the naked eye during daylight, and very bright during nighttime firing. This allows the shooter to visually trace the flight path of the projectile and thus make necessary ballistic corrections, without having to confirm projectile impacts and without even using the sights of the weapon. Tracer fire can also be used as a marking tool to signal other shooters to concentrate their fire on a particular target during battle. > > > [Answer] Space armour is strong enough that most physical projectiles will bounce off harmlessly — they won't even dent it, and in some cases won't even scratch it! On the other hand, a plasma cutter will slice through the armour nicely. That is, after all, how they trim it to size, and shape it. However, plasma likes to dissipate, and will spread out to a harmless cloud within nanoseconds of leaving a gun. One way to handle this over short distances (as used in the real-life [MARAUDER](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARAUDER) plasma railgun) is to fire toroidal plasma charge — i.e. donuts of plasma — so that the plasma's own magnetic field will keep it (very briefly) contained and coherent, like a very delicate [tensegrity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensegrity) construct. As you say, these are well below the speed of light — here on Earth, in 1993, we were achieving just 3% of $c$ — but a mere 2mg of plasma delivers the equivalent of 5lb of TNT to the target on impact. Scale it up to ship-mounted weaponry, and every blast from your Star Destroyer is effectively launching a small nuke, without any of that pesky radiation to worry about! However, there are 2 main issues with that approach: first, boosting the plasma to that speed requires a large accelerator, of at least a meter cubed. Hardly suitable for a pistol! Second, the toroid will still dissipate over time, it just does so slightly slower than unshaped plasma. The only reason it makes a viable weapon is precisely because it is travelling 1 million meters in the tenth of a second it exists for. (A third issue is rate–of–fire, since it can take your particle accelerator quite some time to get your plasma up to the velocities required to fire it) So, if you want to make the weapon hand-held, you need to slow the projectile down. However, this will also mean that even toroidal plasma will dissipate before reaching the target. Enter the projectile! The solid slug at the centre of your blaster bolt is, basically, a magnet. As a bullet, it is useless — weak and fragile, it will shatter on impact. However, the magnetic field it generates acts as a "bottle" to contain a charge of high-energy plasma as a sheathe around it. And it is this plasma that actually deals the damage: the "bullet" core is only there to make sure the plasma stays together for long enough to reach the target. [Answer] They're Just Better (because of space science magic) The weapons in the Star Wars movies that I've watched are ridiculously effective. They're just better than bullets in most of the ways people care about. The science of how to make glowing laser bullets that are better than regular bullets is sufficiently advanced to appear indistinguishable from magic, along with hyperdrive, shields, and The Force. But their effects can be observed, and their effects are better (or worse, if you're on the wrong side of the barrel) than the effects of real bullets. There might be counter-examples in some of the newer or less popular Star Wars media, but in the ones I've seen... no non-Jedi, except for military robots, survives a direct hit anywhere on their body, even from small handguns. More than that, they drop immediately, rather than potentially staying in the fight for seconds or minutes despite being mortally wounded. They go through military body armor like paper. One solid hit with a blaster = you're dead. Nobody ever seems to run out of ammunition. Recoil is minimal. Overpenetration is never an issue. They aren't even loud enough to damage your hearing. The only down side blasters seem to have is rate of fire, and maybe projectile velocity for long-range shooting. The Empire should probably have invested in some modern-style light machine guns, just to force the Rebels to invest in body armor. A plot hole? Maybe, but real life is full of examples of clueless procurement offices cluelessly deciding that they know better than the guys on the ground. ]
[Question] [ Throughout history, precious metals and gems have always held value and can be exchanged for goods. However, what future developments could lead to a bleak future in which these items cannot be traded for anything of substantial value? [Answer] The metal is no longer precious. So for example humanity could discover deposits of them on Mars or comets. Or we could produce everything in Star Trek manner. So Faberge eggs would be valued for they artisan being rather than materials used. Which is already happening as jewelry is worth more than it's source material in their crude form. On the other hand golden marriage rings are bought as gold scrap. In XIX century aluminium was worth more than gold because it was hard to obtain it. So if everything is easily accessible and easy to manufacure. [Answer] # Metals are useful Various metals are used for blades, armor, containers, etc. Gold may be less useful than steel for swords, but it would make a nice cup, or an effective sling projectile for that matter. Gold is also useful for corrosion-proof electrical contacts in any technological society. Would it be enough for your purposes to make gold and silver less valuable than lead or tin? It is quite improbable that precious metals will have no value whatsoever. # Gemstones are somewhat useful Consider [diamond-tipped drills](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_diamond_drilling). You won't get a situation where gemstones are completely useless. I doubt you will get a situation where a gem is worth less than the same weight of bread, unless a famine is about to wipe out your dystopia anyway. # What can be done? * Flood the market with dirt-cheap metals and gems, so that nobody is going to pay for them. Sounds not very dystopian. * Run a strictly controlled economy where each transaction must be authorized by the powers that be. Their five-year economic plan has no place for pretty baubles, so trading in them is punishable. The surveillance is tight enough that nobody dares to trade for "baubles" either. [Answer] # Uselessness. A social breakdown and starvation level of society. Gold, diamonds and sapphires will not feed your children, you will not trade a pound of your beans for a pound of gold, if nobody you know would sell you a pound of their beans for a pound of gold. This is not about "intrinsic value" at all, it is about faith in the utility of something to buy you something else you want or need. A paper \$100 bill has no more inherent value than any other piece of paper, but I can get my house painted for a handful of them. Why? Because painters have faith, bordering on certainty, that the grocer and pharmacist and landlord will take these pieces of paper in trade for what they need to keep their children alive. Trading value is not about rarity, either, although it is about an inability to easily counterfeit, create or just find naturally. Beans have intrinsic value. Injectable insulin has intrinsic value. Even Water has intrinsic value. These things can keep you or your kids alive another day. Various tools (knives, drills, scalpels, pulleys, ropes, saws, magnifying lenses, pipes ... ) have indirect intrinsic value, they can help you acquire or create something of intrinsic value. Gold and gems do not. In a survival situation (without any magic or zombies) gold is a worthless paper weight and a sapphire is a pretty piece of glass that cannot be used for anything. They are indulgences, you cannot afford to give up a tool or food for them when you have three days of food left and are hunting for more. # What can bring about such an apocalypse? The most probable one on Earth, IRL (and to my awareness), is a large coronal mass ejection from the Sun that intercepts Earth. There is about a 1% chance per year of such an event. In the modern world, this could create massive currents in all grounded wires, effectively vaporizing all power lines (literally boiling the conducting metal so they are all gone, destroying generators and all other electrical devices, making them useless; also incidentally setting houses on fire everywhere. The electrical grid and devices would have to be rebuilt from scratch. Communications are gone, there are no telephones, cellphones or satellite phones, the landlines are gone (although undersea and underground cables probably survive). Without electricity, the cities are unlivable and starve. Cars and trucks and trains don't work, their electrical systems are gone. Refrigeration is gone. Most manufacturing processes are gone, they depend on electricity and computers (all gone). So medicines are no longer made. Food rots in the fields, there is no way to get it into the cities or to the towns. All of that stuff could be rebuilt, but it would take years, and in the first six months more than half of people die, in a few years, 90% are dead. The only survivors live off the land hunting animals (and fish) for food, and of course, each other for territory that produces food. I would likely be dead in the first months, but if I survive, I won't trade my machete or knives or even my sling for all the gold or gems you can muster. And certainly not a rabbit leg. (There are other apocalypses that could have a similar effect; CME is the one I consider most likely to cause civilization collapse; the others like super volcanoes or asteroid collisions are (IMO) much much longer shots.) ### Added to address commentary [Earth's Greatest Threat: CMEs](http://www.ecology.com/2014/05/01/earths-greatest-threat-cmes/) This link describes the magnitude of the threat of Coronal Mass Ejections. In particular, these excerpts: > > It is the immense coronal mass ejection that hits Earth head-on that would spell major trouble for modern society’s way of life. Even today, the smaller CME events shut down satellites and global communications systems, as well as interrupt airline control and electric power grids. A massive CME that hits Earth directly would be exponentially more dangerous. [..snip..] A direct hit from a very large CME is a one-in-100-year event according to solar research at NASA and the European Space Agency. [..snip..] Not only could the costs of such a direct hit by a massive CME range into the trillions of dollars, but it would set back the progress of society many years. The entire technology infrastructure on which human life has become totally dependent – from electricity and power generation to communications, business transactions, health care, commerce, agriculture and other critical infrastructures of modern society – would be decimated and take many years to recover. General electricity throughout the world would all of sudden be widely wiped out and it would take years to restore. > > > The ramifications for civilization go far beyond that. No communications, no TV, no telephone. All satellites are fried. Pacemakers explode. Hospitals are disfunctional; as are houses. The government collapses. Before electricity, towns were small and organized at the center of farms and ranches, people were not far from food and trading what they made for food. Modern cities get food from afar, by trucks, trains, and boats. Basically every one of these, since 1930 or so, has electrical components central to their operation, and won't work. The cities starve. Without electricity, high rises (need elevators) and most city buildings stop being livable. Water and sewage systems depend on electric pumps, HVAC systems generally require electricity, Even most natural gas heaters rely on computer control and electrical components at the supply side. A little research shows a powerful CME (and we were hit by one in 1859 that vaporized telegraph wires) can disrupt modern civilization, worldwide. --- The OP asked for a dystopia: I presume it is understood by most people that no dystopia lasts forever; it will end in extinction or it will get better, as people work and adapt to be less miserable. A 'dystopia' is an imagined scenario in which everything is bad; for virtually everybody. (i.e. perhaps not the brutal psychopathic dictator, but everybody else). The CME, as I described, could create such a dystopia for generations. Countries and armies would break down, we would be thrust into a pre-industrial age, but we'd be worse off than any citizen of 1800: They were *raised* to know how to survive such times, build a campfire or shelter in the wilderness and find food there. They knew what plants were edible, how to trap small game, clean it and eat it. Their infrastructure and society were designed for functionality without refrigeration or long distance communication. The vast majority lived lives of labor that made them reasonably fit, and since minor health problems just killed a lot of them (infection, pneumonia, viruses), what was left was relatively healthy people. None of that is true for us. We are on average coddled, obese, and sedentary, we live with diseases (like diabetes and heart disease) that require constant medicine and/or treatment to keep us alive: The resources for that will vanish with the electricity, for years, which will end a large number of people. It is often said no country is more than a week without food from revolution. Large cities in the USA typically have 3 weeks worth of calories for their population, on the shelves. After that, they are out, for years. The water isn't running, the toilets don't flush, the roads are clogged with stalled vehicles. Violent revolution begins out of survival. There are not enough police to control the populace; there are barely enough to control the bad guys. We can expect the police to quickly become their own gang, taking what they need by force and the hell with public service. I don't expect anybody, in fact, to just lay down and die without a fight, especially not young parents of young children. A week without food, law or order, and I expect the young bull fathers to start killing to feed their kids they love. It is not implausible that society breaks down into hunter-gathering tribes. Even us, the professorial mathematicians and scientists: We have to eat too. The point is not that this dystopia lasts forever, but it is not as simple as rebuilding the electrical grid, generators, motors and equipment. That would take years, and we cannot wait years or stop eating for years. Those years are plenty of time to starve, and plenty of time to become so disorganized politically that rebuilding is impossible, we don't have the resources, too many die for lack of skills and knowledge about living in a pre-industrial age, and we are just too isolated by the lack of communications (other than letters and perhaps some telegraphs being set up). We won't have the horses that powered much of their society; we have less than 1% of the horse population they had back then. The dystopia may not last forever, we might work our way out of it, and we might go extinct instead. From genetic studies of a wide sample of humans throughout the world, we can infer that humanity went through a severe population bottleneck in the previous ice age, with a global population of about 10,000 individuals. A little bad luck at that low point (an asteroid strike, a super volcano) might have ended the human race then. That said, the dystopia of living hand to mouth, a subsistence existence, could easily last for generations; our ancestors (like Heidelbergensis that likely gave rise to both Neandertals and Homo Sapiens) certainly lived that way for thousands of generations, and even Homo Sapiens, modern humans in every respect including brain power, lived that way for tens of thousands of years before inventing farming. Have No Value: I interpret this, from the OP, as "no special value", i.e. even an unshaped stone has some uses as a weapon, projectile or hammer, but it has "no value" because you can find one for free. I interpret "gold has no value" as "gold has no more value than any other metal, such as aluminum or iron." That "gems have no value" means no more value than colored glass, which would still be free for the taking in my dystopic suggestion. Further, in general what I interpret as "value" is use as a general medium of exchange, meaning these subsistence-oriented people after the CME apocalypse would be willing to take "something of value" in exchange for, say, half their supply of food. I believe there would be things of value, like knives, weapons, ropes, other kinds of food. But gold and gems have no intrinsic value as food, tools or weapons. They only have aesthetic appeal; and that in turn is an indulgence for people that have more resources than they can use, so they are willing to trade some of those resources for a beautiful thing. Sure it might be sold later to another such person; but for a person on a subsistence level they may not know anybody like that, and they don't have spare resources to tie up in a beautiful thing that has no real use, so they would not trade anything they see as valuable to get it. Thus this is not a tautology: It is not that they don't value gold because they don't value it: They don't value gold because they have no faith they will be able to trade it for something they need, so they won't give up anything they expect to need soon in order to get it. And it isn't a tool or weapon they might use to acquire resources (like food animals). There are plenty of things they do value, but gold and gems are not amongst them. [Answer] The vast majority of goods are valued based on their intrinsic worth. It is unlikely that gems and so-called 'precious' metals value will ever drop below what can be done efficiently with them. We could see a situation where, say, diamonds become super cheap because synthetic diamonds can be created out of sand and a fancy machine - so diamonds are mostly the power plus the capital cost of the machine. But traditionally the value of these resources have been inflated because we use them to represent some other value. To understand why, you have to understand why they are used as currency/representative value. Let's examine what makes a good currency: * Durable: it has to stick around in the same form a long time. * Divisible or Fungible: it needs to be fine-grained enough to represent most common values. * Convenient: a person needs to be able to easily possess and trade currency. * Consistent: one penny must be much like another penny. * Scarcity: if money grows on trees, then it becomes meaningless. * Acceptability: everyone has to agree on the meaning of the currency. Now, the traditional precious resources are going to maintain their durability and divisibility. But they may not be as durable or as fungible as new things (such as the dollar bill, which can be replaced if damaged, and is almost infinitely divisible because there is a backing authority). Convenience has already degraded heavily: most people won't accept a gold coin today for a burger. The most convenient thing tends to be cash, but in a lot of places that is less convenient than some form of electronic currency (credit or debit cards, or at the fringe, cryptocurrencies), if only because those things weigh less and are less likely to be lost or stolen. Similarly, no matter how similar two precious metal coins, they can't be more similar than an integer is to itself, which is how most money is counted these days. Scarcity has long been a sticky point on whether to use a 'gold backed' economy or not: if the government can control the scarcity, the economic stability of the currency is called into question at the a degree proportional to the trust in the government/authorizing authority. This exact phenomenon is also visible in bitcoin, given that it is artificially scarce, harvesting bitcoin is a strong attractor for cheating, and there is 'no' governing body. Finally, acceptability: in the future it can be easy to see where few people have even the idea of how much 'precious' resources are worth. For instance, if you see a diamond ring on someone, would you know what that was worth? Likely not: you'd need an appraiser. It's hard to use these things in actual trade for that reason. Well, that and the fact that translating it to a currency you can use for your needs is increasingly difficult. Where goes the society you probably go, too, on this front, because you're dependent on trade with that society to survive, and that requires some common ground. So, we are very nearly at the future you envision already. I'd say the three biggest things you'd need are: * Some other form of currency that is the clear winner in terms of convenience and similar infrastructure. (Except for some holdouts, this already exists.) * Readily available alternatives to the 'precious' things. Other materials more easily made, or more available, to do the same things, or the ability to make said resources on demand. (Remember: energy is the most fungible thing in existence, though not 'durable' in the same way that solids are.) * A lack of knowledge over how to compare values between one precious resource and another, or a precious resource and something else you want to buy. Is this massage worth a pound of latinum or three milligrams of tin? [Answer] Societies generally find stable ways to store value. Gems and precious metals have a history of being incredibly good at storing value. One obvious answer to your situation is to have a world where the holding of gems or precious metals is illegal. In such a case, they cease to be a stable store of value because they may be siezed at any time by the government. In 1934, the United States of America enacted something similar with the [Gold Reserve Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act), which made it illegal to hold onto gold as a private individual. [Answer] You don't have to make more gold and jewels, you just need less people. An abrupt and dramatic decrease in population would create a surplus of nonperishable luxuries. No one person could hoard enough to make it valuable. This works in the scenario you're suggesting, a dystopia as the result of future developments. It isn't the flashiest solution, but it is easy to implement and depending on the setting, this might already fit your story. (One clarification, to differentiate from post-apocalyptic answers. You don't necessarily have to end the world, or host mass executions. Sterility or cults of people who choose not to reproduce could result in smaller and smaller populations. When a million people inherit all the junk that the other 7.346 billion left behind, there's going to be a lot of shiny stuff that nobody wants.) [Answer] You would need a world where there were things much more important than pretty crowns or jewelry. For example, if drinkable water was more rare, then it would be traded more often than gems. An example that comes to mind right away is the movie, Waterworld. Since there is no land masses available due to oceans rising, dirt is traded as currency in floating towns. So to answer your question more clearly, you would need events that directly impact the survival of a civilization such as drought, famine, forced migration, etc. [Answer] You don't need a dystopia as they had little more than utility value in Utopia! See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book)> EDIT: The term "dystopia" derives from the name of the book "Utopia" written by Thomas More in 1516. He proposes a near perfect society on the fictional island of Utopia. In it he describes the life of the inhabitants, the systems of government and methods of commerce. As all the inhabitants have what they need by virtue of the good government they don't have a need to accumulate portable wealth. Gold and jewels are held in common purely for trade with other societies. Gold is in fact, used for shackling prisoners and wrongdoers. His society is described in some detail and was imagined entirely without the help of Minecraft. The point is that to create this effect in a dystopia, the best way would be to make the dystopia as undystopian as possible. [Answer] ## Aesthetics The rarity of gems or precious metals is a supply side issue - if the supply increases the value will fall but it will not fall to zero. However, the reason that gems and precious metals are valuable is a demand side issue. Some gems and precious metals have industrial uses but this has little to no influence on demand. Consider [gold](http://www.numbersleuth.org/worlds-gold/), only 12% is used industrially while 52% is used in jewelry and 24% is used for investment (leaving 2% lost). Or [diamonds](https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/mining/industrial-diamonds-as-good-as-gemstones-or-better/), only 30% of mined diamonds are used in jewelry, the remainder are used by industry. However, mined industrial diamonds are a by-product of mining: 97% of industrial diamonds are manufactured! Some algebra will tell you that aesthetic diamonds represent less than 1.5% of all diamonds and industrial diamonds are cheap. Notwithstanding, usefulness in absolute terms is irrelevant to price - what matters is marginal utility or the so-called [water-diamond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value) paradox. Objectively water is more valuable than diamonds, without the former, you die. However, the marginal utility of water decreases much more rapidly than that of diamonds: once you have enough water, more water is less useful and, beyond a certain point, harmful (e.g. floods). However, you can never have enough diamonds! Gems and precious metals are demanded is because of the aesthetic tastes of human beings. This is party innate: all humans are photophilic (we like shiny things) and partly learned: gems and gold are coveted because gems and gold are coveted. In addition, they represent conspicuous consumption: they are a way of demonstrating our social status by showing that we can afford expensive, non-utilitarian things. Changing this would require a fundamental shift in both our biology and culture. [Answer] # Asteroid Mining Gems aside (as above, they can be made), a future development could be to bring a metallic asteroid such as [16 Psyche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche) into earth orbit, and mine it for metals, Along with nickel and Iron, rare metals such as Gold, Platinium, Palladium, rare earths, etc. This could dramatically increase the supply of these metals and therefore collapse the price. Hardly a dystopia, though. [Answer] e-dystopia Perhaps in they future people don't much like each other, don't trust each other, and certainly don't meet face to face. All purchases are done though an "e-buy" service. Scammers automatically generate sockpuppets to market obvious high value items such as gold, gems and [premium storage cubes](http://www.ebay.com.au/gds/All-About-Fake-Flash-Drives-2013-/10000000177553258/g.html). Legitimate sellers wouldn't even try selling them, because they'd be undercut by scammers, and the buyer would probably try to claim the item didn't arrive. Any offer to trade high value items would be treated liked Nigerian prince emails today. If you order a ruby, you may as well order colored glass, since that is what you are going to get (unless colored plastic is cheaper this year). Trade, such as it is, occurs only on obscure or low-value items that scammers don't bother targeting. [Answer] I wouldn't call it a dystopia. Because it has happened already in the past. Salt was used as money, clamshells or beads also. They used to be valuable but aren't fit as currency anymore. Why not? Technology. Getting to and from the sea because of easier transportation made obtaining salt a lot easier. The ability to mass produce beads cheaply made them not fit as currency. What could happen to precious metals? What if someone found out how to do deep-deep core mining. Our planets core has enough precious metals to cover the surface with a 4 meter thick layer of metals. Gems could be made cheap is someone invented a cheap super-high-pressure machine. What impact would it have on society? Nothing much I think. [Answer] ## Demand and supply Supply: They can be mass produced easily and cheap, so they're not as precious anymore. Finding a new, rich, deposit does not always mean they lose their worth, unless the deposit is accessible by "all" people interested. Imagine if someone has [Hand of Midas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas), and convert bricks everywhere into gold. Demand: Make it so that people lose interest altogether in gems and precious metals. Prolonged worldwide famine can cause this effect. Notice the italicization. The process needs time, and localized famine will only cause people not affected to gain profit by buying the gems and metals with cheap price. [Answer] Supply and demand. Either you need to eliminate the demand or make the supply so plentiful they have no value. Eliminating the demand for gems stone might be doable, but precious metals will always be in demand in the computer field. This means a societal change is necessary. Take for example Star Trek. Each crewman gets so many energy credit per day,week,month, or etc. They have replicators which can replicate almost and substance on demand. Gems, gold, or etc no problem walk up to the replicator give me a 10,000 carat diamond. `<<random noises>>` and it is built in front of you. there it is, and its indistinguishable from the real thing. So now only energy credit have value. [Answer] Several answers mention things like supply and demand, or scarcity. However, they do not suggest specific dystopias. Automated Dystopia: Where automated worker robots, or even nanites, keep themselves and their surroundings maintained. Buildings, monuments, and perhaps even mercantile stocks might in some cases be “magically” restored. If this happened in areas where precious metals were used, whatever was automatically replaced would have little to no value within that location. Variation on this: Automated space mining vessels regularly offload massive amounts of raw/natural resources on a scale that the capital of an intergalactic empire would consume. To the sparse population of a few thousands, this is more of a hindrance than a help. Something else has become more valuable and is smaller/easier to carry. Sliders Option: A disease ravaged the male population. There are now only a few dozen left in even the largest countries. They must be used efficiently for repopulation. The wealthiest women have taken to sealing semen inside glass beads and displaying them proudly as a sign of their wealth and power. Chrono Trigger Option: automated booths treat every medical need and provide your body with the bare minimum of nutrients it needs. Nothing however can grow on the planet any more. The population is plagued by constant ravenous hunger. Finding something, anything, edible has become the most pressing need. It is now the only thing of value. Spiritual Curse: “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” The Christian end of days has come. In addition to demons and devils walking the earth, all precious metals and jewels have become cursed. Carrying them for any amount of time draws demons towards you, and may also make you mad. [Answer] Blindness Blindness of the valuing species. Disease-driven blindness, or a catastrophic event that induced blindness. Gold is a useless metal if all are blind, it's soft. Diamonds might still carry value for drilling and such, but other gemstones would devalue. Unless they trade heavily with other non-blind entities, most gems would decrease in value. [Answer] The most obvious answer is when they can make them at will. Matter can be transformed to energy and theoretically energy into matter. Gold and jewels would have no value if matter could be transformed into any other type of matter by breaking it down into sub atomic particles and reassembling. See [Star Trek Replicator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Star_Trek)) [Answer] # A planet composed mostly of gems and precious metals Given the right composition this could effectively be a harsh "desert planet" very difficult to survive. Astronomers have theorized about [planets made largely of diamond](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/astronomers-spot-diamond-planet/). To explain observations of some planets [oceans of liquid diamond](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/7042515/Oceans-of-diamonds-on-Uranus-and-Neptune.html) have been proposed. An [exoplanet whose clouds are composed of corundum](https://www.cnet.com/news/sapphire-and-ruby-clouds-on-an-alien-planet/) has been observed (sapphire and ruby are variants of corundum). The asteroid [Eros seems to contain more precious metals than ever excavated in history](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm). Other [asteroids contain an abundance of precious metals](http://www.astronomysource.com/tag/gold-from-asteroids/). Scenario: A spacefaring civilization is dying. They identify a distant planet as their only hope. It contains the elements for life in extremely scarce quantities. The natural composition is high in gems: solid, liquid, and atmospheric. Several asteroid collisions in the past have brought massive amounts of precious metals to the surface. They dispatch a fleet of lifeboats in a last ditch effort to survive. The travelers arrive centuries later. Their home planet is long dead. They land and establish colonies. Life is a struggle every day due to bleak natural conditions. The gems and metals that dominate their terrain have virtually no value; they're as common as dirt on the planet they left behind. No one wants them in trade because they can simply walk out their door and pick them up. Bleak. Dystopian. Gems and precious metals cannot be traded for anything of substantial value. [Answer] All of these answers are ignoring the basic principle behind why gold ever had any value in the first place: Currency Originally, if your neighbor had sheep, and you wanted his sheep, but he didn't want any of your bull, then you were just out of luck. But if he wanted some of your other neighbors goats, and that neighbor had some cows and needed some of your bull, then you could trade your bull to the other neighbor, get some goats, and go trade those for sheep. Eventually we realized that it was kind of stupid to do all of this trading, because everyone kind of had different ideas about what their stuff was worth, plus you had to go work things out among everyone. It became a lot easier if we could just say, "Look, my bull is worth 75 to me. If you want it, you're going to have to give me 75 ." That's why gold was such a popular form of currency - it was durable, it wouldn't rot or dissolve, it was easy to divide - you could do it with a knife or sharp rock, and you could even melt it and mix it back together. It was also useful for decoration, and easy to work with. And it was rare enough that you couldn't just walk along and pick it up off the ground, and it didn't grow on trees. It's also why gems were less popular as a form of currency. Though they were still rare, they were fairly hard to divide, but you could carry a big handful of them pretty easily. So to make gems and precious metals no longer valuable you need to make it so they have no use as either currency or raw materials. From the currency aspect, your dystopia will have to have some other currency that is vastly more worthwhile than gold. Some interesting ideas: * Cryptocurrency (assuming you have a level of tech where digital bits are worthwhile) * [Time](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_15) If you can make a currency that is: * infinitely divisible * light-or-no-weight * permanently durable * impossible to steal - either through brute force or other methods of coercion Then you'll have something that will easily beat out other currencies. Even if the latter is just more difficult to steal than gold, you might have a solid option. [Answer] The thing is, most gems and "precious metals" are only "precious" because there are rich people who will pay for them, to display their wealth and preserve it. If all "wealth" (of the excessive variety) were somehow eliminated then there would be no market for these things. ]
[Question] [ As mentioned above this is not about jump drives, this is about ships that physically jump. Writing science fiction, trying not to handwave too much, so I want to check if this is a feasible tech. Orbit Jumpers are ships used on small planets with <1 gravities and/or asteroids large enough for a gravitational pull. Essentially, they have electromagnetic legs that build up kinetic energy and release it all at once, extending the piston-like leg toward the ground. Similar to a railgun in design, but much less power. Once out of orbit, omni-directional thrusters are used to maneuver. Is this possible? Edit: Thanks for the answers everyone! It seems I may have to drop my ship idea. Luckily it’s not super integral to the story, I just hadn’t seen anything like it before, but now I know why. Lol [Answer] If you can't survive crash-landing from space, you can't survive jumping to space. An interesting and useful property of orbital trajectories is that they are reversible in time. If you want to start from the ground and launch yourself into space with one sudden impulse, that is essentially the same as a time-reversed version of starting from space and stopping at the ground with one sudden impulse - i.e., crash-landing. The feasibility of survivably jumping into space is basically the same as the feasibility of survivably crash landing from space (ignoring drag effects). On bodies with earth-like gravity, that will require speeds of several km/s when jumping/crashing, which will not be survivable unless you have an absurdly long piston arm to spread the acceleration over time. This would only really be feasible on very small bodies with low gravity and no atmosphere, where the required takeoff velocity is measured in m/s rather than km/s. The limiting factor is the crew's survivable acceleration. You could work backwards from survivable acceleration values and the piston extension time to estimate your maximum takeoff speed - if this speed is not greater than the escape velocity of the body you're leaving, you'll be coming right back. Drone ships that don't have to protect squishy meatbags could handle much higher accelerations and would be better suited to such a launch design, although you'd still likely require a surface gravity of considerably less than 1G. [Answer] # No, not without making astronaut-salsa Earth's escape velocity is around 11 kilometers per second. This is blisteringly fast. To calculate the acceleration that would be needed to achieve that speed in a single jump, you can use a kinematics formula: $$\frac{v^2}{2\Delta x} = a $$ Where $v$ is target velocity and $\Delta x$ is the length of the "Jump Legs" on your spacecraft. If we plug in numbers for an ascent out of Earth's gravity well and using a leg-length of, say 100 meters, we get a necessary acceleration of around 60000G (The instantaneous human LD50 is around 75G). This would kill any humans aboard and probably break the ship too; it's more than bullets experience when being fired out of a gun. Also, the atmospheric friction would be extreme, most likely rendering the entire ship to a fine burnt powder Even if the planet you're "jumping" from has no atmosphere and is several times smaller than Earth, there is no configuration where something is both considered a "planet" and has survivable launch accelerations. [Answer] When it comes to space everything comes down to delta V, how much ability something has to change it's velocity. For instance it takes roughly 9.4 km/s of delta V to get to low earth orbit from earth. Getting to the moon will take roughly another 6 km/s of delta V. If you were going to jump from the earth to the moon you'd need to leave the ground going 15 km/s from a standstill. This is ignoring all the energy you'd loose due to air resistance, which increases exponentially based on velocity. So anything near earth gravity, or with an atmosphere is definitely out. What's far more likely is instead of having every ship contain all the mechanisms necessary to jump to the proper speed, (which will also need to be accelerated to the target speed), is to use a fixed launcher to do the "jumping" for the ships. This is effectively the idea behind using mass drivers on the moon to ship mined material back to earth. [Answer] ## Possible yes. Feasible no. > > Similar to a railgun in design, but much less power. > > > Exactly. You have mostly answered your own question. Also taking this to apply to places with gravity below 1/3g ### Analogous to gun launch. Essentially the question is asking the feasibility of a gun launch system. Or a rocket that just has one bang. To be maximally effective, such a system would have very high forces on take off/launch. People don't really handle prolonged 20+g forces on their bodies. This is a known problem with these systems so usual solution is to increase barrel length, increase acceleration time. ### Most of the time in space its just a drag. But once the ship is away from the a space-body those legs are dead weight. They don't help with propulsion. But they need to be moved to the next destination of the ship. It will cost fuel to move them to a place where they are useful again. ## Possible/feasable scenario Unmanned exploration unit that would jump around a moon or some other low mass planetoid. Perhaps more versatile then wheels. Less expensive then legs. Such a system would jump from location to location as it explored. The jumps would allow views from elevation and allow crossing of rough terrain. That is the jumping would be the primary mode of transport. [Answer] If you have very long legs, yes. Spreading out the force over a long distance means you need less power (and will incur less $v^3$ air resistance. If you wanted short legs they'd have to be telescopic, but then you'd have to fill them with gas as they extend, which would incur friction at the entry point. You could suck air in at the top though a wide aperture and then blow it out at the bottom through as small aperture as the legs contract. Of course the energy involved implies a great deal of heat expenditure. Where are you getting this energy from? If you can handwave that away and manufacture telescopic sections which are very thin and light, then this might be feasible. It might work best as a launch assist, to release a vessel which can rocket the rest of the way with lower fuel requirements. The telescopic legs would return to the ground after launch, and remain connected to the ground during extension so they can be driven by a local power station. [Answer] OPTION 1: GRAVITATIONAL SLINGSHOTS Potentially, you could have a ship that uses centrifugal force and the gravitational pull of a planet to sling itself around a planet. This maneuver has been done by real-world interstellar vessels before. OPTION 2: ONE BIG GUN If you aren't afraid of making your novel seem really outlandish and comical, you could have some kind of huge Electromagnetic Propulsion cannon that launches a propulsionless 'vessel' of sorts at incredibly high velocities out of the planet's gravitational towards a distant target and lets sweet, sweet inertia do the rest. Problems with this could include tiny amounts of friction piling up over incredibly long trips and slowing progress to a crawl and meteors and gravity fields knocking the pod off course or destroying it. Both options, however, are incredibly slow without some way to achieve FTL. It could take billions of years to reach a distant planet or star. You could compensate for this with some kind of stasis, or with generation ships. ]
[Question] [ Imagine a dragon as tall as average adult horse with a wing span of 12m long measuring from tip to tip. I wonder what evolutionary traits or techniques could allow the dragon to lift itself off the ground and fly in the air without making sound audible to a human being? I suspect among these dragons some might have evolved or developed ingenious way to take off without startling a dog but this is left as an exercise for hardcore reader only. Kindly use magic sparingly. [Answer] Owls & co. already do this, thanks to the particular structure of their feather. Since I imagine your dragons don't have feather, they might have some structure leading to the same result. Another option can be that they simply start flying with a dive, like birds nesting on cliffs do. Just spread their wings and jump, gaining velocity thanks to gravity and then flying. [Answer] Use its wings to trap hot ascending air underneath? Like make the dragon heat the air under its wings and generate its own thermoclines. Or make a hot air pocket with the skin of its wings and then climb as a hot air balloon. > > Kindly use magic sparingly. > > > Perhaps heat the belly of the dragon so high that the force of the emitted dragon's black-belly radiation will lift the dragon. Feel free to use whatever amount of magic necessary to make the black-belly radiation more potent than the black body one. > > without making sound audible to a human being > > > Consider the dragon flapping its wings at ultrasonic frequencies? Or, I don't know, make it take off at hyper-sonic speeds, by the time the humans or dogs hear the noise it's already too late. [Answer] > > without making sound audible to a human being > > > Take a page from Manowar and play metal louder than hell‚Ñ¢. What your dragon needs is the capacity to give out a very shrill, very loud shout. Something like [my morning alarm ringtone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A43JOxLa5MM), but at 180 dB and without any warning signs. For added effect, make the dragon nocturnal, mostly active after midnight. Prior to takeoff, the dragon shouts. Any nearby humans or dogs will either die of heart attack or go temporarily but practically, absolutely deaf for a couple minutes, give or take. In any case they won't be able to hear wings flapping. Being a headbanger who constantly got exposed to music at over 120 dB I can tell you that exposure desensitizes your eardrums for a while. And don't forget that decibels are logharitmic, so I'm suggesting a sound about 6 orders of magnitude (1,000,000x) louder than a drumkit at point blank range. Even deaf people might hear it because it will shake their inner ear bones very strongly. > > ingenious way to take off without startling a dog > > > Taking off will not startle dogs because they will already be startled by the shout. If your goal is to have a stealthy dragon, just remember that people hearing this will generally have an instinct to hide their sorry selves in their homes, from where they mostly won't be able to see anything. They will blame the fact that the goat's milk turned into yogurt inside the she-goat's udder out of a scare onto some mythological entity such as Baba Yaga. I see the [evolution](/questions/tagged/evolution "show questions tagged 'evolution'") tag. My explanation as.to how the dragon evolved this shouting ability is that it's much easier to catch prey when the prey is paralyzed out of terror. [Answer] We can assume dragons don't have feathers, but there is a possibility of some feather-like evolution qualities. Look at the evolution of this owls feather though. [![Owl feathers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e14Xg.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e14Xg.png) The National Audubon Society accounts for a leading-edge comb in the feathers being the reason why owls fly and land silently. Something like this evolves as a means of survival, in this case, hunting food silently. If dragons needed something similar to the leading-edge comb during evolution, there would be something very similar to this, but on their wings. dragons are rather large animals and would have a lot of air whipping up during take-off and flying. so they would definitely need something like this. Really, with this question, an owl comparison is 100% called for, I hope you take this into consideration. [Answer] Dragons are not powered in flight by their wings... They are instead blimps, with special hydrogen sacs along the length of their body that inflate (making the dragon appear far larger than it really is). The wings are their as rudders and stabilisers. The hydrogen is a by product of a chemical reaction which is generally very quiet, and incidentally allows the dragon to breath fire. [Answer] Many answers have discussed exotic and/or magical ways to reduce sound, as well as some great ideas like loud deafening sounds. But from the perspective of aviation engineering, I had a different idea. An important factor in airplane design is wing loading. This is simply a measure of how much weight is supported by a certain area of wing. In the context of flapping wings, high wing loading(small wings/large weight) means the creature will have to flap fast and hard, while low wing loading(big wings/small weight) means that flapping less hard is suitable. Now with a dragon, many ideas of dragons show a large armored body with absurdly small wings, yielding an extremely high wing loading. Impossibly high. But a dragon with a small(at least relatively) body and humongous wings would be very capable of flight in the real world, and it would be quieter. Here's why. As I explained above, low wing loading means you don't have to flap so hard. But flapping hard is loud. Insects like bees flap their wings really fast, and they are quite loud for their size; imagine the sound of a dragon-sized bee! The lower the wing loading, the gentler flapping, the quieter the flapping, the quieter takeoff. So to make a dragon quiet at takeoff(and in all parts of flight) it just needs to have really really hugely ginormous wings compared to its weight. [Answer] What do your dragons look like? This question could derail this entire answer, but given the description you do have, I think this could fit. Your dragons have the equivalent leg strength of the grasshopper (or flea, or pick you favorite jumping insect)1. The dragon has the ability to quickly wrap it's wings around it tightly, creating a near perfectly aerodynamic form - twisting it's body roughly 720o each time it takes off2. So your dragons simply jump to take off silently. The turning forces air off the ground to follow the dragon up and fill the vaccum left more smoothly. So there's still some leaves rustling, and some air movement for 100ft along the ground3 See notes below4 1Yes, whatever bio-fibers make up their legs will have to be something that doesn't actually exist from a physics/reality standpoint - at least that we know of or can dream of so far. 2 At full strength this does indeed create a sonic boom, but if attempting to, the dragon knows the correct strength to use to get itself just high enough it's wing noise isn't audible to a human, without creating said sonic boom. This is pure speculation, it could easily not be possible for a creature of this size to leave the ground with enough speed to get high enough without creating a sonic boom. This would depend on gravity, air density, etc. Not sure if we're assuming all physics are identical to ours? 3 Estimated, hopefully obviously. 4 Yes, yes I did just find the superscript/subscript tags for SE [Answer] Into the wind. Just hold out your wings straight and angle yourself into a decent-strength wind. Hilltops should work, mountain saddles even better. Albatrosses do this aready on their [(windy)](https://teara.govt.nz/en/video/7069/albatross-taking-off) islands. [Paragliders](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKz3447Mk5A) are another good example. Some running might be needed when the wind is down. [Answer] For those who say that an animal of this size could not fly without magic, here is a link to the wikipedia entry for a very large pterosaur (note the comparison to a Cessna!) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus> The better an animal is at gliding, the less noise it will make (as it will expend less effort flying.) So you are looking at minimizing wing loading, by the same techniques as used by pterosaurs and birds. Principally, hollow bones and a lightweight skull, combined with large wing area. Taking off by running into the wind will help. [Answer] > > Kindly use magic sparingly. > > > A lot of answers/questions on this SE delve into how dragons could work and how to make them realistic etc. In general, such large flying beasts, especially if they should somewhat resemble the typical [dragon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_dragon) are not realistic at all. So I do think that magic should be part of the answer. As L.Dutch stated it already, Owls achieve this effect with their special feathers and your dragons could have similar features built into their wings too. Adding to that or just on its own I'd say they achieve a silent takeoff and for that matter a silent flight (and glide) via magic. Dragons, in general (Hollywood, modern fantasy), are depicted as passive or natural magic users and so are your dragons. They control the air around them to allow for flight in the first place but also to stop sonic waves from forming. A kind of magical [ANC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_noise_control) which could/should also be applied when flying around or at least when approaching prey. Owls are also not just very silent while taking off. ### Evolution Takeoff already takes quite some physical and magical effort so adding additional strain to do it silently does not matter that much especially as it's a moment of vulnerability. Not giving away your position matters a lot if you try to catch some prey. So those dragons which were more silent when taking off and when flying around did catch more prey, meaning more food, meaning higher chances of survival. It is also quite handy if you are the prey and need to get away unnoticed. If you add in some rivalry with other species their control over making/not making sound could be also used while attacking. Canceling out the sounds of cries and combat, in general, would definitely come in handy. If they need to they can also stop the noise cancellation and cry for help. So a natural selection favoring those dragons with better natural ways of making less sound and those which did create less sound is very likely. [Answer] They run fast to take off. Their mastery in hunting has made their feet's movement super stealthy, even when they are running. They can run on a rigid surface or a place full of houses. They know where to keep their feet without making any noise, for this they take help of their sharp eyes - to spot objects which could make noise and avoid putting feet on them. Their agility and sharp eyes have helped them to fly silently without falling into the eyes of humans, for thousands of years. [Answer] Russian Sci-Fi strikes back! A [book series](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE_%D0%BE_%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5) with quite scientific dragons has the dragons with reduced wing span as compared to the physical requirements by * using all the other tricks in a biology book; * giving them biological antigravitation generators. Although the initial design (yep, they are designed, and the design description is a part of the plot) saw antigravs responsible for up to 90% of mass, later books reveal that using some concentration (similar to us preparing to lift a heavy object) and with some previous training, a dragon can lift off without using their wings, on biological antigravs only. --- So, basically, the solution is to let the dragons have antigravs in their bodies. Those devices would also help with lowering wingspan and general flying. If you want a more understandable hint to that series, give your sentient and human-level (or even above-human level) intellectual dragons appropriate dragon-sized protection goggles with an eye tracker for computer controls. ]
[Question] [ > > It is really really hard to beat kinetic energy as a way to transfer > energy to a target. I'd expect handheld railguns before lasers. – John > Meacham 20 mins ago > > > ## It's just simply hard to find a proper justification for the D.E.W. when compared to kinetic weapons. My idea was to use a [special shield](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/72643/sci-fi-science-physics-of-impossibru-force-fields) that has a superb protection against kinetic strikes. --- ## Before the question: Lasers: * Precise. * Requires huge amounts of energy. * Could have a non-lethal function. * 20% efficiency. * Can be obscured with smoke grenades and reflected with mirrors. ~~Plasma~~ [Ball lightning (silicon vapor theory version)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning#Direct_measurements_of_natural_ball_lightning): * Disables electronics. * Requires lightning levels of power. * Can be manipulated with magnetic fields. * Carries thermal energy (14,700–29,700 °C). * Likely to be burning silicon mixed with a bunch of other stuff. * It has a significantly longer lifespan than plasma. ## Based on this information, how can I justify or fix the problems of these weapons to make them viable for the infantry? Note: Getting kinetic weapons out of commission isn't our main goal. [Answer] Sounds to me like your laser weapons would make pretty good sniper rifles. 1. As @Anketam noted, they can be silenced easily, and the lasers they fire might not even be in the visible spectrum. This is absolutely perfect for sniping. No bright flash, no loud bang, no bullet trail... the only thing that might give you away is heat, or an infrared/UV detector (depending on which part of the non-visible spectrum you're using). 2. Modern snipers, when firing, have a whole raft of variables to take into account when aiming: wind speed and direction, the effect of gravity on the bullet, the curvature of the earth, whether your target will move in the second it will take the bullet to travel to him... With lasers, you wouldn't have to worry about any of that. They travel in a straight line, at relativistic speeds. Just aim and fire. You might have a greater effective range as well, depending on how much the beam spreads. 3. Target hiding behind a wall? If your lasers have enough power to go through a human, they probably have enough power to go through the wall. Even if the target hides behind a mirror, the beam will still damage the mirror unless it's perfect (just don't shoot the mirror straight on). 4. According to @SimonRichter in a comment, laser weapons have no discernable recoil (credit to @Ross Presser for pointing out the "discernable" part). Current sniper rifles have horrendous recoil; eliminate that and you can fire repeatedly much faster. 5. As far as I'm aware, sniper rifles tend to have small magazines anyway, so limited energy reserves wouldn't be as much of a problem as they might be with, say, an assault rifle. You could even hook the thing up to an external energy tank - you're a sniper, you're not going anywhere for a while. Modern snipers are a scary enough prospect for an army. A laser sniper that can fire from arbitrary distances, with virtually nothing to give him away, would be utterly horrifying. [Answer] It seems to me that D.E.W. Would be a must in a situation where energy generation and storage is plentiful and well developed but material resources are really low. Which could also be the reason for the war itself. If the army doesn't wan't to spare even an ounce of metal that could be used elsewhere they would naturally change their standards. Alternatively, your army might be inclined to give energy weapons to rookies, so they don't bother with the intricacies of projectile parabola while aiming and proper magazine protocol when reloading and save the kinetic weapons for veterans that would give them a more efficient use. [Answer] ## Use them for specific situations Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) have a several attributes that are being overlooked that can make them better suited for certain situations. Thus depending on the mission it may be better to send your troops in with DEWs rather than kinetic weapons (or a mix of both): ### No moving parts and no parts to clean kinetic weapons require upkeep and cleaning to stay effective. As long as the DEW has power it likely will be able to keep going far longer than a traditional kinetic weapon. So in an intense battle of attrition last thing you want is your weapon to jam up. ### Silenced weapons Movies and shows like to make energy weapons out to be loud and flashy. In combat this likely will not be the case specially for laser weapons. Lasers shoot a beam of focused and very intense light. However, the light does not have to be in the visual spectrum, thus the enemies will not be able to spot the laser even if it is shot through something that refracts the beam. The laser likely would be much more easily silenced than a kinetic weapon since it is not trying to suppress the sound of a small explosion while trying not to sacrifice muzzle velocity or accuracy. As such if you are planning to ambush an enemy position, doing it with lasers can help extend the element of surprise. ### Plasma as an anti armor weapon Shooting balls of plasma or ball lightning at armored targets likely will be able to melt armor. So if you spot an armored personal carrier (APC) and have plasma weapons you can open fire on the APC and likely still cause significant damage to it and those inside, without having to resort to using explosives. [Answer] Maybe we should take a step back and look at what makes an army effective, or a winner, in the first place. That would be...Logistics! An Army is effective when it can project it's political will into a given area better than the enemy can. Boots, Beans, Bullets, and Bandages. This is why Napoleon and Hitler were not able to take on the less well equipped Russians. It is also why the Maginot Line flat did not work. Lets look at energy weapons then. As of right now, any advantage they may have over normal projectile weapons is lost when you think about things like the power supply. It would be huge, and therefore difficult to field. Conventional weapons carry a great deal of energy stored as gunpowder, which is easy to get into the field. If you could get an equivalent amount of destructive power to an AR15 and package it into something the same size and mass, then you have a justification to develop personal energy weapons. If you can exceed the performance by having a near infinite amount of "ammo", even better. The final trump card is expense. Make a laser weapon that can fire a lot, weighs less than an AR15, and is less than $100 per soldier armed, you might have a winner. Good generals always end up judging a weapons system by how well it helps beat the enemy. That's why Machine guns, though expensive, are fairly common. they are heavy, and expensive to operate, but they can kill a lot of enemy very quickly. Therefore, they are worth the time and expense to get them and all that ammo to the battlefield. It's the same rational process that lead to the development of the Bodkin Arrow, the crossbow, the war hammer, the long pike.... What is going to work to kill the enemy effectively? You have to consider both sides, effectiveness and logistics, when developing new weapons. [Answer] The problem is not how to fix the problems with that weapons. The problem is how to justify developing them at all since with a fraction of the power you need for one of these you could build a railgun or gauss gun which would be much more lethal and way harder to protect against. Since it's true that this is more a comment than a definitive answer, I'll expand a little. The only way I can see these weapons interesting enough to replace kinetic weapons is in space. Aside of getting rid of the numerous problems that an atmosphere is going to cause to directed energy weapons, you gain two major advantages: no ammunition, in a place where resupplying is tremendously expensive (and probably not inmediately available) and fully recoiless weapons. If you fire a gun in zero-G you have as much possibilites to get hurt by the 2nd Newton's law as your target is from your bullets. [Answer] Why not both? Kinetic weapons have advantages: lots of kinetic energy, and simple. And the clear disad: ammo is heavy. Beam energy weapons have similar advantages, along with straight line of sight all the way to end of range. They also have disads: reflectability is probably the worst. Being able to be defeated by a piece of tinfoil kinda sucks. This issue (among others) means such weapons are more likely to be used ship-to-ship, than in an infantry role. Non-beam energy weapons have advantages: lots of electromagnetic or thermal energy. This disrupts electronics, including shields and countermeasures. They also have disadvantages: no real penetration beyond what they eat away while destroying the plasma; and no easy way to "carry" the plasma to the target. So if you're firing plasma, then it arguably "makes sense" for the plasma balls to have a small solid kinetic core to "carry" the plasma to the target. This answers the argument of "what if they run out of power"? Then they're down to "mere" explosive-kinetic flechettes, still effective against soft targets lacking kinetic armor. But while they have power, they are firing those flechettes surrounded by a plasma toroid, keeping it stable over longer distances, preventing it slowing, and delivering a plasma-energy punch at the far end. The hard flechette breaches soft or lightly-armored targets, brittle asbestos and carbon fiber that plasma would have a hard time with, allowing the softer plasma to penetrate in its wake. Edit: there's been confusion over this suggestion, so I'll try to re-explain. I am proposing that the weapons fire a bolt of plasma with a solid core. This is to address the problem that real-life "plasma" weapons have: that they simply can't be directed through the air without a charge-carrier connecting the weapon to the target. Real-life plasma-weapon designs are essentially like a taser, where the wire vaporizes into plasma (in the sense of "electrically conductive gas"), and then the plasma carries the charge. In this way, the wire works kind of like the stepped leader in a lightning bolt. This is very unlike the traditional "laser bolt" from sci-fi, though, which is a projectile, not a beam weapon. But you just can't fire a charged gas like a projectile, through the air. The air resistance stops it and dissipates the charge within a foot or two. So instead, I suggest a small, very-highly-charged metal object (a "flechette"), so highly charged that the air around it becomes plasma? This is almost certainly also infeasible, but at least appears more scientifically believable than a weapon that's purely made from lasers, or puffs of plasma. To an observer, all that's seen is a bolt of superheated glowing air. The metal carrier at the center of the bolt penetrates armor and conducts the surrounding plasma charge straight into the victim, where it disintegrates, electrocutes, cooks, destroys electronics, melts, welds, etc... basically like a small lightning strike. The advantage of this over regular projectile weapons is that the ammo becomes an awful lot lighter, as it delivers more damage per gram because of the strong charge it carries, to the projectiles can be smaller. [Answer] # Cost and practicality Projectile weapons are both cheap and practical to use. Energy weapons require a huge amount of energy (since they're energy weapons), so need their energy source to be both small/portable and cheap to manufacture. To make energy weapons worthwhile, you need a huge amount of technology and funding to make them useable. And then you still need to justify that in terms of the end result, which in basic terms is killing enemy soldiers in line of sight. Is the added expense worth the cool factor? For line of sight work for infantry, projectile weapons are an easy choice. [Answer] How about: ## Scalalbility and adaptability You can't change propellant load or calibre of cartridge, you can change power drain and burst duration. Your laser rifles are overengineered. They weight 8 kilograms (or 80 if you have powered armour in your world, basically, a lot compared to battle rifle, details are up to you) and are rather unwieldy, but with one flip of a switch they transform from anti-personel rifle shooting quick short and weak bursts into anti materiel rifle explosively vaporising outer layers of armour and thus inducing shock and [spallation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spallation#/media/File:Spallation.gif) to take out light vehicles and fortifications. Reality is not a game, you can't carry around entire armoury, so squadmate carrying anti materiel weapon (and ammo) won't be carrying assault/battle rifle. This poses problem if he needs a rifle, and poses another problem if he is... ahem, eliminated from combat but squad needs his weapon. Same with designated marksman rifle and machine guns. And that's what laser rifles are about. They adapt. It's a battle rifle, sniper rifle, anti materiel rifle or heavy machine gun and all options are one flip of a switch away from each other. When you know what environment to expect (city, town, village, forest, fields, plains, mountains etc.), kinetic weapon will be better, when you either don't know what to expect or know that you will switch environments a lot, multi-purpose laser rifle will be better. I would imagine regular infantry using laser weapons, infantry specialised in specific environment (mountain regiments etc.) to use kinetics tailored for their environment and special forces picking whatever will fit mission profile. [Answer] Ammo I would say that the biggest disadvantage for kinetic weapons is ammunition, which is bulky, (very) heavy and dangerous to store in large quantities. If in your world there is a portable way to generate enormous amounts of power (by converting some matter, say) then it maybe logistically easier to use that rather then normal ammo. Especially if the infantry in question operates in remote areas, separated from supply lines for extended periods of time. Of course in that case you have to think about the energy generating device, and weather or not it can be used as weapon in and of itself Accuracy Another consideration is accuracy over longer ranges. D.E.Ws would be less susceptible to gravity or wind. However they may be more susceptible to other things, like fog or heavy rain, depending on their nature. Versatility In theory D.E.Ws can have different power settings for different tasks, reducing the need for multitude of different weapon types (anti-tank grenades, sniper rifles etc.) so once again, logistics are greatly simplified. In situations where the nature of the threat is unknown of one is arming a foreign army/freedom fighters it is much easier to just supply one size fits all type weapon [Answer] You didn't specify where this takes place. Thus: You are fighting in very dense atmosphere (certainly not humans unless they're in some very good suits) or perhaps even in liquid (or in between--something above it's critical point where the line between liquid and gas is blurred.) Kinetic weapons have severe range limits, if you want to hit something far away you have to use a laser. [Answer] Handheld DEWs, of whatever variety, are crippled when handheld: Humans are not a steady platform, and humans can identify a human-sized target from only a few hundred meters away. Current kinetic weapons already hit those envelopes, too. DEWs may be effective against fairly large aircraft that are close enough, but unlikely against smaller drones that cannot be easily seen. Soldiers are very good at using real cover (not mere concealment) when possible, and are trained to time and synchronize their movements to confuse the eneny and avoid being hit - a DEW has no advantage there. That's why much long-range US firepower separates the (closer, concealed) observer from the (distant, unobservable) source of fire. An infantryman who can identify targets for more powerful platforms is worth much more than an infantryman with a slightly-more-powerful-under-some-circumstances assault weapon. This has the added advantage of denying the enemy a visible target to engage - death simply falls upon them seemingly from nowhere. Consider instead using gyro-stabilized DEWs mounted on networked ground or air platforms - some Tanks and Infantry Fighting Vehicles. This uses DEWs to their best effect - more energy available (higher rate of fire) and able to use their greater range more effectively on a wider range of targets. Example: Ground-platform-mounted, networked DEWs, with proper sensors CAN attack those smaller aircraft at great distances, and could slag inbound kinetic artillery and missile rounds - even ballistic missiles in flight...targets the infantryman cannot see or detect and that current kinetic systems do not find easy to handle. [Answer] > > A sufficient justification for the infantry using lethal, directed energy weapons > > > Ease of maintenance. No more field stripping. A directed energy weapon has no moving parts that can be fouled by gun-powder residue and grime. This makes for a more reliable weapon in all forms of weather and terrain. From damp rainforest to wind blown deserts. Reduced logistics Kinetic weapons need bullets and bullets means logistics. Directed energy weapon have no bullets so they are logistically less intensive to maintain. Easier to use lasers shoot straight, and not effected by wind, and planetary gravity, no recoil. They are thus much easier to use. And easier to train. Much like why guns initially superseded bows and armored knights. Not because early guns had longer range, fasted rate of fire or could punch through armor. But because was alot easier to train peasant to use. Perhaps your training time has been reduced to weeks due to the need of more soldier to throw into war. High energy storage found Yes, your scientist have found a way to store energy in a very compact form. Perhaps you have cold fusion, perhaps you have hot fusion but the reactor is the size of a backpack. Perhaps you have solve the problem of extracting and storing energy in metastable nuclei of elements such as hofnium. (Ie you have the equivalents of battery that can store the power of a nuclear bomb). No matter how it is achieved, the average grunt can now walk into combat carrying a lot of energy in a very light form. So much so that the idea of carrying 20 pounds of ammo can be discarded as something of the past. The average load of a US soldier is now 60 pounds and goes up to a maximum of 130 pounds. Vietnam gunner used to carry 60 pounds of ammo. Lighter loads means you can have more women soldier carrying as much fire power as men and enduring longer combat missions. Biology is unfair. But laser weapons bring more gender equality to ground war. One power unit fits all Again this is logistics. If a power pack can run anything from a canon to a riffle to communications equipment to night sights, again this is a massive savings. You only need to build one type of power unit to supply your troops. Making manufacturing easier and cheaper due to the economy of scale. Logistics of keeping both infantry and Armour supplied is reduced immensely. It also makes recharging/replacing said power unit a lot easier. Perhaps said power unit also have dual use in civilian life. Depending on the nature of the power unit, your nation may not have a central power grid, making your nation more robust to attack on power plants. Power armor Sure power armor can aid both kinetic and directed energy weapons. However the power unit that powers the direct energy weapon can power the power armor and vise versa. [Answer] If the enemy has any kind of force field / energy shield then lasers are a very good weapon. Any shield that they can see through allows you to shoot them. The only effective defense against lasers (in my current understanding) would be a gravity based "force field" that would deflect the beam through lensing. Though you would have to figure out how to keep from crushing the protected asset while the gravity field is being generated. Short term defenses would be a reflective aerosol that might scatter enough of the beam (before the tiny reflectors are vaporized) to reduce damage. [Answer] the major attraction of laser/beam style weapons is accuracy, specifically the beam travels towards the point of aim effectively instantaneously and in a straight line. This means that there is no need to adjust the point of aim for lead, windage or range as opposed to a ballistic projectile which follows a parabolic trajectory and can be deflected by wind and changes in air density as well as being subject to inconsistencies in its trajectory due to variations from one round to the next. Another potential advantage is energy density. There is a fairly well defined optimum mass for a small arms bullet made from real world materials which is a compromise between kinetic energy, aerodynamic drag and weight per round. Even specialist anti-material rounds like the 0.5" BMG aren't vastly out of this range. The weight of ammunition will always be a limiting factor on infantry firepower and there is a compromise between putting down a sufficient weight of fire to effectively suppress the enemy, having rounds with adequate range, accuracy and stopping power and the total weight of ammunition carried. So if an energy weapon can fire more effective shots for the same weight of ammunition (power pack, battery, micro-reactor etc etc) then that is a huge advantage. [Answer] I'm having trouble answering, as I mostly agree with you. My favorite DEW are lazzors, more specifically the kind that shoot slow-moving bolts of light. Red for bad guys, green for good guys, and purple for the heroine. I find disbelief easier to suspend when the SF is soft and no technical explanation is given. As for real lasers, the ones in Akira were nice. They were large, heavy, and the batteries ran out very quickly, but they were the only thing able to penetrate the mutant's shields. To stay with Akira: the other type of laser was the laser designator. This is a simple pistol which illuminates a target. The real weapon is a drone or satellite equipped with a massive laser which strikes the designated target. The fact it is a laser means it can strike very fast. Now, let's give every foot soldier an extra button on their rifles (or binoculars) which they can use to designate a target. People on the ground provide target identification, and the flying platform provides firepower. Let's be realistic. If you have a ship equipped with lasers powerful enough to be used in battle, and soldiers on the ground, you'd have this feature. If you didn't, the other guys would. And now... The Microwave Gun. Effect: Bad guys flash into steam and go boom. Pros: Who doesn't love stylish, creative gore? Shoots through anything permeable to microwave (like Kevlar). Will diffract around metal plate armor. Turns people's eyes into hard boiled eggs, etc. Can also be used to cook dinner if you're still hungry, depending on setting. Cons: Needs handwavium power supply. Range and accuracy similar to a sawed-off shotgun, unless the gun ends in a rather clunky parabolic dish. And don't forget to wear a conductive exoskeleton armor. Bonus: Cramped metallic airducts, which as we all know are a must-have feature in any space ship (see: Nostromo) make excellent waveguides, and allow long-range cooking of any xenomorph. Warning: Microwaves may not reflect around corners the way you expect. Warning: Silicon based lifeforms may be immune. Please perform qualification tests on specimens before contacting customer service and asking for a return. Accessory: Microwave grenade. [Answer] ## Someone invents a device that shoots bullets out of the air This is obviously almost impossible for humans to do and it would be difficult to make a machine that could physically aim a gun that quickly. However it might not be impossible, and if it isn't a laser would be one way to bypass such defenses. [Answer] Every soldier would be a sniper. A laser weapon has no limit in range, no adjustments need to be made for moving targets, wind or fall of shot. There would be no recoil. If you point the gun at the enemy and pull the trigger they die. They could be five miles away, could be in a plane, doesn't matter. Current rifles are quite limited in range. Simply because if an enemy is at 400 meters away and steps out of cover to shoot, you have one or two seconds before he goes back, the bullet will take 0.6 seconds to get there. leaving at most 1.4 seconds for you to notice him aim and shoot. A laser weapon getting an extra 0.6 seconds to make that shot would be a huge advantage. Ammunition would be universal. It doesn't matter whether you are arming attack helicopters, tanks, machine guns or rifles. They all use energy. Rail guns are heavy, They have to contain an electro-magnet which is a solid lump of iron in addition to the battery. Lasers would probably be lighter. Current bullets are designed to maim rather than kill. Dead enemies are left in the field until the fighting finishes. Wounded enemies are evacuated and cared for or captured and interrogated. The opposite side is if you maim an enemy then you may be the one that has to use resources to take care of him. An energy weapon would not only be better at crippling an enemy without killing but also allow the soldiers on the ground to decide if to kill or maim. The biggest disadvantage I can see is the time it takes to disable an enemy. Kinetic bullets do more damage than just piercing a hole. It is thought that the shock wave travelling through the blood stream (hydrostatic shock) often knocks people out immobilising them instantly. [Answer] Several thoughts on potential advantages of DEWs: Lasers: In a highly robotized/mechanized future, laser weapons with automated targetting would be much more precise and dangerous and likely to outperform similar mechanical weapons (with recoil and bullet physics/speed). For instance a future soldier could enter a combat situation with a shoulder-mounted laser array set to automatically blind/disable any opponents - the array's AI could identify eyes/glasses/sensors and take them out with short concentrated bursts almost instantaneously, even individually deflecting moving kinetic projectiles from an attacker. Future infantry will want every way to avoid actual deadly kinetic attacks and disabling enemy targetting/visualisation systems would be a crucial part of that. Ball lightning/Plasma: Future soldiers would be heavily reliant on AI/robot combat support and so often disabling/frying computer systems would be much more important than punching holes in things. Consider a high-tech infantry assault on a fortified urban position: taking out power sources and computer/targetting systems of the enemy would give you the advantage as your drone/VR nightvision-assisted infantry pushes forward through smoke towards the enemy whose computers are down, AI-assisted helmet visors blank and are reduced to shooting randomly into the air. [Answer] Armor and shielding capabilities. If you can't get through the shield with brute force, melt the shield. > > Can be obscured with smoke grenades and reflected with mirrors. > > > Also this line is bugging me. Smoke grenades wouldn't stop a laser weapon. You would be able to see the direction the beam is going, but only for a fraction of a second. No mirror is perfect. As stated in an answer to [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/73498/on-the-deflection-of-really-big-laser-beams) question: > > Even assuming your mirror is made from something absolutely perfectly suited to reflecting the laser beam, defect-free and absorbing only 1/1012th of the 1015 watts in your laser beam, you will feel like you were hit by a truck — light has momentum. > > > Specifically, 1 Petawatt / (speed of light) = 3,335,640.95 newtons… actually, that's not a truck. 340 tons is what you get if you stack three tanks on a blue whale. > > > High power laser weapons would be great in disabling literally anything from incredibly far away, best use as a sniper rifle. Ball lightning. Why use this if you have lasers? It would take a lot more energy, moves slower then the laser, and you can move out of the way. It would only be useful as something like an [under-barrel grenade launcher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M203_grenade_launcher) a la [Half-life 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt1hgXTKx8A). [Answer] D.E.W. is any tacticians wet dream. I believe they will be developed parallel with advanced projectile weapons, but I think absent some technological breakthroughs in high power projectiles area it will be laser weapons at first. Why: 1. Requires energy only. No ammo needed, so combat load is instantly smaller. Yes, it's being offset by power pack weight, but I don't think it's in same range. Combat load in infantry is about 10 pounds of 5.56 ammo including LBE. twice that for LMG. Twice that for MMG ammo. 2. Powerful enough. Yes, laser can be weakened by smoke and mirrors, but: * energy threshold for that to be a problem is about a megajoule (that's equivalent of a 200g of TNT), which is a lot. * Currently lasers can output Petawatt per second, which is a one billion megajoules, but they do it by emitting in that time (yes, in a second) several million pulses of 500J - equivalent of .45ACP projectile each. Smoke will dissipate that only to a small degree. Same with mirrors - they need to be built to match the wave of the laser to be effective. 3. It's instantly vacuum-rated, recoilless, non-ballistic characteristic, reactionless etc. 4. Power source for them can be unified across the board (that is: no different calibers, calibres etc.) Energy is energy, but the origin matters. Kinetic energy of a projectile comes from somewhere, that is: there needs to be energy expenditure in the first place. However, in contrast to projectiles laser cannot be easily deflected nor absorbed. Plasma energy is much harder to achieve, and is - at least theoretically - much easier to defend against (simplifying: strong enough e-m shield can dissipate it). SO in conclusion: d.e.w. actually needs only reliable high-capacity power storage to be technologically viable as of now. And, thinking on it, if one wants to trade some of the combat readiness time for power levels, capacitors+batteries setup is possible even now for something reasonable. Kilowatt laser (equivalent to roughly 2x45.ACP)? There are capacitors now available allowing for 8 shots, in the size of two shotgun shells and weighing much less than that (I know; simplification). [Answer] Lasers will be the weapon of choice for infantry. With all respect to Mr Meacham, if a effective handheld laser can be developed, it would utterly dominate the battlefield of the future due to the lack of sound or flashes to fire at. Think about the [Battle of Stalingrad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad), where sniper fire and ambushes were king. Now imagine those weapons are totally silent, and it's not just one or two snipers firing, but an entire squad, and you have no idea where they're firing from until you spot them, IF you spot them. It would not take many such battles before laser weapons simply became the rifleman's weapon of choice. Plasma and rail weaponry might be utilized as anti-materiel weapons, but would likely incur heavy losses due to noise. As an aside: Laser weapons also have the advantage of simply needing power. Taking along some solar panels means you could recharge spare or depleted batteries during the daytime, lessening the your logistical burden. [Answer] The X-rays are probably most effective, if there is a technology for efficient X-ray laser. They can't be mirrored nor shielded (thick lead is not suitable for infantry). The military is [actually looking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_laser) into using them, but only currently available tech is not portable and medium is discarded on use. Another possibility is [synchrotron radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation). As it spans whole spectrum, it should be hard to fully deflect or shield. ]
[Question] [ This question already has answers here: [How to keep mages from taking over the world?](/questions/45854/how-to-keep-mages-from-taking-over-the-world) (25 answers) Closed 7 years ago. In most urban fantasy, powerful wizards and other magical creatures form their own societies with their own governments and politics (The Magical Congress of America, for example). They seem very interested when it comes to controlling their own kind, but they never seem interested in ruling over Mundanes. Despite being very powerful, they never try to take over any nations, either directly by force, or indirectly by taking control of the nations' leaders. In my setting, how might I explain this? Things to note: in my setting powerful magic users live in secret among us, their powers include. Controlling the elements, summoning magical creatures, mind control (Can only be done on one person at a time and if the same person is mind controlled several times or for long periods he will develop a resistance to mind control.), weather control, shape-shifting, and also constructing wards that will keep a specific person or groups of people out of a certain area. This is an urban fantasy world so its tech level is about the same as our own. And at least at the moment most of the World does not know about magic. [Answer] * They are busy doing research: Becoming a all-powerful mage isn't that easy you know! The magical world is incredibly complex and requires years of research. * The normal world is boring: Would you prefer learning magic, or wasting time in the normal,boring world? * The normal world cannot provide what they need: They need magical items for their research. Even if they have tons of money in the real world, there isn't anything that can be bought for research (somewhat implausible but still. The normal world does not have 'magical substances') * They have to follow the rules: The all-powerful Council of Mages has decreed that no one can influence the mundane world directly or indirectly, and have special enforcers who will not hesitate to kill those who don't follow this. Punishments range from having your magic bound permanently (so you cannot do magic) to death. [Or worse ..... being expelled.](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/18723-i-hope-you-re-pleased-with-yourselves-we-could-all-have) ☺ * Generations of magic: For generations your family has been in the magical world, why would you be different? Especially important for those of 'noble' lineage, who will not want to shame their families by not becoming a mage. * Reduced Strength: Most of the areas in the normal world are very weak 'magically', meaning mages will have greatly reduced strength. This is very disturbing for a mage, as they are losing something they had from birth. There are rumours that spending too much time in the normal world can cause one to lose their magic permanently.** This stops mages from forming attachments to the normal world, or trying to influence it. (Only the strongest mages can resist this). * General Attitude: Why would anyone want to be near those filthy muggles? The magical world has long been persecuted by normal people, and therefore the prevailing attitude is to stay away from the normal world. Also, mages are generally arrogant, considering that they can use magic while the muggles can't. This keeps away almost everyone from the normal world, as they do not want to get their family members killed in a 'witch hunt'. [Answer] The answers given here so far are what I was thinking, but let me add to the mix. First, not all fantasy settings have wizards apart from politics. Sometimes they are deeply involved and sometimes they [are kings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_King). The Wheel of Time series does have magic users set apart, but they are also deeply involved in politics. Sometimes they are the advisor to the king. I can think of several fantasy settings where the chief advisor to the king is a mage. The Legends of King Arthur is but one of those. But here are some reasons why not, adding to the others outlined here. Numbers. Even in high fantasy settings, mundanes outnumber magic users. You can only use spells for so long, and an arrow will still kill you. Thus the secrecy. Distrust of Magic. Mundanes could deeply distrust mages, so even if they did seize power, they would not hold it for long. If a mage did try to take over an area, the mundy king might hire another mage to help combat this wizard or keep a mage on as an advisor just in case. (This doesn't work as well with magic being a secret). Laws. Magic in the blood may even discount someone from ruling because of the past history of the land (ie. a very powerful mage who devastated the landscape 400 years ago). This can be true even if it is a secret, and the wizards enforce it. Mage Culture Wizards may find mundane concerns to be beneath them. They are delving into the secrets of the very universe. Unless they need a country's resources for their experiments, there's no need to bother with that kind of thing. The Masquerade Following along the same lines as laws, mages really do not want mundies to know about them, so as a society, they enforce non-interference. [Answer] Generally, answers that depend on internal mechanisms (decrees from the High Wizard, religious taboos, lack of interest) tend to fall apart pretty fast as soon as you start trying to work out what lots of different characters with their own, individual motivations might do. All it takes is a SINGLE rogue wizard who doesn't care what the High Wizard thinks, is NOT bored by the "mundane" world, or doesn't subscribe to their wizardly taboos, and poof, there goes the entire "normal" world! In any kind of setting that combines fantasy elements with the modern world, the biggest problem you will face is keeping these elements under wraps enough to maintain the beleivability of the mundane world. As someone who has GMed RPG games in similar settings, I can tell you it is not easy to keep magically enabled characters secret if they believe there is something for them to gain by becoming public. Answer: go back to classical political theory. The US founding fathers set up a competitive system where each branch would constantly be competing for power with the others and they would each keep the others in check. They were COUNTING on politicians being power hungry. Systems that work in this kind of a genre usually rely on an opposing mystical group/force that ALSO wants to remain secret, which is the enemy of the first group, and which serves as a counterbalance. Why don't the wizards just take over the government? Because if they tried, the vampire clans would go into all-out war mode to stop them. If you look at urban fantasy settings that work very well, you usually see a pattern like this. Demons vs demon hunters, vampires vs werewolves, etc. Give both (or multiple) sides areas of influence that they have some covert control over, but make the rules of the game that if one side steps too far out of their "turf" (ie: vamps run The Fed, wizards control NASA) the other side steps in. If anyone starts to become too publicly visible, everybody stands to lose and their friendly side will stop protecting them, so the enemy side will take them down. [Answer] Wizards know that involvement in politics drains the life and soul from people, absorbs peoples humanity, and all of these are needed to be a powerful magic user. Likewise, governments are mainly put in place to help manage internal and external threats (invaders, hunger, taxes, the poor trying to rise above their stations, etc) and the wizards don't see any of the mundane threats as important enough to worry about. Worrying about getting votes on a budget committee just seems like a waste of time when you can turn lead into gold and there's a possible outbreak of creatures from the dungeon dimension. So long as the mundane government ignores the wizards, the wizards are happy to let the mundane government keep the normal people in line. [Answer] Two more issues: Magic Static If mages took control of governments, inevitably the knowledge of magic would spread. A tenured professor of archaeology might be able to cancel appointments for a week and go fight demons, especially with the help of a mind control spell, but a political candidate cannot. Questions would be asked. A wealthy investor might be able to build a magic circle into the floor of his office, but a president cannot. Again, questions would be asked. And if knowledge of magic spreads, people will take defensive measures. A horseshoe hanging over the door. A protective charm. A warding gesture. These are somewhat effective in the setting, even for muggles. A powerful mage might be able to make a cop forget the speeding ticket, but it won't be as easy as it was before. Magical Power is Personal, Administrative Power is Impersonal A political leader rules through law, policy, administrative regulations. Millions of public service workers turn her wishes into reality. If the president sets the first stone of a new building, that is entirely symbolic. You won't see the president storming the beaches of Normandy. By comparison, mages act personally. The archmage at the head of the Magical Council is not just a policy maker, he casts powerful spells. The vampire exchanges witty quips with the slayer. That means a mage who seeks political power finds it an awkward fit. [Answer] Magic depends on belief Everything that happens is an act of magic. Everything that happens is a magical act, where the mind of the people exert effects on the physical and psychological worlds. Mages can do fantastic things because they have lifted the barriers from their minds that keep other people from performing what they call "magic". Since everyone's minds are acting on the world at the same time, and since the smashing majority of people do not believe in the fantastical, for the most time nothing out of the ordinary happens. When a group of mages are alone by themselves, they can fly, shoot lasers from their eyes and so on... But the closer they get to regular people, the weaker their magic becomes, because of the strong programming of the minds of the normals. Magic becomes feeble when normals are around, and fails where it can be seen by the normals. To connect this with the question: the more powerful you become in a government, the more high-profile you get. If mages and other magical beings do control the government, it will be indirectly, in a way that they cannot exert their full will on the happenings of the world. [Answer] There's only two reasonable explanations: ### 1) Wizards simply have no interest in our society This secret world which hides within ours is infinitely more interesting than our own dull, mundane one, so for a wizard the thought of getting involved in politics, and arguing with politically correct idiots on camera is simply appalling. They might intervene when one of our decisions threatens their own interests, but otherwise choose not to involve themselves in our boring ol' lives. ### 2) Wizards police themselves The other possibility is that wizards do get involved in our affairs. Whether because they think they can "save us from ourselves", or simply desire power, they get involved in our politics, and economy in various ways. At this point the wizarding community would have to reach a consensus on what level of intervention is acceptable, and found an agency which would enforce their policies on the wizarding world. [Answer] ## Magic is Addicting - Nothing Else Will Do! Once you've gone magical, you can't go...um, back-igical. The sensation, satisfaction, and sheer pleasure of magic has no rival in the mundane world. No drug can begin to compare. While experienced wizards have become generally accustomed to the raw thrill and excitement and aren't running around like giggling juveniles, and have a more refined and calm demeanor...deep down magic just does something that nothing else does. It scratches an itch so deep that you didn't know it's what you've been wanting all along. All else is...well, not magic. If the mundane doesn't help you get more magic, what good is any of it? Any man could be driven to burn the whole world to the ground to get an ounce of it! Luckily for the world, burning it down wouldn't actually let them get more - so there's really just no point. ## Purity of Magic Is Diluted By The Mundane Why are wizards always trying to do their magic in hidden isolation? Well, why do chemists do their work in carefully controlled, clean-room laboratories? If the mundane contaminates pure magic, then the greatest magic is only possible if well isolated from the mundane. You have to focus and purify! Idle chit chat will spoil the whole thing! Wizards know the peasants and aristocrats are so very nosy they'd never be left alone if the filthy lot knew the truth. So, there's a variety of methods to deal with them. The simplest, most humane method is to just hide away and do your work in secret. Now, logically there should be some crazy group of psycho wizards that think the far better solution is being rid of the trash entirely - perhaps cleansing just a wide-area, or perhaps believing that total annihilation of all that is mundane is the path to the truest, most pure magical power imaginable. Or, if that sort of story isn't your thing, then perhaps magic relies on the mundane so destroying it would be counter-productive - and thus only hiding away and being un-involved will work. If that's the case, there would indeed be a very strong reason for everyone to tow the line and remain out of touch with daily politics and mundane struggles. [Answer] The answer to why wizards and magical creatures don’t take-over nations should not be one-size-fits-all, such as “busy doing research.” Character conformity should be avoided. Wizardry is a practice of the occult, a religious occupation. The reason any particular religion doesn’t conquer the world is that another religion prevails. In reality, different religions have different beliefs and rituals (“powers”), and different religions do certainly have control of different nations, controlling much of our modern world. In fiction, especially in Urban Fantasy, any magical/supernatural being can (and should) have a crippling kryptonite, and the prevailing religion of the land can (and should) keep metaphorical warehouses full of it. If your characters are indeed too busy doing research, for example, then it should be for the sake of removing an imminent threat: the prevailing power. [Answer] I've run myself in circles thinking about this, so here's a wall of text. First assumption - Wizards would be able to (openly) rule the world if they wanted to Okay, I guess I can see how this might have been true in the middle ages when someone basically being a walking Howitzer was totally OP. But now we have Howitzers, and things better than them, so they aren't more powerful. One mage might be better at being "all-knowing" if he has scrying spells but now we have military satellites, cell phones, GPS and more. Okay, so one modern human + gadgets is still potentially better than one mage. If your mages can live a really long time, I guess he might be wiser than a normal human, but wisdom only counts for so much. So...unless your wizards are crazy OP, modern technology should provide a decent challenge for them to keep up with. Given your description at the top, I'd assume a wizard to have power equivalent to two or three Spec Ops teams which would be enough to inconvenience a country but not to hang onto a country. Second assumption - Wizards want to rule the world Alright, people with power maybe want more power. But if they can't be a dictator in a country, there might not be much in it for them, as politicians in a democratic country tend to have relatively little power by themselves. It seems like maybe they'd be better off starting a cult if they wanted to control people. Maybe some do? Third assumption - Other wizards would care So...say a wizard does take over a country or something. Do other wizards care? If that person interferes with their goals, probably. If we make the assumption that institutionalized faith organizations have some branch that deals with wizards, they would probably be against a wizard taking over a country and then preventing them from operating there. Maybe their magic is more/less powerful depending on the strength of belief in their religion so losing a chunk of believers is a considerable hit. Okay, so now we've established that large magical organizations probably care and individuals might care. Conclusion(?) Assuming there are magic organizations, they likely have people in positions of power, or at least connections with them, in order to push for the things that matter to them by working within the system. It also seems possible that dictators of small countries could be mages (or shamans, w/e) that use magic in less obvious ways to divert the occasional bullet or something and make themselves into powerful warlords without having to directly confront everyone that challenges them. Others might create living cults (if they use ritual magic), some maybe death cults (binding the souls of the dead cultists to use their faith power eternally) while a bunch of others may rely on natural forces (ley lines and such). Clerics and priests may tap into the power of faith. TL;DR Overall, I guess I would say that mages wouldn't rule the world because hanging onto something like that is hard, so aside from an occasional nutcase they probably have better things to focus on. These 'better things' would mostly relate to where their power comes from. [Answer] I've always explained it thus: 1. Magic is fairly difficult to learn, and takes lengthy study. In an urban fantasy setting with hidden magic, this tends to mean dropping out of society and working for years at something that isn't socially rewarded. Magicians are geeks. 2. Geeks aren't usually interested in ruling lots of ordinary people. It just isn't interesting enough. They prefer to stick to their preoccupations, and play status games within the people who participate. 3. The ones who are interested are usually a bit crazed. It's thus in the interests of the saner ones to restrain their crazier brethren, so as to maintain the secrecy of the order. [Answer] Consider how we prevent powerful elites from taking control of societies in the real world: Democracy. Throughout most of history, most peoples have been ruled by leaders who came to power either by seizing it through superior use of force (despots), or by inheriting it from a parent (kings). If magical aptitude is your fictional universe is genetic, it might lead to a monarchical form of government. If anyone can learn magic, but some are better than others, then the resulting forms of government might correspond more closely to despotism. Over the last few centuries, the spread of democracy throughout our world has been slowly but surely unseating many, many despots and monarchs. It might be expected to serve a similar function in a magical universe. Little by little, the powers of government are decentralized from members of the elite to the populace at large, and legal safeguards are put in place to prevent the powerful from seizing too much control again. This process is not perfect, of course, nor is it easy. Like they say, the price of freedom from tyrannical wizard-kings is eternal vigilance, assisted by a educated and knowledgeable electorate, as well as possibly some floating, glowing, lidless eyeballs with the power of clairvoyance. [Answer] The mages are too busy trying to magically fight against each other. Having control over the mundane world would not help them as much as it would divert their forces from controlling other mages or magical self-defence. And there's also no need to take control of the normal society now, as they know quite well that if it should become necessary, they could do it quickly with almost no effort, and the only thing that could stop them is other mages, which is one more reason to concentrate on those other mages. So as long as the normal society leaves them alone, they also leave the normal society alone, and instead use all their effort on fighting other mages, and on defending against other mages. Also, mages are generally extremely paranoid against other mages, which means mages almost never work together. On the other hand, they cannot imagine that any non-mage would be able to seriously harm them. [Answer] I have a couple possibilities I'll throw in the mix. First I'll ask "Why take over the government?" The main reason would be to gain some kind of advantage. If magical beings are beyond the rules of mortal man and gain little benefit in furthering their power (particularly among the magical or in use of magic), why bother? Perhaps making strong influence of government persons is a mark of magical immaturity (acting as a source for some of the silly things you see in politics as it is). Now assume they do gain some kind of benefit. It would seem reasonable the magic folks are as factionalized as normal people are. Why would that matter? Because they have taken over the government. Or rather, many factions have tried. As you said, mind control is limited in how much it can be performed on a person. High position in office may have selected for politicians who have already been imparted with a very high resistance to mind control from exploitation in their lesser positions. Alternatively, the magical beings have recognized the potential for this problem and set up wards to prevent magic beings from entering centers of government so they can collectively step in when it really does matter (and they can agree, which seems unlikely). ]
[Question] [ Think, a post apocalyptic world ravaged by nuclear wars. Most of the population has been eliminated. A small amount, but still a substantial number, a million or so people survive, residing in special domed cities to be safe from the effects of radiation. A certain number of people also reside outside, taking proper precaution to safeguard themselves against the radiation. In this scenario, what could justify the absence of all modern weapons, be it a simple handgun to grenades to missiles to nuclear bombs (the wars kinda used all of the bombs up)? Simple medieval weapons like swords or spears, are ok. One justification I could think of was that the people had simply adopted a pro peace attitude and destroyed the weapons towards that end but it does not completely cover the scenario as there maybe some weapons hidden, as everyone would not take that stance and, it being a post apocalyptic world, people would want to hang on to weapons to ensure their survival. I want to weed out all weapons, no exceptions. Is it possible to achieve this ? Edit (clarifications based on comments below) : 1. The enforcers, who control these people and regulated entry into the dome, have psychic powers and do not have any dependence on any weapons 2. For the sake of the question, modern weapon means any weapon which has a dependency on gunpowder or any kind of explosive or relies on any chemical reaction (this includes bio materials). So a trebuchet is good but a tank is a no-no. So a slingshot or a crossbow is OK but a harpoon is not allowed. [Answer] TL;DR: Modern weapons have a shelf-life If you let enough time pass between the time weapons have been manufactured and "present day", the modern weapons will become non-functional. A significant aspect of modern technology is that it requires maintenance, and in the absence of the industrial infrastructure to provide replacements and spare parts, the weapons and especially the explosives (including propellant in ammunition) will only last a limited time. Anything that hasn't been carefully mothballed and has thus been exposed to the environment will have rusted or deformed parts, explosives will become either inert or overly volatile and you will have no means to fix any of this (unless the advanced people decide to build a new arms industry). Anything that has been mothballed will require maintenance before it is useful. [Answer] ## No It is not possible to permanently eliminate modern weapons. I wanted to write the answer that Mike L. wrote. Since he beat me, I'll write a minority opinion. ### Politics Anytime 3 or more people interact, you get politics (the art of persuading third parties in a dispute). Non-physical politics will eventually fail for one of those three participants which means if one of them feels strongly enough about the issue, they'll resort to violence. In those cases, the best armed person usually wins. So there will always be an advantage to arming yourself and your clan / group better than your potential rivals are equipped. ### People find a way As Mike L. pointed out, modern weapons do have a shelf life and after an apocalypse, eventually all of those weapons will become inoperable. But people will also remember them and some survivors will likely remember how to make them. Eventually the pressures for arming your group with better weapons will become strong enough that they'll begin attempting to recreate modern weapons. The first attempts will be crude but, if left alone long enough, the survivors will eventually recreate modern weapons. No matter how strongly you regulate & control things, if you make it unpleasant enough for the common citizenry, they will eventually figure out a means of making them. For instance, a single gun smith could probably create a long gun from scratch. ### Post & pre apocalypse weapon overlap You will also likely have some overlap with post-apocalypse weapons being built while some pre-apocalypse weapons (artifacts of great power) still work. Remember there are still operational field artillery from the US Civil War floating around out there. So it might take a long while indeed for properly cared for equipment to all fail. ### No explosives?? Your "no explosives" stipulation is not realistic or practical. Anything which can burn can be made to explode under the right conditions. So what you're really saying is that no one can burn anything anymore - the laws of chemistry have been suspended. You can find youtube videos of coffee creamer cannons, flour cannons, and here's a "sawdust cannon". <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvPL7KC1DEA> [Answer] There are almost a billion (875 million, just google it) firearms on the Earth right now. Yes guns, and ammo, age, but in the right environment, say a dark place in a dry desert, that ordnance is going to last a long. time. Say one new government gets it into its head to ban firearms, but the New Phoenix Enclave in AZ has found ancient arms stashed in army bases all across the Western US. They're going to steamroll any other groups who have deprived themselves of firearms. Dies the Fire is a post-apoc story where the apocalypse itself is caused by a change in physics that prevents high pressure from developing anywhere. Basically the author wanted an excuse for a medieval post-modern world. Something like that might be better than saying some group banned guns, or everyone forgot how valuable they were and therefore didn't think to obtain/preserve them, or even that everyone wanted peace and got rid of them (some not so altruistic dude would take advantage of that in a heartbeat). Now, guns being rare is believable, so you could rig up some scenario where most of the common people have medieval weapons, while officers and higher-ups have modern weapons. It could even be a Shardblade/shardplate scenario a la Stormlight Archive, which could be kinda cool. [Answer] Extremely improvable without handwaving During the time "modern" weapons would run out of their shelf life (which could take a lot, there have been cases of AK-47 working after decades of being buried or hidden), people WILL have studied them. In a kind of hostile environment, having access to weapons will give you a better chance of surviving. If everyone from a shelter uses swords or lances, and you bring a couple of guns, you can easily conquer them, and have their resources. Or if a wild animal attacks you, like a bear, having a gun would be preferable to a sword Building a homemade not only is easy, but particularly common in countries with heavy arms control. For example a "gun" can be made from a tube for a barrel, explosive and a bullet. Finding such resources in a post apocalyptic world wouldn't be particularly hard, barring the explosives, and unless your really way back to medieval age technologies, finding chemicals for a simple explosive wont be too hard. If your people have the enough resources for blacksmithing (since you said that swords and lances are okay), building a gun would be trivial. I suggest to instead tone down what weapons are available or not. Anything beyond a simple gun or explosive would be far to complicated to build without industrial technologies, also a handmade gun wont be any accurate (as replicating the inner spiral of the barrel IS complicated), and they wont be particularly safe. Also the most limiting factor would be the explosives, as not everybody knows how to actually make one, especially one that's strong enough to shoot the bullet with lethal force, but wont explode the barrel and kill you. So everybody can have access to a gun, but gunpowder and other explosives would be highly valuable and somehwat hard to find, and risky to use. [Answer] Given that the survivors are living in domed cities or otherwise possess sufficiently advanced technology to deal with radiation poisoning I would venture that the ability to eliminate most advanced weapons is non-existent. Technology does not disappear simply because the present means to produce it is temporarily removed. The great difficulty with innovation is determining what is possible. Once this is known then reproducing another's results is often a trivial exercise. Every schoolchild above grade six knows the formula for gunpowder. Any high school chemistry graduate knows how to make nitrated cellulose. How gas operated firearms function is known to anyone who has had military training and to a vast number who have not. Anyone who has studied metallurgy or even military history will have a shrewd idea on how to make rifled gun barrels, receivers; and even artillery tubes and breech blocks. These things were produced at the very beginnings of industrialisation and the techniques are readily adapted to water powered tools. The secret of steel making is equally widely known. In any case, the ability to salvage refined metals in the wake of global devastation will not sorely tax the dullest wit. Knowledge of how modern weapons are designed is just too wide spread to suppress. In the absence of a strong central government, which the postulated conditions eliminate, some group will recreate those weapons; or reasonable facsimiles thereof. [Answer] ## Make guns not effective A resonable situation where guns would not be used is a world where for various reasons they are not a particularly effective weapon compared to other alternatives. If the world has only swords and bows, then the motivation for stronger weapons is extremely strong as they will allow you to dominate the world (the old poem "Whatever happens we have got/the Maxim gun and they have not" has some truth in it), and [re]constructing them is comparably easy if you have any tools and manufacturing capabilities whatsoever - people have built single-shot guns in prison from scrap, and even such items are better than non-firearms and thus would be made and used if nothing better is available. However, you can solve the 'problem' not at the supply side (lack of availability) but at the demand side (lack of desire). What if guns were not the best weapon in the world? For example, Frank Herbert's Dune has advanced societies with very limited reliance on guns simply because of widely available personal shielding technology that protects against fast moving items and projectiles - thus, the most violent warriors still choose melee weapons just because they are the best for the job, everyone worth fighting is immune to guns so guns are left out. In a similar manner, if magic or psychic powers are easier and more effective way to resolve conflicts to your liking - wether by offensive powers or by pacifying brainwashing that removes the desire to fight - then people will use that, and have no need for guns. Do note, that this must apply to all potential fighters; if only a small fraction (e.g. enforcers) have effective powers, than any rebels or criminals may be drawn to guns if that's the most effective thing they have. [Answer] Even without psychic powers, eliminating firearms in a closed society is eminently possible. In Feudal Japan, the Samurai enthusiastically embraced firearms towards the end of the civil wars period. Movies like Kagemusha and Ran show mass battles with Samurai armies facing off with the full range of weapons from their razor sharp katana to mass blocks of arquebusers. The climactic Battle of Nagashino which ended the hopes of Takeda Katsuyori unifying Japan (Tokugawa Ieyasu eventually unified Japan under the Tokugaua Shogunate). Once the Tokugawa Shogunate was established, it was quickly realized that Samurai, who needed a lifetime of training, would become irrelevant in the new society if anyone could take up firearms and defeat them. Firearms were confiscated and gunsmiths heavily regulated, and firearms passed from Japanese society from the late 1500's until the arrival of the Americans in the 1800's. For your setup, the danger that firearms pose to closed environments could substitute for the need to maintain social status, and firearms would be seen to be more of a danger than an aid to politics or law enforcement. Even just having a firearm would be enough to encourage social shunning and shaming, and after a few generations, firearms would pass into legend as fearful devices which could open the dome to the deamon "radioactive fallout" Add the natural deterioration of the ammunition (firearms could last for centuries and still be usable, but ammunition will only last for decades unless specially stored and maintained), and firearms will become unusable for both technical/practical reasons as well as social ones. [Answer] Building on the other answers here, people will build bigger and more powerful weapons, unless they didn't want to. They need to either not have the need to create weaponry, or specifically set out to prevent its creation. For instance, people living outside the domes could still remember the horrors of whatever event destroyed the world and therefore aim to prevent the creation any technology that could lead to another cataclysm. On the other hand, people living in the domes may simply have no need for such weapons (perhaps, they have access to more elegant means of offense, like psychic abilities). I think this is as close as you could reasonably get to 'weeding out all weapons', short of 'Oh, one day, they just disappeared and everyone forgot they ever existed.' [Answer] Yes, pretty much, assuming that there is only one government. Two of the conditions you have specified in your scenario make it possible for the authorities to control people with a completeness present day governments cannot match. The first factor is that a world population of about 1.5 million it is possible to track or spy on every individual. The second factor, which makes complete control even easier, is that nearly everyone lives in domed cities which presumably only have one or two exits each. In these circumstances it is feasible to seal the exits and perform a house to house search of the entire population. If there are two or more rival governments which do not cooperate, or an area where there is no effective government to which people can flee, then it is a different matter and Jim2B's scenario will apply. You do not say whether the prohibition of weapons also applies to those enforcing it. If anyone is going to subvert the policy and cause it to break down, it is most likely to be the authorities themselves. [Answer] > > For the sake of the question, modern weapon means any weapon which has a dependency on gunpowder or any kind of explosive or relies on any chemical reaction (this includes bio materials). So a trebuchet is good but a tank is a no-no. So a slingshot or a crossbow is OK but a harpoon is not allowed. > > > Well, I've got one for you, and although it's a stretch, it would completely justify the inability of mankind to use explosives or any modern weaponry. You have psychic wardens, though, so we're already violating science as we know it. Solution to bio weapons is that the wardens can sense them and disable them from great distances, over a wide area, and with little effort. For explosives, it's harder, but I'll give it a shot. Mankind has, as a side effect of some developing psychic powers, developed an energy field which surrounds their limbs, can penetrate vacuum, and travels further with a conduit (any matter can act as a conduit.) This field affects oxygen's fluidity, not preventing oxygen from flowing, but preventing oxygen from flowing quickly or forming/breaking bonds quickly enough for use in an explosive device. When large groups of people gather, it can become uncomfortable to breathe, since the oxygen becomes too 'slow', but this would never be a health concern due to a hard cap in the field's strength. Also, all humans take a very small hit to their aerobic endurance because of a lessened efficiency in utilizing oxygen. Unfortunately, this also prevent combustion engines and some power plants. This effect is powerful and decays at extremely low rates. A city of 10,000 people would prevent any explosive device for hundreds of miles in every direction, and New York City at current population levels would protect most of continental America. You can even fight a forest fire by dropping a network of cables, which dozens of firefighters are connected to (holding on would work), into the fire zone, choking off the oxygen supply. This wouldn't stop the fire, but would dramatically slow its progress. Workarounds are possible, as it is possible to use an extremely long and slow-burning fuse. It would be possible to still use explosives to harm people, but considering the distances involved, it would be unfeasible to use explosives against a city. If it turns out that you can do other explosives without oxygen, then expand the field to affect whatever fuel they burn. [Answer] Permanently eliminating them simply ain't going to happen. Arms race and all that. Even with some of the examples given (the Tokugawa shogunate or imperial China), external forces got rid of that internal hang-up. Either they resisted and got a proper kicking, or they caved because they knew they'd get a proper kicking. But temporarily, longbows have a lot going for them. They're relatively cheap to make, and as the English proved on French knights, they're a highly effective ranged weapon. There was a good 400 years or so where mediaeval Europe had man-portable gunpowder weapons, but only as short-range skirmish weapons; longbows were the military choice. Even cannons took some time to replace trebuchets. The biggest problem was materials technology; early guns had a nasty tendency to explode on their users, because the steel wasn't good enough. All you need for bows is a decent forest. It's likely that guns will exist, still. A few people will have one, together with a dwindling stock of ammunition. The smart ones will have learnt how to roll their own cartridges, but even then there's the problem of where to get raw materials, even if you return to the days of black powder. In a world of bows, a modern rifle is practically a magic weapon beyond price, and it'll be treated as such. But also it'll be a target for post-apocalyptic smiths to work towards. Mediaeval smiths and engineers didn't know what was possible. Post-apocalypse, there'll be ample records of what was possible, so everyone will know that getting there is "just an engineering problem". Justine Cronin's "The Passage" isn't the greatest post-apocalyptic novel ever, but she's got a reasonably realistic setup of how this would work. [Answer] Target the guys with the guns. Have your domed cities in Japan, Madagascar, Indonesia. There could be millions of guns in the USA, but it is so severely irradiated (everyone targeted the USA in the apocolypse) that even with radiation meds, no-one can make it there. The USA has 113 guns per 100 people. That is a crazy number and it's hard to believe that they could all be destroyed, with millions of people surviving. It's also hard to believe that the government/army could accumulate all of these With 0.5 guns per 100 people, Japan is basically gun free anyway. Now imagine a serious war breaks out, and the Japanese government requests that its citizens hand in their guns for the use of the army. The citizens do it, because Japanese culture encourages thinking about the needs of the whole,not the individual. All we need then is for the army to go overseas to fight in the USA, which then gets nuked and all of Japans guns are unreachable. Or maybe Japan traded away all of their weapons and no-one wasted (many) nukes on them. [Answer] > > to weed out all weapons, no exceptions. Is it possible to achieve this ? > > > The enforcers, who control these people and regulated entry into the dome, have psychic powers > > > I think you answered you own question. The enforcers know if you try to sneak something in, because they have powers. [Answer] Well wouldn't they use compressed air weapons that are spring loaded, they wouldn't be crazily powerful like firearms, but they would be deadly especially to unarmored people, also No one ever pointed this out but if you fired a weapon inside the dome you might puncture it and kill everyone by letting radiation in, so that might be the real reason for banning them. Even if they didn't use firearms they could use a bunch of batteries, wire, pvc pipe to create coilguns, that aren't hypervelocity but they would match the velocities of early firearms. [Answer] ## Taboo People will police each other, provided the appropriate taboos are in place. For example, in the UK, police use horses for riot control because attacking or harming a horse is socially unacceptable. Smoking in or near a playground is also socially unacceptable. If someone does so, someone else will likely speak up. If the offender persists, things may turn ugly. A taboo can be instilled through education (e.g drinking and driving) or can be created through cultural experience. [Answer] As it has been pointed out the domed cities aren't a problem, within a closed environment, especially a tightly controlled one, you can eliminate virtually anything if the lack doesn't actively kill your society. Outside is a different story, you said that the outsiders take great pains to avoid still prevalent radiation. Given that the majority of damage in a nuclear war would be sustained by cities and the majority of the metal we use is also in cities, if you're okay with eliminating metal weaponry altogether then I'd suggest that the outsiders avoid metal altogether since the majority of it is still radioactive, or was for long enough that the practice of staying the hell away from it has stuck. This leaves you with the bow and arrow, the spear and a variety of bludgeons that can be made purely from wood or from wood and stone. [Answer] For inside the dome, it is easy: just outlaw guns and explosives. (the civil engineers won't like it) You can make the enforcers have hyperacusis: They will hear gunshots at an even longer distance, and as they are more sensible to sound, they will come to hate them with a passion, while they may remain lenient with other weapons. If your dome is vulnerable to earthquakes, there should be a seismic array, which as a side effect will detect and locate any explosive usage. For the outside, you could make it so damp, that artisanal explosives and firearms are not reliable enough. ]
[Question] [ Given current technology, ten years, and an infinite amount of money, would it be possible to build an aircraft carrier with a 7,000-foot-long (2,200 meters) flight deck? This is about seven times as long as typical aircraft carriers. Catapults and other equipment are not required. I'm tagging this as [military](/questions/tagged/military "show questions tagged 'military'") because most if not all aircraft carriers are military ships, not because this will necessarily be used for military purposes. [Answer] Yes, it's possible. [WillK wrote the basic concept](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/239174/9852): line up separate units, connect them together and put a runway over the whole. However, this poses huge problems if you use normal ships, because of the way they heave in the waves. Even in calm seas this is a considerable amount of motion (it's hardly perceptible for a human because it's so slow, but that's no help for a plane trying to roll from one ship to the next). In principle it would be possible to connect the ships rigidly together to suppress this, but that would require infeasibly strong joints, because such big ships have enourmous leverage. Probably the hulls themselves would need to be strengthened too. Flexible joints would be more promising, since they avoid having to fight all the force of the waves – but making those reliable would be a challenge of itself, and it would cause other problems for the aircraft. Fortunately, the situation if better if the individual units are [semi-submersible platforms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-submersible_platform): those generate most of their lift several metres below the surface, which means they're much less affected by waves. Another advantage is that these platforms are already designed very heavy, since moving efficiency is much less of a concern than for military vessels. This means they're also less affected by the weight of the airliner. And oil companies already have a lot of experience in connecting such platforms together, so you'll be able to tap into that expertise. The way I'd design this is like this: first create the runway as a relatively light barge, consisting of beams that are in the lengthwise direction only connected with thin-ish (like, 5 cm) steel plates and a tarmac layer. This way, the structure stays flexible enough so it doesn't need to fight the waves by itself – though of course it also wouldn't be able to support an airliner. Then, after towing it to deep enough waters, you rendezvous with the semi-submersibles, which would either dive underneath the runway to support it directly from below, or attach to the protruding beams on each side. It would possibly be best to make these connections still somewhat compliant, e.g. with air cylinders, but I'm not sure. After making all the connections, you lift the runway above the level of the waves, either by pumping ballast out of the semi-submersibles, or increasing the piston pressure or with [strand jacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strand_jack). The end result is a runway that is supported strongly from the submerged lifting bodies, but with clearance in between so that the waves can harmlessly run underneath it – at least in calm waters. Whether this structure would be able to survive a storm on the open sea, I'm not sure about. It would have a lot of similarity with a pontoon bridge. The largest such bridge, [Evergreen Point Floating Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Point_Floating_Bridge), has almost exactly the dimensions you envision. It does benefit from crossing only a lake, not open sea – but I don't think that's completely necessary. E.g. [Nordhordlandsbrua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordhordland_Bridge) crosses a fjord: still not open-sea level waves, but they can already get pretty rough in bad weather. Of course, these bridges are anchored to the sea bed, but sufficiently heavy semi-submersible bodies should get you close enough. [Answer] See [Project Habakkuk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk) That was to be 2000 feet long, which was huge for WW II. The aim was not to be as big as possible, but to be unsinkable. Torpedoes could knock lumps off it, but it could repair itself by mixing up and freezing more pykecrete. It could even be used for landings on coasts with cliffs, just by ramming the shore, and maybe leaving a few hundred feet behind when you were done. There was no reason to make something 7000 feet long but it could be done. You could even have a one-use device - omit the refrigeration unit, and build it somewhere cold in winter. Something that big would take a long while to melt. [Answer] There are problems here which are difficult even with "infinite" money. Landing an A380 on a minimal-length runway is not easy, especially since it will also be narrow compared to a normal runway. Landing it on a moving runway is going to be harder, since it lacks the responsive low-speed handling that is mandatory for carrier aircraft. The C-130 has been landed on a carrier, but it also has good low-speed handling, required for its role as a tactical military airlifter. The A380's wingspan is 80 metres (261'8"), which sadly makes HMS Conga impractical; you're going to need 100 metres (330') width at a minimum. If something goes wrong during the braking after touchdown, the aircraft is very likely to end up in the sea: normal carrier aircraft are restrained by arresting gear, but this one won't be. What is meant to happen to the aircraft once it has landed? If you unload and refuel it, you then need to tow it back to the stern of your carrier for it to have a chance of taking off successfully. If something goes wrong and it's immobilised on the deck, the carrier is out of action, and you may well have to push the aircraft over the side. That's harder and more dangerous for the ship with a 285-tonne (empty weight, metric tons and American long tons are very close) A380 than a 15-tonne Hornet or 19-tonne Hawkeye. This is one of the reasons the C-130 is not used for carrier deliveries: if it broke down, it would have to be discarded, since it's too big to be got out of the way of other aircraft. Building a ship this long is not impossible but would be difficult and time-consuming. If it is built as a single rigid hull, it will have to be extremely wide and tall to avoid being bent by waves. If it's built in several articulated sections, prototyping the pivot mechanism in a smaller ship will be necessary to make sure it's strong enough. In either case, you need to build the world's largest dry dock to assemble the carrier in, which will be quite time-consuming. Getting the ship built within ten years looks doubtful, and the use you want to put it to looks difficult and risky. Finding another way to achieve your desired outcome looks like a good idea. [Answer] From a standpoint of just making the ship longer, there's no particular limit. It's certainly possible to make a ship much longer than current maximum sizes. The limitations are not directly on building the ship. There are other constraints and limits. * The longer the harder to turn and the harder to stop. * Canals and locks are difficult. For example, the Panama canal has a limit of about [965 feet.](https://www.aapa-ports.org/files/Panamax%20vs%20Post-Panamax%20comparison%20article.pdf) * The longer the more structural strength must be built in to resist wave action and storm surge and such. This becomes prohibitive eventually, since you wind up with so much steel that it is hard to keep the thing afloat in anything but the calmest of conditions. It would certainly be possible to join up a lot of individually modest floating structures. It would have to be a fairly robust join between the segments so that the weight of the plane did not depress a segment too much. As long as the water was not too rough, and you did not need this thing to be easy to move, you could build a surface that could be used as a runway. It would be something like a [pontoon bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontoon_bridge) but not anchored to the shore. You might have to split it up into segments in rough weather. And you might need a lot of tugboats to move it. So such a thing would not be great in battle conditions. It might be useful as a temporary airport in a place with ocean but no good land area to build an airport. 7000 feet is at the [low end of jet aircraft runway length.](https://travelonthefly.com/minimum-runway-length-boeing-747/) Planes like a 747 with a heavy load will want more. [Answer] ## No It took eight years to build the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier ([Nov 2009 to May 2017](https://navalpost.com/why-does-an-aircraft-carrier-take-so-many-years-to-build/)). But that's not telling the whole story. It took [21 years](https://www.thefordclass.com/media/building-integrity-building-ford/) to start with a blank sheet of paper and end with a commissioned aircraft carrier. And the Gerald R. Ford is only 1,106 feet long. Can you get 6.3X the ship with only 25% more time with today's tech? I'm having trouble believing that. The problem is that infinite money doesn't make all the other resources you need infinitely available. Ignoring completely the mind-bogglingly devestating effect this kind of event would have on any economy (even planetary), you can only get (e.g.) steel so fast. You can only transport so much at a time. You only have so much asphalt to work with. You only have so many trained people and you can only get a finite number more regardless the amount of cash you have. It isn't just the effort needed to build the ship. it's the development of technologies needed to move it, power it, steer it, stabilize it, and a great deal more. Your question limited the answers to today's tech. When CVN-78 began, the technologies that allowed the ship to be built didn't exist. The technologies today to build a successful ship of the size you're describing don't exist. And if that's not enough, there's feeding those people and their families. Educating their children and providing health care. It's the entire supporting economy that must be engaged. It's a nice theory to think that throwing money at it will fix all the problems, but that simply isn't true. I remember the world-wide steel availability problems that existed while China was building the Three Gorges dam. Your ship will cause problems like that, that can't be trivially solved with more money in the ten year period (now, if you had 20 years before the ten year period to prepare for this and the many other problems... maybe... maybe... there isn't a shipyard on the planet today that can build a ship this long). So, ignoring all the problems of having an ultra-long aircraft carrier (and those answers haven't even scratched the surface of the problems), no, I do not believe it's realistically possible to crank out a 7,000 foot aircraft carrier with today's tech. Money isn't the limiting resource. In fact, there isn't one limiting resource. And if you start making concessions (e.g., "Let's assume the 13 years of technical planning are already in place...") then there isn't a reason to ask the question. [Answer] * Timeline problems: Some others mentioned that it cannot be done, citing the design times of real-world aircraft carriers and other similar projects. I have a slightly different take on that, or maybe a counter-question: Are we talking about a wartime/crisis project, or "just" infinite money? Is it acceptable to build the first prototype in three or four years, to watch where cracks develop when it floats, and to do a second and a third prototype? Can environmental impact assessments for the drydock site be skipped? * Structural problems: These might become more serious than some other answers seem to think. Normally, naval architects worry about [hogging and sagging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogging_and_sagging), the stresses when the ends or the middle of a ship are on a wave crest. These are worst when the wave length equals the length of the ship. This might be less of a problem than usual, if significant waves are much shorter than the ship. But similar calculations would need to be made e.g. for situations where the ship passes a river mouth, or where part is within an ocean current and part outside. That could be much harder to predict and design for since stresses are more random. [Answer] Line them up. [![conga](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dUIq8.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dUIq8.png) <https://www.navylookout.com/what-are-they-for/> Depicted: the HMS Conga. You can make a superlong flight deck by lining up a bunch of your existing aircraft carriers. And you should. I will accept my 1% share of the infinite amount of money, thank you. [Answer] One way would be to make a lot of smaller ships which had big flat sections in their middle between any forecastles and sterncastles they might have. They would have flight decks in the flat sections. And more flight deck on each side in the form of drawbridges which could raised or lowered. So in calm weather the ships could all be in formation parallel to each other and lower their drawbridges to meet each other to form a long runway. Presumably drones could carry cables from the tip of one drawbridge and insert them into the tip of the neighboring drawbridge, which would then winch them closer and closer until they met. Or possibly the sections of the flight deck for use betwen the ships would be carried folded up when the ships were separated and would unfold to meet the neighboring ships when they were connecting. Or possibly the ship would be assembled out of many floating rectangular sections which would launched separately and then meet previously launched sections and attach to them. Each section of flight deck, hanger deck, and other decks, might be supported above the ocean by several shafts leading to hollow watertight floats. And possibly the shafts might have sections which could slide up and down relative to each other as the waves lifted up the floats and lowered them again, keeping the flight deck level. And possibly the floats might turn like giant paddle wheels to propel the giant aircraft carrier. You could reduce the length of runway needed for takeoffs by using JATO units. > > JATO (acronym for jet-assisted take-off) is a type of assisted take-off for helping overloaded aircraft into the air by providing additional thrust in the form of small rockets. The term JATO is used interchangeably with the (more specific) term RATO, for rocket-assisted take-off (or, in RAF parlance, RATOG, for rocket-assisted take-off gear). > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO> Forward facing JATO units have sometimes been used to slow down landing aircraft. So possibly extensive use of JATO could enable your giant aircraft carrier to be a bit shorter than it would otherwise need to be. Of coure the best way to shorten needed runway lengths would be to only use vertical take off and landing aircraft. [Answer] ## No, probably Folks seem to generally discount the fact that stuff like this requires planning, and planning takes time. Consider the history of the A380: * 1988: initial germ of idea * 1990: project announced * 1992: initial designs presented * 2000: Airbus commits to construction * 2005: first test flight Granted, the A380 faced numerous random hurdles, including coordination problems among half-a-dozen Eurozone partners, org changes at Airbus, and an economic recession. *Unless your project takes place in a fictional society of perfect beings, it will face its own unique, stupid* hurdles, all of which will slow it down.** Blueprints take time to design. People who design things aren't just drawing lines on paper -- they are thinking through problems, solving them, and then capturing part of the solution as a physical description of the construct. Or consider the the latest US aircraft carrier, the "Gerald R Ford" class: * 2008: procured * 2017: first commissioned If your goal were a marginal increase over previous versions, my answer would be "yes": creating an aircraft carrier that's 5% bigger probably isn't much harder, so existing techniques will work, and we can assume this project will run similar to previous projects: just under a decade. But you're not making a marginal increase. You're building something roughly seven times bigger. This will inevitably run into new problems. It will require vastly more planning, vastly more money, and vastly more time. I doubt it could be done in under 25 years, and that's assuming an ironclad guarantee, evident from the beginning, that all necessary funding and materials will be available on time. Skynet could probably do it. Independent organic beings could not, at least not the first time. Oh, and the physics is hard, so it might actually be practically impossible. Other answers go into that in detail. [Answer] Another solution would be to make a concrete boat. If we are trying to make a sea-going platform that does not have to defend itself, I feel it could be done in the time. You are not trying to make a capital ship that could survive any attack, but a big,box that floats, and can move itself or be towed. The Phoenix caissons that made the Mulberry harbours for the D-Day landings were 60x20 metres, and over 200 were produced in a year or so. They were made to be grounded, rather than being fastened together at sea, but this would have been possible. Fasten 40x5 of these together and you would have something 2400 \* 100 meters, and 15 meters high. This is five times as long as the largest ship ever. ]
[Question] [ The setting features biomancers who, to summarize, are magic users who can create living things as minions or servants through various ways(seeds, modified eggs, whatever), have the option to directly control their creations like a puppeteer if they have line of sight, and can manipulate life in general, including but not limited to altering their own bodies/cells and the bodies/cells of other living things(if they can come into contact with them). The effects of their magic can happen either slowly or quickly, the time to completion being chosen by the biomancer and a typical effect being the aquiring of claws, but the faster it happens the more pain is involved in the process. There is a high amount of biological knowledge required to do a great degree of anything in biomancy so it's not like a novice or unlearned will be able to do everything they want, but even the greenest of novice tends to know a reasonable amount of human anatomy and knows you can't live if your heart stops beating so try and stay away from their touch if you fight one. Biomancers, though they are magic users, are a little more limited to the laws of physics than other magic users, being that their creatures and any biological modifications are subject to the square cube law and nutritional needs and all that, and unless they want to dedicate the time and effort to experimentation they tend to be limited to similar designs to what is already out there in the biosphere somewhere(after having discovered and studied/took them apart to see what makes them tick). The biosphere they have available to them is similar to ours, with the addition of magical creatures whose atypical workings are magical in nature and so won't be able to be able replicated by biomancers as whatever creature a biomancer makes is non-magical in nature. Magic users in many settings have the ability to significantly and effectively contribute to a war effort or the siege of a fortified location, and so I want this to apply to biomancers as well. Problem is I don't know if they have the ability to do so as they are now, seeing as living things tend to be rather fragile and weak compared to mechanical war machines of basically any era or the good ol' large and heavy ram. The 'ram' part is what will be the focus of this particular question or, at least, the ability to break down or through the gates of a gatehouse during a siege. Ideally the creature the biomancer designs in an attempt to have it be able to do this should still be alive afterwards in order to deal with other gates beyond the one it first deals with, but a one-shot suicidal creature will do as well, if a living thing is even capable of breaking down those gates, portcullis included. With the ability to freely design creatures in mind, seeing as that might increase the odds of them being capable, my question basically boils down to... Are living things capable of breaking down a medieval gatehouse's gates? [Answer] ## Right Tool for the Job The answer to this kind of broad question is usually some flavor of "it depends." In this case what it depends on is how strong the defenses of the fort you are sieging are, and how long you have to prepare. Luckily the first bit of info should be relatively easy to discover, so as long as you know you are going to be attacking a fort you should be able to give your biomancers enough time to grow you a proper siegebeast. In general, your biomancers are going to require more time and planning to provide a tactical advantage than just having a war wizard slinging fireballs on the battlefield. But the trade off is that with enough time and resources they should be able to solve any problem in their way. What that solution looks like is going to depend on the fortifications you need to break through, although you can imagine some common themes. * Gatecrashers - Cross between a horse and a rhino, their most defining feature is a flat "face" which lacks any sensory organs. They are designed to be pointed at lightly fortified gates/walls and then act as living battering rams. * Climbers - Modified monkeys which can rapidly scale most fort walls and are commonly used for nighttime raids. Long tails are designed to be used as ropes for raiding parties and specially designed muscles lock the climber in place as a sort of living grappling hook. * Breachers - Used against heavy fortifications or when waiting out the defenders is not an option, these creatures are little more than living bombs. Their stomachs have been redesigned to produce and store volatile chemicals which cause a strong reaction when mixed. A few well-placed breachers can break open even the most stubborn of castle gates. * Plaguebringers - One of the simplest but most heinous uses of biomancy, plaguebringers are little more than common rats infected with magical diseases which are designed to spread disease throughout the defenders. Due to the inherently chaotic nature of biowarfare, use of these creatures is considered a war crime by most civilized countries and violators risk diplomatic censure if not outright agression. ## War Stuff, but Magical Looking over the list above, you can see how each of those magical creatures can be used to replicate something that was already done during a medieval siege. Battering rams, sapping, scaling walls, spreading disease. How you siege a castle or fort does not really change when you introduce biomancy, just the tools that you use to do it. So start by figuring out what it would take to win the siege in general and then you can work out how to grow an animal to do that. Do you need to starve out the defenders? Make super rats that grow and breed extremely quickly and let them loose inside to consumer as much food as they can. Enemy moat causing you problems? Time to grow some large fish that can be hooked together to form floating bridges or platforms. Specially designed moles can be used to dig tunnels or collapse walls, birds can be made to attack defenders on the wall or air drop other creatures inside the fortifications. Even without breaking the square-cube law to make giant living siege towers, magic and some ingenuity can turn biomancers into absolute nightmares to defend against. ## Recommended Reading In general, I would suggest you look up "biopunk" as a genre for more ideas on what your biomancers can do and how they can do it. For a pretty decent look at what mass biomancy might lead to I would recommend the web serial "Twig" by Wildbow. It is fairly long and while their are not many scenes of large scale battles, there are at least a few. Plus the whole story focuses heavily on what the world would look like if something like your biomancers existed. It is one of the better pieces of work I can think of that really explores the potential of biomancy, both the positive and negative aspects. [Answer] Depends on the gatehouse design, but the answer ranges from "absolutely, like butter" to "It might, if you're able to push the animal beyond it's normal limits." Another answer mentions termites to go through wooden drawbridges/doors. Of course, an iron portcullis is a whole other story. So let's look at nature's battering ram: [The rhinocerous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros) Stats we care about: top speed (maximum kinetic energy) and mass. That's ~30mph, and 2.25 tons There's maths in the comments, but the tl;dr is that you can make a rhino-stopping portcullis out of wrought iron. So to get the job done the first time, you'll need to apply some primitive siege engineering. If you can fully puppet-control the rhino, get two of them and yoke them up to a proper battering ram that focuses the full power of their charge into a piercing point. This scheme, using human-supplied power, can break such gates, all you're doing is changing where the power is coming from. For a more subtle approach, bypass the gatehouse and have a team of angry badgers undermine (literally where the term comes from) the wall itself. Brute animal strength is probably enough: but if you combine it with some clever siege engineering, you've got some truly horrifying options. Hell, if I had elephants to crank a catapult's winch, or set a trebuchet.... etc. [Answer] ## Use a Tree Tree roots are designed to push thier way through solid Earth as they grow. This includes breaking apart and displacing solid concrete and brick work as many property owners have had to learn the hard way. Rather than trying to make an animal that can survive crashing into the gate quickly, injuring itself, you should instead focus on the slow and powerful forces a tree can bring to bear. The Portcullis is really easy. Most portcullises were not locked down, but instead relied on thier weight to stay closed. Depending on its exact size and construction method, most portcullises would have likely weighted anywhere between 1-10 tons. Likewise, most mature trees weigh between 1-10 tons and needs to be able to support several times its weight to be able to survive wind; so, it is perfectly feasible that making 1 or more trees grow up under the portcullis would be enough to lift it open. As for swinging gates, I have a gate in my back yard that literally ripped open by vines that managed to grow between fence and gate and force everything apart. Normally it would take decades and really bad grounds keeping for plant growth to break through a castle's defenses, but since your biomancers can accelerate growth, They can simply raise what they need from the ground. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4cf15.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4cf15.png) [Answer] ### Pneumatics I'm surprised no one else mentioned this, given your stated abilities include: > > altering their own bodies/cells and the bodies/cells of other living things > > > Pneumatic/hydraulic force is frequently underestimated. Plants already sort-of do this and can absolutely destroy a castle. All you need is a good pump and a "skin" that can handle some pressure. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qevIIQHrJZg) ought to give you some ideas. The trick, in any case, is to find the weak points and force them apart. [Answer] Ground sloth. [![sloth dig](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NyO8E.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NyO8E.jpg) <https://www.sciencealert.com/this-massive-tunnel-in-south-america-was-dug-by-ancient-mega-sloths> Megasloths dug this tunnel. That is stone. The ancient sloths were big and had big claws: diggers extraordinaire. They could dig through the door. If only extant animals count, a motivated bear could probably also dig through a door in a day. A badger could probably also dig through a door but they are small and so would make only a small hole. I insist that when the biomancers summon their door digger, they pose menacingly and bellow 'MEGASLAAAAAAAAAAAWTH!" Then there is lightning and stuff. Then the sloth shows up. [Answer] The gate isn't the problem, the guars are! If the gatehouse is not guarded, breaking in is not hard. A portcullis can be simply jacked up with help of levers, a drawbridge can probably be unhooked from the chains if you can bring a ladder and climb up, a door can be chopped up by axes‚Ä¶ The reason the attackers can't do that is that the defenders will be shooting at them, pouring boiling oil on them and doing any other nasty thing they can to keep them off the gate. So what you really need is to disable the guards. 1. If you can control pathogens, that's probably the most efficient option. Pathogens is the one thing medieval people have very little defence against. Note that shooting dung and rotting carcasses into a castle with a trebuchet in the hope of starting a disease was a thing in sieges. 2. Another option is insects. A huge swarm of angry hornets is another thing the guards have very little defence against. They can hide inside, but they need some opening to shoot or pour hot oil on you and the hornets can get at them through that opening. So if you have control over them to prevent attacking your own, they are better than covering fire. They can allow your engineers to come to the gate and disassemble it in any suitable way. 3. Massive woodworm infestation can also do some good in a long lasting siege. A siege means the attacking force blocks all access to the castle and waits until the defenders eat all the supplies and surrender because they are no longer able to sustain themselves. Which takes month to years. There is basically no fighting, everybody is just sitting around and waiting who runs out of supplies first (the attackers can bring supplies easily, but it's still expensive). Infesting the wooden parts of the castle‚Äîthe roof frames, furniture, wooden lining of rooms, barrels holding the supplies and such can make the castle uninhabitable, persuading the defenders to surrender sooner. 4. All large animal options are basically just getting cheaper labour. Humans have dominated the Earth because humans with appropriate tool are better than any animal in almost anything they want. But soldiers have the disadvantage of demanding pay in addition to food, so if you can control some animals that only need feeding, you can make the operation cheaper, which means you can maintain the siege longer. You can use some burrowing animals for undermining the walls (conclude with good old gunpowder explosions one the burrows are dug), and you can use whatever dangerous animals as guards on the paths to the castle for maintaining the siege. What is most dangerous depends on the precision of control you've got. A chimpanzee with a spear would be significantly more efficient than a tiger. A tiger has short reach so a human soldier with a spear can pierce it before the tiger can touch the soldier, but if a chimpanzee can wield the spear with some efficiency, it has the same reach and more strength in a smaller package. [Answer] Creatures capable of eating wood already exist, be it termites or [furniture beetle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_furniture_beetle) > > The female lays her eggs in cracks in wood or inside old exit holes, if available. The eggs hatch after some three weeks, each producing a 1 millimetre (0.039 in) long, creamy white, C-shaped larva. For three to four years the larvae bore semi-randomly through timber, following and eating the starchy part of the wood grain, and grow up to 7 millimetres (0.28 in). > > > [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fc1nO.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fc1nO.jpg) If you boost them with same magic, there is no medieval door which can resist you. [Answer] Perhaps your biomages can find a way to make teredoes (aka shipworms) live on land and work faster than they naturally do. If you go to a rocky part of a seashore, you'll likely find rocks with holes in them -- holes that start small and get larger as they go deeper. Sometimes, you'll see what looks like a clamshell in the hole. Those holes (in rock) are made by shipworm. Throughout the age of sail, they were the major limiter on the lifetime of a ship hull; too many of them bored all the way through, and the ship would leak faster than you could pump the water out. And as noted, they don't just bore in wood -- their natural home is bored into rocks like the ones you find on beaches with holes right through. They can also bore bronze and wrought iron (though I gather they have trouble with actual steel). The limitation, as found in nature, is that their boring rate is very slow. They can bore in rock because they bore with the edge of their (clam-like) shell, and replace the shell material (nacre or similar calcium compound) as it wears away. The holes get bigger as they go because the animal grows. If your biomage can get them to live at a hundred times their normal rate, and supply a source of nutrition that will let them replace the shell fast enough, you wouldn't need to break down a gate or portcullis; they could tunnel right through a stone wall! [Answer] Termites are living things, and so is [wood rot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-decay_fungus) - it's a kind of fungus. Magic termites or magic fungus could presumably eat wood at a much faster rate. Harder materials like iron and stone are harder to get through. In this case I think the better option is not to eat through the materials, but to apply enough force to bend the iron or crack the stone. The roots of large trees are able to do this, by moving the soil underneath the building. So I'd go with magic trees that grow very quickly. [Answer] Many non-magicked animals have evolved with ramming in mind. Rhinoceroses, Triceratops, goats (the latter you might want a herd of). Hippos do not ram ordinarily, but if convinced by a biomancer could create an incredible amount of force by running full speed (30 mph) and then performing a side slam with their full weight (3000-4000lbs). Another form of life which can exert a tremendous amount of force, albiet over a longer time¬†period, are the growth of trees/roots. I could imagine a biomancer sculpting a root structure of some kind to bend an iron portculis completely out of shape over the course of a day or two, being powered by some nearby biomanced trees. [Answer] One option not mentioned yet is biological bombs. It'd take some preparation to come up with the right creature design, but I think it should be possible to make a metabolism that produces highly energetic chemicals which are then stored in some sac somewhere, to be ignited upon need. Maybe you'll need some bone structures to create a pressurized vessel, I don't know much about explosives. üòÖ But, say, methane is a highly flammable gas that is already being produced in vast quantities by life as we know it. Alternatively, if making it go boom is too hard - biological blowtorches/flamethrowers? Can you say "dragon"? [Answer] There are several real-world creatures (alive and extinct) to draw inspiration from: * Elephant - elephants are one of the most obvious, they're large and have been seen break down and uprooting trees in the wild - depending on how the gates are constructed - a reinforced wooden door would probably break much like a living tree. Some gates in the Indian subcontinent still exist that were designed specifically to defend against attack by war elephants, studded with long, sturdy spikes. * Ankylosaurus - the ankylosaurus had a thick skull, bony plates along its back and, most notable for breaking down gates, a nearly two foot thick bone club at the end of its tail, that massive tail is believed to be able to break other dinosaur's bones in a single hit, and could do damage to a doors and gates in the same way. * Water Buffalo - these are a little more questionable, but they have one of the most strong and sturdy sets of horns in the animal kingdom, with many having a relatively solid 'forehead' of horn before they sweep back. It's certainly possible for animals to break down doors and gates, and some kinds of walls - and like what happened with war elephants, specific defenses may be designed to counter that attack. [Answer] Weaken the iron bolts that hold the wood in place with tons of acid. Possible designs include red ants that spit formic acid, leading to the formation of iron formate. While at it, anything that can cause the iron to rust fast is handy to attack the hinges where they are embedded into the wall and then make the joint crumble under the pressure of expanding rust. The application of a weak solution containing chlorine iron (table salt or digestive liquid - you need them in catalyst quantities) then plenty of oxygen and moisture [will do wonders](https://youtu.be/PLF18H9JGHs?t=93) (aka [oxide jacking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxide_jacking)) (call your weather mages to provide a thick fog for the moisture). This will work for the bolts that hold together the wood in the gates, though it won't be the jacking action but just the simple mechanical weakening of the fasteners. For portcullis, just rust (at accelerated pace) the horizontal beams in the middle of them. With the weaknesses created, plug in whatever mechanical force you need to bring the gate or portcullis down - depending on how good the "rust warriors" job is, you may not need too much. [Answer] Use a tree (less elegant version): Plant a tree "in range"[1] from your target. Grow the tree, possibly with a slight inclination towards the target. When its height is sufficient, topple it on your target, smashing it to pieces. [1] A quick search suggested about 130 meters as maximum stable height for trees. [Answer] Ivy Ivy and other similar plants grow their roots wherever they can find a crack. Those roots then expand, widening the crack. If you drastically speed up the growth and magically replace the water and nutrients that the plant needs to grow, you can take the time needed from decades to as short as you want depending on how much energy you want to throw at it. Also, by cutting off the nutrients and water before you cut off the growth, you can have the plant die and desiccate itself. Otherwise, you've replaced an impenetrable gate/wall with an almost as impenetrable plant. Note that it also dissolves the rock that the roots are anchored on. So that will help take down the walls if that process is sped up or inhanced. Fire might be an issue. Maybe use a cross with an ice plant. Iceplant is a succulent. So, it holds enough water that it doesn't really burn unless you apply enough heat to first boil off that water. If you just want to tumble the wall, then anything in the ficus family will do it. The strangler fig is only the most notorious example. Any ficus built next to anything is a danger over time. ]
[Question] [ In this setting, people have developed magi-tech, humanoid golems that they use for tasks such as cleaning, helping with construction, carrying heavy stuff around, etc. They are common/cheap enough that you could see many of them all over a city, and the average civilian household can afford at least one of them. They are designed to withstand falls from tall buildings, such that you can repair them rather than dispose of them, and they are strong enough to carry/push twice as much as a fit human male. However, they are very slow, moving significantly slower than a normal person. Additionally, because their "brain" was made mostly through magic rather than what irl robots use (computational programming) they are also rather dumb. Despite those downsides, I know not to underestimate humanity's ability to weaponise tools, so I want to know how they could be weaponised as they are. [Answer] They are already a weapon. Armies require more than soldiers - they need a heck of a lot of logistics. Basically in the long run having a core of mules or horses or vehicles or, presumably, golems who can carry boring stuff like food, ammo, spare uniforms, the sick, etc. is extremely important. So important that you lose a war without proper resources devoted to supplies and transport and so on. The more trained soldiers you have free to fight the better. You don't want them tired out from travel or hungry or thirsty or in any way motivated to say things like "Sod this, I'm going home !". Ideally you don't want them getting tired building fortifications. It takes time to develop fighting skills, they should not be wasted on manual labor (unless it's good for training !). They do not need to be able to do more that basic walking speed to be useful. And not fast walking - just a gentle steady pace with a load. So the single most valuable contribution golems can make is carry stuff and do basic manual labor. That is a weapon an army requires and ceases to function well without. [Answer] Military engineers 1. A legion of advancing golems carries mattocks and mallets. They will not fight back but they are very hard to stop. When they reach their objective they will disassemble it. It is just another construction job. They take down what is there and clear it away. If the objective is the wall of a fortress or a castle gate then that is what gets disassembled. 2. A legion of golems goes out at night and digs a trench. The dirt and assorted materials goes into a wall. In the morning the humans can come occupy their fortified earthworks. 3. A legion of golems cuts trees, moves rocks and makes a bridge so the army can cross. 4. A legion of golems diverts a river so it flows through the enemy fortifications. Much fun to be had with the golem corps! And they never hurt anyone. [Answer] Seems there are a few ways they can be weaponised StephenG has given quite a good military interpretation, so I'm going to go with the private citizen version. Say you just have a private citizen wanting to weaponise their golem. Say he hates his neighbour, Bob - well he probably can't order the golem to kung-fu kick Bob in the head, it is far too stupid and slow and Bob will probably knock it over with zero effort. He probably can't order it to shoot bob because it lacks the manual dexterity and speed to operate a firearm. But he can say "golem, go and smash up Bob's car" that would probably be do-able for a golem. How about something even more sinister: "golem, dig a tunnel under Bob's house." That should be pretty easy for a golem, it will just plod along until the job is finished - no brains required, no speed required, then one day Bob's house collapses into a tunnel. Any kind of slow structural demolition type tasks like this should be do-able for a slow and stupid golem. But how much further can it be taken? How about multiple golems? Thanks to Adam Smith's division of labour we have highly atomised industrial processes wherein each individual step is extremely simple to perform. A golem might not be able to manufacture a bomb but a terrorist cell with 50 golems could probably get the process down to 50 or less very simple golem-actionable steps; voila - golem bomb factory. This also protects the terrorists from blowing themselves up if something goes wrong, they can just sweep away the destroyed golems and replace them. Then all they have to do is order their collection of golems to walk to their targets of choice carrying the bombs - golem suicide bombers. Probably one of the most dangerous weapons you can get in a guerrilla warfare / urban terrorism setting. Of course this would work with just one golem-owning terrorist, but I wanted to get the golem bomb factory in as well. So they are definitely very dangerous weapons in the wrong hands. [Answer] With proper equipment and minimal programming they are already potent fighting machines. Purpose-built golems with better combat performance aside, all of these domestic golems can easily become a potent defensive force. They are durable and can carry double a human load. In any era, it can be said that most of a soldier's gear by weight is weapons, armor, and supplies. * Able to survive a fall from a tall building, they don't seem to lack for armor and durability so they don't need additional armor like a human soldier. * They aren't biological, so things like camping supplies and food don't need to be carried either. This means that the entirety of a golem's carrying capacity can be devoted to weapons unlike a human soldier while still ending up more durable and less affected by adversity. Poor speed aside, they are basically more efficient weapons compared to humans in every way. They essentially can't be poisoned. Starved. Cut off from water. Tired out. My thought would be to place small armories around the city filled with oversized crossbows or mini ballistae and large maces or spears for the golems to access in times of emergency. Unmodified standard golems would form as a reserve garrison force while being usual servants in peacetime. Reasoning: * With slow movement speed, a central armory would be too slow in distributing weaponry. The transit time to and from the central armory would take forever. * Ranged weapons such as golem sized ballista would help make up for a golem's slow movement speed. Their high strength would actually allow them to load such mechanical weapons quickly as they don't need a high torque gear ratio to apply tension. This nullifies the greatest weakness of crossbows or ballista, namely low rate of fire without sacrificing damage. Their ammo capacity could also be generous, as they don't need to carry additional armor or other heavy items like human soldiers. For oversized bolts, armor penetration would be excellent. * A mace complements large brute strength combined with poor skills and dexterity found in golems. Bladed weapons require precision and require a good deal of skill. Their blades will also lose their sharpness if used brutishly. Spears are also a decent choice, being excellent with simple thrusts and basic formations. Spears and maces would be decent against armored foes even with poor user skill, which may come in handy against large monsters. Without heavy transport the golems would be rather poor offensive weapons due to cripplingly slow speed. They could be outmaneuvered by literally anything and can hardly be thought of as subtle. Their range is unknown and could be a problem. To be of any offensive use there either has to be something concealing them or transporting them to attack a static target. * Tunneling golems under the enemy frontlines could be a good idea. They don't need air ventilation and don't fear tunnel collapses much. The earth would also conceal their slow approach. * Sending golems underwater would be good for nearly the same reasons. Water conceals a slow approach, they don't need air, and water pressure probably isn't too much of a problem. [Answer] Of course they can be. Even as direct weapons. Stack 10x10 in a rectangle and have them march right at your opponents troops. Sync your attack behind them and they'll make a nice hole in the defenses. Now do that with 10x10x10 or more from many directions and your battlefield will be a mess. Have them tear down city walls. Catapult them into enemy ranks. Have them jump from your cities walls into enemy ranks. Let them throw big stuff if possible. Hide them in the earth and devastate enemy cavalry attacks. Put Archers on platforms carried by golems (like the elephants from LOTR). Etc. [Answer] # Live ammo You don't state how much your golems weight, but I'll suppose it's in the range of hundreds of kg/lb. They can serve as trebuchet ammo, with the advantage that they can load themselves on their own. They can also pounce on enemies from above, either by base jumping or being dropped by a roc. And after the crash or fall they can still keep fighting. # Siege engines Though they may be clumsy and slow, they would be great as siege weapons. A line of golems with a battering ram should be a sight to see. [Answer] These things are so powerful I'm not sure where to begin. I'm assuming medieval technology here. Invulnerable warriors: They can survive a fall from a tall building and then be repaired. This means they are extremely resiliant to blunt force trauma. Put each golem in a suit of armor and let them walk at their enemy. Maces and other blunt weapons came to be used extensively against armored opponents as the blunt force trauma that went through the armor was the most effective method of defeating them. With the resiliance of these golems they would be nigh on invulnerable to most infantry weapons. Give them a spear to ram through with their superior strength and weight and they are set. Most wars are thought over something that you can't move, so their low speed isn't as important. For speedy engagements you simply have the humans instead. Long-range bowmen: Using something like a longbow requires skill, stamina and strength. You might argue that the skill required is too much for dumb golems, but these golems have to be programmed to move. Walking upright is an incredibly complex motion, far more complex than firing a longbow. Add the higher draw strength and your golems can fire arrows long distances all day long. The bow doesn't care it's drawn into position slowly, it cares that it is released properly. Their unlimited stamina is also a great boon. After the first few shots a longbowman has to slow down or suffer in accuracy and capability, these golems can keep going as long as their ammo allows. Siege equipment support: Loading and preparing siege equipment is a tiring job to keep up all day. Trebuchets might not usually have launched the cart sized slabs of castle wall as shown in Lord of the Rings but something akin to a small bowlingball of rock is still a heavy thing to be loading and firing all day. Load rock, pull on ropes to put in tention, launch. Load rock... similarly all such semi-tedius jobs can easily be performed by these things. "Fire" brigade: I suspect these golems are pretty well at dealing with heat and they don't need to breathe. Put some armor on them, put slow burning fuels on them, march them into your enemy while you set them ablaze. It doesn't matter too much if it's the smoke inhalation, the heat or their failing morale that incapacitates your enemy, as long as you incapacitate them. Supply units: As already mentioned by others but going even farther. Supplies are integral to any army. The monniker of "good generals study tactics, great generals study logistics" should give you an idea how important it is. Your golems might be slow but they don't need to be if they are driving a cart, meaning you cut down on how much food you need for your supply line. They are also perfect for loading and unloading day and night. It gets better: armies consist out of the population, especially in ancient times. Entire wars have been put on hold as kings send their men home for the harvests, only to resume later. Your army of golems can take the place of these men and help farm the lands, meaning your "real" soldiers can remain on their posts. It also reduces the impact of losses on your kingdom. Losing 30.000 men over the course of a war is a massive loss to the kingdom in terms of economic power and self sustainability. [Answer] ## Yes I can see at least one good use for these golems which other users don't seem to have mentioned: scorched earth warfare. Imagine something like Sherman's march to the sea with an army of these golems. In scorched warfare the slow speed and low intelligence of the golems don't matter, because you aren't trying to catch the other side's soldiers or have to make complex decisions about picking the wrong target. Just point where you want to go and say "everything in that general direction must die". Indeed, in scorched earth warfare you want your enemy to come to you, as you are destroying the enemy's sources of food, shelter, and materiel and they have to come engage you if they want you to stop. And intelligence doesn't matter much if your goal is to just steamroll everything in front of you with a slow advance and you can just throw bodies at the problem until it goes away. The durability of the golems helps out here, as the enemy soldiers have to waste time bringing down the incredibly durable, incredibly stubborn golems that don't have a morale to break, forcing them to hunt down the golems if they don't want their homes destroyed or their food stores burned. Adding in some human soldiers to the mix means the enemies must break ranks to chase down your golems, who are following the single minded order of "destroy everything in that direction", forcing them to pay attention to the golems and allowing your own troops to flank them. [Answer] Opening: I know not to underestimate humanity's ability to weaponise tools, so I want to know how they could be weaponised as they are. Golems are non-human tools, not even slaves Most golems in peace time never need to be weaponized, as long as they don't do tasks that require weapons. Of course, an owner could decide to weaponize his golem - say, with an axe - to kill someone, or a terrorist or mafia organisation could deploy golems as fodder.. they are not human, so they are disposable. Anything goes. When it's damaged, it can be repaired. Deploying the golems in times of war I suppose these "weaponized golems" could serve in a classic Clausevitz-style war, as foot soldiers. Because of their massive presence and strength, they could carry shields and other heavy armour, pushing the front line forward slowly, removing obstacles like rocks and trees, filling up trenches, building bridges. Others could be carrying supplies, or help moving wounded human soldiers. Golems are based on magi-tech, so many human civilians and soldiers in your society should learn to apply the magic, to be able to repair them. And.. watch the enemy ! They could make good use of captured golems, stealing your magic, or apply reverse magic, to let your golem join their army. A self-destruct built into the golem, triggered on a distance by a powerful magician, could help prevent that. Important decisions to make: what weapons of war can stupid and autonomous golems be trusted with.. are these golems always loyal at any time, or are they too stupid to discern between you and enemy targets.. and how strong is the enemy magic, is the enemy capable of turning golems against you ? weaponizing them too heavily would become risky. You'll have to cope with protests Because golems are human shape and commonly serve as part of human society as workers, many people will come to regard them as pets, rather than machines. Especially youth. When war breaks out and the golem is called for duty and be armed, the civilian society will loose its free work force. A lot of owners will not be prepared to send their golems out into some war and these people will try to hide their golem. [Answer] Portable Castle- Surround your troops with heavily armored Golems. Multiple rows if you desire. Design an arrow proof roof and have them carry it on poles. You have a portable defensible command post that you can use for a strategic advantage. [Answer] A few ways this magical labor force could be force multipliers with low skills - 1. Logistics (moving supplies - above ground, under ground, under water) 2. Military engineers (dig earth and stone, chop trees) 3. Mobile fortifications (form a wall to secure a camp) 4. Sentries (never rest, never sleep, silently watching for threats) 5. Anti cavalry - Who needs a square of pikes when you have a square of golems? 6. Intimidation - Fit them with armor and weapons. Even if not aggressive, marching onto the battlefield will be intimidating and may even cause retreat or surrender. ]
[Question] [ In the 1800s, a woman named Marie Leaveau operated an underground black market that centered around the occult. Known as the Voodoo queen of Louisiana, she plied her trade performing curses to selected targets, offering her services around the country to those who could afford them. This gave the buyer anonymity and left no trace that a crime was committed. Voodoo is a specialized form of magic that works by way of controlling the actions or fate of a specific target. This is enacted through a ritual that requires multiple ingredients. The most essential of these would be something personal belongings to the target, such as an item or body part, to apply curses to them by proxy. Through the ritual, the user created a bind between them and the target's soul, allowing them to transmit the curse. However, this doesn't come without consequence. Whatever so done to the target by the curse, the user will receive damage equivalent to that effect. If the curse causes a target to become paralyzed from the waist down, the user will receive some equal disability related to that effect (losing eyesight). If the victim dies through some disease, the user will drop dead at the end of the curse, and so on. This is why people don't go around cursing each other, as both parties would suffer in equal measure. This obviously is not suitable as a long term business strategy for an entrepreneurial-minded witch. There's no sense in performing paid services for clients if it commits damage to herself. How can she break the system and get around this rule to make her trade profitable? [Answer] If your witch can create these bonds without actively being the user then this seems like an excellent way to profiteer off those seeking revenge. Someone already paralysed you in a car crash? The witch will bind you to them so you can take their legs away. Can't make your situation any worse. Insurance company denied your claim for end-of-life care due to terminal illness? Use what little money you have left to buy a curse-binding and give the CEO cancer. Ex on your mind? The Witch will hook you up with a soul bind, some painkillers and a knife. Get to mutilating so they'll never cheat on anyone ever again. Murderer of your wife and child just walked free from court? Go to the witch, bind your soul to theirs and then take a dive off the nearest tower block. Basically: This ~~sociopath~~ entrepreneur's target market is those who are already damaged, desperate or suicidal. Exploiting the darkest emotions in those people will allow her to drive them to both pay her and take the damage themselves. And if they later regret the consequences of their actions? Sucks to be them. They signed a waiver. [Answer] > > There's no sense in performing paid services for clients if it commits damage to herself. > > > You probably never heard of weapon industry if you think so. The entrepreneur creates the bond between the customer and the target (via an IP protected procedure), but then it's up to the customer/user to chant the curse and take the damage. Of course this limits the customer pool to those who can afford a "scapegoat" who will take the damage in their place: 3 letters agencies, organized crime, well off people. [Answer] ## It doesn't work only for pain, but also pleasure This answer may reframe too much of your question, but the basic idea is that while it can be used to harm the bound person, it could also work to bring them pleasure. The target enjoyed a good meal? Well, now you feel good too. You just double the amount of happiness between the two bound people. And imagine how great of an experience it would be to have sex with the bound person. [Answer] One could wonder how such equal-measures cursing was developed in the first place. Perhaps it was developed by otherwise powerless people to strike back at oppressors. A mother could e.g. inflict pain on the nobleman who raped her daugther, even it means pain to herself, or a slave would be willing to give his live to kill the one who has enslaved his tribe. If the damage done to the curser can be redirected to a proxy, who is willing or forced to utter the final words of the ritual or otherwise receive the bad end of the stick, the problem is reduced. The witch (or whatever) can make a deal with authorities to punish criminals this way, or she could buy slaves to inflict the reflected curse on. Or maybe she could pay old or crippled people handsomely, enabling them or their children a better life at the cost of being cursed. To be truly balancing, however, the witch should not be able to redirect the curse. Then if becomes a matter of setting the price high enough. You want the Queen to become barren? Okay, I can live with not having any more children, but it will cost you. Same with losing an eye, becoming lame in one leg, etc. I will accept warts if the price is right. A death curse? Maybe when I am old and feeble and the money will go to my children or a good cause. Rich and powerful customers may be able to give the witch a very comfortable life by buying a single curse every few years. If the curses have time limits, she can sell them again once they wear off - or plan to retire in good health once they all wear off. [Answer] Don't just sell curses - sell "protection plans" too. For a monthly subscription fee, which is significantly less than the price of a curse, the witch will add you to a "Do Not Curse" list, and will refuse contracts to curse you. If you want to splurge on a premium package, the witch will also tell you when someone tries to get you cursed - and who it was. If the witch is smart, she doesn't admit that this is a "Do Not Curse" list, she just lists it as a "protection from curses" which must be renewed, and imply that this is some form of magical protection/ward. This would also allow her to charge the would-be cursers, then later reveal that the curse did not take effect because the target was protected, and offer a partial refund as a "gesture of good will". [Answer] # Cross Cursing So instead of having the client be on the receiving end of the curse, instead put a different client's target who is seeking similar level of infliction on the other end of the curse. In secret prep and do as much of the ritual as possible, and then find one of the targets and as discreetly as possible do the binding necessary to enact the curse. At this point the the original target will get their curse while the recoil from the curse gets dealt to a different target. # Recruit Minions for Clients An alternative is to recruit unsuspecting people to serve as proxies for the clients. They have no idea what they are getting themselves into, and once it is done, Madam Marie Leaveau is no where to be found. [Answer] Find a masochist who's into S&M, and is happy to let you bind them to the victim and then (consensually) do all kinds of things to them that will be painful for the target. You won't do any lasting damage this way, but it's certainly a way to inflect pain on people. Depending on how your magic works, you might also be able to drug your your volunteer (with painkillers, for example), and then perform actions on them that they don't feel but the victim would. Being bound to a someone who was undergoing surgery would be a very unpleasant experience if you didn't get the effects of the anaesthetic. This could also be used to cause more lasting harm - find someone who's about to undergo a legitimate medical amputation and pay them to let you bind them to the victim. [Answer] ## Exploit the Desperate This is going to assume that you can have another person perform the curse or take on the backlash of it willingly. The Voodoo Queen obviously isn't going to be able to do enough curses to become famous if she ends up crippled and blind after the first handful, so I think it is a fair assumption. As long as you are able to get another person to take on the cost of casting the curse, find those people shouldn't be too difficult. Search through the local poor population, especially the homeless or those just barely scraping by. Find someone in really dire straits and then offer to take care of them for as long as they suffer the curse backlash. If you ask enough desperate people "Would you be willing to go blind if it meant having a house and someone to take care of you" eventually one of them will say yes. The Voodoo Queen would have to start small to build up a rep, but once word gets out that she really does keep her word and take care of the people who cast her spells she should have a ready supply of volunteers. The more serious the curse the better the compensation would have to be. I would imagine that for small things like common illnesses or afflictions the volunteer would just get a lump sum of money. Something like being blinded or crippled would require a promise to take care of the volunteer for as long as it lasted. Death curses would have to require taking care of the volunteer's family or designated survivors for the rest of their lives, since obviously the backlash for death is still death. Now, is exploiting the impoverished and desperate ethical or going to leave you happy when you look in a mirror? Of course not. But if that bothered you chances are you wouldn't have gotten into the curses for money game to begin with. [Answer] This sounds kinda like practical Karma, essentially a kind of force, a moral force, but physical, like gravity. Curses are Karma transfers. Witches are Karma engineers, and there would be rules about how to do it safely. You could attack the problem from an ethics standpoint, but this sounds more like an electrical engineering challenge: how to move the Karmic charge from A to B. Witches would be harmed occasionally, just like electricians get shocked, but it would be by accident or mistake. It would not be surprising that early practitioners would be harmed; look what happened to Marie Curie. There would be wide-ranging effects and many practical applications: justice systems, personal protection, armed conflict. Ethical engineers would get a lot of work, most of it deeply unethical. Imagine an ethical ground-wire! Babies? [Answer] Mental pain The victim ruined your life and made you homeless? You now live in a cardboard box? Curse their home on fire. You can easily get another cardboard box. Some witches have special rates for the needy or will allow you deferred payments. Of course you'd better pay ... ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/162576/edit). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/162576/edit) I am slowly building an alternate history story where America and the Empire of Japan are closely allied during the early 1940s instead of at war. They are so close, in fact, that Anchorage is seen as a metropolitan hub for travelers going between Asia, Europe and the Americas (EDIT: when the Soviet Union formed, they banned foreign flights going through their airspace, which meant a flight between London and Tokyo couldn't go through Siberia. Therefore, aside from taking the long route through India, the shortest route for flights between Europe and Asia was through the Arctic, with Anchorage becoming a hub for continental flights). In my timeline, Anchorage eventually gets nicknamed,'The Gateway to the East'. But I was wondering: What historic, political and economic factors would need to change for Japan and the USA to be close during the 1940s? (EDIT: Americans will still be racist, but I'm looking for a way the U.S. and Japanese Empire are allied, even if it's an 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' scenario). [Answer] I think that if you made two changes to history, that it would be believable that the USA and Japan became allies. The first change is to alter the Meiji Restoration to be more defensively focused and less conquest motivated. If the outcome of the Meiji Restoration was to make Japan a leader in the fields of modern technology and comfortably able to defend itself against other rising modern powers, then they could have sought more cooperative avenues to gain access to resources they needed besides military conquest. The other change is to China. To accelerate the rise of communism in China. If their long-time geopolitical rival and the cultural enemy were shedding their peasant driven economy and were embracing the command economy mania sweeping the world at that time, then the USA and Japan may have seen a militaristic China as a greater threat to their own interests and combined forces against the axis -- which might have included Italy, Germany, Soviet Union and China, until Hilter-baby declared war on the communists. [Answer] A single car accident could do the trick Emperor Hirohito had a younger brother named Takamatsu. In 1930-1931, Takamatsu chose to travel across the US and Europe to improve relations with Western Civilization and became much more fond of and respectful of Western nations than his brother. He was fairly successful at this and garnered a lot of respect from US and European leaders. During WWII, Takamatsu knew that the US would defeat Japan before the war even started and warned his brother against the attack being much more aware of US industrialism and the ridiculous number of civilian firearms that would make a ground invasion impossible. Had something so simple as a family car-accident killed his older two siblings, he would have ascended to the throne and would have likely guided Japan in a far more pro-western direction. Instead of being a threat to US pacific assets, Japan may have been seen as more of a buffer zone between the US and the Russians making them an obvious alliance for the US to pursue. [Answer] [According to wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War#Foreign_aid_and_support_to_China), relations began to sour when Japan attacked the USS Panay and committed the Nanjing Massacre during the Second Sino-Japanese War. These two events drastically altered foreign sentiment, and painted Japan as the clear bad-actor in the war. This led to arms sales to China, and Oil Embargoes, which is largely believed to be the straw that broke the camel's back forcing their hand to attack the US directly. Having Japan maintain their discipline in Nanjing is likely enough to stop the sequence of events. The US has a fairly long history of brushing off attacks on one naval vessel now and then, but have always been driven to action by large death tolls. Also, Japan would need to not attack the Philippines, as that was a US protectorate at the time. [Answer] Make Mao Zedong and the Chinese communists much, much more successful in the 1930's. A united communist China, especially one powerful enough to export revolution, would be seen as a threat to US commercial interests in Asia. The US would then favor and support Japan's invasion of China. [Answer] The seeds would have to be planted in the 1918 intervention against the nascient Soviet Union, when American troops were in Siberia to support the "White" Russians, and Japan and the British Empire were still allies. Since the US, the British Empire and Japan all have reasons to be allied against the Soviet Union, then the expansion of Soviet power needs to be somewhat more ominous to all concerned. Perhaps the Comintern's propaganda and infiltration of Western institutions is far less successful, or Lenin manages to squeak through without relaxing collectivism in the 1920's in order to avoid famine (as they did in OTL). If the Russio Finnish "Winter War" had continued, the Finns might have been able to get the UK and United States off the fence and allied them against the USSR in northern Europe as well. Japanese intervention in China would need to be handled differently, since the Americans believed that China was a rising market for American goods and services. The Japanese Empire could facilitate this by acting as a "middleman" between American traders and the Chinese market, making it well worth the American's while to remain on good terms with the Empire. The rising power of the Soviet Union, their ruthless behaviour and eventually their pact with National Socialist Germany then lines up the Allies and Axis differently. The Japanese confrontation with the USSR in 1937 at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol might then trigger American intervention in the Pacific against the USSR, with a second invasion of Western Siberia. WWII would look a lot different, with the hard core of the Axis being Germany and the USSR, and the British and Japanese Empires joined with America against the massive manpower, resources and technology of the Axis. Allied naval power could bring forces all around the edges of the Axis, but the land war would end up being brutal and grinding across Europe and Asia, since a naval blockade would not be able to starve out a continental power like the USSR. [Answer] I think you could make Russia a bigger deal on the world stage a bit sooner. Historically, Russia had a considerably different culture to other european nations, even in things like their religion and their language. I don't know how many historical liberties or stretches are you willing to take, but if we suppose the Tsars invasions of east Europe were more succesful, and Russia was a more stable state even before the Soviet Union, I think you could make the argument that the expansionist policies of Japan would have the USA less concerned about Russia, keeping them busy on Korea, maybe. I think part of Japan's decision to expand south was, simply, that it was easier, and seen as less of a threat to allied nations, and the ever-growing fear of Russia. So, in this sense, if you make Russia a bigger threat (at least perceived that way) to the ally interests, maybe Japan would have less fear of advancing into mainland Asia, fully annexing Korea and parts of eastern Russia. Also, Japan shouldn't join the axis powers, clearly, and maybe you could even put some other invented justifications to make the allies have a better relationship with Japan, with maybe Japan helping the british at least with just intel during the opium wars in China. Making the japanese more allied-friendly (more geopolitically than ideologically, I would say) seems like an important step, not just more USA-friendly. [Answer] You will need to change the time line so that it is unrecognisable. I suggest the following: make Japan a democracy, give Japan a lot of natural resources and no inclination to expand, remove Japan from the Axis and make her hostile to Nazi Germany. Finally perhaps ensure that Japan has a lot of resources that the US would like to trade and vice versa. That should do it. All you need to do then is to find a reason why Hitler declared war on the US without Pearl Harbour. Perhaps the US aid to the UK was greater than it had been historically, was seen as being even more effective than it was or perhaps there were some hugely inflammatory remarks made by the Roosevelt. Better still perhaps the US didn’t get involved in WW1 and consequently was less isolationist. It’s going to be very different… [Answer] A common rival USA and Japan were somehow forced to compete, since both were expanding in the same area (Pacific). But what if there was a third actor in the Pacific scenario? Think of a timeline where the United Kingdom (and its Navy) * continue to pursue a strongly expansionistic policy even through 20th century * isn't such a close ally of the USA (even as a consequence of the previous point) In such scenaio, UK could become a rival of the USA in the Atlantic and South Pacific, through Australia and New Zealand. Seeing the UK as a possible rival, the USA could decide to maintain good relations with Japan in a UK-containing perspective, by closing an eye on its expansion in China and not imposing the famous oil embargo. This should also prevent Japan from joining the Axis. Note that this situation doesn't imply that USA and UK would become enemy: they could still become allied against Nazi, maybe without trusting each other too much (like both were allied to USSR). In such scenario, I think more likely that Japanese would remain neutral in exchange of free hand in China, even because being in the same alliance with UK, USA, USSR they wouldn't have a lot of options to expand, and because the war would be fought too far for them to feel involved. I think Japan could join the war together with the Allies if allowed to invade the French colonies in Indo-China (but they should remain loyal to Vichy and not to Free France). [Answer] You'd have to make white Americans [much, much less racist.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_the_United_States) I mean, you'd probably have to go all the way back to the eighteenth century when the United States was forming and work racial tolerance into the very fabric of the nation. No Trail of Tears. No Slavery. No Klu Klux Klan. No Yellow Peril That's really the only way you'd get the United States as a whole to have the kind of relationship you're describing with ANY non-white nation. You would ALSO need to make the Japanese much, much less racist. The two problems might have the same solution, if the United States had been a reliable ally to help the Japanese and the Chinese resist exploitation by the European powers, you might be able to drive cultural exchange much earlier and have an example for the Japanese to follow that wasn't "The only way to win is exploit everybody else". The big problem that this whole idea has is that BOTH the United States and Japan in the late 19th and early 20th century were in a race to match the colonial example set by the European powers, and both nations felt that they had a manifest destiny to rise to prominence in the world. There's no way for either nation to do that without coming in direct conflict with the Europeans (As the United States did with the British, the French, and the Spanish, and the Japanese did with the Russians.) The Japanese and the United States were also directly competing for the same resource-rich areas in the Pacific, particularly the Philippines and southeast Asia. Bottom line, you'd have to back up quite a long way to start building the kind of relationship you're thinking of. I don't think it can start with something changing in the twentieth century. [Answer] I don't think that it is possible for the USA and Japan to be allied by the 1940s without changing world history to a degree that it becomes unrecognizable. American racism was built into the American character right from the beginning, it was simply part of the cultural landscape at the time that the Americas were colonized by Europeans, and the conflicts with the native Americans during the colonization served only to reinforce that. The nature of the colonization was such that capitalism became enshrined in the national character, and along with that and the relatively primitive nature of African civilisations - plus the propensity of some African tribes to sell the captured members of other tribes into slavery - and the technological inferiority of the Asian nations that served only to reinforce that. On the Japanese side of the equation, the asian colonists who were the ancestors of the modern Japanese also had their own conflicts with the pre-existing native Ainu population, and later, they were involved in a failed invasion of the Korean peninsula, and they successfully fought off an invasion by the Mongols. The Japanese have also had a long history of internal warfare, and a tradition of strong central authorities with a highly bureaucratic style of government. Militarism and a class-based society had become enshrined in the national character, with the ruling class also being the primary military class. In Europe, the ruling military class held the concept of [chivalry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chivalry) to be the highest military virtue. Most importantly, Chivalry enshrines the concept of respect of weakness, which translates to the modern western concept that once an enemy's surrender has been accepted, that enemy must be treated with a degree of respect, that while they may continue to be an enemy and may be imprisoned for the duration of hostilities, they must be provided with the basic necessities of life, and may even be paroled to return to return to their home provided that they swear an oath not to participate in any further hostilities in the conflict in which they were captured, tho the practice of parole has fallen into disuse in more recent times. The Japanese had a similar code of military conduct, [Bushido](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushido). While similar to Chivalry in many respects, it lacks a concept of respect of weakness, and contains a concept of courage in the face of any danger, and is entirely more fatalistic. In the Japanese outlook, surrender is dishonorable, a failure to fulfil a duty that may only be fulfilled by victory or death. So, to the Japanese, those who have surrendered have by their own actions marked themselves as being dishonorable, the lowest of the low, and not deserving of honorable treatment. Bushido makes no distinction between combatants and non-combatants, in war, all fight for their side of the conflict, even if not part of an army, and should engaging in combat be futile, then the only honorable options are escape in order to regroup and fight another day, or death, by one's own hand if necessary. While Bushido didn't explicitly include the concept of suicide attacks that guaranteed the death of the warrior in return for a disproportionate number of enemy casualties, its fundamental tenets allowed the easy addition of suicide attacks. With these fundamental differences between the respective nations concept of military honour, it is inevitable that the military personnel of each nation would be reluctant to work with those of the other nation, on the grounds of cowardice or cruelty. Only if the Americans and the Japanese were generally unaware of the requirements of each other's military honour code could an alliance reasonably be made, and I doubt that it would long survive the outbreak of hostilities against a common foe. For many years, Japan practised a policy of isolationism, seeing those from outside their islands as being inferior and uncivilized. For many years, the main contact the Japanese had with Western nations was through missionaries attempting to spread Christianity. Unlike other peoples to whom missionaries have been sent, the Japanese recognised the presence of the missionaries as an attack upon their culture, and the message preached by the missionaries being antithetical to the interests of Japan's rulers. This led to an absolute ban on contact with the outside world, with only a few strictly controlled exceptions. Japanese isolationism was only broken when the US sent warships commanded by Admiral Perry to force open the Japanese market. The Japanese, realizing that their isolationism had led to their falling behind the rest of the world, began an aggressive policy of modernization which led naturally to Japanese imperialism. The fact that Japan's rapidly increasing technological base and population were at odds with the limited natural resources of the Japanese islands gave the Japanese an imperative to gain access to more resources, and given historical enmities, and the the nations who were the major source of the resources the Japanese needed refusing to trade made conflict inevitable. So, given that the cultural differences that made conflict in WWII likely go back a thousand years, it would take a major event similar to Japan's defeat in World War II to change the Japanese national character sufficiently that an alliance would be possible... and if such an event had happened, one or perhaps both nations would no longer be the Japan or USA that we recognize, but another nations or nations that just happened to have the same name. ]
[Question] [ In my world, the religion is polytheistic. However, one of the gods has inspired a crusade/excuse to invade the rest of the world. This is a "the gods have disappeared from the world a few hundred years ago" type fantasy situation. The followers of this god acknowledge that some of the others have merit, but in other countries, by sea, their god is vaguely known but not followed. Your standard paladins and clerics found in the D&D world are very rare except in places where magic is prevalent--it is not prevalent in the crusading country. Each god had their area of expertise: home and hearth, success/victory, law and order and so on. Given that the god they follow is about virtue, and law, with no texts concerning killing or wiping out the followers of others gods (and the other gods in question are not considered evil), how would such a crusade be justified by the rulers in a religious context? Edit PLEASE READ IF YOU ANSWER: Just to be specific and clear, this is not about establishing monotheism (it may become that in 100 years time, but this is not what's current). This about one god within a pantheon--as if followers of say, Athena, began a religious crusade against a country that largely followed Hera. If you are going to answer the question, please place it within this context, and do not trot out any monotheistic examples OR anything that is pantheon vs. other deity system. [Answer] Monotheism leads to intolerance. Instead of travellers asking “what gods rule here?” and politely fitting in and leaving their own religion at home, or merging cultures swapping and combining gods like old friends, “oh, you have a god/prayer just for stubbed toes? I'll remember that!”, you have now a culture that demands a single specific god is for everything, everywhere, for everyone. They will be taught, perhaps as a highest commandment, that no other gods exist and not to tolerate those who would disagree. Once this meme set takes hold in a culture, crusades are inevitable. If that culture gets benefit from expansion and conquest as well, it will just create a positive feedback loop. Note that the meme set and psycology of intolerance needs to be combined with success and power and some initial impitus of expansionism. If these people are powerless and instead are the ones eing conquered, then sticking to their idea of a single god will instead prevent them from assimilating to the other culture. They will retain a strong cultural identity which will keep these ideas alive, but will keep the group separated and oppressed rather than blending in after a few generations. So, you just need the culture in question to be able to conquer others, and have some other reason to get started. Regardless of what they have previously said about killing and virtue etc. the reality will be bent to enforce the political situation and the people will naturally gravitate to true intolerance even if scripture doesn't actually say to kill all infidels. The reality we see in the actual world is that scripture of successful main religions is complex and something can be found to justify any position, rather than the other way around. If the bulk of it is oral tradition and later interpretations and commentary, it is even more amenable to that. I think what you are looking for is the ways in which the real docterine is extended from or even contradictory to the most central standards document. I suggest looking at real history for the many ways in which this happens. Off the top of my head, * choosing which texts to canonize. The one that says worship is a private thing and people should do it alone and many do it anywhere will get left out by an organizing priesthood caste wanting central public stuff and a priesthood caste! * cherry picking the readings. A huge amount of conflicting material will be boiled down and presented by the priests and government to support whatever view they want. Even in a day when people are literate and could read the whole thing, people seemingly do the same thing on their own! * tiered scripture: besides a small most-sacred text, you can have part that is written, part that is oral, and a body of secodary work that “interprets” the original. This makes it even easier to direct as needed and shift with the times. * teach the secondary material as primary. You say “this is what the diety wants/this is what we must do” and trace it back to interpretations in the main scripture only as advanced study. --- OK, with full monotheiem the very existance of other gods can be seen as herisy, so that makes things easy. When the expansionist culture acknowledges the existance of other gods, we have to look at what aspects make it so. The panthon can be arranged in a strict hierarchy, mirroring the political system of the culture that goes conquering. The one particular god is the boss, his area of speciality being to be the cosmic emporer. Other gods have specificy duties and areas, but now there is also an area of command! The particular traits can be expanded in geography, so that god X isn't just the god of this valley but is a harvest god in general and applies everywhere. Just as different regions have their local leaders who now need to be subservent to the new empiror, the other people’s gods mirror that structure and are local subservent gods. Over time, the culture can shift gradually toward a monotheistic mindset by classifying the boss god as a different thing, so the others are no longer gods but go by a different name such as archangles. Different original gods can be rolled up into different faces of one. Gods that are not part of the new system can be called demons and the culture refuses to admit them as gods even though they have the same properties—just a different label. The gods may parallel the political structure and sgrugles of the larger region. One true king, even though that other guy seems to be governing over the mountains… so it is with their respective gods. [Answer] This seems fairly standard justification for any political or religious war: * Country X does not follow our ideas of virtue and law, they are sinful dangerous! * Country X's disregard for virtue and law has caused crime and corruption and is the cause of the same sins in our country! (fill in any societal problems that plague the crusading country) * The only way to stop this is to root out the evil at its source bring Law and Order to country X! * The good people of country X will surely accept our Wisdom, but anyone that resists Virtue and Law must be an evil criminal and country X must be liberated from their corruption! I've adapted the wording to apply more to the situation described in the question. Another option is specific to the disappearance of the gods: The leaders of the country can proclaim they have discovered why the gods disappeared, and it was because people didn't lead virtuous lives anymore and didn't follow the law. The messengers/prophets they sent to other countries were ignored or locked up and now there's only one way to restore the rule of law and redeem humanity in the eyes of the gods: Crusade! This crusade has a simple win condition: The return of the god(s). Until that is achieved, the claim will always be that people are not following the laws closely enough yet, leading to more draconian measures. [Answer] A good real-world example of this is ancient Egypt. They had a polytheistic religion, and several gods were directly associated with particular regions of Egypt. The regions would then fight, and the winner would indicate whose god was stronger. This often made it into the mythology; for instance, the domination of Set by Horus. Basically, as long as the gods of your world have conflict with each other, conflict among their followers is not only possible but inevitable. And if the gods are gone... Well, all it takes is a charismatic leader to convince people that, no, really, you have to kill those heathens for your own good, for their own good, it's what Our Lord would want, would require of you. And since our Lord isn't around to dispute it... [Answer] 1. Start with St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas' [Just War Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory). 2. Decide your enemy meets the criteria. Another god's followers holding one of your holy places is a good start! 3. Restore the holy places! Deus Vult! [Answer] Justice demands punishment of evil, or it is not justice. Law without enforcement is advice. No matter how good and kind a police officer or judge is, if they don't do their job in condemning lawlessness, they have become the antithesis of their original purpose. That being said, your religious texts should include something about punishment of wickedness, whether done by a special class of priests or the god itself through natural consequences. But I still prefer to think in another way. The gods disappeared hundreds of years ago, so there's plenty of time to have different sects and denominations spawn with beliefs that weren't originally in the religion - see Mormonism and the Jehovah's Witnesses in Protestant Christianity. The thing is, whether the god would condone it or not, it just has to be justified in the minds of the followers. And humans can rationalize quite a lot of things when it works to their advantage. [Answer] There is no contradiction or problem. Polytheism means a multi-god theology, but it does not mean that people are prohibited from being a devotee of one of the deities. In fact, typically in a polytheistic society many people gravitate to one deity out of the pantheon and might focus most of their effort behind that one. In present day Hinduism there are people who basically focus their efforts on one of the deities. A country or society could get behind one and go against those who don't. [Answer] Here's how it should go: "These [insert people name here] heathens don't follow the rule of Virtue and Law, and we're going to bring them in the path of Virtue and Law by pillaging their cities and indiscriminantly kill them. Who's with me?" You're worried your justification will not stick, but in reality, and since you are about to wage war, you presumably have influence, wealth and an army. What else are going people to do? Question you? Crusades are geopolitics, not religion. Religion is the excuse you have to rile up the troops, because you yourself are some form of religious power. They may not understand why god suddenly wants to start a crusade but they're not the ones in charge, and it's not to them that god speaks. They can't doubt your word, because they'd be doubting the religion and god itself. And that's just ludicrous, god is so virtuous and lawful that it, and transitively you, can't be wrong. [Answer] Crusades are launched by nations because the target country has resources and property they want to acquire, or the crusaders want to extent their territorial sovereignty. Their monotheistic religion is merely used as the basis for the political propaganda to rally the population behind the campaign. Since their religion is all about virtue and law, your average skillful propagandist wouldn't need to do much to find egregious examples of the failures of virtue and law in the target nation. Lo an behold! You have poor benighted people in the target nation who need saving from the heinous of their rulers or they are all evil sinners who should be put to the sword. Whatever! Once your populace swallows your propaganda, it's time to mobilize your forces and set off to claim what is rightfully yours. Crusades are land and treasure grabs wrapped in the finery of outrage and branded with religious ideology. Religion, irrespective of whether monotheistic or polytheistic, is nothing more than the fuel for a political campaign to justify plundering the wealth, resources, and real estate of the target lands. Historically the Crusades were intended to reclaim the religious heartland of Christianity, but they worked quite well as a means of plundering the territory they were supposed to liberate. It's all about who benefits from the crusade and how much they can carry away. The religion is only there for ideological justification, thus granting the crusaders the stamp of approval from their deity (or deities, as monotheism doesn't have a monopoly on crusades). [Answer] Your gods sound like the angels of Greek paganism, or the Ainur of Middle Earth. This is a good starting place. This means that--forgive me if I presume too much--your gods are superior to humans, but not really divine. They cannot create something from nothing and do not exist outside of nature, yes? These are important questions because you must decide what your gods actually are and what motivates them. The answer to your question depends on knowing some things about two of your main characters. Is your god of virtue really virtuous? What about the guy who's starting the war? Your answers will set the limits that determine how the war could start. Since virtue is the standard, we must also learn what is a good reason for going to war. You need to know what the good reasons are in order for your characters to choose good reasons or bad reasons. The standard to use for a western audience is called Just War Theory. Just war theory has permeated our political discourse for thousands of years. Most of your audience uses these principles to form opinions about war, even if they don't know what they are called. The practical question is whether you want the crusade to be legitimate, or just a pretense for war. If your virtue god is truly just, the war should be fought for good reasons. Is the war leader a good man? Or does he only want a pretense for war? Just to use Christianity as an example: Christians believe that coercion is forbidden (indeed impossible) in matters of religion. This is a core principle, but has been violated by political leaders who claimed to conquer in the name of the faith. This brings us to another question: could your crusade be justified by a metaphysical reason? Other commenters have already mentioned several famous polytheistic civilizations. Those religions tended to believe that a human's job was to serve the gods. Perhaps your god of virtue has something he needs to accomplish, and doesn't mind spilling human blood to do it. Maybe he has a paradise prepared for those who die for the cause. If you want something that doesn't require so much research, here's a quick and dirty shortcut to get your story moving: * You may always fight to defend yourself against an imminent threat. * A false flag attack can give the appearance of imminent threat if you want your war to start under false pretenses. [Answer] Ok, firstly, "Crusade" is a specific thing that happened, not just a war fought on religious grounds, and that specific thing is over access to "the holy land". Secondly, more often than not, the "The my god decreed it" thing wasn't actually a thing, but there are 2 ways that gods were usually involved with warfare... 1. We are going to kill those guys and our deity supports us, because we are their town. Athens for example, the local god was Athena. Victory in war was an honor to her and she would support them, but she never "decreed" go kill the Spartans because their local god is, I think, Ares. 2. Our god has decreed that x is evil, you do x, therefor you are evil and we must kill you. More often than not, when this came up which is hardly ever, it was an actual thing and not "You worship some other deity". Thirdly, The Abrahamic, "You worship other deities so we gonna kill you" thing seems to have been an evolution that happened due to 2 things. 1. The first is that in the caananite mythology Ba''al and El were rivals where Ba''al's people "the Babylonians" dominated El's people constantly and this lead to a down trodden people with intense hatred of their rivals. If you read the bible knowing about this connection you will start to see just how much the Israelites hated Babylonia and this transfered to their local deity Ba''al (who was the ruler of their Pantheon btw) 2. At some point, the YHWHists came into power and started erasing references to other deities in their local traditions mixed with the "You shall have no other gods before me" (which came from the rivalry in 1) lead to the spreading of Monotheism and where the Israelites went from taking that commandment as "Pay hommage to me first as you're local deity" to "All worship of other gods are forboden and evil". Combine the "rivalry" and the "Monotheism" and you get the attacking of others based on them having other gods. But it's not like monotheism changed how things were thought of in the deity world sense. In the polytheistic world view, the deities whose tribe lose were subsumed into low rankings of the winning side. If Athens won then Ares was considered lower on the totem than Athena and vice verca. When Rome defeated Egypt the Egyptian gods took on a lower ranking or were seen as the same deities with different names. Zeus and Ra for example were considered the same. In the monotheistic world view, it is very much the same. When Christians took over a place their deities were subsumed as either angels or different names for the same relgious figuresm such as Isis and Mary. Likewise, as Rome was advancing they started becoming monotheistic and the view of other deities was just that they were just eminations (Lower order parts of Zeus) of Zeus or Zeus with a different name. There is only one time when there was a legit deicide order from a religion and that was from the crazy Egyptian Pharoah who went monotheistic and tried to change the religion of Egypt... and he was eventually assassinated if memory serves. --- Now that was he have that as background, how can you get a deity decreed war in a polytheistic world. That would be through that rivalry that I mentioned earlier with the Israelites. If the YHWHists never eradicated references to other deities in their writings abrahamic faiths would be polytheistic and still have that hatred of Babylonia which if noone tried to get rid of polytheism would eventually lead one of their priest kings to decree Ba''al and all who serve him as the enemy... Think of it as a kingdom divided between 2 sons. All those who view one son as the leader the other would decree as enemies. Thats the same situation you got with these gods (literally if you know the mythology), and wars fought in the name of destroying the enemy for their deity/king would be a thing. Remember, unlike how many religious people act today, the deities in the past were real, had lives, had kingdoms, and had enemies and they would fight wars and demand their follows fight for the same reasons any ruler would. [Answer] Every God has a particular virtue but takes it to extremes - for example a god (or its followers) of justice might not like a god of mercy/love/charity. That may work because even the followers could vaguely acknowledge the value of another god's virtue (and be tolerant), but as their god's virtue would take precedence, specific events could make them less tolerant. ]
[Question] [ Magical spells in the medieval times requires an incantation and a swing of a wand or quarterstaff to produce any effect, however to cast a high tier grand spell it is necessary to tap the ground as hard as possible with a quarterstaff. Low tier (hands free) : Generate a short burst of energy at a target. i.e fireball. Mid tier (hold a wand/staff) : Channeling a constant flow of energy to manipulate the physical properties of multiple targets. i.e alchemy - transmutation of mild iron or bronze into gold etc. High tier (tapping with staff) : Cast an area of effect spell of great magnitude on every targets within range. i.e disintegration - obliterate all living targets in range into ashes. [Answer] To Empty the Staff for Next Time To cast any spell a wizard has to do a bunch of magical calculations in their head. The spell focus helps compartmentalize this $-$ they can do part of the calculation, store that bit in the focus, in the form of magical vibrations, then start on the second bit without having to hold both parts in their head at once. For more complex spells they store and retrieve from the focus dozens of times. So a bigger focus (staff) is better than a small (wand), since it can store more vibrations without interfering with each other. High quality gemstones are also helpful. The rigidity means they can store more vibrations in a smaller area. When you finish the spell there is usually a bunch of junk vibrations left in the staff. Equivalent to pages and pages of rough work for a normal calculation. You can discharge these into the ground by focusing the vibrations into the tip and whacking as hard as your can. Then your staff is clean for the next spell. Usually the wizard releases the spell and discharges at the same time, since there's no reason not to. There are stories of a grand wizards who are killed after releasing the spell but before discharging the staff. If you find a glowing staff in the woods next to a pair of singed wizard boots you should be very careful about touching the staff . . . [Answer] HARVEST AND CONDUCT EARTH MAGIC: From the sound of it, you need more material components and contact with the ground to cast spells. Trees grow out of the ground and conduct this energy, so wands and staves are made of wood. * Most ordinary little spells need only the energy conducted through people, so you can just do it (as long as you're in contact w the ground - maybe you have enough reserves to do a few tricks in the air, but watch out...). * To use a bigger spell, you need a conductive wand to allow more energy to leave the caster all at once - definitely don't try this while flying, it could deplete your life force and kill you. The conductor (wand) also allows for a steady flow, setting up a constant stream of power. Perhaps your mages might use natural plant fibers in their clothes or hemp cords that drag on the ground to aid in the constant stream of Earth magic. * For something REALLY big, you need a big conductor (like a staff), and only a foolish mage would try to run that much energy directly through their bodies. Instead, you strike the ground directly and conduct the power straight from the Earth. * This system would lend itself well to druidic practices, sacred groves, holy trees, and magical locations. Natural crystals and unrefined metals (like gold) would be a potentially useful set of materials, from the Earth. [Answer] To ground harmful energies. Casting a powerful spell creates lots of magic waste-energy in the staff. Just like static electricity, those energies want to get into the ground. By ramming the staff into the ground, those energies get conducted directly through the staff into the ground, like a lighting rod. Without that precaution, the energies would get conducted through the wizards body. That effect is barely noticeable with minor spells, so wizards don't bother. But with very powerful spells, the effect can be painful or even deadly. So proper grounding is essential. So why do wizards pound the ground and don't keep the staff on the ground while casting the spell? Because being grounded makes it impossible to collect all the magic energy in the staff. So the usual way to cast a very powerful spell is: 1. Raise the staff into the air 2. Do the magic stuff (gestures, incantations, etc.) to charge the staff with magical energy 3. Release the spell 4. Quickly ram your staff into the ground before the magic energy feedback knocks you out For an outside observer, the order in which 3 and 4 happen might not be obvious, giving the impression that the staff-pound is part of the spell and not part of the cleanup. [Answer] If you want a literary reason... I think the use of a staff in fantasy magic is clearly reminiscent of the [staff of Moses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staff_of_Moses) from the Old Testament book of Exodus. Moses raised the staff to part the Red Sea, and later he struck the rock in the desert with the staff to create a fountain of water. Also his brother [Aaron also had a staff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron%27s_rod) which was used miraculously in creating the plagues of Egypt. The reason the staves "worked" in that context is that it's what God told Moses and Aaron to do, and it was an action of faith. In fact, Moses got into a little trouble when he struck the rock, because that's not exactly what he had been told to do, so it reflected a momentary lapse of faith. The choice of a staff would have made sense to the people at that time as a natural symbol of authority, of the shepherd's protection of, and command over, his sheep. [Answer] I'm kind of surprised no-one has suggested this, since to me it's the most natural and obvious explanation. Casting magic clearly requires some sort of mental effort, even if that just means concentration. When there is a sharp and clearly-defined endpoint to the casting (as with a spell), the effort is suddenly released - think of snapping a stick or branch with your hands. Since you're holding a staff anyway for channeling purposes or whatever, that staff is going to go flying which could cause physical damage not to mention any magical side effects. That is, unless the release is controlled in some way. As the ground is a large, immovable / fixed target that's always there, pounding it with the end of the staff is a reliable way to control that release. [Answer] Recoil, the larger the spell the more force the spell exerts on your staff. So by tapping the staff into the ground you are bracing the staff to receive a larger amount of force. [Answer] Area of effect works by connecting the staff to the earth, and the spell is conducted through the earth and surfaces in the area. Without the earth connection, your choices are beams (targeted) or radiating out from the staff, which would be rather weak. This could have some other interesting properties like mages' power being limited in places with stone floors, similar to how necromancers don't like space travel because there are no bodies buried there. [Answer] Without going too far into R-rated territory, there is obvious magico-sexual symbolism involved. The Earth is traditionally the receptive female, the mage with his staff is male. The greater the contact, the better the chance of conceiving grand magical effects. Yes, it's sexist by our enlightened standards, but in line with some older magic/religious beliefs. ]
[Question] [ A group of aliens are off to save the human race from extinction caused by a Lovecraftian monstrosity. In order to accomplish this feat, they go to Earth in order to harvest as many humans as possible to restart the race while keeping as much diversity in the gene pool as possible. The thing is, the aliens don't have time to introduce themselves and have the humans sort themselves out. So they arrive one day and start abducting people for the greater good. In order to store the humans they have acquired, they liquefy them in-order to save...how much space on their craft exactly? I would like to know how much volume a liquefied person takes up if they were stored in the most spatially-economical vessel (a cube or rectangle, though cylinders might be needed if under pressure.) The age groups I would like are: * Toddlers * Teenagers * Adults (Don't question how they are liquefied only to come back normally afterwards. We are dealing with Clarketech here.) [Answer] ## How good is liquefaction? L.Dutch's answer is the right concept, but his numbers are wrong. 6 liters is the maximum inhalation of an average adult male; however, men have much larger capacity than women and normal respiration does not fully inflate the lungs. The 62 liter volume of an average adult assumes a resting inhalation volume which actually averages closer to 2.5 liters of air in your lungs (during normal at-rest breathing across genders). Volumes of gastro intestinal gases vary a lot throughout the day, but average about 1 liter. This means his equation should look more like 3.5/(62+3.5) = 5%; so, you only get a 5% reduction in absolute volume. That said, the more important savings are in removing the empty spaces around the body. An average human is 160x39x23cm that is 143.52 liters. When you compare that to the 58.5 liter liquid state of a human, you get 143.52/(143.52+58.5) = 71%; so, your reduction in practical volume would be 71% compared to shoving us in boxes. This will result in the following: ``` Age Group \| Avg. Whole Weight \| Avg. Volume ----------------------------------------------------- 2yr old Toddler 12,000 g 11,100 cm^3* 13yr old Teenager 45,000 g 41,600 cm^3* Adult 62,000 g 58,500 cm^3 Due to lack of data, child volumes are based on mathematical ratios compared to adults. Different childhood ratios of bone, muscles, organs, etc might impact these figures. ``` Designing the packaging:* To package your humans this way, place thier remains in large plastic bags kind of like IV bags. This will keep your remains separate, sterile, and waste very little space. That said, because some fluids such as stomach acid would react with other fluids such as brain chunks, you may in fact want to store certain biological substances separately rather than in on big bag to make sure you still have all the same compounds coming out as you had going in. This may mean a complex system of "disassembling" the human body into separate bags rather than just throwing them into a blender. This can lead to some unexpected wasted space as you start needing to account lots of total bag materials, air gaps between bags, and possibly wasted space in whatever bins you use to keep all the liquid human sacs organized in. It's hard to say just how much space will be wasted without delving REALLY deep into human biochemistry and industrial design to determine how many bags and of what size you need; so, lets just say it will still be more efficient than boxing whole humans, but maybe closer to a 50-60% savings if you go this rought. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5mb7I.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5mb7I.png) ## But, your aliens could do better Generally I agree with Carl's assessment that you don't need to bring whole people, but cloning humans requires large artificial wombs, and lot of labor for your aliens to hang around baby sitting us for 20 years waiting for us to have a functional adult population while our DNA synthesizes all the complex compounds (proteins, fats, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, etc.) that make up an adult. Instead of a slurry which is 60% water, you could dehydrate the human pulp into a "meat and bone meal". This is an industrial term referring to the dehydrated and ground up remains of an animal. Since any planet they are bringing us to would inevitably contain lots of water, they would just need to rehydrate our remains as part of the reconstitution process using the water from our new world. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_and_bone_meal> says that meat and bone meal averages 4–7% water; so, if you reduce the human body from 60% water to 4-7%, you are eliminating about 57-58% of a human's total mass. According to [calcert.com](https://calibration-services.calcert.com/Asset/Bulk%20Density%20Chart.pdf), loose meat and bone meal is has a density of 0.72 g/cm^3. This is a bit less than our liquid density because the powder will have room for air, but will still have a lower total volume than liquid humans while allowing the aliens to transport all of our complex compounds needed to put us back together. This will result in the following: ``` Age Group \| Avg. Whole Weight \| Avg. Dry Weight \| Avg. Volume ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 2yr old Toddler 12,000 g 5,100 g 7,080 cm^3* 13yr old Teenager 45,000 g 19,125 g 26,560 cm^3* Adult 62,000 g 26,350 g 36,600 cm^3* Due to lack of data, meat and bone meal density is based on animal meal. Human meal might be slightly more or less dense. ``` If the remains are vacuum sealed like coffee, you could increase the density of your meal to be just a bit over 1 g/cm^3; however, vacuums cause most organic compounds to break down; so, depending on how advanced your alien tech is will determine how much they can safely compress your human remains. Going back to the practical volume of a human, this means you will get about an 82% practical reduction in volume by converting people to meat and bone meal. If you opt for liquefaction in your story, I would suggest giving some brief handwave explanation for why you can not dehydrate the human remains. Designing the packaging:* Another possible advantage to removing water from the human body is that it makes freezing us far less destructive. Water expands when freezing which plays havoc on on the other molecules being frozen with it. The Arrhenius equation shows that as things cool, things that react at higher temperatures stop reacting with one another. This means you can deep freeze stomach acid and dehydrated brain chunks together without them reacting with one another such that you can get an even better efficiency out of your packaging by keeping us in one very cold container. Even under low-vacuum states, vacuum sealed plastic and foil cubes are probably the best way to store and separate human remains because they maintain a sterile, light weight, easily stored, separate vessel for each human, and can be shaped into cubes for optimal space efficiency. To figure out how big these cubes have to be we should look at the top end of who the aliens might select for transport. If they want to save the species, they will probably select people based on health factors meaning the obese and dangerously tall may be excluded. This puts a reasonable upper limit of 115kg on your whole weight. If we assume a light vacuum seal will compress the meal density to about 0.85 g/cm^3, then we get a finished volume of about 41,055cm^3 or a cube that is about 35x35x35cm. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TrK1Q.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TrK1Q.png) If it were me, I would describe the human storage room as being a cryogenically cooled cargo bay full of pallets of vacuum sealed blocks, all ~35x35cm at the base so that they stack nicely, but ranging from ~4-35cm tall. By mixing and matching people of various volumes, each pallet could be filled to the maximum height recommended by alien freight regulations. In conclusion: There are many factors that could play into how you could and should store a disintegrated human, and it all boils down to "how destroyed is too destroyed to reassemble." Hopefully this goes into enough (though be it disturbing) detail to figure out how compressed your humans should be. [Answer] The [average volume of an adult human](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-human-cube-the-volume-of-humanity) is about 62 liters. Assuming that the aliens don't use any process that causes the loss of volatiles elements, the only saving from liquefying a human body would come from the air volume taken by the lungs and bowels. In an average adult [the lungs account for about 6 liters of air](https://www.physio-pedia.com/Lung_volumes), while the bowels I wasn't able to find accurate values, so I would go for the same volume as the lungs. That would save about $12/(62+12)=16\%$ of the volume taken by a normal body. Since we are at it, the same page I linked above calculates the volume of entire mankind is about half a cubic kilometer > > If you stacked everyone together into a Human Cube (hmmm, I should trademark that), it would be about 770 meters on a side. > > > Since the average above covers adults, teenagers and toddlers, I won't go into further calculations. [Answer] Since we know that the density of a human is very close to 1kg/l (we float in water, but only just), a human’s volume in litres is pretty much the same as their weight in kilogrammes. [Answer] The whole concept is wrong. If you want to save the species and the diversity of the species all you need is a couple bottles full of cryogenically stored eggs and sperm. And a decent artificial womb, but if they can travel from wherever to Earth, that shouldn't be a big problem. Resurrecting actual people is a huge waste of mass and effort, and further it'll be a lot easier to acclimatize newborns to the alien planet than to try to get native Earth-born folk to adjust. [Answer] Liquification won't be all that effective. Basically, you reduce the problem to "what is the volume of a human being?" One can find this volume via Archimedes' principle. Fill a tub with water, put the human in the tub, letting the water spill over, and measure how much water left the tub. However, we can do this faster. The human body is roughly the same density as water. Thus, for every kg of human, you have roughly 1 liter of water. Get any growth chart of your preference, and you find out how many liters they are (in particular, toddlers grow freaking fast, so there's no one number). Now if these aliens mean business, they need to then put the liquid in a dehydrator, to concentrate the humans. Orange juice concentrate gets about a factor of 4 size reduction (which is why you add 3 cans of water to bring it back). The human body is only about 60% water, but you should be able to squeeze a bit more out of it! Freeze dried humans are probably the most effective form of packaging. It works for ice cream! [Answer] > > How much volume does a liquefied human take? > > > Just over 1 litre per kg of mass. Close packed in a rectangular sided form (cubes or other). Because: Rather than looking at materials, lets look at some attributes of "real people". The average person will float in fresh water with air in their lings and will usually sink if all air is expelled. The density of fresh water is 1 kg per litre. So the density of "just sinking" people is just over 1 kg/litre. If you allow 1 lite per kg = 1 cubic metre per tonne (or ton) in rectangular sided shapes you get a slightly higher than absolutely minimal volume. Add whatever allowances you need for storage (shelves, protection, ... . ) Most of the body is liquid which is incompressible. If the technology allows you may gain a little more packing density by compressing no fluid materials. [Answer] It really depends on the pressure, because liquids are, contrary to common belief, compressible, it just takes much more pressure than gases. In fact, everything is compressible, even the most incomprehensible thing there is, a neutron star, can develop into a black hole. So, I say, for maximum compressiblility, the minimum volume occupied by the liquefied people is only dependent on the mass, and is a sphere with radius r = 2GM/c², where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass, and c is the speed of light (this is the [Schwarzschild radius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius)), which is very small for the whole population of Earth. Subatomic, in fact. People compactified into black holes should not lose their original information, according to the outcome of a [bet between Stephen Hawking and Leonard Susskind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Hole_War), so the aliens may be able, in principle, to reconstruct the people from the information in the black hole. [Answer] What you want is a justification for liquifying the human body. Since some answers have already pointed out, the act of liquefying itself is useless, I will try pointing some other things If you only want to save volume and not mass why not make them denser? Why not extract only the nervous system and then liquefy it? Wouldn’t that make them more self-righteous... In absence of logic the reasoning you choose can be arbitrary. If you are hell-bent on liquefaction to save humanity from galactic extinctionists go with the second soln. ]
[Question] [ After years of meticulous planning and crushing any and all opposition I've set my sights on conquering other races and nations. One group that I believe would be a valuable asset for my expanding empire is the Giants. Under normal circumstances, my [men](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/167531/what-evolutionary-pressures-would-lead-to-orcs) could easily crush them but giants are a formidable force even for my men. some of the traits of giants are: * 10 ft (3 m) tall and weigh 751 lbs (340 kg) * have bloodhound level sense of smell and improved hearing * have thick skin approaching 0.3 in (7.62 mm) at its thickest * have Human/Orc-level intelligence * are proportionately weaker (but are still quite strong) * have worse endurance Compared to a human or even Orc * live in semi-nomadic tribes in groups of no more than 200 * can live up to be 110 years old Given this is there a good way of capturing these Giants? Would they even be worth the effort, and most importantly how do I stop them from rebelling? part 1: [How might a Dark Lord quickly overhaul a civilization?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/168722/how-might-a-dark-lord-quickly-overhaul-a-civilization/168739#168739) [Answer] Food. Animals that big need a lot of calories. Maybe giants eat huge quantities of plant material like elephants. Even elephants prefer crop plants like corn and melons over grass and bark. A giant can do more work than a team of horses. Employ them to do agriculture. Pay them with funds they can use to buy the huge quantities of food and beer they need. Once they catch on, pay them with land they can farm themselves. Domesticate them, as civilizations have done with nomads forever. Then when you need to make war, the giants are your citizens and will share in military obligations with all your other citizens. [Answer] Drugs Giants get hooked on drugs more readily than humans due to a neurological quirk, although you still need a pretty big dose. So you get your giants addicted to opium, which you import from a separate region as to prevent them from just taking it from you. Giants have a very hard time beating addictions because they‚Äôre so used to always getting their way, so it‚Äôs really hard for them to psychologically resist drug addiction. Once your giants are hooked, you have them do what you want and pay them in drugs. It‚Äôs slavery because they don‚Äôt have the free will to actually stop being employed by you. On a darker note, drug addiction and withholding is a relatively common tactic for organized crime to keep control of trafficked sex workers in real life. [Answer] how big their baby is ? i think a method to tame elephant can be use here, basically catch the infant put them in chain or shackle and tame them or brainwash them in the process. when they grow they probably wont even realize that they can remove the shackle easily and can be manipulate easily. here some copy paste from <http://www.stevescottsite.com/how-to-chain-an-elephant>, since my english is not good for a proper detail anyway. > > Despite their enormous power, elephants can be chained. It doesn‚Äôt > seem to make sense ‚Äì what chain is strong enough to hold an elephant > who struggles to break it? > > > The answer is a small one: a small chain fastened to a metal collar > around the elephant‚Äôs foot is attached to a wooden peg nailed into the > ground. This holds the elephant so strongly that it doesn‚Äôt ever > struggle to break free. > > > It starts when they‚Äôre babies‚Ä¶ > > > Chaining an elephant isn‚Äôt as > simple as just putting a chain around its leg ‚Äì an adult elephant > would snap that chain without even noticing the effort. > > > The way to chain an elephant is to start when it‚Äôs a baby. You don‚Äôt > even need a chain ‚Äì a strong rope will do. > > > The baby elephant will struggle, but eventually it will realize that > it can‚Äôt break the rope, and even worse, continuing to struggle > creates a painful burn on its leg. The baby elephant learns not to > struggle ‚Äì it accepts that the limit imposed by the rope or chain is > permanent, and there is no use struggling against it. > > > Sure, the elephant grows up, and becomes the most powerful land mammal > on the face of the earth. But the chains in its mind remain, and so > the chains on its leg are never broken. > > > [Answer] With skin that thick they've got no manual dexterity. Win them over with the sort of goods than can only be produced with nimble fingers -- fine-woven cloth, tools, gadgets -- and build a trading economy that binds them closely to your interests. [Answer] Don't capture one giant from the tribe. Instead, hire the whole tribe (they are as smart as humans). Then spend treasure and resources to flatter them, corrupt them, promote them, and win their loyalty. THAT will make you a force to be reckoned with. [Answer] Politics: Divide and Conquer Since they live in semi-nomadic tribes, I imagine that some of the tribes... don't get along. Make a deal with the tribe(s) you find to be the least offensive. Woo them with food and drink. Have them go after the other tribes, and capture them for you. Then, once all the allied giants have captured all of the enemy giants, throw a big feast in celebration. Poison the allied giants' drinks. They will be dead, at which point you have captured all the giants. You stop them from rebelling with fear. Whilst the allied giants still live, they can put down rebellions. When you throw them away like disposable tissue, it sends a clear message to the captured giants: that the same can be done to them. [Answer] A trench wider than the giant's stride and with the inside surrounded with a tripping hazard with a collapsible drawbridge and covered in net. "Fun" fact. Elephants can't jump. They're too massive. Tripping is potentially fatal for an elephant. A biologist once described it to me this way, "If a mouse, a human, and an elephant jumped off a twenty story building, the mouse would get up and shake it off immediately after. The human would die, but remain intact. The elephant would explode." The point was the square inverse law.\* The bigger a creature is, scaling up, the more the volume outpaces the directional support. A giant of anything remotely approaching fantasy proportions would not only be unable to jump, but a trip would be fatal and climbing short distances extremely hazardous. \* Explanation of Inverse Square law: Imagine a child's letter cube. üûñ -> 1 square tall, 1 square wide, 1 square deep = 1 cube Now imagine 8 of them arranged into a larger cube. ‚äû -> 2 squares tall, 2 squares wide, 2 squares deep = 8 cubes The vertical is only doubled, but the volume is octupled. That means it weighs 8 times as much for only being 2 times taller. That means, direct scaling a giant, if the giant was twice human size (a 'tiny' giant at only twice human size) a bone is only going to be twice as wide (supporting twice as much weight) but it's going to weigh eight time as much. It's muscles and bones, proportionally, have to carry (8/2) 4 times as much weight. So to get a similar experience as your giant, you'd have to have a backpack filled with 3 more of you (to make the total of 4 of you). At that point, you'd roughly feel what it's like to be a twice-scaled-up human. And that's just double scale. At heights often showing up in fantasy (say, tall enough to climb over a castle wall), their difficulty moving would be ridiculous. ]
[Question] [ 500,000 people have been kidnapped from all over the world by aliens. The aliens want to see if humans have empathy, and they can't understand our languages, as we speak they hear just random noises coming out of our mouths. Scientifically speaking what is the most effective way for aliens to measure in a laboratory if humans have or lack empathy? For the sake of the question let's say they won't use hyper technology to get inside our heads, instead they will use some quite primitive technology similar to ours, so nothing that resembles magic or things which are way to futuristic. > > Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. > > > [Answer] I'm legitimately surprised that this hasn't come up yet: <https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/rats-forsake-chocolate-save-drowning-companion> A test setup like this, with a set of humans being placed in apparent danger (if your aliens are trying to be humane (so to speak), the danger could be simulated) and another set being offered a choice between saving them and getting a personal reward, would be a fairly basic way to test this, especially if your aliens do control groups (Do humans save another when there's no reward for not doing so? What about when there is? Etc.), test related vs. unrelated/associated vs. unassociated subjects. [Answer] Unfortunately this sort of experiment has been done. I read about it as a teenager. It may have been carried out by Josef Mengele I choose not to remember. In essence relatives were paired up and one was tortured. It was noted whether the relative would be willing to take the pain instead of letting their relative suffer. E.g. would a mother agree to take torture to save her child from torture. I prefer not to remember any more about this or dig up its history. The records are out there if you are interested. EDIT You may also wish to investigate the Milgram Experiment which is less harrowing. It involved subjects giving what they believed to be electric shocks to another subject (who was actually an actor). There were no electric shocks involved but the actor pretended to be in increasing pain. <https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html> [Answer] We humans have [mirror neurons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron) in our brains. Makes this test a pretty trivial one. Just show to one person some negative and positive things done to other person, record activity in that part of the brain. I'm pretty sure the response will be uneven when testing different pairs of humans as all sort of biases would manifest. [Answer] Fortunately, even with "primitive" (relatively speaking), technology empathy is fairly easy to measure even without understanding your subjects' languages. To complete this experiment you'll first need to locate the main cognitive center of your species of choice. Look for a dense network of stuff that is electromagnetically active. It'll likely be found encased in some sort of dense protective shell/box. Use the clustering of sense organs in one place to inform your search, the main cognitive center will usually be found within the general vicinity of this clustering. Once you're confident you've found what we're looking for you're going to need a large number of individuals from your chosen species-oh, it looks like you've already got that sorted. Excellent. Next, designate pairs of individuals. One will be the "experiencer" and the other will be the (prospective) "empathizer". Now find a way to measure the electromagnetic activity of your species' cognitive center. I realize that's vague but there's not much to say besides suggesting a bunch of trial and error. Depending on the anatomy of the species in question you may be able to simply place electromagnetic sensors on the surface of the individual encasing its cognitive center, or you may need to implant sensors directly onto the latter by means of surgery. Anyways, once you've figured that out outfit each of the members of a pair of creatures with your electromagnetic measuring system. Now here comes the ~~fun~~, uh-the necessary part. Inflict damage of some kind (be creative) onto the designated "experiencer" while the "empathizer" is in proximity. Depending on what sort of senses your creatures have and where their sense organs are located you may need to orient your empathizer in a specific direction relative to the location of the experiencer for proper experimental efficacy. Now compare the measured cognitive response of the experiencer and the potential empathizer. Are they the same? If, so, you've detected empathy! Of course, this could simply be a fluke, any sound experiment needs to be repeated to weed out anomalous readings. That's where the previously mentioned large number of individuals comes in. Repeat the experiment many times to comfirm your results. Remember to vary what damage you inflict onto the experiencer in each instance. ~~Oh what fun!~~ [Answer] ## For an Extremely Low Tech Solution, Drop the Capitives on Island(s) Solitary creatures will scatter. Some, like male bears, will completely isolate themselves. Some, like female bears and their cubs, will keep together with their young until the young are old enough, while others, like lions, will remain in pairs demonstrating a band of increasing - but very low - empathy. Empathic creatures will form groups. Dogs will form packs where even the weak are cared for. Monkeys will develop specialized labor. These things are impossible - absent language - without empathy to cover the gap. In your aliens + humans case, if you drop them on an island with limited resources, you might get one of the following behaviors. A group of sociopaths would likely scatter to "do it themselves". A group of highly empathetic will form a village of some sort. The level at which the weakest in the group, or rebels against authority are cared for gives you an idea of how empathetic the society is. The aliens may even quantify empathy: 100% - $(number of isolated captives) \over (total number captives)$ [Answer] Crude/low tech version: Show them a video of someone getting kicked in the groin really hard, with audio of a sickening "crunch". Observe resulting wince/flinch/shudder/protective covering of area. Edit in response to comments Empathy is about understanding or sharing a feeling or reaction. Without necessarily understanding what a specific feeling is or reaction means, the aliens can invoke various actions and see that there is a reaction, and an approximate magnitude thereof. Once they find a suitable action/reaction they can then display it to the humans - they have no idea whether they are causing pain, laughter, sadness, or erotic stimulation, and quite frankly, they don't care. The important thing is observing whether the display generates a sympathetic reaction in the second subject. For best results, this will be repeated with a variety of action/reaction pairs [Answer] Tl/Dr: It's always difficult to write short answers about tricky words like "empathy." However, if we use some philosophy to pin it down to a more abstract concept based on relating to others, we can then expand the concept to how empathy affects societies and groups, and then look for those group patterns. We should see patterns in humans along well recognized scales of 5, 15, 40, 150, and 1500 individuals, and that would be a strong indicator of something we would have to call empathy. It's actually surprisingly difficult to identify empathy unless you already have an intuitive sense of what it is and understand the being. Its too easy for individuals to fake empathy if you don't have a good enough connection. For example, it can be really difficult for us to determine if the empathy of politicians is genuine or an illusion. The cynics would argue it's always an illusion, but it's hard to tell. You and I "feel" empathy because we're already bound together in how we view the world. To scientifically measure empathy from an alien perspective, we're going to have to be a bit more specific about it. Arne Naess is a 20th century philosopher who came up with a concept called the "Ecological Self." He was looking at different definitions of self ("My body is my self" "my mind is my self" "my body and mind is my self", etc), and found great problems with all of them. The one he settled on "The Ecological Self is that with which the self relates to." In his essays, he gave a story of a scientists who was looking through a microscope into a petri dish. A fly buzzing around the room landed in the dish. The dish itself contained a rather strong acid, rapidly deteriorating the fly's wings so that even if it escaped, it would not survive. But it takes time to be dissolved by acid. The scientist could do nothing but watch as the fly painfully disassociated into tiny molecules and integrated into the liquid of the dish. In those moments, Naess argued the scientist's Ecological Self extended to the fly. He had some sense of relating to what the fly was going through. Of course the scientist had never been dissolved in acid, but he had been splashed with it and burned by it, so there was something with which he related to the fly. Naess then went on to argue that much of altruism could be explained by selfishness from such a wide concept of self. He argued that Mother Theresa was the most selfish person ever. However, her Self was so wide and all encompassing that acting in her self-interest meant supporting the countless people whom she helped during her life. Her Ecological Self encompassed more people than most of us can even imagine. I use this philosophical example because it provides a larger more abstract structure the aliens can look for. They can look for evidence of this Ecological Self. If they find that the Ecological Self of any individual extends beyond their trivial body, then they have found empathy. Thus, the best way to scientifically search for empathy is to put people together into groups and observe whether they exhibit these sorts of behaviors. This, of course, will require trying to categorize human behaviors into simple egocentric behaviors and wider behaviors founded in the Ecological Self. Measuring this is excruciatingly difficult, which is why we don't have any scientific tests for politicians. However, one fascinating possibility stems from the [Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory) (IIT). IIT quantifies the gestalt effects which come from bringing processing units together. It studies how much information is contained in the individual units (neurons in the usual IIT case, but test-subjects in this alien case), versus how much information is contained in groups of them. If there's no integration, no larger selves to be had, then a collection contains no more information than the individual units. Put a bunch of CDs together, and they contain little more information than the stamped contents of the individual CDs themselves. Really the only information stored beyond that is a few bits of information stored in the order you stack the CDs. However, put humans together, and they tend to form groups and societies which contain far more information in their structure than in the individual bodies themselves! A key to using this theory here is that information has a tendency to decay over time unless something is preserving it. If there's a lot of information stored in the collection, it will tend to decay unless it's providing some value to the individual units. So with this, we can divide up our sample of half a million people into small lots and see if they form structures with measurable information stored in their interactions. You can start with large or small scale samples, but I'd probably start with small because I have a limited population of test subjects to work with. As it turns out, our aliens will notice really interesting results occurring at some regular intervals. They'll find similarities between groups of 3 4 and 5. Likewise, they'll find patterns in the 5-15 region which are different from the 3-5 region. Another region is 15-40. Then 40-150. 150-500 is a bit fuzzy, then there's 500-1500. 1500 on takes on a very different nature. These numbers have been found by anthropologists in virtually all cultures. If I may gloss them: * 3-5 people is your close knit group. These are the people you will let you see at your worst, or at your most vulnerable. These are the people you rely upon when everything else has gone wrong. In most militaries, 3-5 people form a fireteam, lead by a corporal. * 5-15 is your wider friend circle. These are the people you rely on directly on a day to day basis. In hunter-gather societies, these are the sizes of hunting parties in many parts of the world. In most militaries, 12 people form a squad, lead by a corporal or a sergeant. * 15-40 people is a tricky group to give a single word for. This is smaller than a tribe, but is a close knit group with a lot of tribal elements to it. The hunting party of 15 people will come back to the great group of 40. Here you will have true "leaders" in the sens of them making decisions which everyone else has to follow. In most militaries, 30-50 people will form a platoon, lead by a lieutenant, which is the first officer we've seen in this hierarchy of military organizations. * 4-150 is a tribe. This is the size where we see real tribal allegiance. Many companies target 150 as the size of a department or center. The upper end of this is a number called "[Dunbar's number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)," as the size of a tribe, though he actually gave it as a range rather than a single number. IDEO, made famous by documentaries in the '90s, would build a new building when they hit 150 people rather than go larger within a building. 80-250 people is a company in the military, lead by a captain or a major. * 150-500 is a tough region that's been nicknamed the "megatribe." In anthropology, we find this when tribes form alliances. These are the extended tribe. In the military, these are battalions, lead by a Lt. colonel. * 500-1500 is a fun region to explore. It is currently believed that 1500 is the maximum number of faces we can pair to identities. If you have a society larger than that, you become forced to have people who you do not identify by their identity. You have to identify them by classes or roles, such as "serf" or "plumber" or "teacher." Larger than that, you see written down hierarchies dominate, as our brains can't handle the size of the structures without writing. I point all of these out because they seem to be very universal, so the aliens would almost certainly notice those structures. They just seem to form when humans are involved, so any reasonable scientific experimentation will eventually find them. From an IIT perspective, this would be sufficient to argue that there's something somewhat-empathic going on. If you stressed one human in a way specific to its individual self, you could watch how the group responds to reach out and help that individual. It would be very hard to explain the patterns we see by simple rules, as opposed to ants which have very clear hard-coded social structures built into their DNA to handle the 4 thousand to 4 million ant populations. Ours would be more fluid and adapting. The groups always seem to form, though the actual social structures they create vary depending on the circumstances. This could be tested easily by dividing out groups and seeing how they interact before bringing them back into the fold (three cheers for nondestructive testing!) To turn this one around on you, you might ask yourself whether you would consider ants to be empathic in any way at all. There's something to their structure that suggests there's more than meets the eye! Now that would be the scientific way. The other more intuitive way would be to introduce yourself into the system. You, as an alien, try to extend your Ecological Self to include the humans. Then you see whether this self is returned or not. This, of course, may introduce empathy into the humans where it did not exist before. Depending on your goals, this may be a good thing or a bad thing. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama series explored this. Of course, if your alien species has no empathy, this will not work. Then the question will be "what do they think they're looking for?" Is this a cold calculating study before planning an invasion? If so, then the pure scientific approach is best. On the other hand, if they're looking for something they lost, they might try integrating themselves into this human society. Perhaps they can learn empathy from us! [Answer] [Scientists have performed a similar test on rats to test for altruism](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-you-rat-me-out/), which is closely related to empathy, and the same under some definitions. The experiment involved two rats, one of which was in a small cage in the middle of the enclosure while the other was free to roam. Approximately 70% of rats chose to free the trapped one, even when it meant sharing the supply of treats in the room. The aliens could easily set up the same or similar experiments with pairs or small groups of the human captives to observe the results. Another method could simply be observation - place the humans on a planet somewhere with a little food and supplies and see how they interact and perform when setting up their own small civilisation. [Answer] How are we so sure the aliens even comprehend empathy? Would the aliens even have a sense of "self"? They could be insectoid .. spider, ant or bee-like megamonsters who only have some kind of hive-mind but each creature cannot feel anything in particular at all but just acts on insectoid insticts. Actually this is a quite popular type of alien in sci fi. I think it is a better question how we humans can test the aliens for these qualities. Because at least humans know what empathy is. [Answer] Aliens want to test humanity for empathy. They stage a crash landing of one of their spacecraft near a small town in New Mexico, to see if the local humans will offer assistance to the crew. Humanity leans about the names "Roswell" and "Area 51". Aliens learn that humanity doesn't really have much in the way of empathy and have left us well alone ever since. [Answer] 1. Isolate them, but need all their needs 2. After a period of time give them a companion (either of the same species, or something that's non-threatening to them that they can socialize with) 3. Threaten or treat their companion badly and observe their reaction [Answer] The aliens could set up a scenario similar to this: Create a huge pool of water. Place one group of humans on one side of the water. Place another group of humans on the other side. Now the aliens would arrange the living conditions on both sides of the water in a way that one side is very hostile and dangerous, a place you wouldnt want your children to grow up in, and the other one to be a flourishing society. Finally the aliens would put some boats on the "bad" side. As a result of this setup humans from the group in "bad" living conditions would try to cross the body of water on their boats. However the aliens would have prepared the boats in a way that they would not be fit to make the trip and sink en-route. Now the aliens could observe the reactions of the other group. Different strategies might surface: Some might do it like the rats mentioned in another example and try to save the drowning ones. Others might choose to ignore it. Some might build up barbed walls on their shores to keep even the good swimmers from entering their land. And few might even search for ways to make the "bad" land more liveable. It seems like a pretty reliable empathy test. Luckily noone would do such a thing. [Answer] perhaps in the same way we tested for empathy in elephants and dolphins? expose some members of a group of humans to certain stimuli such as pain and view how they react. if the other humans appear to be attempting to comfort the other members of their group it would be a good indicator of empathetic tendencies existing in humans [Answer] If empathy is: the ability to understand the feelings of others, then we need a test that can't be passed by someone who doesn't understand the feelings of others. Here is a short list of things that can be learned through training, repetition, conditioning, etc. that are obvious contenders for empathy but actually don't fit the bill. 1. Saving people that are in danger. 2. Comforting someone who is visibly crying / screaming / hyperventilating. 3. Performing really any action in response to an obvious stimuli. These do not necessarily indicate any understanding of another's emotions. Such responses can be learned or programmed. For example a robot can be programmed to respond to a sound frequency that approximates crying, with ice cream and words of affirmation. Does the robot understand what sadness is and how the other person feels, or what its actions are doing? If this is the only code in the robot, then no it wouldn't understand emotion. Action and response. In the same way a dog can be trained that when a person wearing a mask (so emotions cant be seen) stamps their foot, then the dog should sit on their lap and lick them. What is a way to make this happen with out any emotional understanding? Just consistently rewarded the dog with a treat afterwards. I hope I am beginning to show that actions that might seem like they indicate empathy, don't always have to. So since we are an advanced alien race, I presume that we want to know if humans are capable of empathy with a high scientific degree of certainty. I propose that we test human's ability to conceive the emotions of others. > > Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. > > > This is the emphasis of my answer (and in my opinion the core component of empathy). A test to prove this can take any form, but there are some key points we should hit. 1. We should establish a baseline. How does the subject being tested react to certain situations, and how do they feel about things. We want to make sure the subject is not just saying how they would react in every situation. 2. We give the subject a hypothetical test using the same situations as step 1, but with regard to different people. We want to make sure to use examples of people that are known to react differently to the subject. Provide appropriate background information for each person the subject is empathizing with, provide a situation and ask the subject how the person would react. How do they feel. What are some of their likely future actions. For example: "Person A goes to law school and dedicates her life to it for 4 years excelling at it the whole time. She is then expelled for failing one class. She has never failed a class before. How does she feel? What are some likely future actions?". 3. We see if the subject can identify the emotions of others with some degree of accuracy (maybe 50% of answers are right, or something like that). Now obviously there are some caveats. For example not all humans experience empathy. We have plenty of psychopaths and they are markedly known for an absence of empathy. We may also want to weigh different parts of the test differently. For example when predicting the actions of others in response to an emotion is difficult, so we may be satisfied with any plausible action. However the key point of this test is that the subject should have to mentally walk through what others would do, to clearly rule out other explanations of seemingly-empathetic behaviors. ]
[Question] [ Would a mid-sized transport spaceship (able to carry up to two hundred people, including crew and a fair amount of supplies - enough to survive in space for up to a couple of weeks, if need be) have a cockpit or a bridge? I suppose it's my call, but I'm trying to be realistic in my first draft. I welcome examples from real life, earthbound ships and scifi. I've tried running my own search but Google is a black hole when it comes to questions like this one. For context, the ship primarily transports passengers between several gargantuan, low Earth orbit space stations and a moon base. Thanks for any help you can offer, and please be gentle on me. I've watched many space-based shows & movies and read a bit of space opera but want to be as realistic as I can. [Answer] It depends on how space ships operate in your universe. When they operate more like maritime ships (like they do in the Star Trek universe, for example), then "Bridge" would be appropriate. When they work more like aircraft, then "Cockpit" might be more appropriate. Which is why some space operas use "bridge" for large crafts (which behave analogue to naval ships) and "cockpit" for smaller crafts (which operate analogue to planes). But when you want your spacefarers to inherit from neither naval nor aviation tradition and instead see their roots in 20th and 21st century space programs, then they might prefer the term ["command module"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_module). That term also works for stations. The [Zvezda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zvezda_(ISS_module)) module of the ISS is sometimes referred to as the command module of the station. Another option: The piloting area of the [Space Shuttle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle#Crew_compartment) was called the "Flight Deck", so that would also be a term you could use. It would make most sense when "Deck" is also used as terminology to separate other sections of the vessel. [Answer] As a rough guide: If its a vehicle with a single person in charge who is also a controller, even if this person has a couple of subordinates: Cockpit (or cab sometimes) Example: cars, trains, planes up to 747. Boats where the captain is also the steersman. Somewhat implies that here is only one steersman, although they may have a relief. Like a 747, which frankly should have a bridge not a cockpit! If its a vehicle with a person in charge who is NOT an operator: Bridge Example: any boat where the captain is not a steersman. Especially the bigger ones. If its a vehicle that does more than just vehicle around, it will have an operation center. Which may or may not be co-located with the bridge, which only cares about the vessel itself. Example: Aircraft carrier. Missile cruiser. Fleet coordinator. In your case, a "mid-sized transport spaceship (able to carry up to two hundred people)" would definitely have a bridge. It would have one captain, and one steersman position filled by different people in shifts. Unless you presuppose a LOT of automation, to the point where a single person can handle the navigation & steering & etc of the ship 24/7. [Answer] If the location is a small enclosed space where the commanding officer (and perhaps one or two others) directly controls the vessel and all or at least a majority of vessel navigational, communication, and engine control functions without having to move from their position at the controls, it is a cockpit. Not just aircraft, but boats have them as well. If the location is a larger space where multiple people are expected to be on a routine basis to carry out operations, and the commanding officer does not (the majority of the time) directly control the vessel, it is a bridge. There is, of course, a gray area. On modern automated bridges a single person can control almost everything from one console, but it's still generally called a bridge if you can get up and walk around without interfering with vessel control. The benchmark I'd use is the "being able to walk around" part. To use Star Trek and Star Wars examples, in the cockpit of a Starfleet shuttle or the Millennium Falcon if you tried to stroll around, the pilot (who is typically also the vessel's officer in command) will get annoyed because you're physically getting in their way. On the bridge of a Star Destroyer or a starship, you can move around without interfering with anyone carrying out their duties, and the officer in command isn't the one in direct control of the ship (most of the time). Related to it is that on a bridge you typically must be able to move around to get to different controls because they aren't all accessible from a single position. For example, if you look at luxury yachts, this would be a cockpit: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/o9m5S.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/o9m5S.jpg) All the controls are at one station, and aside from whoever is at the wheel and the person beside them (considered to be a co-pilot), you can't get in there without physically getting in the way. There isn't any way for anyone else except the two people in the cockpit seats to be able to do anything. This, on the other hand, is a bridge: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xgRtQ.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xgRtQ.jpg) Lots of room to walk around and not interfere with operations, and the person at the wheel has to move around to control other basic functions such as the navigation and radar controls, which also means that while it could be controlled by a single person, it could also have several people able to carry out functions at the same time. [Answer] I always read about "control rooms" in old science fiction stories. I hate the term "flight deck" for some reason. Maybe because it seems too British and too areonautical for a vehicle which operates totally outside of any atmosphere. I prefer the term "cockpit" for airplanes. But much less for large scale spaceships. After watching a lot of Star Trek I am used to the term "bridge". However, it seems a bit too nautical for vehicles which operate in outer space far from the surface of any body of water. I note that modern warships are commanded from the CIC, not the bridge, which is only concerned with steering the vessel. > > A combat information center (CIC) or action information centre (AIC) is a room in a warship or AWACS aircraft that functions as a tactical center and provides processed information for command and control of the near battlespace or area of operations. Within other military commands, rooms serving similar functions are known as command centers. > > > CICs were inspired by science fiction: > > The idea of such a centralised control room can be found in science fiction as early as The Struggle for Empire (1900). Early versions were used in the Second World War; according to Rear Admiral Cal Laning, the idea for a command information center was taken ‚Äúspecifically, consciously, and directly‚Äù from the spaceship Directrix in the Lensman novels of E. E. Smith, Ph.D.,[3] and influenced by the works of his friend and collaborator Robert Heinlein, a retired American naval officer.[4] > > > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat\_information\_center[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_information_center%5B1%5D) And possibly a passenger transport vessel might have some sort of OIC (Orbital Information Center) keeping track of the orbits of functioning satellites, dead satellites, space stations, space ships in transit, space debris, meteroids, etc. for hundreds of thousands of miles around the ship as it travels in Earth orbits and to the Moon. But to me it is most natural to think of the command center (another prossible term) of a space ship as the "control room", or some similar term like "control chamber" or "control cabin". And possibly different characters could tease each other by using different terms for the command center that they know will annoy the others. [Answer] I think the difference is whether the captain is in direct control of the ship as the pilot, which indirectly correlates to ship and crew size: * Captain is the pilot with direct control = cockpit * Captain giving orders instead of being directly control the ship = bridge [Answer] Well, this is a great question! I thought it sounded easy at first glance, but then I realised I actually had no idea...so I turned to our old friend Wikipedia. I'm sure you did this too and I am preaching to the choir, but here goes. Cockpit comes from 'cockswain', and "referred to an area in the rear of a ship where the cockswain's station was located, the cockswain being the pilot of a smaller "boat" that could be dispatched from the ship to board another ship or to bring people ashore." <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockpit> Whereas the term 'Bridge' apparently comes from an actual bridge on old time steam boats: "With the arrival of paddle steamers, engineers required a platform from which they could inspect the paddle wheels and where the captain's view would not be obstructed by the paddle houses. A raised walkway, literally a bridge, connecting the paddle houses was therefore provided. When the screw propeller superseded the paddle wheel, the term "bridge" survived. Now, as to what term you should use in your story, well, it sounds like cockpit may be more true to form history-wise given you are talking about a type of smaller shuttle between larger craft, no? As usual, I am completely prepared to be wrong - just offering my 2 cents worth. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_(nautical)> [Answer] Probably neither. There would be much less need for a specific bridge or cockpit area when systems are automated and monitoring can be carried out from various locations. There might be a central control screen to act as a psychological reminder that this is the place where any important flight decisions are made (abort options, initiate various engine fire operations etc). More likely is an operations room (where the "bridge" screen might be located) where crew inside the ship can monitor crew outside the ship on EVA in space or on the surface acting as CAPCOM. Ultimately it would be a matter of taste what such a room would be called. They could call it whatever they want, but in my view operations room would be a better fit than bridge or cockpit. Watch what happens to SpaceX and their Starship in the next few years, at some point you may well see a door, seat or screen labeled control room, bridge or cockpit. We shall see. [Answer] Basically, if you're coming from the angle of realism and practicality, it all comes to size. Small enough ships just simply do not have enough room to have a proper shielded bridge inside of them, and\or designed to perform things that might actually need a cockpit functionality (I.e. a direct unobstructed view of where you are going), like landing on the planet plane-style or manual docking. But for the big ships definitely only a bridge would do, and it obviously should be in the center of the vessel instead of stupidly be exposed on the outside, like too many shows to count sin. [Answer] First and foremost think about your target audience and what they would like. Do keep in mind that many times media miss the "target"group and land with an untargeted group. Me, I like Bridge. Any space vehicle that is capable of carrying up to 200 people is going to be large. Not withstanding just the humans, luggage, food, water, fuel, life support, more fuel, seating, more water, even more fuel and what ever else you (the author) decide this thing will be called Ship = Bridge, craft = control room/cockpit. Give yourself some time to think this through and maybe you will come up with the perfect name for it, a name that you invent. Good luck to you. [Answer] Nomenclature When you say cockpit, I automatically imagine a seated position cramped amongst the machinery in a small craft/fighter, whilst when you say bridge I imagine the space where the Capitan, navigator and pilot stay on a naval vessel. That is what every average joe is going to imagine when talking about that and that's what literature and TV have taught us over the years. I don't care it's might not be right, it is widely spread as such. Use case angle It all depends on HOW you work out your spaceflight. I'd say that for high-intensity short duration stuff the cockpit is better, and for low-intensity long duration stuff, the "bridge" is a better solution. The cockpit It's great for stuff that's high intensity highly autonomous and short duration. You don't want to be strapped there for hours on end, as it is a risk to your extremities and poses long term problems. You can have "gun operator" strapped in the turret for the duration of an engagement or a fighter pilot, but as a captain of a cargo ship going for days on end, it would be highly uncomfortable without the means to get out and refresh yourself. The bridge/CIC Better for low-intensity long time stuff and situations, where you're not sure about the number of people that might or might not be needed to make decisions at the time. Imagine you need to have someone else (port official, tugboat navigator, diplomat,....) in the decisionmaking process that is not normally present and if everyone is communicating from their cockpit they have no reasonable means to intersect into the process without leaving some empty cockpits just for them. It's easier to just make one "Command room"/"bridge" and let them come there and interact with the personell. You don't have to have every console on the bridge, but there needs to be a space where the "head honchos" and "leaders" can come together and communicate. And the closing noncommital thoughts All of this is of course dependent on just how you write your own fiction, you can have everyone in cryostasis operating the ship by connecting their brains to a network or you can have all of them in a "bridge full of capsules", where every capsule controls some subsystem. Or you can replicate the classical naval doctrine and have departments where they are needed and then have CIC if not everything is automated or the ship is REALLY large. ]
[Question] [ I'm having some real dilemmas creating rules for magic in my fantasy novel. Here is my issue: there are three intelligent beings included in my novel. The entire premise is that all races were created by all-powerful beings, and with good intentions. Humans are characterized as being capable of anything they set their minds to. Because of the desires and free will of men, they are easily corrupted. That being said, the kingdoms of men fear magic due to its threat against them. I'm using the cliché party of two men and one woman as protagonists. Each protagonist is from a different race. The woman is from the mystical race, and therefore will have been taught to use magic by her people. She is acting as the group "healer". Another character is from the human race, and will be acting as the team "tank". The third character is someone I am modeling from a D&D campaign I did where I made a changeling sorcerer. The "changeling" equivalents I am using in my world are frowned upon by the human race, due to them being deemed as untrustworthy because of their ability to change their appearance. Although they are not welcome in human society, it is not uncommon for these "changelings" to live amongst men. The idea is that this character does not know his background (although he is aware that he is not human). He is adopted, becomes a sailor, and I want him to have the ability to manipulate weather so I can design him as his crew's weather mage. So finally, my dilemma. This character would not have had formal training, which means he would have discovered this power on his own. The idea is that anyone in this universe has the potential to use magic (although some may not be very good) but I want the use of magic to be rare an extraordinary by non-mystics. Also, I should add that the antagonist is a human blood-magic user, which he discovered through experimentation and is the ruler of his nation, so his magic is also explainable. I've taken into account magic costs, through an explanation of a sort of naturalistic pantheism (all magic comes from the natural world itself). I guess my ultimate question is how do I stop every Average Joe from throwing fireballs when I am dedicated to the idea that everyone has the potential to throw fireballs? [Answer] Another possibility is that the magic needs to be awakened in someone before he can use it and every magic type has a different trigger. For example a wind mage gets awakended in the eye of a storm. Fire getting burned? Lighting getting hit by lightning? Because they are this kind of mage they survive it unharmed but its to dangerous to just randomly try out because no one knows what kind of magic they are. Step further would be that the mystics actually can feel their own affinity so have a better chance to use the correct trigger so more magic users in that race. [Answer] One possibility here is that magic is controlled by a recessive gene. The same kind of random combination (or random mutation) that produces an occasional albino human (rare, but far from unknown) produces a specific variation on a neurotransmitter (or receptor) that gives control of magic. Why hasn't this given an evolutionary advantage and swept through the entire race, making those without the gene vanishingly rare? First, it's recessive -- the "normal" dominant gene codes for production of a biochemical that the recessive variant fails to produce; and second, the recessive, while harmless when heterozygous, creates a condition of very low fertility (or even, effectively, sterility) when homozygous that greatly reduces the likelihood of the mage successfully reproducing. As a result, while carriers of the gene are fairly common (like carriers of blue eyes in humans), because those who express the gene are virtually unable to reproduce, there is no chance of homozygous carriers producing lines of mages. This could also be a multi-gene condition, where two or more recessive sites would have to combine to produce the "mage" variant neurotransmitter/receptor. This would make mages even rarer (instead of blue eyes, this would be more like polydactyly). [Answer] Using / accessing Magic is instinctive once you know how, but almost impossible to describe in a meaningful manner to someone who can't do it. A "real world" equivalent would be wiggling your ears: Anyone can do it if they can work out how to isolate and move the correct muscles. And, once you can do it, you can just do it - and explaining it to someone who can't will seem annoying and frustrating. There are exercises that you can do to help "get the feel" for the muscles, but some people would take years of practice before it "clicks", and other people are effectively born with the ability. Then, because of this initial "speedbump" that most practitioners need to get over, the Mages Guilds collectively claim that magic is not something that anyone "can just learn" - and regularly send around theatrical mystics to seek out suitable apprentices with claims that "they possess the rare gift". Some use it as an excuse to rescue the poor and downtrodden - others as a way to scam rich nobles (either into paying for lessons, or into paying for the mage not to take their child away!) An inverted real-world example (i.e. where the "have-nots" are rare, and lack a skill that most take for granted) would be depth perception / binocular vision: There are people out there who don't develop the ability to use both eyes to judge how far away something is - everything the looks flat to them, like watching it on a TV screen or cinema screen. However sometimes, with a suitable stimulus, their brain "reboots" and they gain the ability - an example I have heard was someone who was taken to see a 3D movie (complaining that there was no point) and the over-done & exaggerated CGI 3D effect forced his brain to consider "something's not right here" and evaluate the image from each eye separately. So, next time someone wears 3D glasses and jokes about how it makes Real Life look 3D to them - they may actually have a point. [Answer] No formal training does not mean no training. Consider barber-surgeons. <http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/barbersurgeons> > > Barber-surgeons were medical practitioners in medieval Europe who, > unlike many doctors of the time, performed surgery, often on the war > wounded. Barber-surgeons would normally learn their trade as an > apprentice to a more experienced colleague. Many would have no formal > learning, and were often illiterate. > > > You can formally train to use magic, as your healer probably did: colleges, competing schools of thought, theoretical basis and so on. The physicians in the Middle Ages had all of that. They also considered themselves above services like surgery or pulling teeth. Then there are people like your weather witch. This is everyday magic and would have been learned as an apprentice. Probably your guy was a sailor first and the old weather witch on his ship saw he had potential and so started teaching him on the job. There can be other similar low level magic users - flea and louse killers, tinkers, sore tooth healers and so on. The formally trained magic users of course do not consider such to really be mages and a comparison would likely offend the one and embarrass the other. [Answer] If you look at the "real world", there are a lot of abilities that are available to everyone (or almost everyone), but most people don't have: skateboarding, juggling, doing handstands, or playing a musical instrument, to name a few. Let's take that last one as an example. Anyone could pick up a trumpet or a clarinet and make a few hoots or squeaks - the magical equivalent would be a tiny puff of wind, or a slight shift in color, something that barely even registers on the senses. Trying too hard makes a loud BLAT or squeak - the magical equivalent of something locally annoying, like giving yourself terrible indigestion, or making the area around you smell of old fish. After a few minutes toying around with what combination of keys produce what sound, you could probably play an off-tune "Jingle Bells" or "Mary Had A Little Lamb", albeit still squeaking loudly or playing very breathy notes. Magically speaking, that would produce an incredibly dim light, or a faintly noticeable breeze. Most people never progress beyond that, simply because you need a lot of practice to do anything more. It will be tiring, the equivalent of developing calluses when playing guitar, or an embouchure playing trumpet, but they'll still have to play every day. Just like learning all the notes on an instrument, it's possible to learn the basic fundamentals of magic on your own, but it'll be trial and error - going a "little flat" may turn your gentle breeze into an annoying static cling problem, or perhaps your shoes will start smoldering. And using the wrong techniques may sound ok, but it'll take a lot more effort, or prevent progress by exercising the wrong muscles. Jingle Bells is fun once or twice, but doesn't sound nearly as good as Carol of the Bells, and hitting all those high notes requires constant practice to exercise the right muscles, not to mention the stamina to be able to play for several minutes straight, as opposed to a few seconds. Magic is no different; the "high notes" produce the most effect, and the ability to cast powerful spells takes stamina and a high degree of control - it's easy to take that quiet drawn-out note of "Translate Language" and turn it into a loud squeak of "Induce Personal Blindness." Timing, stamina, and control take a lot of practice to achieve. As awesome as it is to play a musical instrument, most people can't be bothered; likewise, most people don't want to take the time to learn how to use magic, because it takes so long before you can so much as summon fire, let alone rain down fireballs on your enemies. Finally, magic may require some sort of focus. Powerful mages may be able to use any focus (wand, staff, crystal ball, etc.), but most mages will pick one and stick with it. Learning a single focus limits what you can do, just like picking piano over flute. And a focus could be quite expensive - that wand isn't just a stick with a handle, it's an expensive investment. In short: learning magic is difficult even with a teacher, and the tools required to practice may be hard to find and harder to build, and limit the type of magic you can practice. [Answer] In the situation you describe, I would try looking at the real-world occult systems instead of fictional magic, since they most often try to explain, why anybody has a potential to do magic, but only a small number of their adherents can be successful. Folk tales are also a good source. Magic is taught I will mention it only for the sake of completeness - you've already stated that people can discover magic by themselves. There basic idea here is that magic is either very complicated ritually, or magical thinking is so significantly different from everyday thinking that you need to be taught to use it. Magic is done by spirits It is pretty popular too, and it may be not the best for your setting. In this version, a source of magic is not exactly in the person, but in his ability to call upon spiritual entities and coerce them. Maybe there is a shaman-style spiritual quest, whereby the prospective magic users discovers his spirit helper and then it teaches him further. It may be a matter of knowing the Names of the spirits (Kabbalah style), and knowing at least one name puts you into position to discover more. Magic is gifted This version also presumes the existence of the spiritual entity . There simplest example is the folktale idea of the 'deal with the Devil', 'deal at the crossroads' etc. Magical ability is conferred by a spirit as a part of some bargain. It doesn't need to be a devil, it may be an ancestor spirit looking for vengeance. Magic is insane That is my favorite. It is used in fiction too, but mostly in the 'magical realism' style of writing, not in the mainstream fantasy. In this version, magic exists in the world, but it's illogical and irrational enough so that an average person is just not able to think this way. Something similar to the theories of quantum physics, for example. 'The world is not what it seems' - the human understanding of events and things is locked into linear time, the illusion of actions and consequences, or the illusion of free will and similar stuff. A practitioner needs to pierce this veil of illusion in order to grasp the real laws according to which the world operates. It is a bit like Zen Buddhism this way. Such enlightenment may be a result of a long study under another practitioner, but may also just happen on its own - either as a result of meditation, or a particularly traumatic event. In such version, all magical practitioners would seem slightly mad and unhinged to the ordinary people. [Answer] Magic is like math. In theory everyone can learn math and become a professor, but to do so requires a certain amount of intelligence and without any people to help you learn and develop your math skills its going to be very hard to become any good at it. Math in this sense is the perfect comparison. In the old ages there were mathematicians and most had their own techniques and theories to solve certain mathematical problems, there were even contests with prize money given in some places to solve a particular problem or learn a particular way of solving a mathematical problem. Now replace "math" with "magic" and you've got a perfect explanation. [Answer] 1. The ability to perform magic is genetic in origin, and so is inherited from your parents. 2. The gene(s) is/are recessive. 3. An active ability to perform magic results in sterility. This has a number of important effects. Firstly, high levels of magic affinity in a population are self-limiting. If you build up a large stock of magical genes, you're going to end up with a lot of powerful descendants in the near future but the long term future of your family line is at risk. There are no magical families. You might be a magician, and maybe all of your siblings have magical skills too, but your parents can't have had any, and you won't have any children of your own. The people of the "mystical race" do have a larger number of carriers of the magical genes, but have a basic grasp of genetics and understand that you must be very careful in your choice of marriage (or however breeding partnerships are formed in their culture). If your sibling is a wizard and you are not, then for the sake of your family you must be very careful in choosing a partner who is from a family with no history of magic if you want to have children who can themselves continue the family line. Alternatively, as a member of a magical family who can have children, if you wished to have magical children it is much more likely that you would be able to. If your family has no history of magic (and therefore probably doesn't carry the magical genes) and you wish to preseve this trait, you must be careful to ensure that some of your children are strategically partnered with other non-magical families to ensure that the magic-free traits are continued into the future. I don't recall reading any stories where the equivalent of a muggle is considered to be a special and valuable thing, whose unique abilities must be carefully preserved for the good of the future, so it would make for an unusual dynamic. [Answer] Magic is dependent upon a limited resource. Niven's [The Magic Goes Away](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Goes_Away#List_of_works_in_the_series) series considers a world where the power behind magic mana is a limited resource, one that is depleted by usage. If hoarding mana, etc. is needed to perform magic, magic will be rare. In Niven's series, mana was formerly abundant and magic was common and extravagant, but it became rarer over time as the mana was depleted. You mention blood-magic. In Niven's world, this is potent because it relies upon the natural mana concentrating effect life-force has. [Answer] # Stronger Mages use up all the available mana Mana comes from the natural world, however like water in a lake, if it's drained faster than it fills it soon becomes empty. Years of practice allow Mages to pull most (or at least more) of the available mana as soon as it permeates their area. Most people never get good enough to snag more than a thimbleful of magic, especially if they live near to a well practiced mage. This also explains why most mages' towers are far apart (so they can get more mana without having to fight for it) and why mages in cities/towns generally hate each other (since they're constantly battling to draw 'their share' of the available mana.) Even further, this explains why you see so few fantastic creatures in or near cities, as their very existence is predicated on an environment filled with mana. When they attack cities and towns, it's not because they're particularly angry at the townsfolk, but because they've divined that something in the city is the source of the painful "mana-dryness" they're suffering from. Most (especially non-sentient creatures) aren't smart enough to realize that the wizards are the cause and so their attacks are more like a wild animal lashing out at something it doesn't understand. [Answer] # You don't play with fire You can cast spells and everyone knows this, but doing so may kill you. Like Fred. He was stupid and one night he got drunk, decided to cast a spell, and blew himself up and half the block with him. People have come to believe that magic cannot be controlled. In fact, it might very well be a curse. Magic is strictly forbidden as a result and people who openly cast spells are considered to be reckless or terrorists. That having been said, there's Waghort's (any resemblance to Parry Hotter is purely coincidental), which teaches people (in secret) that magic can be controlled, and they have several powerful mages who do so, like their leader Dombledure. [Answer] My first thought is to specify that the magical training people must do is physically/emotionally/mentally torturous somehow. They must undergo this training to have any magical ability at all, and it is the torturous conditions itself that causes the magic to manifest initially. You could also throw in that one of the races is predispositioned to handle the torture (without dying/losing their mind/becoming recluses) required to use magic. This would mean that: * Most probably won't stumble accidentally on their magical ability b/c they avoid torturous conditions * The people that do know how it works won't want to do it unless they are sufficiently desperate * The person will have to be very dedicated and strong-willed to get through said "training" Then, the reason your changeling could do magic could be to do intense childhood trauma. Child slave, abandonment, emotionally terrifying moments, the possibilities are endless for an abandoned child in a rough urban setting. Through these trauma, he suffers enough that at some point he inadvertently realizes he can use magic, and begins to understand how to control it (obviously with some hilarious, destructive, or serious consequences). This could provide a cool, mysterious backstory , as well as a motive for why a ship would pick up a random changeling. [Answer] The ability to do magic is relatively common, kicking in gradually in your 20s or 30s. (Growth hormones suppress magic.) (Going off on a tangent, you could have sex hormones also suppress magic. Thus the most powerful mages are post-menopausal women.) However, magic is dangerous. Unless you have had a lot of training, you are more likely to blow up your neighborhood than to light your candle from your chair. By the time they are old enough for magic power to manifest, most people are wise enough to not want to take the risks. "Hold my beer while I set off this fireball" just isn't as appealing once you've survived to your 30s. [Answer] ## Take @ZeissIkon's and @StarfishPrime's answer (recessive genes) and add a cultural limitation. This will make a rare gene combination even rarer. ## What if the powers that be feel threatened by those who can do magic? They may actively stamp out anyone who shows signs of magic, maybe even going after their families as well; killing or social stigma. In the first case, a number recessive carriers are directly pulled out of the gene pool. In the second case, the remaining members oft he family have a lower chance of breeding: "look, it's a Jones, they had a cousin a couple of generations ago who produced a mage, better stay away from them." Or, they allow magic but only as part of a power structure that limits breeding. Magic is only allowed for priests and nuns (who aren't allowed to breed). Combine this with shunning and the gene pool gets filtered over time. This doesn't even have to be the current power structure. If such a structure was in place for a long enough time in the past, even if it is largely forgotten, the result would be what you are looking for. ## What if those in power ARE the ones who can do magic? they got in power because they can use magic. It gives them an advantage and is something that they can point to as proof that they have some divine mandate to rule. They don't want to risk losing their advantage. They would have the incentive to pass laws or just use their strength to nip any non-noble who can cast in the bud as soon as they are detected. The stupid ones would wipe out the families of anyone who shows signs of magic use. The smart ones will recruit the "common" mages as front line troops (get use out of them and whittle down their numbers). Again, this doesn't have to be a current civilization. A past civilization will do just fine. ]
[Question] [ It turns out that a single strand of human hair measures 17 to 181 millionths of a meter wide. But anyone who creates or reinvents a fictional species of humanoid has the freedom to change the dimension of the head, including the size of a strand of hair (if they choose to still have hair.) So in an alternate world, we share that world with another species of Homo, one that still has hair on its head, only that each strand now measures 1/2-1 inch in diameter. The question isn't what the hair would look like--I'm imagining a bunch of leaflike lobes--but what kinds of adaptive advantages such hairs can have for the wearers? Oh, and by the way, the hair in the question is focused on the head, nowhere else. [Answer] [![Baby Porcupine](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lG8uI.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lG8uI.jpg) You would end up with a head full of horns or quills. Human hair is made from keratin. It's the same with your fingernails and toenails. In fine form, hair is soft and flexible. With thicker amounts of keratin, it becomes stiff. In the animal world, most horns have a bone core covered with a thin sheath of keratin. Since we lack boney protrusions on our heads, humans with thick hair might end up looking a bit like a porcupine or a hedgehog. with long hairs covered with keratine. Or if they started to clump together, our heads could end up looking like a rhinoceros horn, which is made of entirely of keratin. With a head full of quills, humans have another form of defense. Ramming people with your head could cause painful injuries. Imagine tangling with a human sized porcupine. If it formed like a rhinoceros horn, it would act like an helmet, further protecting the skull. It would become a defensive and offensive weapon. [Answer] I see some serious disadvantages: Such hairs would fold and crease versus bending, leading to hair snapping off and/or major split ends much more readily. Such hairs would, of structural necessity, have much thicker walls, leading to a massive per-hair weight; as a result, hair follicle depth would need to be far larger, leading to a monstrously deep dermis & epidermis. Deeper hair follicles would demand a far thicker skin total on the head, leading to possibility of actual injury from hair pulls, yanks etc. If such hairs were not basically circular in cross-section (OP's leaflike lobes) they would be quite weak across the shorter sectional angle. However, those considerations aside, were these super-thick hairs quite short and numerous, they might have enough resilience (due to the space inside the shafts) to act in aggregate as a sort of natural helmet, absorbing the first portion of mechanical shocks to the head. The caveat to that would be that should the shock exceed a certain velocity and power density, the follicles in the deepened head skin would tear, leading to haematoma, bleeding, risk of infection etc, though even that might still be preferable to the alternative: sub-dural haematoma and TBIs which significant head traumas almost always risk. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9JIo8.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9JIo8.jpg) [Answer] Ah! Fun question. As mentioned above, hair has a wall to it. If you look at magnified hair pictures, you can see that it looks fairly scaly. As hair grows longer, the hair kinda flakes off in tiny bits and the hair gets thinner. If you had wide follicles, you could imagine you might get something like more flexible fingernails that hang off the head. Having the bed of the hair be angled like fingernails are, you add strength without making the dermis deeper. As the hair grows long, it will likely split and break in ways similar to how nails do. Different grains may evolve to allow splits to happen more laterally, but it will likely not be even or pretty when it does happen. If not cut, the hair may have frayed looking ends as if you took a weed wacker to a leafy bush. There are many ways this hair could evolve. It may be easier to identify the conditions of it's evolution and work forward. I imagine a species that lived in sandstorm conditions and needed hair that could both protect and not tangle. A species like that may develop an oil that helps protect the hair and keep it stuck together more. In that case it may look more like scales than hair unless they just got out of the shower. [Answer] As @GerardFalla mentioned, the walls of the hair would need to be pretty thick. So, think of circular fingernails growing out of the head. What could be the benefits and issues of such? More than a eighth of an inch long (.25 cm) and it becomes pretty brittle unless there is a supporting, living medium inside. If they are dense enough, they would support each other and operating like overlapping armor. The scalp would have to be at least a quarter of an inch thick (probably closer to half an inch) for the follicle of the hair. If the hairs were not dense enough to support each other, then to get any kind of length, there would have to be living tissue inside the hair. That would mean that any hair that breaks off too far from the tip would bleed (like trimming a dogs claws too far). All that thick hair would be very heavy and would require thicker neck muscles. Also, one of the main reasons for hair is to provide evaporation cooling. The brain is one of the big heat generators of the body. Unless the people lived in a cold environment, they would cook their brains without some other means of cooling their heads. I suppose you can use active cooling by running blood vessels up the hairs and use them as radiators but hair breaks would cause much more bleeding. So you could bet the benefit of armor and/or spines but at a pretty high cost. [Answer] I picture this along the line of large fish scales, which are keratinous like hair. If they were leaflike or roughly oblong in shape and say, 2-3mm thick, they would have a pretty significant armoring effect on the head especially if the skin underneath had some fat and muscle layers...could they make it e.g. stand up for emotional signaling? Mating displays? I'm also guessing it would hurt like hell if you scuffed your head and the hairs/scales were pulled straight out away from your skin or bent back on themselves. That large a mass of keratin would require a lot of nutrients to produce, you'd need to provide some kind of evolutionary benefit. Heavy metal sequestration? [Answer] The most practical way of implementing this is to make it hollow. If it's not hollow, then it would be very heavy and inflexible; it would end up being more like a horn or a claw than a hair. It would also require much stronger structures at the base to keep it fixed to the head. Making it hollow gets around these issues. It would still be fairly rigid, but not totally inflexible. The end result would be something similar to a porcupine quill or the central shaft of a feather. ]
[Question] [ A world similar to ours, but all countries have the following law: Each individual person is allowed to spend no more than a fixed amount of money every year ("fixed" in the sense that it is equal for each person, but the amount may change from year to year, e.g because of inflation). There is no limit to how much money each person can save in a year. This law is supposed to maintain a small difference between life standards of the rich and the poor. How would the economy of these countries be like? Would it be stable? [Answer] Money is just a fictional thing to keep track of value and time. If money doesn't work, people find other ways around it. A real world example you could study is the German Democratic Republic. Money was practically worthless, so high-quality items were traded in secret. Let's say you can spend amount X per month. X is the amount an "average" job pays. This means for average people, not much would change (on first sight). For people with sub-standard jobs that pay less then X, nothing would change, either. For people in jobs that pay more then X, but only a little, not much would change, either. The surplus would be saved so that they can use it up after retirement. The problem lies with high-quality jobs. Jobs that pay a lot more then X. There would be little incentive to do these jobs anymore. And if you did these jobs, then you would likely only spend a few years doing them, and then retire, using up your saved money. This means that a lot less people would be practicing such jobs, leading to an increase in pay, and even shorter times they actually need to perform that job. That is, if money were to stay. But that's not what will happen. People will simply create another system to keep track of time and value - a black market. Let's say you need to get a doctors appointment. Many people will try that, but there is little incentive for the doctor to see you. So you "sweeten the deal" by giving him something that isn't money. You trade your own labor or self-produces goods for his time. This is exactly what happened in the GDR - money was worthless, since you couldn't buy anything -- so if you wanted to get something special, you had to have something of value to trade for it. Certain goods were always very rare in the GDR due to the regulated market. if you tried to buy those, the merchant would always tell you "they are out of stock". But if you secretly handed him something equally rare, suddenly you ended up with getting exactly what you wanted. Without money, the problem is to define what "equally rare" means. All in all, it's a recipe for disaster. Money works well because it has a standardized value and is recognized by all parties. If your population can't use money for their everyday needs anymore, they'll use something else, less standardized, less controlled, and even easier to abuse. People that are poor will be even poorer then before, because the little money they have isn't worth anything anymore and they likely don't have qualified labor to offer or much own ground to produce something. [Answer] People would do what they did in high tax countries (>90%). Cheat. Instead of taking a high salary, they would get benefits from their employer. Free housing. Free food. Free clothes. Free travel. Free education benefits are possible but tricky (since you usually get educated before working, not after). Cheating actually helps the situation, because without it, people with high incomes would retire early. Why keep working if you already have more money than you could ever spend? Black market barter of goods and services directly is also possible. This is economically inefficient but not as much so as not getting goods and services at all. This would decrease the velocity of money, causing a drop in the money supply. That would cause deflation. Rather than having inflation, prices would fall as no one has enough (spendable) money to afford many things. [Answer] Money is simply a fiction used to account for time and value, so the value of work, goods and services would radically inflate or deflate according to circumstances. People would be effectively "paid" the same regardless of what they did or how hard (or little) they worked, so incentives to work or do highly skilled jobs would disappear. Good luck finding either a plumber or a brain surgeon. Since you would be "paid" the same regardless of what you did, then any job would be done to the same high standards as the local DMV or the team which set up Hilary Clinton's email server (i.e. not at all). I might not recommend that you go to a restaurant to eat in this economy. Indeed, the effective result will be everyone is forced to into subsistence farming in order to survive, since the social and economic underpinnings of society will erode away and infrastructure will collapse without routine maintenance. Venezuela is rapidly approaching this point despite having the second largest reservoirs of oil in the world, a temperate climate and fertile soil. In Canada, Quebec has the largest land area, a wealth of mineral, agriculture and hydropower resources, not to mention several large cities with modern industry covering a multitude of sectors, but decades of soft socialist governments have reduced what is potentially the richest province in Canada to receiving billions of dollars per year from other provinces just to pay the bills. So TL:DR this plan is a recipe for poverty and social collapse. [Answer] So several economists just cried a little. Money would deflate in value to approximate its now current value, paychecks would be reduced, and where paychecks couldn't be reduced (due to wage laws) workforce would be reduced and costs would increase. Some industries would just simply fold, unable to make a profit. [Answer] Most paths I see for your world involve collapse. There's many paths it could take, depending on details you'd have to work out yourself. The first and most obvious would be the development of massive loopholes. A fundamental problem people in your world would have to solve is that any money earned above the limit is basically useless to them. If the cap is \$100,000, and I'm earning \$100,000, there's no incentive for me to take on a job that would earn me \$1,000,000 every year, because \$900,000 of that is unspendable useless paper completely devoid of value because I can't spend it. Or can I? What if I am permitted to "donate" that money to the poor? What if I can "donate" \$20,000 to a poor person, in exchange for him "donating" me a \$10,000 car I couldn't purchase on my own because I'd hit my limit. Such loopholes would lead the rich to view the poor as tools, valued by how much of their limit they aren't using and how well they can be manipulated to provide goods and services to the rich. So let's say we plug those loopholes. We've never been able to plug the loopholes in any major economic system, so I won't say how its done, but let's just handwave it away. So now any paycheck I get above my \$100,000 limit is worthless, right? Well, I did gloss over one use for this extra cash: vacations! I may earn \$1,000,000 one year, then retire for the next 9 years bleeding off those reserves! Now you have income equality, but the "rich" have more leisure time. Most certainly those rich who like their position in life will busy putting that time to lobbying for the jobs they want, locking the poor into a perpetual grind. Of course, society could always just rebel against your system. Bartering would almost certainly become a solution immediately, so you'd have to put your foot down and demand that all barters be documented and counted at "fair market rates." But what's a fair market rate? What if nobody buys these things with cash? What would quickly happen is a massive deflation of your currency. A car that once cost \$10,000 might suddenly cost \$2,000, and wages would drop by 1/5 to support that. Now that the prices are devalued, the rich that were making \$500,000 are now only making \$100,000, which was the limit, so they can spend all of their money. All of this because you had to document bartering to prevent it from being a loophole. Of course, you can also become a despot and fix the market rates for goods. In every documented case of price fixing ever, a black market springs up. You set the price of a coffee cup at \$10? No problem, someone begins selling a "topology teaching device: donuts" for \$5. It's purpose is to teach youngsters about topology. In topology, a donuts and a coffee cup are treated as the same shape, because they have the same number of holes in them. But you don't have a fixed price on tools for teaching higher order mathematics to children, do you? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VHWIn.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VHWIn.png) In the end, things don't go the way you want. It's very hard to apply gross changes to a system as complicated as economics without massive issues. Changes have to be smooth and subtle. [Answer] * Your scheme would discourage ownership and encourage lease. No person would be able to buy a new car or a house, so they have to rent it. * Or they create a company with themselves as owner and employee to assign themselves a company car. This would accelerate the erosion of workers' rights in the new "[gig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_work)" economy. * If old property can be inherited, it could stabilize economic differences between owners and non-owners. * Your scheme would discourage saving because there are fewer ways to spend saved money. On the short term that could bring an economic benefit as the demand goes up, but on the long term the lack of investment capital would be harmful. And I agree with Brythan that loophole abuse would be rife. [Answer] If the amount of expenditure is fixed and there is no meritocracy involved, so there is no way someone can expand that amount, and this amount is similar to the medium wage in a country of the first world, then almost the entire economy will need to be controlled by the state. That’s because producing goods and services needs investments, more than the average person can effort. If there are no rich people to invest money on it, then only the government can, or the economy will eventually collapse to a pre-industrial era. Otherwise there should be the possibility to exceed this limit only for some not-individual legal entities, but speculate on this and if it can be exploited needs a lot more assumptions. There are others things a government can realistically do to reduce the social inequality without going so far, like giving a job for every unemployed person with the right amount of working hours and salary (and possibly without competing with the private sector), which is supported today by a lot of post Keynesian academics and is fully compatible with capitalism in a modern industrialized country. Something important to consider about the modern industrialized economies, as opposed to e.g., pre-industrial societies, is that the interest of riches and of the middle class are much closer; having an amount of money distributed over all the citizens is appropriate to ensure that sales are done in the market, it grant goods and services for the consumers and income for the capitalists. If the expenditure amount is quite high, like over the average wage, this shouldn't be a problem, at least not from this side. Otherwise, if this amount is too low, this will lower the aggregate demand eventually reaching a deflationary crisis; unsold goods and services lead to low salaries and dismissals for workers and bankruptcy for companies. So the entire productive system will slow down, it will be like economic self-harm. With this in mind, I can’t imagine a good reason for all countries to adopt such a limiting rule, and if only one country abandoned it, it will probably gain economic power from that so that the other countries will need to abolish this rule as well, or they will be economically outclassed. So if the only way of make it possible is to have a communist-like form of state, that means all the countries of the world needs to be ruled by this communism-like ideology or to be under the influence of a much stronger country which is under this ideology. That’s already quite far from what we have in the real world. I also assume that the government should make the overnight rate (which affect rates of loans) stay really low or completely at 0% (that can be achieved without the needs of nationalizing the bank system, as we can see in a lot of examples in Japan or Europe), otherwise the bank system could have too much power from the needs for everyone to make loans for acquiring expensive goods like an house; otherwise there should be some exceptions to the expenditure limit rule. I guess also that the more expensive services (healthcare and education) should be completely public and accessible for everyone. In addition, eventually other services which can be easily monopolized like water, gas, telecommunication, transport etc should also be nationalized.. ]
[Question] [ I'm writing a story where there's a civil war fought by people with weapons and technology based on 50s experimentals, kind of like a subtle "What-if" aesthetic. How can I manipulate what tactical situations they have to face (by means of things like geography, certain limitations on their technological capabilities, etc) where armed jet pack pilots are the superior choice? [Answer] Enemies also have jetpacks! Because the only thing cooler than soldiers with jetpacks fighting enemies through a Jetsonesque city of the future is when their enemies have jetpacks too! They dodge around the buildings, ducking in and out and around them. Flying soldiers shoot watertowers to drench their enemies. Enemies knock over billboards onto enemies who shoot a hole as it comes down so they dont get hit. Jetpacks spinning out of control. Apparent returning jetpack solider is actually a mannikin in enemy uniform flying captured jetpack and carrying bomb! Flock of jumpjet soldiers flying up out of the subway! Jumpjet vs jumpjet 3d urban warfare. Oh yes. [Answer] Your jetpack troops are combat engineers (let's face it, jetpacks are temperamental things and it takes technical know-how to keep them working in the field) and their duties are the traditional duties of engineers: establish routes that other troops will use to follow them, sabotage enemy routes and fortifications, and clear out any obstacles that would stop the rest of the army. For pioneering work, jetpack troops are ideal for establishing a beachhead. Whether it's literally storming a beach and taking gun emplacements on the sea cliff, jetting over a river to surprise dug-in enemies, or bypassing an enemy-held bridge, they are invaluable for securing an area long enough for the rest of the army to catch up. Even if you're not under fire, being able to jump over rivers and up cliffs is a huge leg up when building bridges or setting ropes for others to follow. For sabotage they're even more valuable, able to bypass all kinds of passive defenses (walls, barbed wire, even mines) that enemies might leave around their fortifications. Their unmatched mobility lets them make quick, surgical cuts against targets like rail lines, artillery emplacements, or communication towers that other troops can't touch. [Answer] Urban combat in extremely build environments. A rocket launcher and a team of specialist entering through a window or roof of skyscraper. Allowing bypassing the most obviously defended areas of underground and surface level. These could be tactical pinpoint strikes against high value targets or pincer moves combined with more traditional ground based action. Building a bridgehead for ziplines and like for exit and entry. Or maybe retrieving high value objects from such location. Main issue with jetpacks is limited travel time and distance. As such entering and possibly exiting a building would be a use case that could be somewhat realistically possible. [Answer] I am assuming these are the classic backpack-worn jetpacks. A Jetpack gives an immense mobility to the user. Even in flat terrain with a low amount of houses the ability to reach anything above ground floor quickly without passing the ground floor is immensely valuable. The more urbanized and the rougher the terrain the more powerful these jetpackers become. * first of all just the fact that you can move pretty fast across terrain without it costing you much stamina is a massive boon and justifies the jetpack even if it didnt fly. Everything else is just gravy. * normally assaulting a beach can only happen at specific terrain, while jetpack users can quickly scale any type of beach. Even as "simple" skirmishes behind the rear line they would be immensely valuable. The fact that they arent relying on an outside source (say a helicopter) means they remain effective and low profile for much longer. * many terrain can severely limit movement. Ukraine's rain season is a good example where everything gets so muddy only roads are really available. Another example is the Winter War where the simple act of having soldiers capable of using ski's gave such an immense advantage the Finns managed to (barely) hold back the superior Russian numbers and vehicles. Jetpacks massively increase the mobility across any terrain, from mountains to deep snow to swamps. * rivers are a natural obstacle that are immensely hard to overcome. Boats and pontoon bridges take time to get people across and they are extremely vulnerable (again, the Russian's tried to cross a river in Ukraine and lost almost the entire group). Being able to quickly and relatively safely cross the river and skirmish would reduce the advantage of a river (but not eliminate it). It also means its easier to set up a perimiter in order to get non-jetpack troops across using regular boats and pontoonbridges. * parachuting? Thats pretty dangerous! Not a couple of years before during WWII many parachutists died due to getting stuck on their descend or hitting stuff they shouldnt hit like power lines. With jetpacks you have an immense control over where you land and how, letting large groups land in a smaller area if you need it. * someone else already mentioned it but combat engineering. It doesnt matter if its simply laying down a telephone line, deploying a bomb meant to clear barbed wire or bringing a flamethrower/explosives up to that Pillbox from an angle pillboxes arent normally designed to shoot at. [Answer] Rapid treatment by Combat Medics. As you can see [in this video](https://youtu.be/gtvCnZqZnxc), a person with a jetpack can reach a remote casualty very quickly. This is very important for dealing with traumatic injury quickly as [death rates can go up very quickly when treatment is delayed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_hour_(medicine)). [![Jetpack rescue test in England's Lake District](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kbedH.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kbedH.png) [Answer] Paratroopers are great for inserting infantry in hard-to-reach places, but it's a one-way trip. They either win the battle, or they're stuck with no escape. A jetpack would give your infantry an escape mechanism. When things get rough, send in an empty troop carrier plane and your surviving paratroopers can jet back up and escape. They'd be quite vulnerable during this trip, but it's a lot less dangerous than being trapped in a no-win situation. This doesn't just apply to paratroopers, either. Any small band of stranded personnel can be rescued by air-dropping a crate of jetpacks and having them jet-jump up to the evacuation craft. The evacuation craft can remain at altitude and not risk coming under direct fire by landing. Many small, independently-moving targets are harder to take out than a single evac chopper sitting on the ground. You could even do something similar for a spy who has completed their mission: copy the enemy's battle plans, grab the jetpack you stashed away, and get out before you can get caught. You'd completely blow your cover, but it might be worth it if it means better odds of making it home alive. Since you're talking about a retro-future aesthetic: jetpack troops would be very useful in a world with airships/dirigibles. Technicians can fly up to inspect an airship or do simple repairs without forcing the ship to land. Boarding parties and sabotage crews could use jetpacks to assault enemy craft or capture it without shooting it down. [Answer] Whenever human carrieable ranged weapons are outclassed by armor (but melee weapons aren't or to a lesser degree) I got this idea from Rimworld actually. Whenever you have melee weapons with a reasonable (even if situational) big enough advantage over ranged ones (aka not our current reality), jetpacks make sense. When plasmaswords can cut trough power-armor that any carrieable ranged weapon can't touch, a melee jetpack trooper is necessary, even if only to charge at the opponents entrenched big guns that could actually hurt your own power-armor troops. ]
[Question] [ In a relatively near future, the humanity discovered a way of commercializing space, in the sense that a project emerged that is extremely costly, but if successful, would be worth it and then some. The only problem is that the time span between the investment and the return would be significantly longer than the human life span. (For concreteness, we discovered precious mineral resoureces on one of Jovian/Saturnian/Uranian moons. We can send unmanned missions to build mining facilities, but we cannot really send enough fuel to break, so we are stuck with Hohmann transfer, that takes decades one way. We then produce fuel for the return trip on site, by an energy-costly process fueled by energy harvested on site, which also takes quite long. Then, the ore is sent back, again by Hohmann transfer, so it starts to arrive some 70-150 years later.) And, this is a risky investment, in that the mission may fail, or resources may lose their market value. The question: what social/economical conditions allow for such a mission to be funded? As far as I understand, IRL, the longest commercial contracts we have have span of a few decades, maybe 40 years at most, and those are mortgages, a different thing completely. When investing in stock or investing directly, we typically expect return within a decade or two. We do have agreements that span, say, 100 years, but those feel more like an euphemism for "eternity" to whose who sign them, say, as in Great Britain Hong Kong deal. I am not aware of any commercial contracts that only target revenue decades later. And that is rather logical - why would someone invest their money if they have no hope of seeing returns in their lifetime? Then again, if public money is spent, then you need to convince the public that it is worth it, and the same problem emerges, exacerbated by the riskyness. If some kind of a dictator or plutocratic elites control the public spending, then again they seem to lack incentive to spend money on such a project that they could rather spend on their villas. Etc. So, is there a realistic mechanism such long-term missions can be funded? I'd like it to be rationally motivated, no religious cult or such. [Answer] ## Trading in promises Two mechanisms can play a part here but essentially you don't have to wait for the ore to return to sell your investment, it's all about share value and the promise of a return. Shares in a business are proportional to their promise of return - sometimes even if that return hasn't happened yet the implication that in the future the profit will be there can drive the price of a share up. There are several stages to this: 1. Launch to landing - Depending on how far along your tech is this could be a risky stage. High risk, low share price because your money may go up in flames. Once past each risky stage the price will increase because the chance of return is higher. 2. Prospecting - This can make or break the value, another high risk position. The number of possible sites would guide the initial share price but finding, and staking claim to, places where ore is known to exist will skyrocket your share price. Selling the rights to mine those areas would be a business all in itself I imagine. 3. Launch and land of mining vehicles - Each bit of mining equipment that makes it to the ground safely will increase the value of the shares, the chance that sooner in the future ore will be ready. 4. Return and sale - When the value is known, the ore is safely to it's buyer, the risk is at its lowest and the share value at its highest. In theory someone could hold onto a share for the whole of the lifecycle of this process but most people will sell along the way. Each stage relates to different investment tactics - some people may never invest before machinery is down and mining - the lowest risk, lowest return stage, but some may gamble with the highest risk and invest in pie (or ore) in the sky projects. The second mechanism is the future sales promises. After the prospecting stage the project could sell off the promise of certain sales at a reduced rate to companies who need the ore. Like share prices this value will fluctuate and companies may well trade these promises between themselves too. --------Edit ------- Just some thoughts on this. Mining beyond Earth but within our solar system is likely to be followed by production moving out too. There is no sense using all that fuel shipping the full weight of mined ore that, once the useful product is extracted, will have its weight substantially reduced. The refinery process will move out too, they'll buy up the ore. Manufacturers (especially of space faring vehicles) may well move their production to space too. All of this will mean that profit can be made quicker. Not to mention that once a mine is set up it will continue to produce value for years to come, it isn't a one off profit. [Answer] Counterpoint: This mission isn't a good investment and would probably never take off Mainly, 70-150 years is a very long time. Hell, 150 years ago humanity didn't have powered flight, let alone space travel, and if anything, the rate of technological progress has only gotten faster. Furthermore, while investors are fundamentally gamblers, all our modern capitalistic markets are predicated on constant market growth and betting against long-term technological progress is insane. It is all but inevitable that a better space-travel technology will be developed (better engine, faster fuel process, space elevator, etc) and the smart money's on this advancement happening in less than 150 years. Let me give a hypothetical example: in 1950, engineers at XYZ corp decide that making a supercomputer to do automatic stock trading will be hugely profitable. To do so, they've found a genius mathematician who's developed a nobel-prize winning algorithm for this task, but the catch is that it simply requires immense computational power. The engineers plan to build a computer to do this, and figure out they need 10,000 computer cores and they calculate that their company can build 150 a year. This way, in around 67 years, their computer will be built, they can load the software, and basically print money. Unfortunately, when 2016 rolls around and XYZ corp finally brings their multi-warehouse computational cluster online, the markets have fundamentally changed, their algorithm is no longer relevant, and the smartphones that the engineers have in their pockets can all out-compute their supercomputer without even getting warm. A similar thing would happen to your 150-year operation, I think. Space travel will be cheaper, faster and more efficient engines will exist, and maybe the resource that they were out to get in the first place can now be synthesized from dirt using your average basement particle accelerator. Also, while I'm on the topic of technological progress over time, I'd say that there are even odds the first immortal person has already been born. Eventually, the progress of medical and anti-aging technology will outstrip actual aging and it's entirely possible that people in their 20's today will live long enough for anti-, and eventually, de-ageing treatments to exist. For the young and affluent, long-term investments will become more attractive soon. [Answer] ### I'd buy it, and so would millions of other other speculative traders. I'd totally buy a 0.00001% share of such a mission for \$50, because I'd be expecting to sell it in 10 years for \$60, not because I'd be expecting to be around in 150 years when it returns and I can claim my \$300 cut of the mining profits. When people think there's money to be made in a stock, long or short, term, they will buy it. But when a stock is bought by other people, speculative investment follows. When that happens, people are buying the stock only as an investment on the value of the stock, not because they're waiting 150 years for the company to turn a profit. For example: * [Uber only JUST became profitable](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-results/uber-sees-profit-by-end-of-2020-but-still-expects-full-year-loss-idINKBN2002UQ), but still hasn't done a full year profit, despite trading for 10 years. * [90% of bitcoin purchases are speculative, 10% are actual transactions](https://cointelegraph.com/news/90-of-bitcoin-usage-is-speculation-10-transactions-says-luno-ceo). People are only holding bitcoin because they know the value is rising, not because it's useful to them. * [Tesla has never made a profit](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/01/tesla-becomes-worlds-most-valuable-carmaker-without-making-a-profit#:%7E:text=Despite%20never%20having%20made%20a,demand%20for%20electric%20vehicles%20soars.), but the expectation of making a future profit (or speculation) has driven it's stock price up so high that it's the [most valuable car maker on the planet](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/01/tesla-becomes-worlds-most-valuable-carmaker-without-making-a-profit). I may not care if Tesla ever makes a profit, but if I bought it shares for \$900 a piece and sold them for \$1100 each 3 years later who am I to care? The share of the company, (or the mission itself depending on how it's financed), has an implicit value because of that long term expectation of profit. The share of that expectation could be traded on the open share market. The company can raise more capital by releasing more shares to the market - either diving the company into even more parts or selling some of the founders shares. That capital raising can be used to finance the mission. Assuming the tech is reliable enough and there's some refund guarantee if the mission is scrubbed, this would be a really stable investment to make actually. By the time I die of old age the ship is still in transit, not much is likely to go wrong in the decades its slowly travelling, but as the ship gets closer and the payoff gets closer the expected value is guaranteed to rise (\$1tril in 50 years is more "valuable" than \$1tril in 100 years). By not caring about the final outcome, only the change in the value of a share of that outcome, it's a pretty safe investment. I can sell it for my retirement, or even use it as security to borrow against to pay for my retirement, long before the operation returns its first gram. [Answer] They're not being funded by an individual; they're being funded by conglomerates. An awful lot of banks accounts/pension funds/mind boggling sums of money are not invested by any one individual. They are funded by investment firms which aggregate up all the money that they have been given and then invest it in a variety of different potential revenue streams. I'm simplifying greatly, of course, but by aggregating lots of small sums investments can be made that would otherwise be impossible, both in terms of risk profile and time needed for the investment to become profitable. For example: Investments can (really simplifying) be split into low risk, low reward investments and high risk, high reward investments. If I (as an individual) decide I want 95% of my money to be safe investments, and only 5% to be high risk: That might not amount to a lot of capital in the 'high risk' bucket. But if there were a million of me all going through the same investment firm? Suddenly they've got the money to use. Not only that, but the firm can expect to be running for a long time, certainly longer than your average human. As such they can afford to make longer term investments, trusting that short term investments can cover their obligations (Various financial laws apply here, but I'm sure sufficiently motivated lawyers can weasel around that) while their higher risk portfolios sit and wait for the big payoff. If one big payoff never comes: Oh well, they have others. As long as the risks and rewards are properly quantified (There's a reason actuaries and quants get paid a lot) it won't affect the investment firm in the long run. In this case the investment can be made by one person knowing full well that they will be retired by the time the return arrives: as long as the risks are signed off by the company it will still be worth it. So, that's the private side of things covered. Now for public sector. Governments are free (subject to the constitutions/laws of their respective countries) to invest public money wherever they like, and write whatever laws are politically expedient. If it seems worthwhile to their people a government can start funnelling small amounts of money into their space programs, and while it might not seem like much money that can then be fed to a larger multinational corporation that can use the money to achieve much more. If you want a historical perspective you might want to take a look at trade and exploration in the age of sail: Government (or sometimes privately) funded expeditions could take decades to offer any kind of return, and there was every chance a ship worth a sizeable chunk of a fortune could be lost without trace. You cold often find that expeditions would be funded by companies instead of individuals or government bodies, since this would reduce the risk to any individual and allow those individuals to see a return on their investment even if their particular investment hasn't actually returned yet. In the real world this is done via a complex web of contracts, investment firms, government contracts and (last but not least) the stock market. SpaceX, for example, gets paid by space agencies and private companies from multiple nations for services rendered (launching satellites), and they re-invest that money in projects which they don't expect to show short term gains but (they hope) will net them a sizeable long-term gain. Various investment companies, seeing the success of SpaceX in the 'think big and then make it work' stakes, invest in them (via buying their stocks) in the hopes that they can then make money off their success (by selling those stocks later). So far it seems to be working out for them. Longer and longer missions are simply a matter of momentum, since the money will keep rolling in from the 'lower risk' missions and increasing political and private interest in their success. Basically: We keep doing what we're doing. The risk on the long-term contracts is quantified and agreed to by every company involved, and while waiting for the contract to actually make money those companies live off their other investments. [Answer] It's an enterprise undertaken by states, not individuals or firms, for several reasons: * It's a good long term investment financially * It's a good investment from the perspecive of a nations economy: The first nation to receive the return shipment could dominate the market in certain minerals for some time, either by dumping it on the global market to wreck certain terra-based mining operations or by ensuring global dominance to the respective nations industry * It's teh superpower thing to do - someone recently answered the question why China did a sample return mission to the moon: "Superpowers have space programs. China wants to be a superpower, so China has a space program" * the investment dumps a lot of money into the economy, which can serve as a stimulus. This can only work in a state with a "private or public" native space industry to support the project. To really take off, one or both of the following should exist: * if there exists a 'star-fraction' in one state - a large coalition of capitalists who will benefit short term of the investment, and of starry eyed space fans who act as political support of these capitalists (think of the US and the weird Elon Musk fans). * a political leadership who sees andrealizes the short term benefits, but thinks in longer terms than one election cycle or even one generation (Maybe China? more likely the Chinese leadership is just muddling through like eveyone else, but better at hiding this fact. This neednt be the ase in your story and Xi Yinping has weird fans too). [Answer] > > Why would someone invest their money if they have no hope of seeing > returns in their lifetime? > > > Maybe they are so rich they literally can't find any other half sensible places to stuff that money into. This is very plausible in fact. > > If public money is spent, then you need to convince the public that it > is worth it > > > Heh, really? How much of your government's spending has your or your friends' permission? Even most democracies are only borderline democratic, and spend countless billions on stuff almost no voter would accept. That doesn't even take into account less democratic nations. Arms races have successfully spurred nations into investing about 5% of their gdp into space programs. This can even have some sort of rough democratic mandate given suitable propaganda! It is probable that if one centrally planned and dictated nation state decided to try to take space colonization superiority, even if no profits were in sight for decades, other powers would be forced to follow. [Answer] Another counterpoint: commercial company won't have monopoly on space exploration (or won't be expected to hold it for 70-150 years). This would not only be a long term, high risk investment, it also can be ruined at any moment. Even if a space program hits all the milestones over a very long period of time and delivers all the promised results, there is no way to guarantee that the value of these results would match the expectations. Halfway through the development process, a different company may jump into the business, and building on what is already developed, overtake the original company and making the returns much less profitable. Consider a Soviet space program which enjoyed a good head start in the late 1950s only to be overtaken by the Apollo program by the late 1960s. Moon landing was the big prize, but someone else had won it. Sure, the original program would have long term benefits - it's just the rate of return would not be quite great. [Answer] Society is run by AI, not humans As it will likely be decision making is going to be in the hands of artificial intelligence, not humans. If the profits of an enterprise are worth it and the risk acceptable the AI will invest into it. Its scope is that of the lifetime of the company, not that of human life. > > According to a report published by the Bank of Korea in 2008 that looked at 41 countries, there were 5,586 companies older than 200 years. > > > [List of Oldest Companies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies) Humans may still profit after all, in more than one way. * shareholders / investors will gain by the value of the company. That value is calculated (by AIs of course) also by the number of active enterprises and their potential future revenue * workers will gain because they will have jobs. Human workers may still be needed for some tasks, not everything is economically feasible with robots. Of course human workers will do their job (designing, testing, cleaning, etc.) in close relation with the AI and using also robotic assistance * consumers will benefit from previous missions which will have brought back to Earth materials that are nigh depleted on the planet. Without them products won't be made. It's nice to have almost free electricity but how can you have it if not mining for Helium-3 in the clouds of Jupiter? Of course the elements that fuel fusion that is powering the planet now were searched for over 150 years ago, those that are being mined now will be used by mankind in another 150 years. Does it really matter? Not really. What matters is continuity. The machines must run. The same actually can be said for any long spanning project, like interstellar exploration. Or genome modification. And so mankind will grow out of it's own limits. [Answer] Not viable as a commercial enterprise Consider that large capital, properly invested, generates 10% annual [return rate](https://irei.com/publications/article/investing-like-harvard-yale-endowment-funds/). GDP of the world, \$84T, divided by `1.1^150` is a meagre \$52M. Alternatives Consider governments, universities, religious and non-profit organisations as your donors instead. More alternatives Figure out how to sell "space land", and allow the investors to extract rent from this "land" indefinitely. Then, it makes sense to buy a chunk of land now, because as time goes by and technology improves, the value of "land" will increase too. [Answer] Milk it for all it's worth. In addition to Lio Elbammalf's great answer, no project this large will ever have just one goal. Sure, the mining mission is the main objective, but there are tons of other profitable things you can do along the way. Sell some payload space to research institues; offering to bring experiments to this distant world for them. Livestream major events during the mission and sell ads on the stream; I'd watch the landing and I'm sure tens of thousands of other people would too. Sell some more payload space to the estates of rich people, offering to scatter their ashes in space or on the planet. Sell the documentary rights to the highest bidder. Sell the rights to use the mission in fiction. All of these things will pay off well before you sell the first ounce of ore. They probably won't cover the entire investment, but they don't need to. [Answer] Here is my attempt. As mentioned in the comment by AlexP above, "The greatest part of investment money (by far) belongs to immortal legal persons, such as pension funds, investment funds, sovereign funds and so on". Project Mine-the-moons major investments will come from governmental investments as well as trust fund investments, with an absolute minority investment coming from all the Joes and Johns who want to have some financial assurance later in life. The majority of individual investments would be in the supplier companies, as they will see returns of profit on a much faster scale as they would need to be paid for their services rendered. The first ship that is launched - someone needs to transport all the raw materials to the factory to build the ship, all the ingredients for the fuel need to be transported, someone needs to make the switches and circuit boards, someone needs to design the communications software and equipment, etc. This can even be taken further to the very first steps of someone will need to mine the initial metals to smelt down into raw material to be sent to the factory. No matter how much of the actual work is done by the mining company of designing and manufacturing the ship themselves, there will always be work that is outsourced and subcontracted to other companies, and those companies will want to be paid now, not in 150 years, and I think that during the initial stages as mentioned by Lio Elbammalf these companies will see the majority of individual investments. [Answer] If the gems held an intrinsic value beyond their market value as gemstones. Only rare gems formed under particular circumstances hold the attribute of rare attribute can . . . * be sliced thinly enough to create room temperature super-conductors * or be used to build RNA filters used in longevity treatments * or are large enough to focus light beams for hand held Synchrotrons that create and isolate anti-matter used to generate power * or whatever . . . Make what they're used for be valuable beyond all imagination, and people will queue up to buy stock in the mining of them. ]
[Question] [ If the immune system of a healthy human just shut down completely and instantly (magic, nanotechnology, whatever), and after a certain time period it went back to normal, how much time without the immune system would be survivable? There are real-world examples of people with severely damaged immune systems, but I don't know how total it was. So, basically: 1. What length of time would be immediately or almost immediately fatal? (so even restoring it completely would not save from a quick death) 2. What length of time would be survivable but lead to long term (or permanent) consequences? 3. What length of time would be completely healable afterward, even without modern medical treatment? 4. What length of time would be unnoticed or almost unnoticed? Assume the victim of this curse is not doing anything dangerous or unsanitary during its effects. (so no cuts, bruises, being in an unsanitary environment, etc.) Of course, as we have no real-world data to measure it (AIDS-patients don't go from 100% to 0% in an instant), a rough Fermi estimation would be enough, but even for that, I have no idea where and how to start. [Answer] Within 24-48 hours you'd start feeling the effects of skin conditions from unchecked staphylococci and the like, such as eczema and erythrodermatitis. It is difficult to come up with a hard, reliable source for infection progression since instantaneous immune collapse isn't really a thing. However, ex novo infection can have an incubation as short as 96 hours and in-vitro growth time is reported as [about one day](https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_long_do_transformed_Staphylococcus_aureus_cells_take_to_grow) (google 'staphylococcus growth time' or 'incubation period'). As soon as the skin barrier is broken, cellulitis and circulation problems will ensue, followed (since there's nothing to check the infection) by gangrene. Within three days you will be severely disabled and within four or five days pretty much be unable to move. Expect death from septic shock to occur within one week. One week, in this case, refers to a time period not exceeding 7 Earth-days. Time-frame data is also difficult to obtain. I have used data from several instances of severe Clostridium infections, where "[symptoms usually develop six to 48 hours after the initial infection and progress very quickly](https://www.healthline.com/health/gas-gangrene)" in compromised subjects. So: * 0 - 24 hours: No real effects except itching and rashes * 24 - 48 hours: Weeping sores, discoloration and loss of sensation in limbs and other areas. Some loss of functionality may be noticeable after healing. * 48 - 72 hours: Severe pain and gangrene. Even after immune system recovery, there are strong chances of amputation being required, scarring and permanent loss of some functionality. * 72 - 96 hours: Almost certain amputation necessary, possible death by septic shock even after healing. So, while in that time several nasty kinds of cancer are guaranteed to have sprung up, they won't be what kills you. (If several brief immune loss periods repeat, however, it's possible for some of those cancers to develop enough to become dangerous). Meanwhile, however, dormant infections might spring up and manifest (herpes, for example, and some fungal conditions). These will take longer to disappear even after healing (actually might surface some time after the immune system has recovered). If you have a preexisting condition or eat anything that requires immune support (the bactericidal properties of saliva will still be there, but several kinds of spores will not be killed and usually die when they germinate and get recognized by the immune system - that barrier will no longer hold), then anything from cholera to Montezuma's Revenge can kill you within 48 hours. If you don't have complete immune deficiency, then you can survive indefinitely as long as you take sufficient precautions (this is the so-called "Bubble Condition" or "Bubble Boy Disease"). Make it more severe than that and you have something not too different from Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome - AIDS. [Answer] Since [your body contains at least as many microorganisms of various kinds as it does human cells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome), which are continually kept in check by the immune system, I’d say that “a few hours” was a reasonable guess for your survival time with no immune system at all. You wouldn’t have to wait to be invaded by bacteria or viruses, the ones that would kill you are already there. [Answer] There have been cases such as that of David Vetter who’s adaptive immune system was non-functional from birth. Due to the death of a previous sibling, the parents knew that there was a 50/50 chance of the same condition affecting any further children they had, but they decided to have another child anyway. That child was David Vetter who unfortunately was affected. As the risk was already established he was born in a sterile environment and transferred to a sterile bubble within 20 seconds of birth. He lived for 12 years inside the bubble but at the age of 12, he was able to receive a bone marrow transplant from his sister. Unfortunately due to complications, he had to be removed from his plastic bubble and he died 12 days later due to a viral infection. <https://www.rarediseasereview.org/publications/2017/8/7/living-without-an-immune-system> The key questions are what environment is that person living in and what aid might they receive to help them? Perhaps the above might be seen as a “best” case, had David been born in a pigsty without medical intervention of any sort I suspect his survival time would have been measured in hours. To answer your specific questions: 1. Assuming no medical intervention or specialist care death would probably follow within days. 2. Permeant consequences might or might not result from an infection at any point depending on the nature of the infection. But assuming infection by agents that would normally be easily defeated by the immune system, permeant consequences would probably only arrive in the latter half of the infection period before death and not with certainty even then. 3. The length of time required to heal when the normal immune system returned would also depend on the nature of any infection and especially the amount of time it was left to multiply before the immune system returned. Assuming an infection by easily defeated agents, this recovery period might range between the equivalent of having a cold or flu to pneumonia or septicemia. 4. The amount of time that the person might not notice a missing immune system would also depend on the environment and the nature of any infection. An exact answer again is not possible, but many minutes could easily pass in a relatively clean environment, but probably not many hours. [Answer] Your lungs, warm and moist as they are, are a fantastic growth medium for any fungal spores & bacteria you might inhale. It simply isn't a problem for us with working immune systems. I'd figure between fungal and bacterial infections you would be incredibly ill within a matter of hours, and suffer respiratory collapse within 12 or 24 hours. You'd probably die from that before you went blind from dry eyes, as your tear ducts are clogged by other bacterial/fungal infections. One upside is as you have no immune system there would be no pus weeping from your eyes. [Answer] Five years ago, my father had a compromised badly-working immune system due to acute leukemia. An infection from some bacteria that was incubating inside his body caused septicemia and killed him in just a few hours even with heavy medical caring. Not having an immune system is very quickly fatal except if you somehow manage to live your entire life inside of a sterilized bubble or something like that. Otherwise, every people has a lot of bacteria, viruses, protozoarians and/or parasites inside his/her body that could kill in only a few hours if the immune system doesn't keep them controlled. Most of those pathogens act by killing healthy cells, producing toxins and/or damaging tissues. Further, the immune system needs some time to combat an infection. Also, the greatest the infection and the weaker the patient is, the less is the chance for eventual recovery and the tougher is the challenge for the immune system. So, if a patient without an immune system is already severely ill and suddenly, the immune system comes back, he/she might already be unsavable. So... > > 1. What length of time would be immediately or almost immediately fatal? (so even restoring it completely would not save from a quick death) > > > This, of course, varies from person to person. But I assure that many healthy people would be dead in less than 24 hours if the immune system suddenly vanishes. > > 2. What length of time would be survivable but lead to long term (or permanent) consequences? > 3. What length of time would be completely healable afterward, even without modern medical treatment? > > > There is a smooth gradient and probabilities in the game ranging from certain death to unnoticeable. Also, again, this strongly varies from person to person. So there is no place to draw any hard line. > > 4. What length of time would be unnoticed or almost unnoticed? > > > Probably only a few minutes. Maybe up to 2 hours. [Answer] Cook a porkchop and leave it out of the fridge for a while, noting the time it takes to spoil. In my experience, half a day would be enough. Without an immune system, you'll have about as much defense against bacteria as a porkchop. [Answer] Human blood already contains lots of antibodies that are memories of the past diseases, these would stay where they are unless destroyed by some really super-method. A newborn has enough antibodies for about six months from the mother. I think the adult human may survive for a comparable duration if just the mechanism producing new antibodies is destroyed. There are also defenses like acid in the stomach and lysozyme in the eyes and lungs. If they stay working, this would help a lot. It definitely will not be minutes. ]
[Question] [ I was working on a short story set in winter--a good time to contrast the cold, deprived life of the main character, reflecting his mental state, and the warmth and joy of other characters. There is an apartment situation (perhaps only a few dozen max people, more likely about 20-30,) I imagine in a small city (or on the outskirts of a larger one) and I imagine all characters having fireplaces of their own. My ideal setting is in the 20's-40's~50's, without going to the radiator or boiler route, is there any way each apartment could have its own fireplace, even if not bigger than a few feet? I mean, theoretically, there could be complex series of pipes in the building, but that is more dangerous than anything and quite stupid. If there is nothing historically, I suppose I can go with a gas heater... [Answer] Here's a stock photo of Edinburgh. As you can see, there are a lot of fireplaces. [![Photo of Edinburgh skyline showing many chimneys](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lnmbum.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lnmbum.jpg) (From www.dreamstime.com's royalty-free section). I used this photo as it is royalty free, but most tenements are in straight rows, not as messy as this A large part of the housing stock in Edinburgh is what we call tenements. A fairly typical tenement consists of a stair, with 3 flats off each stair, and 4 floors, so about 12 flats total. Each flat has 2 to 4 rooms of 8-15m2, and each of these rooms has a fireplace. There are also smaller box rooms or cupboards which do not have fireplaces, many have been converted to bathrooms. Every flat has at least one 1m2 cupboard which would have been used as a coal store. They vary from quite grand in some areas of town, to quite small and cramped in others. So this "typical" tenement has 36 fireplaces, slightly more than one per person living there in modern times, though in the time frame you mention, there would likely have been more people in each one. They aren't exactly what you're looking for, but they sound pretty close. They are also very characteristic of Scottish cities, and I have not seen anything quite like them in the US where I assume your story is based. The Brownstones in Boston look similar, but lack the forest of chimneys and also presumably the fireplaces. These tenements were mostly built between about 1700 and 1850. By 1920-1940, they were often a bit dilapidated, and potentially the cheaper end of the market (many are now very expensive). It would be quite believable to find tenements still using coal in that period, with gas fired heating taking off after the war. [Answer] My solution would be to go with a conversion of what the Americans refer to as a "colonial" due to when they were built in the US. Use a building much older than the setting that was converted from a large single dwelling to apartment living but due to its age they kept the fireplaces rather convert to the latest and greatest of the date of conversion. Such buildings are quite common in most of the western world; big old grand homes, from an era where fireplaces were put into almost every room, that were later sold when the families that built them fell on hard times and sub divided into flats/apartments by developers. In my local area many such buildings are actually elder care facilities. [Answer] You can definitely have a fireplace for each room. That is how they did it. A college dormitory is like an apartment house. Older dorms often had a fireplace for each room. Here is a dorm at Yale. Judging by the laptop this is recent. [![yale dorm](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zcnW6.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zcnW6.jpg) <https://fyeahcooldormrooms.com/post/128888769089/yale-university> In this photo of Burton Hall at Carleton, you can see the chimneys - there are many. [![Burton hall](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wVTJ0.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wVTJ0.jpg) Each of those chimneys has 6 stacks in it, and each stack is shared by several floors of rooms. Of course at Carleton they bricked up the fireplaces long ago because of the propensity of Carls to conduct flammability tests of items they found. But the principle is what I am after. You can have your characters reside in a dorm, or a converted dorm. Or apartments built in that period. Take a look at old photos or new photos of old apartments and you will see that they, like Burton Hall, have many, many chimneys. [Answer] Ben Franklin solved your problem Behold: the [Franklin Stove](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_stove). > > The Franklin stove is a metal-lined fireplace named after Benjamin Franklin, who invented it in 1741.[1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/biEh1.jpg) It had a hollow baffle near the rear (to transfer more heat from the fire to a room's air) and relied on an "inverted siphon" to draw the fire's hot fumes around the baffle.[2] It was intended to produce more heat and less smoke than an ordinary open fireplace, but it achieved few sales until it was improved by David Rittenhouse. It is also known as a "circulating stove" or the "Pennsylvania fireplace". (Quote and image courtesy Wikipedia) > > > The fireplace design is also more efficient, [requiring less wood to heat the same space as its predecessors](https://www.ctsweep.com/blog/father-of-the-fireplace-insert/). [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/biEh1.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/biEh1.jpg) While having a single chimney per fireplace will always be easier on the fireplace, one of the benefits of Franklin's stove is that multiple stoves can use the same chimney. The traditional problem of sharing a chimney is that an upper-floor user would create hot air, below which in the chimney was cold air. That cold air would remain trapped until heated equal or greater than the air above it. (This "inversion" is notable climatically for its pollution-causing capabilities.) The consequence would be the lower rooms would fill with smoke until the chimney air heated. The Franklin Stove's "inverted siphon" ameliorates this problem by allowing a small draft to form first, heating and pushing out of the way colder chimney air. [Answer] [Here's a link I found that you might find very informative.](https://www.curbed.com/2017/11/30/16716472/old-house-fireplace-coal-stove-history-heating) The TLDR is that you absolutely could have a separate heating unit (of whatever kind) in each apartment, likely with multiple heating fixtures feeding into a single chimney. It'd just have to be an older building. How old depends on the needs of your story. Fireplaces were already going out of fashion by the beginning of the 19th century just because coal-burning stoves did a much better job of heating a room and coal was more readily available in urban environments. If it's important for your story that they be actual fireplaces as opposed to stoves, then Ash has the right answer. You'd want an 18th century building. If it's not, then it could just as easily be a 19th century building with coal stoves. By the late 19th century new construction was shifting to steam radiators just because they were more efficient and (especially for taller buildings) saved you the trouble of having to haul coal up and down stairs since all the coal could stay in the basement with the boiler, and pumps would just move the hot water throughout the building to keep things warm. [Answer] As long as you're willing to invest in the infrastucture up front (at the time of building) this is no problem at all - but it is expensive. Consider a square building with 12 apartments. It would have 4 chimney stacks, each containing at least 3 flues. In the simplest version, each apartment would have a single fireplace. Each chimney stack would be pretty massive, which is why it would be expensive, and the upper stories will benefit from the presence of the heated flue(s) from the lower stories. Many New England colonial-era houses have a single, central, chimney stack with 4 fireplaces per floor. Since the masonry is enclosed by the building, maximum efficiency is obtained. [Answer] For the time period you're indicating (1920s to 1950s), there was a vast array of heating options available. Complex systems of pipes is exactly what they'd have! Most apartment blocks of that period (in the US, at least) had boiler rooms feeding steam radiators in all the main rooms of the building. Some very ritzy apartments may have had hypocaust heat (same principle, but you put the heating elements in the floor). Coal stoves, oil stoves, wood stoves, electric heaters of various kinds, baseboard heat (using a number of fuels) are all much more likely for the time period. However, multiple fire places are certainly possible and old houses in general often had quite a few. (A nice view inside a [Georgian era town house](https://sharonlathanauthor.com/look-inside-a-georgian-townhouse/). [Answer] Not only is it possible, it happens in real life. Up until about 10 years ago, I lived in a complex built in 1986 (so a recent build, designed to be used this way, not a colonial-era home that was later split up into multiple apartments) with 8 apartments per building (stacked on top of each other, 4 to a side, not a row house) and individual fireplaces and gas heaters in each apartment. [Answer] This will be anecdotal answer and you'll have to decide yourself if it fits your needs. Based on the sentence > > If there is nothing historically, I suppose I can go with a gas heater... > > > I assume you're more focused on having separate heating sources and not a modern-style central heating and for some reason you want it being coal/wood fueled but you don't necessarily need an open fireplace. My grandparents lived in a multi-apartment 5-storey residential building in Lodz, central Poland. Their flat (originally) consisted of 4 rooms, a kitchen with a room for service a toilet and a bathroom. The original heating system consisted of 3 masonry stoves located strategically in the flat and a coal oven in the kitchen. One of the stoves was located in a corner of rooms so that it could heat two larger rooms and corridors, the other two rooms had smaller stoves each, dedicated for those rooms only. I know that all apartments within the building, at least on the front side had similar setup. There were two main staircases, each with two apartments on every floor so you have a building with at least 20 apartments, each with its own stove based heating (totaling up to 30 stoves in the whole building). These buildings were built somewhere in either late XVIII or (mostly) whole XIX century and were still heated with coal or wood at least until the WWII and probably even after it. And there were lots of such buildings in the whole city centre. Additionally I know that at least some of the buildings located by the main street had also fireplaces in the living rooms so you may use that as well, however it will be limited to some rooms only and only in the most prestigious parts of the city. [Answer] Medieval castles hosted more than 20 persons, and they had nothing more than fireplaces to keep them warm: at least kitchen, bedrooms and living rooms had fireplaces. The complex part is getting a good amount of combustible (wood or coal) to supply them, but for the rest it's not that insurmountable challenge. ]
[Question] [ I am working with a setting in a [block universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)) that is deterministic. Starting from an initial [garden of Eden configuration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_Eden_(cellular_automaton)) at time `t = 0` every configuration of the universe at a future point in time can be calculated by a function applied to the configuration of the previous point in time. This means I can calculate the whole block universe from start to finish based on the garden of Eden configuration - basically [Laplace's Demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon) creating a block universe. Now I consider whether bi-directional time travel is possible. Jumping forward in time doesn't pose a problem, because the algorithm to calculate a configuration only takes past events into account. I don't see a way how traveling back in time would work though, because to calculate e.g. the configuration at `t = 1000`, I would need to take the configuration of `t = 999` as well as `t = 2000` into account, assuming someone or something travels back in time from `t = 2000` to `t = 1000`. This is not possible, because I cannot calculate the configuration at `t = 2000` without knowing the configuration at `t = 1000`. This seems to be an unsolvable circular relationship. It doesn't matter whether I allow arbitrary traveling back in time or only at certain intervals, the circular relationship always arises. I could of course rework the algorithm that builds the universe to start at the end of the universe and calculates all the configurations backwards until I reach the garden of Eden configuration, meaning the configuration of the universe at `t = n-1` can be calculated based on the configuration `t = n`. This only switches the problem, because traveling backwards in time suddenly becomes feasible while traveling forward in time no longer works for the same reason as before. Did I miss something, or is bi-directional time travel in a deterministic block universe never possible? Are there changes I can introduce that would allow bi-directional time travel in this setting? [Answer] In your strictly deterministic universe, if Alice travels through time to today, it was always inevitable that she was going to do it. From the moment of the big bang it was already decided that she would arrive today, and that would be equally true if she was travelling towards or backwards. As you have noticed, it would be impossible for a human to perform the calculations to predict her arrival if she travels back in time. You try to calculate what happens if no time travellers arrive today, you find that Alice is going to travel back to today from the day after tomorrow, but that changes what tomorrow will be like, which changes the day that Alice leaves... But, like the famously intractable Three Body Problem, if the equation is impossible for us mere humans to solve that does not make it unphysical. The world is not like a desktop computer, it doesn't have to solve the equation one step at a time, it just exists as it is and the equation is effortlessly true. To a godlike observer looking at your block universe from a higher dimension, there is only one unchanging history in it, inevitable and singular from start to finish. To a mere mortal living inside it, the exact state of the past and future are both unknowable. There are an unlimited number of scenarios where a time traveller could suddenly appear without warning and throw off your ability to extrapolate the past and future from the present. But, we can know that any extrapolation that results in a contradiction, like a grandpa-murdering time traveller, or Alice getting into the time machine the day after tomorrow without first having arrived today, must not be a valid solution. This means that time travellers who try to change history can exist, as long as they fail. They can succeed at inserting themselves into historical events, history may contain events that would be impossible without time travel, history will often turn out to be not quite what the traveller thought it was going to be, but in a block universe the traveller cannot ever prevent the circumstance that will have inspired them to travel. [Answer] If someone travels from t=2000 intending to go to t=1000, they actually go to a t=2001 state, which is calculated by the algorithm using what it already knows about t=1000, and internally looks just like t=1000 did except with the addition of the time traveller. You basically recycle t=1000 except with something changed by the state at t=2000, which is exactly what you want time travel to do. So you’ll end up with a lot more clock ticks than are necessary just to account for the perceived elapsed time within the universe, since you need to effectively roll the clock back every time someone travels to the past. You’ll either need a lot of memory (so that you can hold every state in memory for ever) or a lot of CPU time (so that you can recalculate earlier states from scratch from the garden of Eden configuration when required). [Answer] # Who says time is one-dimensional? If time has more than one dimension, you can allow bi-directional time travel along some of the axes, as long as one only allows one-directional travel. Consider a universe with two time dimensions - one which allows bidirectional travel ("time") and one which doesn't ("meta-time"). As long as time travel takes some amount of meta-time, this removes the circular dependencies. `t = 100, m = 100` doesn't depend on `t = 200, m = 100` anymore - but it doesn't depend on `t = 0, m = 100` either! Instead, those all depend on `t = 100, m = 99`, and `t = 100, m = 101` depends on all of them in turn. This is actually a pretty common approach, though it's usually not very explicit. It usually hides behind terms like "timelines" or occasionally "parallel universes". [Answer] Similar to Robyn's answer, but with some different reasons. Alice travels back in time. In your deterministic universe, the fact that she does so is determinable from the laws of physics and the initial state of the universe. Not only that, but everything she does when she goes back in time is determinable from the initial state of the universe. That means all the information needed to calculate the results of her visit is already present in that initial state, and therefore is also present immediately before her arrival. That is, the deterministic calculation of the "next state" of the universe is able to calculate from the past information only that a time traveler appears at this point in time, and go on to calculate every effect of the event. In a deterministic universe, the future is not some unknown thing that cannot be accounted for. It is a fully knowable thing whose impact can always be calculated. [Answer] In my thinking about this problem, there is no reason that you cannot have time travel in a block universe. It would be a poor kind of time travel but it would be time travel. For example, X in year 2000 devises a means to travel back in time to year 1000. In your model, everything in year 1000 is determined absolutely by the year 999. In my block universe, the computation is not so linear. My computation would encompass all of time, including incursions from the past or the future. In this case, X has no free will. He has and always will make the journey from the year 2000 to the year 1000. Thus, the universe is not strictly linear in how sentient being perceive time. The writer could devise all sorts of journeys through time in such a universe. Indeed some of the time travel stories that I have read depend upon the inevitability of the twists and turns. X travels to the year 1100 where he sees Y die. Later (in X's timeline) he travels to the year 1099 where he meets an earlier Y and imparts the precise information that leads Y to their death. Sadness and despair all around. [Answer] I don't see why it cannot be calculated, as long as the machine/human/god doing the calculation has infinite time and resources. If backward time travel is possible, you have a feedback loop. It makes the math more complicated, but not impossible. Until the first time travel, the process go sequentially: first t=999, then t=1000... then t=2000. Once Alice travels back in time from t=2000 to t=1000, you need to go back to your state in t=1000 (now t=1000b) and keep going until t=2000. There, Alice (or Bob) will again travel back in time, adding a new input that needs to be added to the state in t=1000b. After a few iterations, the time travel in t=2000h will be exactly equal that the one in t=2000g, and no new input will be added to t=1000g. The function has converged and the math can go forward to t=2001. It will always converge, even if it takes several millions of iterations for each jump in time. Alice will travel back in time and do the actions required to influence her to go back in time and do the exact same actions. In this state of the universe, every action is deterministic. Paradox are not possible: after enough iterations, the universe will converge. [Answer] Reverse engineer the seed. What you describe is the same problem faced by people who want to determine the seed used to generate a Minecraft world. In Minecraft a seed number is used to generate the entire world. Minecraft will pick one at random or you can give it one. A given seed will generate the same world each time. <https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Seed_(level_generation)> > > World generation > > > Whenever the game has to generate a new world, it calls upon an > algorithm. This algorithm outputs a pseudo-random value that is then > used to determine the characteristics and features of the world. > However, the algorithm always outputs the same value each time for a > constant starting point (seed). This is why seeds exist — to generate > entirely different worlds, consistently each time, from single values. > > > A world's seed is set when that world is created. By default, it is > decided automatically, but it can also be set manually. Set and reuse > a seed to replay that world, or use a known seed to play the same > world as another player. > > > If you could determine the seed of a world you could know it completely. In a competitive map, a player who knew the seed could generate a copy of the map and study it at leisure, so gaining a competitive advantage. For your question. if you knew the seed of the world you could know its state at any point in time. People try to figure it out. The below text is from a programmer who tested one seed after another ("brute force") and used the appearance of several unusual features to narrow down the list of candidates. <https://www.reddit.com/r/technicalminecraft/comments/7idgzx/seed_reverse_engineering_survey_of_approaches_and/> > > Seed reverse Engineering -- Survey of approaches and a structure-based > Algorithm. > > > This post contains information I've dug up on the various ways to > figure out the seed of a world without having direct access to the > seed. Also I introduce my own approach to the problem below -- a GPU > accelerated brute force implementation which searches for the seed > using structures such as ocean monuments. > > > The code I wrote is an ocean-monument based solution for > finding the seed. Although if I remember correctly, only very slight > adjustments of some of the constants should be needed to adapt this to > other structures such as villages... About 6 or 7 monuments provide sufficient information to work > out the seed. The RNG check for whether a ocean monument can spawn in > a certain chunk is significantly more complex than a slime chunk, and > involves 4 iterations of the Java LCG... I implemented a straightforward brute-force approach in CUDA. On > a Titan X Pascal, about 22 billion seeds are tested per second, so 248 > seeds can be searched in just over 3.5 hours. I'm quite happy with > this result, because it shows with a good implementation, a brute > force solution doesn't need to take forever. > > > You could do this for your world - if you can run simulations. The programmer above used the appearance of "ocean monuments" - unusual structures - at given sites to narrow down the list of candidate seeds for a given world. If your world has Yosemite and Devils Tower at time CE 2020, see what seeds generate a world with both. Once you have a short list you can look at more features to narrow it down to just one. [Answer] # Unpossible Your function is impossible: > > Starting from an initial garden of Eden configuration at time t = 0 every configuration of the universe at a future point in time can be calculated by a function applied to the configuration of the previous point in time. > > > The reason is that "previous" is an infinitely long time away once you introduce a loop. Therefore, there is no "Garden of Eden" configuration from which you can bootstrap your configuration. # Counter Example Marty meets Doc Brown in 1985, and then jumps back to 1955. The sequence up to 1985 is causal and deterministic. However, as soon as Marty jumps back, you now have a problem. Future Marty is a new cause of events between 1955 and 1985 that you already computed. Now, let us suppose that one of Marty's hobbies in 1985 is solving the Rubik's Cube. On his jump back to 1955, he happens to have a Rubik's Cube in his pocket. Suppose further that Dr. Rubik happened to be visiting Hill Valley for a conference, and walked past Marty sitting on a park bench, working on his cube. He pauses and watches Marty for a few minutes, then returns to Hungary, working out the mathematics to convince himself that a solution was possible. Since he is an architect, not a mathematician, he is unable to prove that the cube is solvable, and gives up on it for 25 years. Then, in 1980, while replacing a light bulb in his toilet, he slips and falls and bumps his head. At this point, the solution to the puzzle appears to him like a dream, and he visualizes the mechanism of the cube in a flash, which he quickly draws and subsequently licenses to toy manufacturers. What we didn't say is why Marty jumped back to 1955. When Doc Brown was showing Marty the flux capacitor, Marty was solving the cube idly without looking at it (Marty was able to solve the cube blindfolded). Doc wasn't ready to use the DeLorean yet, but Marty's hand slips and he almost drops the cube. As he reaches to catch it, he bumps a switch which activates the flux capacitor. Doc realizes that his precious plutonium will be consumed if he doesn't go now, so he tells Marty to drive the car up to 88 mph, at which point they jump to the past. # Analysis Now, the version of determinism you describe can be modeled as a function, $F(C\_t) = C\_{t+1}$. That is, the function $F$ applied to the configuration $C$ at time $t$ produces the configuration at time $t+1$. In particular, the proximate cause of an event in configuration $C\_t$ must exist in $C\_{t-1}$, and the ultimate cause in $C\_s$, for $s<t$. Furthermore, you have defined $C\_0$ as the "Garden of Eden". We know that there are configurations in which the Rubik's Cube exists. Therefore, it is natural to ask: "Which state contains the ultimate cause of the Rubik's Cube?" We know that Dr. Rubik invented it, and so we might say that the incident on the toilet is the ultimate cause. But we know he was thinking about it for 25 years, and he actually saw it before he invented it. So we could say that the cause was when he passed by Marty. But Marty only had a cube because Dr. Rubik had invented it, so we could say that the ultimate cause was when Marty jumped back in time. But Marty had the cube before he jumped back, so we should say that the invention of the cube was the cause of the invention of the cube. Let us call the moment of invention in the bathroom $C\_i$. The point at which Marty jumps back to the past is $C\_j$. The moment when Dr. Rubik is exposed to the idea of a cube by Marty is $C\_e$. We know that $i<j$ because Marty only jumps back to the past because he bobbled his cube. And we know that $e<i$ because Dr. Rubik did not invent the cube until he had already seen it. And we know that $j<e$ because Dr. Rubik didn't see the cube until Marty had jumped to the past. If history is well-formed, then for any configuration $C\_x$, there should be a finite number of applications of $F$ starting from $C\_0$ which arrives at $C\_x$. Or, going backwards, we should be able to find the cause of any event by searching backwards through the timeline until we find $C\_c$ such that $F(F(F(...(F(C\_c))...))) = C\_x$. However, we cannot find $C\_i$ above, the moment of invention, because we are stuck with $i<j<e<i$. The configuration $C\_i$ must occur before itself, and thus be its own cause! # Conclusion And herein lies the rub: time loops allow self-caused objects to exist. Since time travel itself violates conservation of energy, there is no limit to what objects may self-cause. This theme is well-explored in the German Netflix drama Dark. A wise, powerful dragon may suddenly appear because it whispers in the ear of a bioengineer on how to craft the DNA of the dragon and implant it into an existing creature, which causes the dragon to be born, after which time the dragon uses time travel go to back into the past and cause its own existence. In particular, time travel breaks your function $F$. When $F$ arrives at $C\_e$, the earliest point in the time loop, Future Marty appears out of nowhere. There is nothing the set of configurations $C\_{<e}$ which explain Future Marty. Only the future configuration $C\_j$ can explain his sudden appearance, but that is many configurations subsequent to $C\_e$. And therefore, you have broken determinism at this point. At any moment, $F$ may as well introduce a dragon or a unicorn or raining fish teleported from another dimension. Time travel makes a mockery of determinism. Laplace's Demon becomes infinitely powerful, and also capricious. [Answer] ### It's simply an extra consistency constraint on the system A system of equations (and/or constraints) can have any number of solutions, be it zero, one, five, a billion, or infinite. "Time travel consistency" is simply an extra equation or constraint. A deterministic universe needs a set of constraints with exactly one solution. Adding a time-travel constraint simply means that certain Garden of Eden configurations do not yield valid universes. (This may be the case even without considering time travel, depending on your constraints. You might for instance say that black holes aren't allowed.) One may argue that this means you can't calculate $f(t+1)$ from $f(t)$, but you can. It's just a more complicated calculation that potentially needs to basically work out the entire future of the universe just to give you the next instant of existence. To give a concrete example, let's suppose we have a sequence $x\_0,\, x\_1,\, x\_2,\, x\_3, \ ...\ x\_n $, where all numbers are below some large number (say 1 billion), and each element in the sequence is the prime number with the largest digit sum that has not yet listed. For example, 7 would come before 23 (because 2+3=5) which would come before 113 (1+1+3=4). In order to find the "next" number in the list you have to find all numbers in the list, and thus all future states of the universe. But the next number is always unique! ### But in a physical universe isn't it impossible to satisfy all constraints? You may be wondering, if under "normal conditions" a step from $t$ to $t+1$ follows certain rules, then how come when a time machine pops out of nowhere, are these rules not violated in comparison to the time machine not appearing? Well the trick is in the word largest that I used in the example above. (As in, largest digit sum.) That sort of word creates a flexible constraint—one that implies uniqueness but doesn't force a particular solution. Allowing time travel in your universe slashes valid Garden-of-Eden states by a mind-boggling amount. Only universes where a "time loop" satisfies all constraints will be valid. So, there is no universe where one could successfully go back and kill their proverbial grandfather—but it also means certain new universes become possible (like when your future self comes and prevents your own death.) [Answer] The problem here is that you need to use an iterative calculation. Once you figure out that Alice will go back 100 years you need to back up your calculation 100 years, add Alice and recalculate those 100 years. Note that this will get exceedingly complex if there is any substantial amount of time travel. That doesn't mean it can't be calculated, though. [Answer] Assume f(t) generates (t+1). Therefore: t1 = f(t0) t2 =f(t1) = f(f(t0)) Etc. traveller x travels from 7 to 5. Traveller is based on t7, so denote it x(t7) We need to insert this into the calculation for T6. Thus: T6 = f(t5, x(t7)) T7= f(f(t5, t7)) This will presumably require some kind of time-based calculus to compute, which may or may not be easily solved, but can certainly exist. [Answer] You are looking from the wrong point of view I believe. The world's time is not the same as the time travellers time. Let's say all of the elements in your world equation can be defined as some f(t), where t is their personal time, as in the age of the most fundamental particles that constitute the elements. So W(t) = f0(t) + F1(t)+ ....and so on. Usually the value of t will be same as value of t for world. Now when a person x from t=11 travels to t=9 from the frame of reference of the world, the world equation becomes W(9) = f0(9) +F1(9) +fx(11)+.... Do you see the problem now ? Your equation now has an extra element. And that means W(9) now has two values. Two distinct branches of time, one in the time travellers past, and one in the time travellers future. I don't know how to put that into equation but essentially, you should either gonwith the multiverse, where the world equation branches off with a new element in it, giving each branch its own formula. Or you can modify your equation to be self consistent by adding all future elements into the equation as well. So the equation not only takes into account the past states but the future states as well. Kind of like W(t= tx) = sum( f0 \| 0 to inf) + sum(f1 \| 0 to inf) ..… repeat that for F2, ...fx. where fx are the fundamental particles. As long as nobody time travels, the value of f will become 0 for t > tx, but when they do, the equation can handle it. Basically laplace's demon knew someone will travel back from future and hence already took it into account. [Answer] This will depend on the way you interpret causality. It's not the same from the point of view of someone trying to reverse engineer it, than from a "god" setting up a configuration. Also if there should be a past with no time travelers that lead to the past with the time traveler. Even so, we don't know the function $f(x)$ that defines this universe, but we can assume it's extremely complex, with lots of outputs. We could think an output of $f(x)$ as providing a map of every person on Earth and their hair color. I will assume that time is quantized. At $t=997$ there's someone with black hair at (1,1), a blonde at (3,5) and a readheaded at (11, 96). At $t=998$ there's someone with black hair at (1,2), a blonde at (2,5) and a readheaded at (11, 96). This is because the first two people moved from the previous position to the next "square". The third one didn't. At $t=999$ there's someone with purple hair at (1,2), a blonde at (1,5) and a readheaded at (11, 96). Well, the first one was dying their hair at a the hairdresser's. At $t=1000$ there's someone with purple hair at (1,2), a blonde at (0,5), a readheaded at (11, 96) and a Gallifreyan at (3,14) Wait, where did that last entity came from? There's no nearby entity that could move there. The other changes can be easily be explained with physics by someone doing physical action. However, $f(x)$ doesn't require that. It only describes the state at a given $t$. From $f(x)$ calculation, it only tells us it appears from nowhere. As this is a deterministic universe, something will be forced to happen so that such state (a time machine from $t = 2000$? A wormhole?), just like the blonde is forced to move (3,5), (2,5), (1,5), (0,5). [Answer] Just change how the algorithm sees timetravel. If someone is going to timetravel from t=2000 to t=1000, it was predetermined. So you can change the algorithm, so that he "just appears" at t=1000 and disappears at t=2000 (and reappears at t=2001 if he travels back or something). [Answer] If It Makes Sense We Can Simulate it There are really two questions here: (1) Is This Universe Possible? (2) Can it be Simulated? For (1) you at least need some time travel rules to avoid the Grandfather paradox and similar. Let's suppose you've done that and focus on question (2) To answer (2) here is a baby example. Suppose there are 100 time slots and a single instance of time travel. At time 80 someone travels back to slot 20. You want to see what happens on time 50. This is how you do it: Work out 1,2, . . . , 80 as usual based on the deterministic update rule. Now you see there is a time traveller who goes back to time 20. Copy that traveller's mental state (which encodes all the decisions that will ever make). Now go back to the previous simulation of slot 20 and insert the copy of the traveller. Now work out the new 21, 22, . . ., 50 based on the old 20 with traveller inserted and the deterministic update rule. ]
[Question] [ I imagine a world with the size of Europe and the Middle-East. In this world, with lands and seas that are comparable to Europe and the Middle East for its geography, farming is not developed. In fact, there are only some Neolithic techniques with no kind of irrigation. There are only two countries, at the East and West of this world, that have plenty of food (the reason does not matter): food from all sorts of agriculture. These countries can be compared, for their position in this world, to Great Britain and Iran for Europe and Middle East. Technologies and societies are comparable to late Middle Age. Is it possible that these two countries feed the entire world by trade? What are the issues? I already identified three: * What does the rest of the world exchange for the food (weapons, artisanal production, product of mines...)? * How to send to all countries without seeing the food perish? * Is sea or land transport more efficient considering the necessity of a reliable, fast and massive trade? [Answer] You are asking about a world with two centers of food production and asking if they can feed everybody who doesn't live in one of those centers. There are three main factors to consider: * preservation * transportation * motivation ## Preservation You describe a medieval level of technology (except for agriculture). During the European middle ages, people had to store food too -- over winter, and also for transport. They preserved meats and fish with salt, by drying, by fermentation (e.g. sauerkraut), and sometimes by pickling. Saltcod, for example, could be kept for [years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dried_and_salted_cod) and was used for long voyages by sea. Grains can also be stored for years, so long as you store it in a way that keeps the vermin out. Hard cheeses can be stored for at least months, sometimes longer. Fermented and pickled items last quite a long time if sealed well. ## Transportation You need to be able to move food from your centers of production to everywhere else. This is going to depend on where your population centers are and how your population is distributed. You'll need roads or trade routes on land, but if you have large inland populations, it's going to take a lot of wagons (etc) to carry the food to feed them. So try not to do that. Make your centers of production coastal so you can use ships to deliver food to other coastal areas; it'll be faster than going overland on medieval-quality roads and you can carry more. A boat can travel farther in a day than ox-pulled carts. Boats that hug the coast are an ancient technology; by the medieval period boats were seafaring too. Also, don't neglect your rivers (for example, in our Europe, the Danube). ## Motivation Your food-producers are going to want something in exchange. You have many options, though some of them raise the question of why these people don't have food of their own: * Textiles: spinning and weaving wool and flax (linen) have been common since ancient days. In the middle ages weaving could be quite elaborate, including brocading and use of gold. Embroidery was also advanced. And you know all those tapestries in medieval castles and manors? Somebody made those. One issue with textiles is that people who have sheep (for wool) also have milk and meat, so your inland people will have some local food but not enough. * Spices: perhaps your central land is no good for crops, but people have learned to cultivate spices, which can be smaller operations. The spice trade was a big deal in the middle ages, but you can't really live on cinnamon and saffron. * Finished goods: tools, utensils, furniture, hinges, nails, weapons... people need lots of things that require specialized skills to make. * Education: maybe some of your inland population centers are centers of education and arts, not production. These are just examples. There are lots of things your non-food-producing communities can offer in exchange for food. The items I've listed involve a lot of people, potentially the whole community; not everyone is a master carpenter (or whatever), but a master carpenter is supported by tool-makers, wood-gatherers, and so on. So it's reasonable to think that a community's output could be traded for food for the whole community and not just the craftsmen. [Answer] Monica laid out the main issues quite well and I'm not going to attempt to duplicate her answer. My answer will focus on some additional elements. --- Not allowing people to produce their own food is akin to holding them hostage. Or a form of servitude. At the very least, it's a tool of oppression. One example is early 20th century India. Britain ruled the country and one tangible element of their control is that people were not allowed to make salt, something those who lived near the coast had been doing for millennia. They did this so that Britain could maintain its monopoly on the salt trade. Not only did Britain now control a food that was essential to life (you can live without any particular meat or vegetable but you can not live without salt) but they destroyed the livelihoods of Indian saltmakers. The actual harm this rule caused, as well as the symbolism of oppression, led to [a year's worth of civil disobedience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March) that turned public opinion against Britain and ultimately led to India's independence. Lesson: Don't mess with people's food. How would you enforce a rule against growing your own food in the countries forced to import it? Obtaining local food must be possible or there wouldn't be people living there in the first place (there are only very rare situations where people move into an area knowing they will have to import all their food, like Antartica, or places where food is difficult to obtain and the government deliberately erased cultural knowledge of how to do it, like [Nunavut, Canada](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-in-nunavut-a-land-of-plenty-food-insecurity-abounds/)). How can you keep people from harvesting food from wild plants, from hunting, from planting gardens? It makes no sense. Your tech level is Medieval so there is not modern monitoring, political control can be intense but would need to be motivated, and your claim that there are no irrigation systems doesn't ummm hold water. This implies that people wouldn't live near fresh water sources. But how do they get water to drink? All lands, even deserts, have plants and animals adapted to the climate. People have always lived in low-water areas and done just fine. The only reason to import all food is political. That means the government has to be on board. This worked with salt in India because the British were the Indian government. But people will not choose themselves to deprive themselves of their own food. It just doesn't happen. Now, you can create a situation where certain foods, even staple foods like wheat, are imported. But the trade for it might very well be other kinds of food. Or, sure, it could be products. But it doesn't have to be. Even if you set up a believable situation where certain foods are imported, you need fresh foods to be local. Dairy (if used), eggs, meat (though live animals can be transported elsewhere for slaughter), and most fruits and vegetables. In Medieval times with slow transportation, the only foods you can export/import over the distances you describe are grains, hay (for animals), dried produce, dried meat, and preserved foods like cheese, wine, jam, etc. To sum up: * Transportation in the setting you describe would not allow food trade in anything but grains and a few other preserved foods. * The setting you describe is one where people could produce all or most of their own food if allowed. * It would be impossible to keep people from obtaining at least some of their food locally (and detrimental to their health if you succeeded). * You would require a political situation where the local governments are in fact the exporting countries, or corrupt enough to go against their own interests. This is a frame challenge. What you describe isn't possible, not without some serious geographic changes, forced servitude in no-grow areas, and/or extreme political control. [Answer] I would also agree that what you propose is plainly not possible. By claiming that food production technology are not even medieval but roughly neolitic, you are making the situation worse, not better. The lower your technology is, the more it is labor-intensive - so it means there are more people employed in agriculture, not less. Without significant technological or magical advances in agriculture you will not be able to have the minority of the population to feed the majority. As far as I understand, you need the level of organisation, transportation and urban development beyond at least 1600s level, if not later (per the data here <https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture>). Another question is - what would the remainder of your population be doing. Before the certain level of technological development there is plainly not enough work in other areas. If you do not produce and service complicated machines, and do not mine fossil fuels to power those machines (or any magical equivalent thereof), you plainly don't have where to put to work your huge population. Attacking the problem from another angle - before rapid transportation and technological advances such as refrigeration, pasterization and conservation, it wasn't possible to supply remote areas with food completely. Even if grain was imported, fruits and vegetables (vitamin source) and animals (protein source) would be produced in place. Other people had said about the futility of the attempts to control and centralize the food supply - and the best example of such attempts is the Soviet Union. Even the closed cities that, presumably, were supplied wholly by imported food actually had people growing vegetables and raising hens on their private plots. In general, the amount of food grown privately on small plots covered almost a half of any Soviet citizen ration. At the same time, a huge amount of food that was produced officially in kolkhozes did in fact spoil before being transported. And that in a modern state with trains, cargo ships and canning factories. A medieval state would just but be able to preserve even a half of food it produces. I can envision a reversal of your situation - two giant cities that are supplied by the rest of the world. That makes more sense in the colonization scenario too. If the cities are metropolises, the sources of knowledge, science and technology, uniquely situated on the trade routes, they can hold a huge population that is not employed in agriculture. [Answer] No, middle age farming technology is not advanced enough to generate any significant surpluses. Estimates vary, you can find different numbers, but generally you find 80% or more of the population was directly involved in agriculture during medieval times. This means you need 4 people to generate food for themselves and a single other person. This means the rest of the world can have at most 20% of the population of your single food producing country. You can fudge the numbers a bit by postulating extremely good soil, but to get a minority feeding the rest of the world, you need agricultural techniques that are significantly more advanced, and likely not achievable without industrialization. [Answer] Your biggest problem is workforce. In mediaeval societies, perhaps 80% of the total workforce was employed in agriculture. Having all the agriculture in two countries won’t change that, so 80% of your total global population needs to live in those two countries. And in fact it’s more than that, because they can’t all work in agriculture — they will need non-agricultural workers employed in those countries providing services that can’t be imported, such as barbers, doctors, legislators, clerics, builders, farriers, stablehands, innkeepers, shopkeepers, and so on. [Answer] Population of neolithic Europe went from about 2 mio. to about 6-8 mio. depending on when you consider that time period to end. With your described scenario, a good part of that population would live in the places that have abundant food supply, so you only need to feed the rest. Let's say 4 mio. or less. The city of Rome is said to have 1-2 million at peak during the time of the Roman Empire and was in a large part fed from abroad, e.g. grain from Egypt, in addition to local food. So we know for a fact that a well-organized empire can feed 1-2 mio. at distance. We can assume that other major cities also received shipments of food. To extend that to the entire continent would require considerable logistics because land travel is a lot less efficient. If you postulate that the vast majority of the population lives close enough to rivers to be supplied by boat, it might be possible, but... This feat requires an excellent supply chain logistics. Any interruption such as a war would immediately threaten the food supply for affected regions. The whole system would likely not have much reserves or margin of error because it is already operating near its limit. [Answer] Yes this would work if food is actually not that valuable and the areas without food have something way more rare and useful. The surrounding areas would be the powerful areas, the food producing areas would be the ones at the bottom of the totem pole. In a way that's how it works in the current modern world. For ex Saudi Arabia imports almost 100% of their food. They could grow food but don't bother doing that because it's much easier for them to sell their oil. Saudi Arabia is much wealthier than Ukraine although Ukraine can produce more food. That's because food is not rare and valuable in the modern world. So make it the same in your medieval world. So in a medieval setting, you would need the surrounding areas to have something really valuable, rare and useful. Maybe some special ingredient that is needed for magic. In that case it would make sense that those areas that cannot grow their food wouldn't mind because everyone would trade food for their magic powder without hesitation. [Answer] # No For many reasons. # Malthusian Trap The late Middle Ages are well within the Malthusian Trap. In the Malthusian Trap, population scales rapidly with food supply and other wealth. An excess of food results in rapid population growth, which then makes food scarce again. It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that any part of the world escaped the Malthusian Trap; any civilization not in that Trap would not be "late Middle Ages" like. So population ends up being concentrated where food is plentiful, and elsewhere starves. At best small colonies can exist elsewhere, with goods are sufficiently valuable people where the food is plentiful are willing to ship off food despite locals starving. # The Rocket Equation Bulk transport is expensive. On land, doubly so. A horse can eat 20 lbs of food per day. If the cart has a ton of goods (2000 lbs) that is 1% of the mass of the cart per day. Moving at a human walking pace of 5 km/h (it is pulling a tonne), over a 8 hour day, that is 40 km for 1% of the mass of food, on high-quality roads. Europe is about 5000 km from one side to another; that is 125 days. 1.0 - 0.99^125 means that you lose a good 72% of the food you want to transport in feeding the horses at best, and that ignores feeding the human or repairing or horse shoes. Long distance transportation of food calories by land isn't plausible, even with high quality roads, prior to an energy source as abundant as coal to pay for the transportation work. Water based transport is better; but mass cargo shipment in the late Middle Ages isn't something that plausible. You'd have to have ridiculous sized fleets and massive amounts of ship building to keep them intact. The middle ages end with the 15th century; well into the 16th century oar-power was important. The Age of Sail is basically the time when long-ranged Sailing trade became dominant; as you want to be set in Late Middle Ages, you aren't in the Age of Sail. Ocean transport is going to be better than horse-and-cart, but not so much so that you can practically have a fleet capable of carrying enough food for a non-trivial population over 1/4 of the world. # Power Starving is a lot of power. While the non-food producing areas could have a huge army to punish and invade the food-producing areas, this just moves the power to that which controls the food-producing areas. And being able to destroy them (or prevent trade) then becomes power. Your society isn't going to be stable, and being away from the source of power (food) is going to be enslavement. Even accounting for that, you'll have a complex web of transport; each node in the web has power over the next ones. They don't have to field an offensive army to lay siege to things further along the trade network, just disrupt trade going past them. The instability of the situation will prevent stable societies from forming that depend on the food transport far away from the sources. # Singularity So, let us say we solve all of this. Society is out of a Malthusian Trap, it has a world-spanning Sail based (low rocket equation) transportation network, and it is web-like and/or has a form of law that is sufficiently strong enough that the food continues to flow, and everything is stable enough. Then you won't stay Late Middle Ages very long. You'll have large populations not spending their entire lives scraping for foods; a society of artisans and crafters. You'll have an economic explosion of activity as innovation piles on innovation. You are going to experience an Industrial Revolution or a Renaissance. The Renaissance was the Merchant class displacing the land-owning Gentry and having a run-away wealth experience in Northern Italy. The Industrial Revolution started in Netherlands, where the Malthusian Trap was defeated by a percent or so per year for a century, resulting in the wealthiest population in Europe (and possibly the World). Then the UK mimiced it, outpaced it, and then started a "virtuous" feedback loop of coal mining and steam power. Basically, areas of Europe in the Middle Ages where most of the population wasn't dedicated to growing Food where areas that didn't stay very "Middle Ages"-like for very long. [Answer] There are a lot of answers that make a lot of great points about why this won't work. But there's another factor, and one that plays into our own world: having only one producer of a necessary commodity is a ticking time bomb. Let's say that you solve or hand-wave the problems of preservation, transportation, and exploitation. What happens when raiders disrupt supply chains? Or hostile polities cut off another's trade route? Crop blight? Civil war in the food-producing country? I realize this is a story, and you can get away with a certain suspension of disbelief, but I can't help but think this is going to strain credulity: the kind of stability that this scenario requires is rare in human history and generally was propped up by a military superpower (e.g. the Pax Romana). [Answer] I'd like to provide two separate scenarios for you to consider. The differences hinge on the value of food. In our world, food is quite scarce and not very nourishing compared to the energy required to transport it. This makes it uneconomical to transport it long distances without a relatively high level of technology. You don't have to have this dynamic in your world, however. It is fictional, after all. Depending on where you place food on the spectrum from abundant and nourishing to scarce and nutrient-poor, different dynamics would arise your world. # Scenario 1: Food is Valuable and Scarce In your world, perhaps civilization started in the areas that produce food, and a small portion of the population became very rich and came to control a large portion of the weapons and wealth of the society. These individuals then retreated away from the food production areas and project their influence by the use of military force, compelling the food producing areas to continue to bring them food. (This is similar to the setup in the Hunger Games, in which the relatively resource-poor but power-rich Capital compels the flow of resources from the Districts). Some potential reasons for the retreat from the food production areas include: 1. Greater natural beauty away from food. 2. Disgust with the living conditions in the food producing areas. 3. Greater available of building materials for construction of more luxurious dwellings. # Scenario 2: Food is Abundant and Nourishing Food is extremely abundant and nourishing at the ends of your world, but building materials are scarce. In the center of the world, building materials are abundant but food is scarce. Since the end regions want to live in houses, they gladly exchange food for wood, iron, stone, etc. Because relatively little food is required to fuel its transportation, this is not a problem. # Commonalities Between Scenarios There must be something particularly desirable about the food-less areas or undesirable about the food-producing areas. Otherwise, people are likely to simply stay near the food. Food-less areas could be: * Very beautiful * Abundant in building materials * Very safe Food-producing areas could be: * Swampy, smelly, and/or buggy * Disease-ridden * Full of dangerous animals * Lacking in building materials of any kind (no trees or ores) [Answer] yes It actually happens on earth, we humans have so much food that we feed cows.... Entire forests are burned down to make agricultural land to grow crops which serve to feed all those cows which are really gonna be transformed into energy infecient food sources like steaks and burgers. If we didn't feed so many cows, (humans have artificially produced almost 1 billion cows) we would be able to feed the entire planet. Now consider that cows eat 3 to 7 times more agricultural land mass than humans. And there are 989 million, almost 1 billion cattle in the world. If we account only for the grain, dry seed grain that cows eat then U.S could feed almost 1 billion of starving people. But if we account for landmass occupied, which makes more sense. Then U.S or North Europe alone would be able to feed the entirety of the globe for free, because there would be excess food. But burgers and meat farms are more profitable than ending world hunger. If you want your world to have one country feeding everyone, then delete capitalism. ]
[Question] [ So ignoring all the other hydrodynamic inefficiencies associated with sticking a human torso on a fish body, let's just worry about those most distinct of human female features, breasts. The problem with them on mermaids is that no other sea creature has breasts. Sea mammals such as whales and dolphins have teats that calves will suck from when nursing. But, these teats are flush with the skin of the mother and offer no additional resistance when swimming. Assuming the instantaneous creation of classically shaped merfolk, would evolution select for or against human style breasts on an creature that lives exclusively underwater? If mermaid breasts did remain, how would they be shaped and where would they be located for maximal hydrodynamic efficiency as well as satisfying their role as providing food for merchildren? [Answer] A walrus [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8HLBQ.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8HLBQ.jpg) A hippo [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/75OdD.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/75OdD.jpg) Both of them can swim much faster than a human being, despite the clumsy looking proportions and giant weights. Next are the winners of different length swimming contests in Dubai 2010 (FINA) as stated on [the wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_FINA_World_Swimming_Championships_%2825_m%29#Women.27s_events). I am only posting their names and not their swimsuit images to evade creating controversy here. Ranomi Kromowidjojo Camille Muffat Katie Hoff Erika Villaécija Hinkelien Schreuder Kylie Palmer Mireia Belmonte If you google search their images, you would find out they are no less feminine to look at, than other women. In fact some of them are hopelessly gorgeous, both by the face and by the curves. If having round, bumps on your chest was detrimental to swimming, you would find more flat-chested women champs ... which is not the case. So while mermaids might have minimized breasts or be completely flat-chested due to some other reason, speed in swimming would definitely not be that. [Answer] Evolution would select for human style breasts ...given a few things are true. First, humans have effectively removed predatory pressure as a cause for human evolution, and with sapience I would say things would be the same for your merfolk. Without this pressure the selection for reduced breast size/improved aqua-dynamics simply doesn't exist. I don't need to be super fast to get away from predators if I don't really have any predators. Second, you need to define what the merfolk society values; function or appearance or some combination thereof. Since it is not specified I will lean towards they act like humans. This means it will vary from time to time. The ideal of beauty will be the primary procreation selection pressure. Which is weird because that means the pressure will vary based on the whims of your male merpeople. In the end I think this means that there is no effective directional pressure because the pressure would not be consistent enough over long periods of time for selection to take place. Additional considerations: [Breast cancer](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2168780/Women-bigger-breasts-DO-higher-risk-breast-cancer-finds-genetic-study-html) is something to keep in mind if your mermen prefer a larger bust. It's possible that larger size = higher cancer risk ....so figure out how to do mammograms underwater. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xcZaf.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xcZaf.png) [Answer] As long as mermen will consider breasts to be sexy, they won't disappear (that's how they came into existence in the first place). Quoting Wikipedia on [sexual selection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection): > > Sexual selection is a mode of natural selection where typically members of one biological sex choose mates of the other sex with whom to mate (intersexual selection) and competition between members of the same sex to sexually reproduce with members of the opposite sex (intrasexual selection). [...] > > > Sexual selection can lead typically males to extreme efforts to demonstrate their fitness to be chosen by females, producing secondary sexual characteristics, such as ornate bird tails like the peacock plumage, or the antlers of deer, or the manes of lions, caused by a positive feedback mechanism known as a Fisherian runaway, where the passing on of the desire for a trait in one sex is as important as having the trait in the other sex in producing the runaway effect. > > > [Answer] The evolution of the enlarged human breast is a bit of an evolutionary mystery, but one prominent theory (I am not making this up) is that human females evolved them so that their chest would look more like a butt (two bumps with a crack in the middle). Most male primates are naturally attracted to the bottoms of their females (which makes sense, since it is near the reproductive organs), but since humans walk on two legs, it made sense for females to have a similarly-shaped sexual trigger that was closer to the male's natural eye level. Assuming this theory is correct, there is little reason to suppose that merfolk would have the same pressures to evolve breasts, because pre-merfolk (presumably some aquatic mammal) had no legs and therefore no butts to be attracted to. Therefore, I would presume that they evolved breasts not as sexual selection, but in order to attract human prey. This means that it would make sense for the males to have them as well, unless merfolk are a species where only the female hunts humans. Since humans are not generally a good primary food source, especially for an aquatic species, it would be unlikely for merfolk to have a specific means for attracting humans... unless humans played an important part in their reproductive cycle. Maybe they lay their eggs in human corpses, like wasps, or need human blood to produce children, like mosquitoes. Though as a survival strategy, this is almost as bad, or perhaps even worse. It'll take some major handwaving to explain this phenomenon in a logical way. [Answer] I see two possible directions: The first, they keep their parts where they are because they grew them in the first place to attract sailors and fishermen to their fate ;). Though it is possible they only show up (down) when the mermaid 'relaxes' some muscles in order for them to 'stick out' either for feeding young or attracting strange humans, kind of like my belly when I sit (though much less attractive). Otherwise they would be 'flat' against the body, like when a woman lays on her back, and stretches. Though really busty mermaids are likely to be pretty rare. The other is more along the lines of other animals. Well let's take the manatee as our model. They would likely be large round animals since that shape helps mammals in the water, all of the examples I can think of are, [Whales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale), [manatees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manatee), seals, [sea lions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_lion), [walruses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walrus). [Dolphins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin) are the least round, and are the fastest/sleekest. The best I could imagine would be a line of teats like a pig, where they form a line or trow and could be more of a rudder than anything else. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hCvBy.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hCvBy.jpg) [Answer] I’ll attempt another, not well documented approach, here. * Mermaids activities include most notably luring sea farers with their charms and singing voices in order to wreck ships. This is usually described as a group behaviour. * While little is known about what happen once the ships go down, I think it’s safe to assume it is beneficial to mermaids. Collecting riches makes little sense as they’d have no way to spend it. It only seems logical to assume they eat the sailors they manage to drown. I actually heard that a Captain’s kidney is considered a delicacy under the sea1. * Swimming speed thus brings little benefits to their hunting method. * This making-noise-to-attract-prey attitude pretty much seems a top-of-the-food-chain behavior. Fleeing a regular danger doesn’t seem a vital selection criterium either. Now, consider that most sailors throughout history were mainly men. Men with little regular contacts with women. * At least a proportion of those among these men who are attracted to women would yearn for them. * Busts are considered an arousing detail of female anatomy at least in western cultures. But personal studies of mine2 show that people tastes in them varies a lot between individuals. [I don’t need to remind you of what a great Australian poet wrote about breasts in various shapes and sizes.](https://youtu.be/p1EhaANeYCI?t=1m16s) It would thus my humble opinion that, from an evolutionary perspective, the size of individual mermaids would matter little but, as a collective, a larger variety of chests would increase the probability of attracting more members of a ship crew, thus increasing the probability of a shipwreck. --- 1. Where nobody beat you, fry you and eat you in fricassee if you’re a fish or a mermaid princess. 2. I must admit that the size of my sample makes statistical results contestable. [Answer] While I am not a mermaid, I am a female who free dives (diving under the water with no air supply only lasting on one breath) in the ocean. I am naturally large chested (size US 36H for reference) and often I am swimming in a one piece swimsuit or a wet-suit. 1. With my chest secured I think the only thing I notice is being more buoyant (due to extra fatty tissue) then smaller chested or male free divers. So while my brother can dive easily with no weights, I use a weight belt to help me dive easier. * Thinking about mermaids, I would think of this to be a negative effect for a creature that would be swimming and diving all the time, who probably doesn't want/need the extra buoyancy. Tho this may depend on what type of buoyancy system the mermaid has if any at all. 2. With my chest not secured by a swimsuit we run into some different issues. One time practicing alone in a private pool I wanted to try swimming and diving without my top on to test the difference. First off while floating in the water breasts are buoyant and float as if gravity is no longer weighing them down. This is a positive at first because large breasts are heavy and cause back pain/problems, so at least mermaids wouldn't have to deal with that. But when I started swimming/diving under water I encountered an issue, large breasts move and pull when swimming creating a similar feeling as jumping without a bra on. This is a very uncomfortable experience, and is why I put on 3 sports bras when going to the gym. This would probably cause some kind of damage to the tissues after a while. * So if mermaids do have larger breasts they would probably be tightly bound to prevent this awful experience. Out of what material you would make this binding, maybe fish/seal skin or maybe some type of sturdy kelp. I'm just gonna say here that seaweed, shells, and sea stars/starfish are not viable options for securing breasts in general. So with that field research data out of the way, I would conclude that mermaids would probably have smaller breasts, flatter breast shape, and/or that the milk producing lobes and ducts would be more spread out, maybe even located in the chest cavity. The stress caused to large breasts while swimming and the added buoyancy would probably in the end outweigh any benefits of either attracting mates or prey (especially if they do not function to produce milk for young). And with creating bras/binders out of marine materials being so difficult, having a large rack is just too difficult. [Answer] Only humans have large breasts outside of child-rearing phases (coincidentally, other than some equine species, humans are also the only mammals to exhibit overt menstruation). As such, the function of human breasts is not strictly for feeding children. It's been theorized, rather controversially, that humans have breasts because cleavage looks like a butt, and because humans tend to interact sexually and socially by facing each other, they needed a new sexual cue other than the female posterior. Personally I think a more plausible theory (though not a mutually exclusive one) is that large breasts signify both maturity and capability of motherhood from a biological standpoint. Humans are very weird creatures in the animal kingdom and we exhibit a lot of strange traits not found among other primates or mammals in general. Humans show a relatively high amount of neoteny (keeping childish traits in adulthood), so we need some secondary sexual characteristics to signify that we are of breeding age. For this same reason, humans show an unexpectedly high amount of sexual dimorphism as well. For women this is breasts, buttocks, and hips. For men this is muscles, facial hair, and broad shoulders/chest. For women, their traits signal that they can become capable mothers able to raise children into adulthood successfully, and thus pass on the genes of their partners (strong hips suggest safe childbirth, large breasts suggest capability to breastfeed babies, etc...). For men, their traits signal an ability to protect and provide, and thus ensure they can help their partners pass on their genes. Each gender is complementary in their dimorphic traits and what they signify. This is somewhat supported by scientific study that shows a specific waist-to-hip ratio in women is invariably considered "attractive" across cultures on the planet. The same is true of muscular, athletically fit men (there appears to be an especial aversion in heterosexual women to men showing a feminine waist-to-hip ratio, perhaps because it may signify low testosterone or other unfit characteristics). We are more or less genetically programmed on what to find appealing. So to answer your question, any similar drives in merfolk would select for breasts. Do your merfolk interact socially/sexually facing each other? Do they breastfeed their young? Do they show neoteny? Do they have a selection pressure to show strong sexual dimorphism? If the answers to these questions are yes, then they are likely to select for large breasts. The hydrodynamic aspect is essentially irrelevant. Breasts are mostly water, and so behave (mostly) neutrally buoyant, despite jokes about "flotation devices." They aren't just big blobs of fat; they exhibit complex structure of ligaments, milk ducts, and other tissues. They're specialized organs. Humans are stamina-based pursuit predators. We actually have some of the best stamina in the human kingdom, and actually have the best among mammals. Large breasts obviously are not conducive to running for long distances. Even so, humans still have them, so it is reasonable to assume that the selection pressures for them outweigh their disadvantages to our ecological niche. Similarly, I would not expect their hydrodynamic properties to being a limiting factor in whether or not your merfolk would evolve them. It will also depend a little bit on their evolutionary ancestors, but since they're merfolk, it seems reasonable to assume they evolved from humans. As such, it's likely they would have had breasts before they took to the water. The fact that they're descended from humans means they would be starting with human preferences regarding sexual selection, and it's unlikely they would lose their breasts completely without a strong pressure away from them. For this to happen, there would have to be a very strong disadvantage to having breasts, one so strong that those whose genes make them prefer large breasts would die out over time, as well as those who have them being unable to pass on their genes to their descendants, presumably because they died before reproducing. The only thing that I can think of that might cause this in an intelligent species is going to be some kind of super predator that only fast merfolk can escape from, and even in that case breasts would have to provide a strong disadvantage for swimming speed. However, merfolk are assumed to be at least as intelligent as their land dwelling human cousins, so they aren't simply subject to natural selection. Humans invent artifacts to allow us to survive in our environment, one of which is clothing. In this case, we're subject to cultural selection as well. It's likely that even if large breasts were a disadvantage to swimming fast and thus escaping predators, that the merfolk would create clothing to offset this disadvantage (i.e. things that bind their breasts and make them more hydrodynamic). Assume one tribe of merfolk realize this and begin binding their chests. Because cultural changes can propagate far faster than the slow chaos of evolution, the idea of chest binding would spread to other tribes long before evolutionary pressures caused slow mermaids to be eaten and mermen who prefer large breasts to die out. [Answer] Another prominent theory about breasts is that large breasts indicate that the female is able to collect sufficient food for herself and her children. In this it serves a similar purpose to peacock tails although in a different sex. I.e. large breasts are a deliberately wasteful use of calories because young females who can deliberately waste calories in this way are more likely to be able to raise healthy, well-fed children. I find this hypothesis more convincing than a [resemblance to buttocks](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/37783/2113). Because in my opinion, the fatty tissue in breasts hangs differently than the muscle in buttocks. They look most alike when the breasts are in a bra or other binding that creates cleavage, but they would have evolved prior to the creation of such clothing. This would be just as true of mermaids as of human women. This would also tend to counteract the evolutionary downsides, like more difficult swimming. Because a female who can survive even with a handicap is again more likely to be able to raise children who survive to adulthood. Because children are also a handicap when running/swimming. ]
[Question] [ The world this is set in is located in a valley and doesn't allow anyone to leave. They are very strict about this so there are many watchtowers along the top of the valley sides, and soldiers patrolling the area just outside of the valley (where the secret tunnel leads) to ensure no one leaves. As a part of the story, the main character has a secret tunnel that leads out of the valley, into the forest on the outside (it goes through the mountain side.) I'm concerned about how she keeps this completely secret for a long period of time, without anyone either noticing her go through the tunnel, or the tunnel itself being discovered. For extra context, the technology is not advanced at all, think of how it would've been in medieval times; so there's no cameras etc. The only way someone would find out is if they saw it with their own eyes. This tunnel is one her grandmother made with a group of others a number of years before the main character uses it herself. This means it has to have been effective at being a secret for a long period of time. I was thinking leaves to cover it, or some rock contraption which makes it secretive- but none of these seem to work, so I'm in great need of a second point of view. [Answer] The other answers cover how to stop someone just randomly turning up, but not how to stop a dedicated search team that tracks her down. There's an alternative. The protagonist's family made an underground tunnel around a river. The river doesn't always have air, and has many twists you can get lost in. Only someone with detailed knowledge of the routes can pass it. Even if someone tracks her down and finds the underground river, they are likely to get lost and drown in it. She holds the only map in her head, and she's not telling. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YHBrr.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YHBrr.png) The entrance would be a river which seems to go into a rock wall. She would know she can swim under the surface and go into a hole above the entrance, while someone who tried to follow the stream would die, and would know all the twists and turns needed after that. Underground there would be a mix of cave systems, artificially made rooms for smuggling, and a path to the other side. Someone who followed her would just see her vanish into the river, and if they followed her would just get lost in the river. Some sections would have holes just narrow enough for water, but not for air. You'd have to swim through them, or bypass them with other tunnels made. The protagonist would know how to get through, others would not. Exploring the tunnels was a decades long effort by her family, and not something a foe could quickly do. [Answer] * Have the tunnel start in the family cottage. Could be a [root cellar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_cellar), or a more traditional masonry basement, or hidden under the floor. For a medieval setting, how about under the [open hearth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearth), or perhaps under the dung in the chicken pen? * Then there is the hole under the [outhouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outhouse). Searchers might be reluctant to go in there. * Have the tunnel branch off from a masonry well above the water table. It is cleverly constructed so that one would have to climb down to spot it, yet there is a ready, inconspicuous rope already present. * Make it reasonably common to use natural caves for storing cheese, etc., and make them the personal possession of wealthy farmer's families. Except that one goes deeper than the rest. [Answer] Mountain passes are infamously hard to traverse. Especially in a preindustrial culture, most people would religiously stick to the established passes and trails just because it‚Äôs too risky to explore a different pathway. You don‚Äôt want to take a POTENTIAL shortcut and end up falling off a cliff, or getting turned around and ending up in miles of wilderness. Her grandmother could easily have discovered a cave tunnel that was formerly blocked, but got revealed after a landslide, or after a warmer winter where more snow/ice melted than usual, and the knowledge of the tunnel would have been guarded very strictly by a handful of trusted family friends. [Answer] ‚ÄúDear, let me say something about this old tree here. It has a story to tell. Walk over with me, just through these bushes.‚Äù ‚Äî- We go back to a day, many years ago, Nana was helping at the cottage and needed some clay for bricks to patch the fireplace. Her papa sent her down to the river, where the mountain washed down lots of silt and clay into the valley. She went with a bucket and a shovel to carry as much clay as she could, because the fireplace had settled and was cracking at the bottom. She arrived at the river and came to a small tree, which was tenuously clinging on to the river bank, refusing to let its little piece of soil wash away. Roots were washed bare by the water at the river‚Äôs edge, and the little tree dug them firmly into the riverbed to keep itself righted. But something else was odd at the base of this tree. The water below the roots was in a swirl. She loved the pretty funnel it made, and started dropping leaves into it. They spun around and around. She leaned over, just to get a closer look, and the soft, cool clay of the bank would not hold her. It crumpled down into the water‚Ä¶ and disappeared! She noticed that the little whirlpool now was a little bigger too, and her leaver were gone! She started to put more leaves in, and through the gurgling sounds of the water, they were sucked down into the earth. ‚ÄúWhere could these leaves go?‚Äù she wondered. She gathered her clay for her papa, and ran back to the cottage. A week later, she returned to the little tree with a long branch she had picked up along the forest path. The path does not go out here, but it isn‚Äôt far away. Only a few shrubs line the foot of the mountain where the river is forced to turn. She pulled up her skirt, and stepped into the cool water. It was only midway up to her shins, but moved fairly quickly. She poked her branch into the whirlpool. It went in several inches, and felt like it caught a root from the little tree. She wiggled it around some more, and then it almost fell into the ground! There seemed to be no end to the hole now. ‚ÄúWhere is the water going, I wonder?‚Äù She pushed the branch in all the way, stepping closer to the edge, carefully. The stick felt like it was in open water with nothing below it at all. This was spring, the water was still cool from the fresh melt. She decided to come back when it was warmer out. Several weeks went by and she gathered up a rope from her papa‚Äôs shed. She walked out to the woods, and the path had nearly overgrown by now. it took a while to find her little tree, by stepping through some scratchy and prickly overgrown shrubs. But she found her tree, and below it; the little whirlpool. She tied the rope to the little tree, and the other end she looped around her waist. Then she took off her skirt which was covering her bath clothes. She stepped into the water. She was very scared, but also very curious. This was her greatest fault, her papa thought. She carefully walked up to the whirlpool, feeling the smooth river stones between her toes. As she got closer, she was very nervous that the earth may fall in again like the first time. But she had a rope on, and that gave her courage. She moved up, just to the part where the water turned black with nothingness, and her toes dangled over the edge. It felt firm. It felt like solid stone, as if she were a mud doll on a large granite shelf. She gave herself a bounce. There was no question, this was a very solid footing. Looking around, making sure no one was watching (she had a bucket for an excuse just the same), she got to her knees and sat in the shelf, in the cool summer water. Her feet dangled down into open water, just like the branch. The little whirlpool twirled gently just in front of her, and she could cup it in her hands. She looked around again, and seeing no one, she took hold of the rope where it was fastened to the little tree. Pulling it taught, she gently slid herself off the stone shelf, and held herself above the hole with her arms. The coarse shelf of stone scraped against the back of her thighs with only her cotton undergarment protecting her, but still, there was no bottom. Her waist was just under water now! She decided to slowly unfold her arms to lower herself into this dark, strange hole under the tree. Deeper it went. Now the cool water tickled her rib cage, but her feet still swung free. She lowered to her chest now, and nothing! At this point, she wanted to be sure she could get out, so she pulled up a little. Relieved, she found that she was very light in the water, and pulling up was not difficult. Now was the worst part, to put her elbows at a right angle, she would be into the water up to her armpits. This was a scar as she would go! And, as the water tickled the bottom of her armpits, something touched her toe! Quickly, she pulled up again and brought her feet up with a startled shriek! Now she has to check around again, that no one saw or heard her. It seemed she was not noticed. She thought long about this. Did something brush her, or did she touch something? Nothing is reaching up to grab her. OK, now she got the nerve to find out. She lowered herself down carefully, reaching around with her toes. Then, just as before, something touched her toe. Did it move? she thought? No, it‚Äôs not moving. With a little more confidence, she touched the thing with her toe, then lowered her foot down flat. It was something solid. Her weight, light as it was, seemed to be supported. Finally, she let the rope go. She was standing in the hole in water just below her shoulders. But where does the water go? She tugged firmly once again at the knot on the little tree. It was a good knot, like her papa taught her to make. She bent her knees down, and pushed her hands into the dark water, clenching on to the thick roots of the tree for stability. Lower she went, until her chin touched the water. It was like the water in her bath after playing for an hour. No, maybe a little colder than that. Now she realized that she forgot to tie up her hair. It was wet like a mop now at her shoulders, but frizzy up top. This was uncomfortable. She had the urge to just wet it all and let the weight of the water straighten it out. She went under, and the hole swallowed her up completely. It felt cool but not frigid under her, she braved to open her eyes. Nothing at all but blackness met her. But more frightening, her hands could feel nothing in front of her below the roots either. There were coarse rock outcrops to the left and right, like pinschers holding the tree up from the earth, but nothing straight ahead. Her left hand held the rope tightly, and she drifted weightlessly forward following the soft current and paying out the rope slowly. This was a time to use her bedroom closet trick: Think about nothing. Focus on her body only; the braids of rope passing through her hands, the gently waving fabric of her blouse brushing her sides, the long locks of hair tickling her shoulders. Thinking about where she was right now would be bad. It is a bad place to be. Her lungs told her it was time to get up to the surface. The sound of the gurgling river dimmed behind her, but a new sound caught her ear up ahead. She has no idea what direction she went, but the mountain was very close. Is that another river I hear? She decided to push forward one more kick before turning back; the rope gripped tightly in her hand now. Her hand pushed forward with one last lurch. She really wanted something to be here‚Äîanything to make this journey fruitful. Her hand flailed just a bit, and felt the coarse, wet stone walls around her, until her hand made a splash, just over her head! There was air above her! Would she dare to taste it? There was no longer a choice. She had no choice now. This little air was the closest she had, and it could refill her for the trip back. She pressed her face upward, and blew out her lungs with relief. In came a draft of cool, earthy air. It was a shallow cave‚Ä¶ or maybe a shallow entrance to a cave? She took a few breaths, and felt relaxed. Opening her eyes was useless, it made no difference. But she had air now, and her rope. She pressed further. The cave rose up. She reached a point where she could swim openly, in chest-deep water and a clear ceiling. She kept one hand over her head in case something hard was sticking down. It never came. But what did come, is a shore. She had never in her life been more terrified. She had never in her life been more thrilled. She had never in her life, been this curious. She returned a week later, with some kindling and a cloth soaked in oil. She wrapped them in wax parchment, bundled them tightly, and covered the bundle with wax. Having this portable fireplace secured against the water, she lit the fire in her secret cave. She followed a river through the mountain for a while, but it went down, and the cave went straight. It went straight through, to freedom. [Answer] In order of plausibility, Option #1 bats cave The entry is in a bats cave. Soldiers fear bats (superstition) grandmother did not.. and she tells her Option #2 The entry is up a hollow tree There's a hollow tree in her back yard. The opening is 5 meters up, and on the inside, there is a ladder going down to the entry of the tunnel. All you need to do is climb the tree and descend. You can do that at night and not be noticed. Soldiers are not interested in dead trees. Option #3 Grandmother invented bear spray The entry of your tunnel is in a bear cave. An underwater river flows through it, with plenty of fish to feed a family of bears thriving there. The soldiers won't dare to enter this cave. Grandmother found a way to handle the bears.. and after a while the bears got to know her and avoided her, so she does not need to use it often. She left a good supply of it in the kitchen cabot. [Answer] A few random ideas: * A place, which seems to be dangerous because of surroundings, but contains a secret. Eg. a cliff edge with some bushes covering the fact, that there's a stone shelf below leading to a cave. Hidden in plain sight, because no one would go there (adjust the idea to the valley and its shape). * A hidden passage inside a hidden passage. Even if someone discovers the first one, probably wouldn't search for a second one. That's a derivative of hiding something in the ground with something of less value buried just above. When people reach the topmost object, they'll most likely stop searching further and the deeper object remains safe. * If "magic" is allowed, there may be a physical anomaly, which allows reaching otherwise non-accessible area (local decrease of gravity, for instance). I suppose that placement of the secret way itself is a simpler part, what's harder is how to cover up, why someone walks somewhere and doesn't return. So most likely it should be a place, where prolonged disappearance is justified (eg. home, library, hotel, etc.). [Answer] ## Hiding a tunnel is easy, keeping mouths shut is the hard part. No matter how well you hide your tunnel, the real challenge over this period of time is keeping people from talking about it. At first it might be your Grandmother and her friends who knew about it, but then they started getting spouses and kids and more friends and grandkids and cousins etc. that they each start sharing the secrete with. After 3 generations there could be hundreds of people who know about the tunnel, and only one of those people has to be a loyalist to share its position with the guards who will destroy it. The only way to keep the tunnel a secrete that long is to make it forgotten. So, perhaps when the grandmother and her friends built the tunnel, they hid it well enough to avoid physical discovery, but they were soon after found outside of the valley and executed before they could tell anyone else about the tunnel, or else, they ran away never to be heard from again. So, fast forward 3 generations, and the woman would by chance discover what had been forgotten. Perhaps it is a secrete passage in her grandmother's old home that she happens across, or maybe the grandmother left a note in the margin of some old book that's been in storage for a very long time, or what not. As for the exit... caves can stay hidden in plane sight for a very long time. The dead sea scrolls stayed hidden for about 2000 years with no real effort to hide the cave entrance; so, even a cursory attempt to hide this tunnel could work for a very long time. Something as simple as an overgrown sink hole could stay undiscovered through centuries of patrols if its far enough away from any paths. [Answer] Terabithia style. I like the other answers. There is one more. Your character escapes from her miserable valley using the secrets her grandmother taught her when she was a little girl. Her grandmother built her the tunnel but her grandmother did no digging. The tunnel is secret because the tunnel is only in her mind. She escapes to a place she can be free and so for a while, she is free. ]
[Question] [ This is another attempt at helping my [previously mentioned](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/189253/30-year-groundhogs-day-how-to-increase-the-worlds-technology/189388#189388) time traveler to distribute a significant amount of 2020 knowledge in 1990. This time we're assuming 2-3 loops have happened and he can carry back a little more technology to 1990. The time traveler will have a small specially made device, think something like a Raspberry Pi + monitor and possibly ports to interface with 1990 tech. On it he has stored gigs worth of information & knowledge from the future which he wishes to share with 1990 to uplift their technology. He wishes to maintain his own anonymity while doing so. He is looking at a simpler solution than previously mentioned and sticking his uplift-tech device, along with a per-printed (in the future) note, into a box and anonymously mailing it to a trustworthy influential individual (or group) that can be trusted to ensure distributing the information to the world. He only has one of these devices at first to mail, thus he must be very careful to pick a recipient who is trustworthy and in a position to distribute the information. Luckily he can research historical figures in 2020 to try to find the perfect candidate to trust with such an important payload before he goes back. He has two primary concerns when picking the recipient. First is his desire to ensure this information is distributed to everyone equally. He doesn't want a single country or organization to hog the information and utilize it to become a superpower, he wants all of the world to benefit equally from the knowledge. Keep in mind this doesn't just mean he needs to trust the recipient to not steal the knowledge, our protagonist needs to trust the recipient has the means to prevent his government, or other groups in power, from strong arming the recipient into handing over the payload once they learn of it's existence. This means the recipient needs to either have significant amount of power and influence, or have a means to ensure the information is stealthy shared and replicated to numerous sources before making it's existence public knowledge. The second concern closely influences the first, and that is the massive quantity of data to be distributed. The payload will have potentially many gigs worth of data, since he's trying to share 30 years of worlds knowledge. 1990 technical infrastructure will struggle both with having bandwidth to efficiently distribute so much information and the storage to store, and duplicate, it. This will make it difficult for the recipient of the payload to easily distribute, and duplicate, the information across the world in a timely manner. Until the recipient has ensured the data is replicated in numerous locations the payload itself becomes a tempting McGuffin that people, and governments, will want to take and control for the potential power it's information can provide. Given these constraints who, if anyone, can be entrusted to ensure the information is properly disseminated across the world; and what instructions should the time traveler include with the payload to help the recipient to have the best chance of succeeding at this attempt? [Answer] ## DARPA They're the guys responsible for making a lot of the cool tech we use today, such as graphical user interfaces, GPS systems, and even the Internet. They might not give all the information to the public, but they would “give away” more technology than most other people or organizations. However, if you really want all the technology to become available to the public, don't want it to necessarily be commercialized, and don't mind insufferable arrogance: ## GNU / The Free Software Foundation The proprietors of such famous technologies as EMACS and Linux, they would love it if you were to give them a cache of future technology. The only issue with them is that their knee-jerk reaction to everything is “slap a GPL on it and post it on an obscure listserv.” As a result, while they would greatly appreciate getting modern Linux thirty years early, the blueprints for an Intel i9 processor would be wasted on them. ## Therefore, let's compromise: DARPA + GNU Your best bet is to make a copy of the hardware blueprints, send them to DARPA, and give the original capsule (along with a note saying that you've also given a copy to DARPA) to GNU. This is for three reasons: 1. DARPA normally wouldn't necessarily give the technologies to the public post haste; however, since GNU has put all the blueprints on an obscure listserv, they now feel compelled to develop it before the Russians do. 2. Their knowledge that DARPA also has the technology would give GNU something other than the Great Editor War (and Great OS War, and Great Language War, and…) to focus on. Instead of fighting about which code editor to use, they would start developing the software parts of the data dump and making trouble for DARPA if it doesn't give the technology to the public. 3. Notice that I didn't say anything about giving DARPA the software. While they could still make their own firmware to run the new hardware, it would be much more efficient to just cooperate with GNU. [Answer] ### The People Who Came Up With It: This will be the harder option for distribution, but the fairest and in the long term ,the most effective. For scientific papers, find out the addresses of the authors. For patents, the folks who patented it. For blueprints, the companies that generated them. These will be the organizations that are already working on these problems. They will have the earlier versions of the tech. Rightfully, they should get the rights to any tech. organically, this will move the technology forward. If anyone wants to dispute the legality of all this going on, it is the most clearly legal way to do it. This also means the folks who have an interest in the fields involved get the leg-up they need to move their research forward. People will recognize the stuff they are working on. Every piece of information involved should come with a mailing address. Call it old-fashioned, but printing all this stuff back then is possibly the most effective way to move it. Sending disks and emails will eventually be a good backup. This does require a lot more work. It requires the MC establishing an office to distribute the material. It will be obvious to anyone involved that a time traveller is involved, but I doubt that wide-scale distribution of this data would be concealable without the help of a major government. It also means that the people who are most transparent with their research will gain the biggest boost. Since openness is critical to your MC, this seems to fit nicely with his ethos. If the character wishes to screw over bad actors, he can doctor the information and send it to alternate sources with the names changed. No one trusts everyone. If you want to block a certain group from misusing information, either don't give that out, or give it to whomever you do trust. The sheer volume of the truth will allow the character to lie a little and get away with it. Some data will be time-sensitive. The butterfly effect will be your enemy. If you want to prevent 9/11, your data might change the timeline of the event. What do you do about Ponzi schemes (like Bernie Madoff) and murders? Innocent people will die and be ruined if you don't act - or not, depending. Semi-random influenced events may or may not happen, but warnings that don't come true will make you a Cassandra - Establish a reputation for disasters that are inevitable (earthquakes? volcanic eruptions?) and maybe NASA will listen when you say there's a critical O-ring seal failure problem with the space shuttle. * PS There may be as much benefit in reporting failed efforts as successful ones. Billions of dollars are spent on research and development that never goes anywhere. Letting people know in advance that DOESN'T work and WHY will let them concentrate on what DOES. [Answer] # RMS I know someone answered "GNU" already, but if you have to pick one particular person, there is probably nobody else on the planet as radical about the openness and freedom of information as Richard M. Stallman. He is an undisputed zealot on this topic. # ESR Another major openness advocate is Eric S. Raymond, head of the Open Source Initiative. He's a bit more flaky than RMS, but still probably a good choice if you had to pick just one person. # Steve Wozniak I agree that Bill Gates was quite influential in the 90's, but he was hardly altruistic or open. He was legendary for browbeating early PC users for stealing his software. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the happy hacker "The Woz". While Apple was as proprietary as anything, Woz grew up in the 60's and absorbed some of the hippie hacker ethos of his generation. He helped found the EFF and is active in philanthropy. As a single actor, and a key player at Apple, he is as qualified as anyone for this role. # Stewart Brand As the author of the Whole Earth Catalog, which was like modern search engines before they were invented, Brand was committed to disseminating information. Yet another member of the hippie generation, he literally drove around the country selling tools to help hippies be self-sufficient. He is clearly the kind of idealist tree-hugger type that could be trusted to share and spread a cache of info rather than hoarding it for himself for personal gain. # EFF Most of my nominees are single individuals, but while GNU would be a reasonable organizational choice, I think the Electronic Frontier Foundation would be a "purer" choice. They are focused not on building software, but on protecting informational freedom of all kinds. In particular, they have fought abusive patents perhaps more than any other non-profit in the world. They are the nuts and bolts operation of information freedom and now have a fairly wide reach and sphere and influence. [Answer] Not to put us on too high a pedestal, but the perfect recipient of such a treasure would be a successful (or soon to be successful) science fiction author. Such a person would be comfortable with future technology, good at distributing information and have enough wealth and connections to get the job done. The nice thing is that from your future vantage point, you can use the totality of an authors work as their resume for the job. If you are worried about governments and super corporations wanting to steal the information, I'd recommend Dean Koontz. In his books, the government is never the good guy. Worried about managing the massive scale of the information you have to share, choose David Brin. His writings involve Earth receiving a massive library of technical knowledge (from Aliens) and how it effects our culture and world. Need your author to have a strong technical foundation, consider Michael Crichton or William Gibson. Better yet, send the device to one author but include a note recommending that they create a think tank of other great minds to help with the project. Provide the home addresses and private phone numbers of other science fiction authors whose writings demonstrate traits which will help the project. Throw in a few non-fiction authors, like George Gilder and Doug Hofstadter. Cherry pick the scientific celebrity list for people like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan. And of course, reserve a seat at the table for Stephen Hawking. However, keep this in mind. By diverting these great minds from their writings, you will be depriving the world of some wonderful stories and un-sowing the seeds which those stories would otherwise plant in the minds of tomorrow's science leaders. Therefore, if your character is going to do this, they better have a really good reason why 1990 needs that information early. You are messing with the mind of the world. Be careful! [Answer] ### 1st Preference; Someone who: * Believes in the freedom and release of information so strongly he's willing to go to jail for it. * Registered leaks.org in the 90s to start leaking information that was in the public interest. * In the 90s was hacking big companies to find their secrets. [Julian Assange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Early_life) is who I'd give a 2020 data dump to. I'm choosing someone who's willing to go to jail to ensure that data in the public interest gets released. Assange's life consisted of "born into a cult" -> "teenager hacker" -> "contributing to open source software" -> "hosting wikileaks" -> "going to jail for releasing public interest information to the public." Early 90s will catch him at the end of his teenage hacker phase and just as he's starting to contribute to the world's global knowledge base. This is the perfect time. He did a dry run of wikileaks in 90s by registering "leaks.org", however he never used it, he didn't start wikileaks until 2006. If you can get him something worth leaking, he may end up starting wikileaks on his first try instead. There was some early hacking charges against him in 1991 - if you can get the information to him before he starts hacking, he won't need to hack to get leak worthy information. Include some 2010's news stories about how he exposed torture in the middle east and the USA killing journalists to remind him why he's motivated to do this, and how his belief of free exposure of information made the world a better place. ### 2nd Preference; Someone who: * Believes in the freedom of information so strongly they're willing to go to jail to get the truth out. * Has used their skills to expose government oppression. * Has an easy way to multiply information and mass transmit it. [Kenneth Jarecke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Jarecke) A war reporter already famous in 1991 for capturing a photo of a burnt Iraqi soldier, and had covered the Tiananmen Square massacre. Alternatively, [Daniel Ellsberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg), who exposed the pentagon papers. Either of these two could be trusted with a large volume of public interest documents in the early 90s. [Answer] CDs are cheap (like a few cents each if you buy thousands), hold at least 600Mb and were widely used in the early 90s for distributing software. So spend $500 and buy like 2000 CDs. <https://www.mediasupply.com/buvecds.html> The internet existed in the 1990s. Make a peer to peer file sharing program on a CD (like LimeWire, KaZaa, BitTorrent, etc). Included with the client is a chunk of your repository the installer installs anywhere up to 500MB worth of repository data on the client machine, depending on the user's disk space. There are many versions of the CD each containing different parts of your file repository. Mail a copy of the CD to thousands of university professors and engineers. Don't use your real return address so you remain anonymous. Include instructions telling them to share the CD with others and explaining what is on it. Once several people install the CD you now have a distributed file sharing repository that is impossible to destroy because there are lots of redundant copies. Put copies of the file sharing client on popular FTP sites like Usenet alt.binaries. If you really wanted to get aggressive about it, you could make the file sharing program into a virus instead. It would then automatically spread the information to other computers. [Answer] # Option 1: Bill Gates Yeah, I'm a Bill Gates fanboy, what of it? In 1990, Microsoft became the first personal computer software company to exceed 1 billion dollars in sales in a single year. Bill may not have had the international untouchability that he has these days, but he does have plenty of access to enough resources to make it impractical for even the US government to try to shut him down. Presuming Bill Gates still grows into an eccentric billionaire trying to help the world by the time you start planning this expedition, you can talk to him in 2020 about what exact message you should send to get his help in 1990. This plan has a bonus in that Bill Gates of our timeline (maybe not the one you'd be able to talk to him in) is likely introspective enough to tell you if he would actually have been a terrible choice in 1990 and could offer better suggestions. # Option 2: Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter was a former President of the United States which makes him politically inconvenient for any government to try to suppress. More importantly, he's a genuinely nice guy. If you sat down with him in 2020 and explained what you were trying to do and how you planned to bring technology and medical science back from the future for the good of all mankind, there's a pretty good chance he would help you craft your letter to himself in 1990. # Option 3: Tim Berners-Lee Tim is credited with implementing the World Wide Web. I think that if anyone could sneak it into the very foundatiuons of the internet it's him. # Unforseen Concerns I've been reading a bunch of your prompts this morning, and this is the first time I've thought about it. I think it goes here because you're talking about preventing governments from strong-arming people. Please remember that in 1990, the Cold War was still a pretty big deal, the Soviet Union had not fallen. Further, the People's Republic of China didn't join the World Trade organization until 2001. Hightened tensions with these nations could be exacerbated by some crazy time traveller bringing destabilizing technology back with them and trying to make it available to everyone. [Answer] The Leibowitz Solution What about entrusting copies to e.g. the Vatican? Meets the criteria of having enough power to withstand pressure from foreign governments. Struggles on the technology side with replicating the information across the nascent internet. But as long as they can duplicate it locally they'd have enough envoys to a wide range of countries, with diplomatic credentials, that they could physically distribute it to trusted parties around the globe before making it public. If you consider there's a risk of giving one religion too much power, or that some parts of the world would be underrepresented, share with some others to balance it out. Actually, I'm not clear on how the time travel works, but with your future benefit of hindsight is this something your time traveller can tinker with? So try e.g. the Vatican first, if that is disseminated widely enough, or leads to a power grab, go back again and give it to somebody else at the same time? [Answer] I see the point of nominating organizations like FSF and EFF, but let's face it, those are 501(c)(3)s, with boards of directors and their own formal agendas, and they can't be counted on to decide that dealing with your info-bomb is suddenly their mission in lieu of whatever they were doing before. Instead, I would send the package to one specific person, [John Gilmore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gilmore_(activist)), and ask him personally to disseminate it for the good of humanity. Gilmore is a founding member of the EFF, so he aligns with their technological freedom goals (actually he's probably more of a hard-liner on those issues than the EFF itself). He's been a contributor to GNU since 1983 and originated some well-known GNU projects, so he's committed to free software. If he decided it was the right idea, he could probably enlist a lot of help from one or both of those organizations. But Gilmore is also a founding member of the [Cypherpunks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk), which was, in the 90s, the organization most dedicated to the idea of using technological means to allow people to share information, anonymously if they choose, no matter who considered it illegal or obscene and tried to censor it. Gilmore coined the phrase "the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it". He's the person I would trust to have a backup plan to ensure your information's survival and dissemination even if, for some nefarious reason, "going through channels" failed. ]
[Question] [ In the modern day a isolated country with no standing army (and no military agreements with other countries with a military) is invaded. The country in question has similar characteristics to [Iceland](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland) (minus the military defense agreement with the U.S.) This country has no standing army or major paramilitary force that could pose a threat to the invading enemy army and has not for the last one hundred years (unless you take the lightly armed police and coast guard.) Firearm legislation allows for all citizens to be able to own handguns as well as shotguns and rifles, but few do. Now the invading enemy army... Where has this army invaded? Assuming Iceland is our model country, the enemy force has attacked from the western most point. How large is this enemy force? Around 20,000 strong (two divisions.) They are mainly infantry armed with AK-74s and russian body armour. They also have a 500 strong logistics and communications brigade and a mobile AA squadron (with a dozen [SA-6](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K12_Kub)s.) There is also a small number of armoured personal carriers (APC) and Tanks; probably [T-72s](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-72) and [BMP series](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_development) APCs (up to 50 APCs and 20 tanks.) How long until they reach the capital (in the east of the country)? Two weeks at the most, due to rough terrain that bogs-down their wheeled vehicles. # Question How can a country with no standing army for the last one hundred years mobilize an army? Additional Question - Would the defending country's government be able to appeal to the UN or NATO for support/an expeditionary force? [Answer] ## You don't The invaded country has too little time and resources to build up an army. You need years, at least 5 but probably more like 25, to have a decent military. ## Your enemy's enemies do! (Almost) Every country has some other country that has a problem with them. Ask that country to come help with special forces. (And weapons while we are at it) Of those are at least two kinds: 1. Elite Door kickers 2. Rebel rousers and trainers The second type is the one we want. You might call them special advisors. You know those 'little green men' the Russians send to Crimea? Special forces. You might want to look into this: [Green berets in Vietnam.](https://specialoperations.com/30941/jfk-sends-400-green-beret-special-advisors-may-1961-begin-vietnam-involvement/) Those guys can train your people with very little in time and supplies. But be prepared for guerilla warfare, and that gets very, very nasty, for both sides. Option Bravo: borrow a few subs (with crews) and sink the supply ships, without food and water you will not get far... --- You can and should involve the UN in this. That is how [Kuwait](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Kuwait) solved its invasion problem in the end. NATO will only help if you are a member of it... [Answer] ### They can't. A modern day army, with that kind of strength, would wipe out any main (police) resistance pretty fast. Assuming they prepared it somehow, and not just you know, discover that there's some land there and have no idea how to go around. The main reason for it, is not necessarily the lack of army, but mostly the lack of equipment. Let's see how that could go down: 1. The invasion begins (and they did not use air planes, or artillery to cut any communication mean, just because. 2. The government gets to hear about it. And decides to mobilise the troops to resist the invasion (because they can be irresponsible as well). 3. They somehow contact the population (with the communication that still wasn't cut, remember?) like with SMS/Email. 4. People rally to the designated centres (because they are patriotic/suicidal) and somehow the invading army does not get to know about that, observing many people moving to a specific destination. 5. They give them the best they have: a set of police equipment: rifles, guns, some helms, etc. (This is assuming, their police was well funded and had that much surplus). 6. They train them (meaning, they give them a chance to shoot, if they don't die trying, then good enough, they can join the front). 7. The first mobilised troops get to face the invasion (who were kind enough to wait for them to come up). They are now equiped with some shields, light guns, and maybe gas grenades... to face tanks. The Russian (in)famously faced the German army on such similar imbalance. But first they needed time to gather their troops, and had to fall back a few thousands of km first. On Iceland's scale, that's the sea. And they made it work by having a much more populated army. Iceland has 380,000 inhabitants. You don't get the 60-80,000 stronged-troup in 2 weeks. And modern weapons are slightly more effective than WWII's. ### Altenatives I can see two alternatives. * They were in the situation you described, realise that they have no chance, and surrender. However they try to arm and organise some resistance. When there's such a strength imbalance, guerilla's tactics are the go-to choice. * They were not completely irresponsible and had a plan put in place to defend themselves. Which, I guess most evolved countries do. Either they train their citizens regularly (like Switzerland), or they have agreements with stronger countries, etc. And put the plan they had into place. [Answer] Long and short, two weeks isn't really long enough for many plans. We should have been gearing up to defend ourselves before anyone ever arrived, but we can't change the past. In the position of the not-icelandic government, my first move would be to hire a substantial paramilitary mercenary group to help defend my nation. Our biggest military resource right now is probably our wealth. My second move would be to form a militia and arm them. If there aren't enough weapons to go around, that's a limiting factor since any competent invader will have blockaded us. As other answers have noted, Not-Iceland has a heck of a lot more people than the invading army, if even a modest percentage can be armed and equipped and are willing to fight, that's an army of similar size even if it lacks in quality. Thirdly, I would also be making serious overtures to anyone who might be sympathetic and powerful enough to help out. Guerrilla Warfare with the support of the population has a long history of success. Take Finland during WW2 as an example. With the assistance of a bitter winter, knowledge of the terrain and a tenacious determination to drive the invaders out, they repelled both the German and Russian armies using a militia armed with hunting rifles. [Answer] ## How can a country create an army in two weeks when faced by invasion? They can't. An army implies a great deal of organization, training, and support. There is no way you are going to pull one together in two weeks. You need tactical & strategic leadership, command & control structures, logistics corps, and people that understand and accept their place in the overall structure along with many other things to have an army. There is no way to put all of that together on the fly while an enemy is advancing across your territory. --- ## Can a country without an army mobilize for an effective defense in two weeks? Maybe. This would hugely depend on the social/political structure of the country and populace, along with certain aspects of their economy and geography. Guns You mention limited private ownership of firearms. This is a huge damper on their likelihood of success. People who have never handled a gun tend to be afraid of them. They don't know how to carry, load, ready, aim, fire, handle recoil, clean, or otherwise maintain their weapons. They may have seen things in the movies, TV, or games, but there is a huge difference between what generally comes from the entertainment industry and reality. It is generally accepted (at least where I learned) that you need ~100 rounds through a firearm to get accustomed to how it handles. That does not mean proficiency, just that you are generally hitting in the vicinity of the target, can reload in a reasonable time frame, and are unlikely to hurt your self or panic/drop it when it goes off. You mention 20,000 invaders. Just to match them in numbers you need to come up with 20,000 people, 20,000 firearms for them, and 2,000,000 rounds of practice ammunition, and time for them to do said practice before they are even close to being ready to handle a weapon without direct supervision. Not to mention the logistics of making sure the ammo matches the weapons for any given group. Even if you managed to pull it off, you are still at a huge disadvantage in this respect because your people just barely know how to use what they now have, your opponents will likely have fired thousands of rounds through their weapons, as well as having cross trained on the other weapons their forces use. A handgun handles very differently than a rifle or shotgun, and those handle differently than each other. By contrast, a culture where the majority of the citizenship is familiar with and has ready access to firearms stands a much better chance. Particularly one in which marksmanship is prized and striven for. In such a place people will know how to handle their guns and what their strengths/limitations are. They will have their weapon of choice where they can get to it quickly and if they don't have ammunition readily available, they know what they need. They are likely to have practiced enough to hit targets reliably, and they will know how to care for their weapons. It is also likely that they have practiced with multiple types/styles of firearms at some level and could quickly be trained on a new weapon if their usual choice was unusable/unsuited for some reason. On average, they would be a decent match for the soldiers in terms of weapons handling and marksmanship. Intelligence & Communication The biggest part of war is not throwing bullets at each other, it is information, and making sure it reaches the right people at the right time. * Where is the enemy? * What do their forces consist of? * What are their objectives, both short term and long term? * Who do you have available to confront them? * How are those people equipped? * What is their level of experience? * How can you pass orders to the people in the area? * How will you get feedback and adjust when things inevitably change? * Can you keep communication lines open when the enemy is trying to close them? * Can you keep the enemy from listening in on your communications? This is just a sampling of the types of information that needs to flow through a military organization for it to be effective. Your outlined scenario doesn't offer much in the way of hope on any of these points. Particularly with the last two, communications that are resistant to disruption and interception generally require some special equipment and arrangements to be in place before you can use them. It would be difficult to establish such after the invasion has started. The biggest thing that would help is to have multiple redundant communications lines connecting your population centers. By this I mean no single points of failure in the network as a whole. Each town or city must be connected to several others, so that information can flow around any nodes the enemy takes offline. There needs to be a mix of mediums involved as well. Land lines and fiber can be cut, radios can be jammed, messengers can be intercepted. Doing all of these reliably at the same time is unlikely. Command & Control How are you going to pass instructions to your people and have them relay information back to you? You need the 200 militia in area X to form a blockade and delay the 1000 enemy soldiers that are coming down highway 1 for a day so you can get other people in position to stop them. Who are you going to contact to give those orders to? To the militia this looks like a suicide mission (and it might be), why should they follow those orders? A large aspect of military training is to get people accustom to following orders and to recognize and accept their chain of command. By nature most people question what they are told, procrastinate, or otherwise avoid doing unpleasant things (like letting someone shoot at them). One of the primary objectives of basic training is to break down this natural inclination and get people to do what they are told, and do it right now! In combat there is often no time for question or explanation. You need trust between the different layers of the organization. Front line troops need to react when given an order because delay means the situation has changed and what would have helped is now going to hurt or be pointless instead. They also need to trust that their commanders have information that they do not, and are not going to throw their lives away frivolously. Your lower and middle tier officers need to be able to read the situation and know when their orders no longer apply, when they have information that the upper ranks do not, when the situation allows for them to question what is coming from HQ, and when they need to act without waiting for orders. Your high command needs to trust that their field officers know what they are doing, and have quicker access to local information than HQ does. They need to judge what information needs to reach different areas and how to best use the troops available. A few of the other answers imply that the civilian police forces can step in to provide this command structure. But that is not how they are organized or what they are trained to do. Generally speaking, police forces are local organizations with somewhat tenuous connections to higher authority. The police in a small town know their populace and area, they likely know how to reach the regional HQ/directors and their immediate neighbors, but they most likely do not take orders from them or communicate on a daily basis. Similar for large cities, precinct A has a specific area that they are focused on and don't pay much attention to what is happening in the other areas. In general, police training and procedure are designed to handle momentary situations on an individual or small group basis, not ongoing battles and confrontations involving hundreds to thousands of people. Geography The nature of the terrain will also play a large part in the success of the defense. By putting your defenders on a relatively small island you have already hampered them, they just don't have a lot of room to work with. However, if there are significant terrain features that can be leveraged as defensive points or barricades it will help a lot. Dropping the bridges across major rivers will do a lot to slow the enemy. Mining them so that they can be blown mid crossing has the potential to do even better, but adds the risk that they will be able to disarm the charges or otherwise prevent you from detonating them, thereby securing a crossing. Significant mountains implies passes that can be barricaded and defended, and opens the potential for things like triggered rock slides or avalanches to take out enemy columns or make the roads impassible. Lots of heavy forest or swamps give places where your people can hide and launch harassing attacks while making it difficult for the enemy to maneuver. Weather & climate are also a potential factor. The locals are accustom to it, they know which direction storms come from, how fast they move, and how severe they tend to be. They know what temperatures to expect, how they change through out the day, and how to live/work with them. If the invading force is not familiar with these things it is going to hamper them. If they are from significantly warmer/cooler climates they are also likely to encounter weather related injuries such as heat stroke or frostbite. Economic The nature of your countries economy will also play a part. Do they have significant natural resources and the infrastructure to turn them into finished products? Are such resources and infrastructure spread out enough to prevent the enemy from seizing them right off? Can the things that are produced and associated infrastructure be repurposed for war? Can such repurposing happen fast enough to make a difference? As an example, if the country has a significant mining industry, that implies a fair amount of heavy equipment and raw materials to work with. There is also a decent chance that there is a ready supply of industrial explosives around. In the end, explosives are explosives, they can be used to build various types of mines, collapse bridges, destroy roads, and create various improvised weapons. Heavy equipment can be used to modify terrain, either in building defensive positions, or raising other obstructions. It is also conceivable that some could have armor bolted on and be used as APCs or other fighting vehicles. Another key economic issue is whether the country is a net importer or exporter of various goods. How self sufficient are they? If the enemy just seized their primary port, how long are they going to be able to keep power on? run vehicles? feed their people? Finally what is the lifestyle of the general populace and what are they accustom to? Societies which are accustom to lots of creature comforts and ready access to food, power, and other modern conveniences & luxuries are not going to fair as well when suddenly confronted with the hardships of war. Modern America is a prime example, generally speaking, people are accustomed to being able to walk into any of a dozen stores on any day/time and being able to find what they need, be it a loaf of bread, clothing, a new car, or a high powered rifle. If something were to cause a disruption in the supplies or power flowing into a city, most of the people there would have no idea how to deal with it. More than a few days of disruption and society would start to collapse as supplies run out and people start to turn on each other. [Answer] Same way small countries without standing armies do now. The police are used and added to. Many small nations police are specifically sent on peace keeping missions so that they can learn some military type skills. > > Would the defending country's government be able to appeal to the UN or NATO for support/an expeditionary force? > > > They could appeal to anyone they want or pray even. But it's totally dependent on political expedience and economics on whether they get any help or not. Iceland being basically part of Europe would get quicker more effective support than somewhere like Tonga. [PNG has been appealing to everyone in sight](https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/west-papua-forgotten-war-unwanted-people), yet despite being next door to Australia receives no help from an invading modern army practicing genocide. In practical terms without treaties with other countries they're pretty much on their own. [Answer] You're missing the big picture A classic Army for force-on-force enagagements must be trained and equipped before the fight. That takes time and money. Your scenario indicates that's already too late since the fight is already in progress. At the National level, before fleeing the capital, leaders must decide upon a strategy to dislodge the invaders: Should they solicit foreign help (Kuwait), or expel the invaders without assistance (Finland)? The types of organizations, targets, equipment, and responses will be based upon the chosen strategy. For example, the strategy will determine the main effort of any government-in-exile: propaganda vs. fundraising and logistics. Lower-level national leaders and local leaders form the command and logistical framework necessary to bind the many soon-to-spring-up independent resistance cells together into a unified national effort. This takes a bit of persuasion, particularly if local cell leaders disagree with the national strategy. For example: In a foreign-assistance (Kuwait) strategy, expending resources to disable invaders' air-defense (at the right time) is sensible. In a do-it-yourself (Finland) strategy, that would seem a waste. If your cells are uncoordinated, then air defenses might get attacked, or not, or at the wrong time. Lots of wasted effort and lives that way. The national command and logistical framework provides unity of effort toward the chosen strategy, prevents destructive competition between cells, and maximizes the effect of limited resources. There's more. All a resistance or insurgency can do sap the invaders' initiative; to transition them from offense to defense. Historically, guerilla forces cannot expel the invader - they are not trained or equipped for that kind of fight. So once you have denied the invaders mobility, start building your Army in an obscure corner of the country. A real army with a general and uniforms and perhaps some tanks. There's a reason for this: The new army clearly, unambiguously, and legally represents the old government. It's a legitimate force that can be negotiated with or (eventually) surrendered to. Even if it's just a battalion. It's a rallying symbol for the occupied population. If the invaders turn over territory to a local quisling, the presence of the army makes it clear who is on whose side. If a foreign power intervenes, the army is the organization that can be coordinated with, and liberated territory turned over to. [Answer] They don't need to mobilize an army? Even without the military, the US would be a hard country to invade. The general population is nationalistic and there is easy access to guns and ammunition. There is also a number of gun enthusiasts with reasonable training that could manage and train smaller fractions of resistance. This is hard to fight against as an invading force... Iceland has a population of around 350 thousand people. If slightly more than 10% decided to try and sabotage the invading army, you'd get twice the number of guerrilla soldiers as the invading army. If they're nationalistic or the invading force is cruel, they can get significantly more. That's going to put a damper on the invasion real quick. They might not have a standing army, but there is nothing to say they can't have resources available. Emergency stores with supplies such as medicine, food and water could go a long way. If there's some weapons and ammunition available, that would be great. For that sake, there is nothing to say that the country itself isn't a big exporter of weapons. Secondary question: Yes they can ask whoever they want. If they will get help is another question. [Answer] Twitter. Ok, that's simplistic, but consider how the [Arab Spring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spring) played out just a few years ago. The details are different (not an insta-army in response to an invasion), but the principle applies: in a place with nationalistic citizens, guns, and the Internet, loosely-organized resistance is possible. A real army requires years of preparation, but army-on-army isn't your only possible response. You would be better off facilitating guerilla warfare. You're in for a lot of chaos; you won't be able to centrally-organize this stuff. But if the cause matters enough to your people, you can encourage them to take matters into their own hands. You'll probably have to make it known that you will look the other way about how they slow down the invaders, and you'll have some work to clean up afterwards, but you might not be doomed. [Answer] You can! If you can't handle the problem yourself try making it a problem for other powerful countries. You can come to an agreement by trading your valuable resources to another country with powerful army forces at a cheap price (eg:- oil, gold). So you can expect them to fight for you. Remember that making allies is an important strategy in any warfare. With the right resources at stake, you can defend/defeat any force. The resource you choose to trade doesn't necessarily have to be gold or oil any other kind of trade item. Even sometimes it could be the country's geographical location that carries an immense economic advantage. [Answer] They don't have to have an army. As world history shows to us, guerrilla partisans can resist to invading forces quite a long time even in very small country. Especially if invaders are not that familiar with the landscape environment, local culture and all this staff. Look at mid-Asia countries as an example: how much decades they're hot-points in terms of warfare combat, attempts to re-format their culture to alien ideas etc? And regardless the amount of blood spilled and tremendous budgets spent, any invasion status is sub-zero success. Any woman can be a kamikaze bomber, any errand-boy can stab you with a knife suddenly, any elder can be guerilla informer. [Answer] You mention that citizens are allowed to have weapons, but few do. However, the fact that they can means there's a supplier of firearms. If everyone in the capital purchases a weapon and the police force starts organizing a paramilitary style army for two weeks, they could at least put up a fight. If they demolish the roads leading to the capital, set traps everywhere and engage in extended urban warfare they could last a couple of weeks at most. Maybe that's enough for reinforcements from other allied nations to arrive? [Answer] You'll find your best guidance in history. The standing army is a relatively modern construct. Historically the greater portion of fighting was generally done by mercenaries. # Modern Mercenaries <https://www.businessinsider.com/bi-mercenary-armies-2012-2?r=US&IR=T> # Arrière Ban There's some great info in here: <https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24d1tz/mechanism_of_raising_an_army_in_medieval_europe/> Basically the option facing land owners in 14th century France was either to pay money to contribute to the recruitment of mercenaries, or contribute an amount of men. The second of these options was of course deeply unpopular, and reminiscent of modern conscription. # Modern Examples The following countries have no armed forces: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_armed_forces> For many of these, they are small nations for which their international partnerships are very important. See Monaco as an example. [Answer] Asymmetric warfare, as others have stated, is definitely the key here. I wont belabor the main gist of that but would add a few things not yet addressed. 1. Owning or shaping the internal and external message are the real long term keys to success. It doesnt matter if you fail in every operation as long as your messaging resonates at home and abroad. Your three audiences are the internal population for morale and support purposes; sympathetic nations who may be swayed to pressure the invaders or assist you; the population of the invading country as they are footing the bill in blood and cash for this endeavor. Crafting appropriate messages and hammering them home across the spectrum of communication will likely prove more decisive than any kinetic action although kinetic action must be part of the mix to show resolve. Many examples of this exist but Id point to two classic historical cases (as in the conflict is completely resolved) which are the French and US involvement in Vietnam and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 2. Co-opting the invaders from the beginning allows for long term success. It is possible to be completely invaded/subsumed and still win in the end. The invaders will not have unlimited money and will look to create efficiencies. If the police force is postured to appear happy to collaborate and the mid and low level bureaucrats present in the same way many will be incorporated into the operation of the new government and can set about slowly nudging the government into doing things advantageous to the invaded nation. It would be important to have strong nationalistic ties and craft guidance for everyone that is easy to follow in a vacuum. Some type of low key cell structure would help keep such an initiative on the tracks. Examples would possibly be former colonies that gained independence from their European "patrons" through non violent means such as India and Pakistan. One final big question though. Why would anyone think the effort would be worth the cost to invade a resource-poor isolated nation? Some sort of geographic strategic value? [Answer] Your country does not have a standing army. But it might have a militia. This was the way the US was originally intended to work. The writes of the Constitution were nervous about standing armies, and rightly so; they are dangerous in several different ways. But you need to be practical about the possibility of invasion or insurrection. A standing army implies persons whose entire job is to be in the army. A militia is like the National Guard - civilians with regular jobs who come together to train and practice, and who are available to mobilize on short notice when there is need. From the US Constitution - Article 1 section 8, Powers of the Congress. <http://constitutionus.com/#a2s2c1> > > 15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of > the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; > > > 16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, > and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service > of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the > Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia > according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; > > > Your scenario says no standing army. Maybe the militia is how they planned to do it. The citizen soldiers will be mustered, issued weapons and then do it like they practiced. Bonus: if you are going to muster, you will get to have a Mustermaster. [Answer] ## Look at the Fyrd system from English history This system was most famously implemented and perfected under Alfred the Great. Basically, each region is responsible for contributing military forces called up from the local population to go to fight. They are expected to be able to mobilize quickly and answer the call to arms, but much of the time, they are working in their own communities. This system was largely responsible for his success against the Vikings, and causing them to look elsewhere for raiding targets. [Answer] While the answers talking about militias are good, you undercut that possibility with this statement: "Firearm legislation allows for all citizens to be able to own handguns as well as shotguns and rifles, but few do." If there are generally no arms in the country, making them from scratch is doable, but takes TIME (not a couple of weeks for the necessary quantity). Ammunition is even harder to start from scratch (gunpowder takes a bit of effort). More importantly than the manufacture of weapons (or capture - molotov cocktails are cheap) is a culture of arms and independence. If the society allows weapons, but there is no culture of using them, any militia/guerrilla army raised will be largely incompetent. (EDIT: And Rozwell actually notes this point.) Aid from elsewhere is possible, but will not happen in two weeks for a physically isolated country (unless there is something already arranged - which you say is not the case - and the invasion was signaled so that the other country could put its forces on alert). [Answer] "How can a country with no standing army for the last one hundred years mobilize an army?" It depends on what you call an army. If you mean a human organization able to win over another army. It's possible under certain conditions summarised by: compensate enemy advantages with your advantages. You have the numbers but that doesn't go long way. The most critical aspect of an army is it's morale which you can achieve without having an army. The morale depends of many things but I'll try to simplify them in three: th belief that victory is achievable, belief that the cause for defense is just (more just than your ennemie's one), love for your way of life (nationalism, solidarity). In that sense the first and only way to win this battle is to first win the morale battle. Publicity that confirms these beliefs is necessary, while international efforts to descredit your enemy can achieve it too. Conversely, avoiding information that would undermine these beliefs is equaly important. Under that condition a partisan army will form itself with little exterior help faster than the government forces could. You have all the weapons you need. You have some guns but you certainly have explosives to even take care of the armoured vehicles. "Additional Question - Would the defending country's government be able to appeal to the UN or NATO for support/an expeditionary force?" If your ennemy is Russia, fighting in the middle of the atlantic and with so little troops I would say they wont resist the opportunity to hit their foremost political enemy even if you don't ask them. [Answer] A modern military needs a lot of stuff, coordination, and support. The enemy is invading an island (a difficult thing to do already) with only 500 support personnel for almost 100 vehicles and 20,000 line troops? That's a bold move. Most of their tanks and many other vehicles are likely to be broken down on the side of the road fairly shortly. Their troops won't be able to scavenge ammo from the locals because even if they find any it's likely to be a different caliber. Their medics and other support personnel will be too overloaded and won't be able to handle everything. They'll be sick, hungry, and in unfamiliar hostile territory. Meanwhile, their ships are sitting ducks. So find an ally with a submarine or buy one and get enough people aboard who can figure out how to operate it just well enough to sink the enemy supply ships. Then the locals can round up the remains of the enemy troops with pitchforks. [Answer] Nope. Look at what happened in Yugoslavia in WWII. Individual partisans with high morale hastily formed into groups consistently lost to poorly-armed, poorly-led and poorly-equipped regular troops. You might have enough time to get much of the population familiar with their weapons. Turning them into actual military units will take much longer. Guerrilla warfare can take place and make the place difficult to govern, depending on the motivation of the defenders and the scruples of the attackers. It was a high-cost operation in the German Eastern Front areas in WWII. ]
[Question] [ What if our planet was always lit so that there would be no nighttime? Assume that the scenario is like [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/Circumbinary_planetary_systems.svg/220px-Circumbinary_planetary_systems.svg.png), where A is the planet and B and ABb are the stars. And they are all aligned so that it will fit the scenario. This planet has stars on both sides that gives enough light to keep it warm yet not enough to burn the surface. Will it still be necessary for us humans to sleep regularly like we do every night? [Answer] # Be like the Majestic Dolphin. The solution is to have the animal evolve to sleep like a dolphin, with half their brain at a time, though for different reasons. Dolphins on Earth do this to avoid drowning, but the concept is still the same. Without a method like this, your people will have a hard time living without sleep related issue, like the dolphins said "So long and thanks for all the fish, so sad that it must come to this." This opens the door to some interesting psychological and physiological features; * For one, growth hormones are released during sleep, so this species may grow at half the rate of humans but for 24 hours a day. * I imagine as individual sections of brain controlling movement rest, certain body parts may be paralyzed at certain parts of the day. * Depending on the sections of brain, they could possibly have different personalities, depending on what half was awake. When you get started here, you can really get rolling. I can imagine a species that instead of sleeping half a brain at a time; lives on quarters, or even eighths at a time. Keep in mind that if they evolved in this world, they wouldn't even have a concept of night; never mind associate it with sleep. Of course, if you have your world suddenly have no night, then this answer is pointless. [Answer] A very brief overview of something I remember from my Psych class. The reason for sleep is still somewhat debated and unknown. Three of the leading theories are Evolution, Restoration, and Processing. The evolutionary theory states that animals evolved to sleep during periods that it would be dangerous to be awake (ie. The time most predators are awake.). Restoration is exactly like it sounds like and is the theory that we need rest in order to repair the body and mind. Processing is that we need sleep in order to process everything we did during the time we were awake and prepares us for the next awake period. Because of these theories, it would be doubtful that humans would not need sleep if there was no night. If you wish to understand sleep more thoroughly than my brief overview has provided, I would suggest looking up sleep theories, theories of sleep, or a psychology book as that talks about sleep too. Hope this helps :) Edit: I would also like to add that sleep seems to play an important role in mental and/or physical development. We sleep a long time as babies when our minds and bodies are still developing and as we age, the time we spend sleeping or needing sleep decreases. [Answer] You need to look up the classic story [Nightfall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_short_story_and_novel)) by Isaac Asimov! Furthermore, look into the backstory of how it was written, which is essentially your question. People like us evolve to live in constant light. The only twist is that night does fall once in a thousand years and the stars come out. This drives the people crazy. They do sleep, as he wanted to make them just like us for the story. That is your choice, so the question has no real answer. You can have your characters sleep or do something distinctly different that serves a similar purpose. If so, you can get creative about what kind of cycle to follow. You can have them never sleep at all. You can do something like migratory birds do and have them rest half the brain at a time while remaining active. Perhaps different species will do different things, so you can explore multiple solutions in the same story. [Answer] There are areas on Earth which regularly don't get any nighttime for part of the year: the polar areas. While this effect is not enough for evolutionary timescales, as in to balance things out, it's only nighttime during the other season, people do sleep at night even though the sun is up. Some people do use curtains, blindfolds etc. but you can actually get used to sleep while it's bright outside. [Answer] Nobody fully understands why we sleep. There's plenty of pieces that we've put together about what sleep does for us, but we don't fully understand the puzzle. We also only have observable examples of sleep from 1 planet, which happens to be dark for half of the day, so we don't really have any good ways of guessing how things would have evolved without a day/night cycle. Given the "nature finds a way" mindset, one might assume that life on such a planet would figure out something. There's plenty of really odd sleep approaches out there. Crocodiles, for instance, can sleep with one half of their brain at a time so that they don't get surprised. However, if we're talking about humans, as in you transplant some of us to a planet with an eternal daylight, the answer is easier. Humans shut down without sleep. The structures coded for in our genome assume a day/night cycle, and our brain simply doesn't work without it. [Answer] While I'd rather ponder the possibilities of a planet suspended in the [Lagrangian point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) between the stars and mechanisms that lead to such configuration, here's what I think about sleep. It is not necessary for humans to sleep every night, 8 hours straight, or even regularly(though regularity is beneficial). While sleep deprivation does affect people very much like narcotic substances (diminished motor control, grogginess, up to even [hallucinations](http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/108/455/457)), the need to sleep does not come from the changes in light levels. I've personally experimented and realized that about 28-hour cycle suits me better than the 24-hour locked-to-day cycle. During the time I didn't see the sky to assess the time of day for long stretches of time, so my body forgot the regular cycle and fell into what was "required", rather than timed by the setting and rising of the sun. There are several different sleeping patterns you can employ to alter your cycles, some claiming to be more efficient([requiring less sleep per 24hr cycle](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/00207459809000648)) than the solid "8 hours at a time" we've grown to hold as the status quo. [Here's a blog of a person switching to 20 minute naps for every 4 hours](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep-log-day-1/), one of the most extreme polyphasic sleep cycles that maximizes the time you are awake per day. As he explains it too, while you might get more active hours to your day with a "powernapping" sleep schedule, the downfall is that those smaller windows of sleep need to be extremely efficient. After about two weeks of extreme sleep deprivation(not reaching REM sleep during the naps) his body adapted and he'd be able to get to REM stages within minutes of falling asleep. The final post(A year after he ended the experiment) details some of these pros and cons. Should you have no clear cycle of day and night, then time would simply not measured by the changes of light levels, but perhaps by some contraption that had a really reliable interval in it's action. This would also perhaps create a society where people are awake at whatever hours suite them, rather than the uniformed cycles most people on earth follow. A polyphasic sleep cycle might easily be the norm in such societies, since there would be no clear distinction between times of "day". [Answer] I was just brainstorming this on your behalf. Note, these are options other than binary star system. Just things you can consider. * If your planet's only/major landmasses were in the polar circles, day and night cycles would be drastically different. Affecting the wildlife and such accordingly. * This one is more fun in my opinion. If the planet's moon was slightly larger/closer and/or made from a more reflective surface, it would light up the night substantially more. As it stands, the composition of the Earth's moon is made up primarily of silicon/magnesium/iron and has the reflective capability of a dishpan. If your moon was made up of a majority aluminum and/or silver, that may light the planets surface more. And then a lunar eclipse would really mean something. Two moons may also accomplish this effect. [Answer] We'd probably sleep like we do more and more nowadays - taking a nap throughout the day as and when we feel sleepy. This is quite normal now, its called polyphasic sleep and many animals sleep in this way, 'napping' during the day and night. It also happens with humans too, several countries where it is generally very hot in the midday, have a siesta, where they sleep for a while. This biphasic sleep pattern is also normal - before electricity, TV and internet distractions we all used to [sleep in 2 phases](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783), often in the late evening and then after waking for a hour or so, again in the early hours. Notably mentioned by Pepys as "little sleeps". There are other, more [unusual sleep patterns](http://www.dreams.co.uk/sleep-matters-club/4-alternative-sleeping-cycles-infographic/) So I think all that would happen is that sleep patterns would change to be more spread out, more chunks of sleep spread out through the long day. 2 hours after lunchtime and again after tea in front of the TV (no change there then!) or irregular sleep patterns as and when the opportunity arises. [Answer] Here is one example system with an Earth-like planet and 5 Suns (from <https://planetplanet.net/2016/03/22/an-earth-with-five-suns-in-the-sky/>): [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RWe7w.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RWe7w.jpg) In this system there is an 8 year stretch in which there is no night time on the planet. (For details see here: <https://planetplanet.net/2016/03/23/earth-with-five-suns-in-the-sky-when-would-night-fall/>) This is clearly a special kind of system, but this kind of thinking could easily be expanded upon to create a system in which there is no night time at all. In fact, if this is of interest to anyone please let me know. [Answer] What would the sleep cycle of a species living on an all-night planet? Would they sleep all the time? I don't think so. The "cycle" might look less cyclic as every species has now the freedom to develop its own rythme and adapt it to its own needs, but also in accordance with other species (pries and predators). So it can get really messy and complicated, compared to our relatively orderly system. That said, it is possible that life evolves without ever 'discovering' sleep, creating other restoration systems which are more efficient and working in background mode for 24 hours (or whatever day they have). Another way to look at it: people who live in places where it gets 6 months of night and 6 months of daylight. Over the centuries those peoples were living there, we would expect them to develop a slightly adapted life cycle. But as far as I know, they didn't. ]

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