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[Question]
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I'm writing low fantasy set in alternate Earth with technology level of 6th century.
In my world I have psionics, born something like 1 in 10,000. They are several times stronger than normals, from 3 times to 12 times depending on the talent. The stronger they are the rarer they are. There could be 3-5 times strong psionic in every city, while there are few stronger then 8 in whole world.
Some psionics have also ability of [Bullet Time](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BulletTime) They are not faster then normies but they are able to perceive the enemies in slow motion.
If there is a unarmored swordfight between normal swordfighter and psionic one is there any chance for the normal to win?
Assumptions are as fallows:
1. The normal is very talented and trains everyday. Also he has plenty of experience fighting psionics. In my story his father, brother & sister are psionics and he trains with them regularly.
2. Since the psionics could easily defeat normies most of them tend to rely more on their strength and reflexes.
3. Many are only one of the psionic kind in the whole area and might never faced serious opposition, beside bunch of normies ganging up on them.
[Answer]
Yes but the odds are against him. There is a chance I beat Stephen Curry in threes, if he is injured or extremely tired, but you wouldn't put your money on me.
Psionic strength matters less in a bladefight if they don't wear armor, and bleed the same way as humans. However their superior reflexes give them enormous advantage.
>
> The person who wins an encounter, whether it is a fight or sparring or
> a mugging is most often the person who recovers more quickly from
> surprise, shock and failure.
>
>
> I was able to disconcert the guy and slip in on him because I was
> "**slicing time**" more thinly than then he was.
>
>
> Now there is nothing mystical or anything about this. It is a matter
> of how much attention and flexibility a person can apply to conflict.
> How much a person can stay in the "moment" and not be pushed into
> thinking about the encounter.
>
>
> To slice time thinly you have to stay in the moment of the encounter,
> you have to work within your breath, you have to let thinking give way
> to sensing. Then you can recover from being surprised by things not
> going as you want quickly. (I know that this sounds semi-mystical, but
> it is not)
>
>
> This is usually not enough though, you have to get the other guy to do
> exactly the opposite. And that is what I did to my acquaintance to
> throw him off and disconcert him.
>
>
> The moment you take time to think about things in a fight, you are
> likely to lose.
>
>
>
[MUSHTAQ ALI](https://web.archive.org/web/20181029150124/http://tracelesswarrior.blogspot.com/2004/11/slicing-time.html) [Silat instuctor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silat)
I think its best to surround a psionic with few of his buddies, he might be able to take a two or three of them but a fourth one would put a blade in his back.
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Assuming the psionics only have ability of extremely sharp senses (they merely *percieve* time as passing more slowly), they can still be defeated by laws of physics.
If they are tricked into rushing towards danger, they might find themselves watching in super slow motion horror as inertia pushes them towards their death - even if they move every muscle, they cannot change direction and end up falling from height or stabbed.
Bonus: you get to decribe the unnaturally prolonged agony - they feel every bit of the blade running through their organs, or see the ground bellow them approaching for half a minute.
[Answer]
**Yes, easily.**
If I would need to fist-fight Bruce Lee while I'm a psionic and he isn't, all I can probably do is see my demise in slow motion. Seeing and reacting gives great advantages, but without the training giving me the *speed and skill* to back it up, I'll probably be beat down. The same is true for swords.
Swords give more considerations. Seeing it slow can make you over or underestimate the power behind a blow. You can more easily injure yourself with overextending, especially as only their strenght is improved. Their durability isn't, making it dangerous to use full strength and possibly breaking your own bones or ripping off the ligaments. Being able to dodge is nice, but you might duck or something similar that accidentally put you out of balance.
With a trained opponent the psionic will have a good chance thanks to bullet time and their incredible strength, but as the psionic isn't trained there are a high amount of pitfals. The trained opponent doesn't need to be trained in fighting psionic persons, but just be very good at swords with an agressive style to win. If the psionic can go first, it looks a lot more dire, but as said before the raw strength can be a detriment, so a good block against a bad swing of the psionic might injure the psionic immensely. All that being said, being a psionic still gives massive advantages that make him/her an impressive match against skilled opponents.
Incidentally, other weapons that make use of the pitfalls of (untrained) psionics might pop up. Have a thought if a sword would be most logical.
[Answer]
## With your settings, the *normie* would most likely win!
Why? Given that
>
> They are not faster then normies but they are able to perceive the enemies in slow motion.
>
>
>
and
>
> The normal is very talented and trains everyday. Also he has plenty of experience fighting psionics
>
>
>
most psionics won't stand a chance. There were excellent techniques in sword fighting which will overwhelm unskilled opponents every time. Especially if the psionic attacks first, the professional swordsman would parry the attack and will most likely deal a fatal blow in a single motion. The psionic could see the blow coming, but with his weapon out of position he had no way to block or dodge the incoming attack. Even if he would be able to dodge it, he would be out of balance and a second attack could come in the same motion.
Our perception of swordfighting is mostly based on what we see in movies and showfighting. But the techniques are for style and not for effectiveness. Realistic swordfights would be very boring in movies, because one person would die very fast.
[Answer]
>
> They are not faster then normies but they are able to perceive the enemies in slow motion.
>
>
>
The way you describe their power makes clear that they can only perceive their opponent somehow faster, but not react faster.
If they for example are fooled by a feint into exposing one side, they might be quicker in noticing that the opponent is feinting, but their reaction will still be human like, thus if a human cannot recover, neither would they.
It would be a different story if also their reaction time would be faster. In that case it would almost impossible for a single opponent to defeat him.
[Answer]
# No, the psionic will win every time in a one-on-one sword duel.
If you watch some HEMA videos, you'll notice just how fast a sword duel is. Often, one or two clashes with a sword can be sufficient to score a mortal blow, and what's most important in determining who wins a clash is leverage.
I don't think you should underestimate how powerful the combination of superhuman strength and reaction times would be in a sword fight. The superhuman strength would allow the psionic to exert significantly more force to the opponent's blade, which would allow them to overcome any advantages of leverage that the normie's experience might let them to acrue. Since the psionic also has superhuman reaction time, they will be able to catch the normie's sword in a strike, then push it out of the way and score a lethal blow.
For instance, consider the following image of a sword parry from Wikipedia:
You can see that from the points where the swords cross, the defender has approximately twice as much distance to his hand than his opponent does. This increase in moment arm doubles the amount of torque that he can apply for the same amount of strength, and between normie swordsmen, it would allow him to control the motions of the swords and deliver a potentially fatal counterblow. However, the amplified amount of strength of a psionic would allow the psionic to push through this and control the sword strike regardless of this leverage advantage.
Note that I'm not a sword fighter myself, so I might have gotten some of the sword-fighting terminology wrong.
[Answer]
Bring a spear.
Spears are used in every time period up until gunpowder for a reason. And the reason is its ease of use and how hard it is to stop. Spears also dont rely on overpowering your enemy with strength but on speed, range and how easy it is to do repeated attacks at various area's of the body. There's no easy "lob off spearhead" technique, especially since swinging a sword takes more time than stabbing and repositioning the spear, so a few feints and stabs could help you get the psionic out of position. We are talking about a skilled fighter after all. Even if you swing for the spear and hit it, the wielder would let its spear slide to the ground as he starts pulling it back, making it harder to cut it. I deem it likely the spear is also made to be as resiliant as possible with plated metal around the top for example.
Now this is an unarmored fight, so no shields right? Without a shield I would give the fight to the spear wielder 9 times out of 10. I would give it 5 times out of 10 against a high psionic with bullet time.
[Answer]
If, as you say, your character is highly proficient, then yes. Especially if there's swords involved.
For example, a gorilla is 4-9 times stronger than a human (pretty in line with your psionics). In hand to hand combat, humans probably can't even injure a gorilla due to their sheer size. But if both a gorilla and a human trained in martial arts wielded cold steel, my money is on either a draw or a human win.
Simply due to the fact that the gorilla would blindly swing it's weapon while the human would know to parry/block/dodge/counterattack.
And if it's human vs psionic, then the human can just parry/block... BETTER than his stronger opponent.
Basically, as long as your character's skill sufficiently surpasses a superhuman's, they can win. After all, even if you're the strongest person in the world, you'll still die from a slit throat.
[Answer]
Adding detail to other answers :
## There are several significant differences between a skilled fighter that bullet time alone can not compensate for.
Starting with conditioning : strength, resilience, and endurance.
## Strength
You might not know it until the first time someone tries to knock this three foot long stick out of your hand, but there is a significant amount of [wrist and arm strength](https://martialarts.stackexchange.com/questions/2555/exercises-for-strengthening-arms-wrists-and-fingers-with-the-intent-of-sword-us) required.
Also, moving quickly requires a lot of core and lower body strength. For a concept of how much strength is required, think about potential and kinetic energy $ E = m g h = {1 \over 2} m v^2 \rightarrow 2 g h = v^2 = 2 s a \rightarrow g h = s a$: if you can jump 1 meter high (h), on $1 \over 2$ meters of legs(s), that's 2 gee's of acceleration (or about twice your body weight in lower leg strength). The average 2.5 centimeter-of-air jumper is 40x physically slower.
## Resilience
When you take your first hit to sword or shield your nerves are likely to go numb and your muscles go slack. Shooters [have a similar problem with recoil](https://phc.amedd.army.mil/topics/workplacehealth/hha/Pages/Hazard-Category---Musculoskeletal-Trauma.aspx). Swords and shields, like firearms, transfer the blunt force trauma of a parry into the body through the wrist and arm. It does not take a very heavy hit to create this kind of injury. A fighter who practices regularly learns how to take a hit to his/her sword or shield, how to intercept an incoming hit properly, where to take the hit, and when to roll with it.
## Endurance
Finally, like sports or most other kinds of physical activity endurance is essential. An unconditioned fighter's strength will likely fade in only a few seconds of full engagement. He or she will get winded, slow (because that requires a lot of strength), weak, and less accurate. A toned fighter will be able to rip your guard down and hit you.
## Skills
Beyond the basics are muscle memory : accurately hitting where you intend to strike, being able to perform a parry or dodge by reflex, how to try to hit a sword at the tip, so that you get the maximum advantage of lever arm against your opponents wrists, how you engage shields near the top or side, so that you can try to curve around the shield and get in your stroke. How to lunge, dodge, cut.
The difference between a conditioned fighter and an untrained one who can see the world move in slow-motion is that many of these behaviors aren't easily intuitive. A really bright person may guess at a few, or hit a few by blind luck. Someone who studies with a good teacher is doing most of these things most of the time.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Me4Ffm.jpg)
## Limits of Performance, Performance Envelopes, and Tactics
Further distinguishing a trained fighter from an untrained one is recognition of the performance envelopes around themselves, and being able to estimate them accurately in an opponent. It takes a certain amount of time for swords and shields to move from one location to another, and because of that, a "window" in time is usually left open in an opponent's defense.
This is what high, mid, and low guards are. A student learns to be aware of where he or she is holding the sword, and what location of vulnerability is created by holding it there. A student also learns where to strikes effectively when an opponent has exposed an opening (and that an opening is always exposed). How they change for sword, shield or spear. Learning to perform with your eyes and body language to feint - tricking the opponent into changing their guard to accept an incoming stroke that you don't really intend to deliver (so that they are now exposed low or high for a hit).
## Strategy
Someone who trains and studies regularly as a sword fighter has strategies for wearing down the opponents endurance, testing the opponent's capabilities, making use of your extended reach to keep the opponent away (if you are bigger), getting inside your opponents guard where it's difficult to wind around and hit you (if your serious), distraction, blinding, breaking weapons (when it's possible), entangling weapons or your opponent, what parts of armor can take a hit and how to work that knowledge into your defense.
## Miscellaneous Knowledge
Finally, there is miscellaneous knowledge : knowing that strikes (sword, shield, fist, kick) work at a distance; however up-close wrestling takedowns are the most effective way to win. Being mindful that rocks, spears, crossbow bolts and bullets (maybe) exist, and having already given some thought into how to stay safe. Knowing when to engage, when to disengage, how to conserve your strength for when you need it.
[Answer]
I'd think the normal would do well at first with sort of a left-handed boxer effect. In this case, our hero knows how to fight psis, but they've never fought anyone like him.
Other than that, it sounds like a basic power vs. skill issue. That's common enough in books -- the strong guy unleashes a series of brutal blows the skilled dude is able to dodge and deflect using every trick, getting tired, then he spots the pattern and flicks out to draw blood. As for psis being 3 to 12 times as strong, Conan fought like a normal, very strong guy and the internet says he was as strong as 10 or 20 men. Even so, against even regular soldiers he had to use his considerable skill and ferocity as well as his great strength. So I think you can ignore "at that strength, a psi could kill anyone by just... ".
Back to the main idea, the "left-handed boxer" thing. Your typical psi probably gets by on basic Conan tricks. He can quickly swing a big sword, recovering quickly. He'll either smash through an opponent's parries, or quickly tire them out. Most skilled normal swordsmen have never fought a psi and are fatally surprised by just how strong they are. Even if they have the forbidden tome "how to fight Psis and win", they've never been able to practice it or experience that kind of strength. Expert "normal" fighters don't do much better. They know tricks the Psi doesn't, but have only practiced them against other normals; while Psis have had plenty of practice countering those tricks with bullet-time. If fact, name-level psis (the ones the story builds up so the reader recognizes their name) have sparred with normal swordsmasters. Overall, besides strength and speed, the Psis have the advantage "I've fought plenty of guys like you, but you've never fought someone like me".
But your hero knows how fight Psis. There's no reason for the one non-Psi in the family to take up fighting, but he's like Ethan Hawke in Gattaca -- obsessed with being as good as his superior sibling. He's practiced every way to safely parry a blow from a his Psi older sister, every way to attack where they can't use their strength to knock your weapon aside. He knows exactly how fast the blows will come and what won't work.
Without really thinking about it, he's practiced how to fool bullet-time (feinting a feint, picturing a move the opposite of his real one? All he knows is he can fake out the brother who used to predict everything). Using bullet time against him is now a drawback. He also knows how to spot a Psi. Little clues give away that they're much stronger than they look, like how they don't take an extra second to switch to a better grip when lifting medium items.
The first few Psis he faces will be surprised, and he won't be. He'll be ready for the first blow, slide off it, and counter in a way they didn't expect and bullet time told them wasn't coming. The next few Psis will assume he's a also a Psi and awkwardly try to prepare for his great strength (I'm assuming Psis rarely fight each other). They'll be even more surprised and also lose.
A psi who finally knows he's merely a good swordsman with practice against Psis will still be at a disadvantage -- they've still never fought that style. When they realize their bullet-time is unreliable, maybe they'll force themselves to be conservative, letting their superior strength slowly wear down our hero. But that's a another new style to them, whereas our hero has experience in that as well!! It's what his other brother would do when pestered into just one more swordfight. Our hero knows how to goad a big tough Psi who's fighting defense like a frightened puppy, into doing something stupid.
[Answer]
**The psionic can wear down the normie.**
The psionic has no special offensive skills. Her unsophisticated attacks will be easily blocked by the swordsman. But the psionic defense will be really difficult to penetrate.
The swordsman is not used to prolonged battles. He is more of a sprinter, counting on his skill to finish quick. Eventually he gets tired and makes a mistake, and her unsophisticated attack is enough.
It is actually more sophisticated than she gets credit for. She is moving in slow motion to herself also, and instead of a killing thrust she diverts it and wounds his sword arm at the last split second. so he must yield.
[Answer]
# Pride, and Arrogance
When you are king, and there is no reasonable opposition, what do you do?
Do you train, and hone your natural talent? If so against what?
Even if you trained against each weaker psionic, what would you gain in learning? That you can easily overwhelm them when things aren't going your way? That you are literally training to fight at 20% strength?
Take a look at Chivalry of a Failed Knight. Stella can trivially overpower the protagonist. It never crosses her mind that she is literally revealing her weaknesses to him.
How about training against groups of weaker psionics? Well maybe there is something to learn here. Except that after the third person, the group starts getting in its own way. Unless they are expertly drilled in how to fight vs one individual, and even then the three psionics up front need to actually provide a reasonable challenge, elsewise they are again working to hand victory over to the individual.
# Humility, and Diligence
Having your arse handed to you again and again, being drilled to take on and give challenge to a psionic, actually having to earn the skill to overcome the natural advantages held against you. You start becoming creative.
Creativity changes things up, suddenly the opponent has to adapt. If the opponent is unpracticed in improvisation, or has no well rehearsed counter tactic it will be to their disadvantage.
Think of it like the Africa problem. Why is it that Africa has the most and largest animals, and the rest of the world doesn't? *Because those animals grew up practicing against humans, and the rest didn't.*
In short that well trained human, probably won't win (or wins rarely enough) against family who are equally well trained, respect their skill, and have learnt to deal with creativity.
Those who dismiss them, have rigid and inflexible training, and have no clue what to expect will probably go down quickly , particularly if the the trained human picks the fight.
Of course their is always surprise, and a bad situation. Neither are easy to rally from even if you have all of the edges.
[Answer]
Yes. If they rely on strength and reflexes techniques like usual in Aikido work. So, yes, a Aikido master with daily training and especially training against psionics would probably be able to modify the standard techniques to counter the bullet time capability.
(as a small side remark: You only mentioned that they are stronger, not that they have a more stable head, better constitution or balance. Could be that they knock themself out when they fall unlucky)
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As both sides are bound by inertia and other physical laws, an experienced master may win at the logical level, achieving the velocities and positions of both bodies and both swords such that there is no escape for the opponent.
This would work if some attacks can be counter-acted if predicted timely in advance, and cannot be efficiently evaded if the "slow" body movement to counter-act starts too late.
[Answer]
# Fights are unpredictable and dangerous
In real life, even very skilled folks will sometimes lose just because of bad luck. Fiction likes to use the trope of skilled warriors being like terminators, able to withstand ludicrous amounts of punishment. The reality is that many real fights were over as soon as the first solid blow landed. You can roll snake eyes, and boom, you're dead.
The manta ray probably wasn't actually trying to kill [Steve Irwin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Irwin); it was scared stiff (because only a predator would be doing what Steve was doing).
For a good take on how winning a fight actually works, I'd recommend [this movie](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1041911_unforgiven) (which happens to be a good movie anyway). I'll avoid spoilers, but it contains a believable example of how a guy can walk into a room full of enemies, and win. Being stronger, better, faster than the other fighter will definitely help you win fights - lots of them - but it doesn't make you invincible.
[Answer]
Normie can win with superior training in martial arts technique vs untrain psionic who only relies on his personal ability. Technique are best practices from many great mind of history. Training and studying from the past give one the works of many before him.
For example,
* Martial arts technique movement is more-effiency in term of time and energy. Both can be viewed as resource.
* Some move are able to counter another (nullify the damage, break through defend). General speaking, some more are more effiency vs another skill, in-term of energy/time spend for expecation result.
The psionic "are not faster then normies but they are able to perceive the enemies in slow motion", meaning he can only "see", he have same resource as Normie. If his movement is not effiency, he is wearing down faster.
It is battle of attrition.
If the psionic also in good training, he can perceive predict, reactive, spend more time thinking on technique to counter the Normie,then the psionic have huge avantage.
[Answer]
The normal allows his mind to be read, and closes his eyes at the exact right time.
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I am a world-hopping warlock who regularly goes on adventures in various worlds with differing levels of technological knowledge. Being a crafty warlock, I have a number of tricks, weapons, and gadgets up my sleeves, and I'd like to add firearms to my repertoire.
I'm currently planning an extended campaign in Acardia, a continent with a technological and political structure comparable to what you folks refer to as early medieval Europe. My early scouting missions haven't discovered any gunpowder based weapons, although I can't confirm that no such thing exists there.
Once the campaign starts in earnest, It won't be feasible to return to a more advanced world for supplies. In addition, I'll be traveling a great deal, so I don't want to cart heavy machinery around with me. I'd like to utilize firearms as a form of self defense during this campaign.
Here's the thing, though- I don't want to be that idiot who thinks they can conquer an entire continent with a single machine gun. If I'm going to use firearms in this campaign, I need to take into account the manufacture of ammunition, repair of the weapons, etcetera.
So... what's the most advanced sort of gun I can take with me and be able to utilize for the entire campaign, which could last for years? It's acceptable if the guns themselves can't be manufactured using the tools available, so long as they can be maintained using Acardian tech. I will, however, need to manufacture ammunition. I would also prefer to be able to fire more than once before reloading, and use bullets that include powder inside of them rather than being loose metal balls (if possible). (If I'm correct, guns that use such bullets tend to be easier to clean.)
I'll be campaigning with a small team, no more than 20 to 30 people. I don't currently have a motor vehicle that would be practical to fuel and maintain during the campaign, so I'll probably be using horse-drawn wagons to carry anything I need to take with me.
If the tools required to make ammunition or a part can themselves be easily made with Acardian tech, that is also acceptable, but keep in mind I won't have the resources to start an industrial revolution. If the equipment in question is too heavy to cart around, and I can't make new ones when I enter a new city, that will put a damper on it, but it won't necessarily completely invalidate the technique in question.
I'd also like to note that, given the choice between power and accuracy, I'd probably go for accuracy, although it would certainly be nice if the gun had the power to punch through steel plate.
[Answer]
**Solar Charging Electro-magnetic Flechette gun**
How advanced is the most advanced world you've encountered?
A Coil-gun is perhaps the most reliable weapon imaginable.
It fires reliably underwater, in space, in mud..
The entire weapon can be sealed in plastic and it has virtually no moving parts whatsoever.
It cannot jam, it doesn't misfire and requires almost no cleaning or maintenance.
The ammunition ideally would be iron-cored tungsten needles, but in a pinch, an iron nail will do just fine.
The flechette gun will put an iron nail through a two inch thick wooden beam at 100 paces, so armour-piercing capability is not a problem.
Ammunition can be manufactured by any blacksmith able to [Draw metal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing_(manufacturing))
The only technological hurdle is the power required to fire it.
Fortunately, the internal super-conducting capacitors have more than enough Oomph to get the job done.
In the field, such a weapon mounts a small solar cell in the casing that trickle-feeds the capacitors. It's not the most efficient way to charge it, (preferably you'd plug it into a base-station for charging) but it's more than sufficient if you have time on your hands.
Good news for you is that travelling between towns by horse and cart will take days, so you have plenty of time to keep your weapon charged!
[Answer]
Best solution is to skip the gunpowder - too difficult to manufacture while traveling or carry vast quantities, and a bit of a pain to deal with anyway. Of course if you are relying upon the giant cloud of smoke to obscure you and the target and loud bang to scare the primitives off, then go with black powder, but honestly I would rather shoot them than mostly hope they scare easily.
I suggest an air rifle. For reference, the [Girandoni air rifle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifle) taken on expedition by Lewis and Clark certainly survived long arduous journeys through the wilderness. At one point the main spring broke and they modified a metal file to fit in its place. That kind basic design for field maintenance is vitally important when you don't have access to the same kind of workshops which produced it. A few modifications to the design (for example being able to braze a seam more effectively than they could at the time would make for a much more robust air canister than they had, and some rubber gaskets instead of leather though leather is very easy to acquire if replacement gaskets are needed) and this would be thoroughly reliable.
Of course there are any number of designs which could be used, but I like pointing out that repeating rifles capable of firing 20 shots in about a minute were fielded in 1780, and more specialized single-shot hunting weapons had been available for at least a century prior. Unfortunately they were a little delicate for poorly-trained masses of peasants to survive long use in the field (which was the style of warfare at the time) as well as mass-production manufacturing not quite being up to the level needed for sufficient reliability and interchangeable parts, but for small numbers (craft quality rather than mass-produced by poorly-skilled apprentices trying to churn them out by the hundreds) this would be the way to go.
A small metal shop (even some bronze working in antiquity would suffice) for major repairs, some leather for worn out gaskets, and some lead for ammunition (easily melted down and poured into molds at your everyday cooking fire while camping), and this would serve quite well. Downside is that the accompanying belt-pouch sized air pump took about 1500 strokes to recharge a 30 shot air canister - the wagon-mounted version was far better but not something an individual could walk around with.
If you were willing to go a little higher tech, you could make a more effective air rifle with better pumps for building pressure and a lighter more robust design, but the downside is relying upon modern alloys and delicate metalwork for replacement parts. Something which only needs knowledge to produce with low-tech manufacturing seems like a better path for reliability on campaign.
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I'd recommend the [Colt Pocket Percussion Revolver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt_Pocket_Percussion_Revolvers), possibly supplemented with a good muzzleloader (they've got easy-to-maintain modern ones now) for ranged shots.
Sorry, I'm sticking you with ball and powder. Modern ammunition is pretty great, and not hard to make with modern techniques - but that's the thing. It's best with modern techniques to get the rifling and curvature right. I don't know what kind of tech level you'll be at, so I'm picking something which can be manufactured effectively at the lowest level.
Black powder isn't hard to make, all it takes is the correct natural resources. Look up a recipe online, I try to stay off as many government lists as I can. Ammunition is the real trick here - making a perfect sphere. And there's a very easy way to do that using gravity. Use a sixty foot tall building, strain lead through a copper mesh, and then drop 60ft into cold water. It's called a shot tower, and it produces very accurate lead balls for ammunition. Not as good as a modern round, but on the flip side, it won't have the defects something made with 10th century technology will have. Carry a few Colts for short range, a modern muzzleloader for long range, and take good care of them. Should work pretty well.
Edit: Percussion caps - these weren't made until the 1800s, but technically the chemistry is possible earlier. The hard part is the mercury fulminate, which can be made by combining mercury (pretty accessible), ethanol (widely accessible), and nitric acid (dangerous, but accessible even as early as the 900s) in a specific way. Nitric acid can be made from scratch, if you know what you're doing, but I'm *definitely* not including a recipe for that, as it's also a precursor to TNT.
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All you really need is heat and knowledge. Copper and tin were very common metals in the world you describe, so the brass to manufacture ammunition is no problem. Gunpowder existed - but only in China - so the early Europeans just hadn’t found it yet. It was there. He needs to be really good at making very precise recipes from natural ingredients. We are talking about a warlock, aren't we?
Getting gunpowder is easy:
* Your warlock needs to have access to tobacco, sunflower, common borage, or celandine sap which contains the saltpeter. He can also find it in limestone caves.
* He needs to get some charcoal. Just burn some wood.
* He needs to locate a geothermal area - hot springs or a volcano and try to get some sulfur.
When he plays around with these three ingredients he will have gunpowder.
He needs to make cartridge shells, not the ball musket. The important advantage of the cartridge over ball shot is keeping powder dry. All your weapons can become useless quickly in a slight drizzle, and you’ll be reloading under an umbrella. But, making cartridges is time consuming so I hope some of his magic can do automatic work for him! If he has access to electricity (or magical power) he can bring a modern ammunition stamp press, which can be mostly aluminum. Otherwise, he can make one when he gets there. It looks like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hfnRJ.jpg)
Many people make their own bullets today. Just be sure he can get the basic materials and he is good at making them pure. He can make bullets in any caliber. You don’t need special armor piercing bullets, the armor of that period will be worthless against him.
Pick any high powered rifle or guns you like for the trip, he can make ammunition, and he can maintain it with local mineral oils.
I want to add that you can improve your gunpowder with nitroglycerine, which can be made from the same ingredients. Take sulfuric acid and the salt Peter in a pan to make nitric acid. Use the nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and baking soda (mined from a mineral called trona, or made with CO2, ammonia, and table salt). This can give your ammo a little more range.
Your warlock needs to be really good at quality control or the bullets will be very unreliable. You don’t want duds! Make him a perfectionist!
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Get medieval, get a crossbow!
A crossbow has simple enough construction and rugged enough parts that it should be able to handle a good deal of travel so that should fit your reliability criteria. The most vulnerable part would be the string but you could easily bring a few extras and as bows were developed by just about every human civilization at some time or another you should be able to trade for more strings as needed.
While high quality ammunition is of course preferable a crossbow has such simple firing that you could load it with even primitive projectiles and still have some level of effectiveness.
In terms of stopping power modern crossbows today are able to push 400 fps and higher and don't require the special loading mechanisms that their medieval counterparts required. This means you can fire a bolt fast enough to pierce armor and reload at a similar speed you might a single shot bolt action rifle.
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KerrAvon2055 from the comments has the right idea. A SBR (Short-barreled rifle) AR-15 styled rifle, a parts kit or two, and a few ammo cans will probably last you two campaigns over unless you're using it to hammer nails or things go extremely poorly, at which point you probably have more pressing issues to worry about.
The standard AR-15 weighs in at around 6.5 lbs. The weapon platform is extremely modular so you can, and probably will want to, swap out some of the stock parts with meatier after-market ones, such as swapping out for a heavier barrel in 5.56x45mm. After all your tinkering, the rifle will still come in at under 8 pounds making it convenient to lug around. 5.56x45mm is also very light at ~12.5g a bullet. Adding in the magazine puts you in at about 500g per 30 round mag (1.1 lbs). 20 loaded mags will give you 600 rounds at 22 pounds, not a bad deal considering you can pack even more ammo tins on the cart.
You now have 30 rounds of semi-automatic fire that will defeat any man-worn armor you will encounter (I'm assuming you won't meet many men wearing 1/2in steel plate). This will go a long way if you don't plan on "conquering the continent with a machine gun." With proper cleaning and a dab of oil, the gun will run right as rain for a very long while. It's almost as if Eugene Stoner designed it for military use.
As DKNguyen has pointed out, circumstances might cause you to enter civilization for untold periods of times. Having a 2 foot long rifle strapped to your back or hanging from you at all times is not ideal for such occasions. If we're permitted a second armament, bring a carry pistol with another set of parts and accessories will be much more convenient. This weapon should ideally not be used much unless you live an exciting life so ammunition can be skimped on a fair amount. You will then need to decide if you want maximum concealment or a work-horse. The distinction boils down to a tiny pistol with usually a single-stack magazine (low capacity) and a meaty kick vs a larger pistol that is nicer to shoot with a double-stack magazine (more capacity). This is getting long so to wrap it up, you can never go wrong with a Glock.
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One alternative answer to consider: You can simplify logistics by having your sidearm and primary use the same ammunition (e.g. both are chambered in 9mm). This can have the draw back of having either a beefy pistol or an anemic rifle but there are some pretty good carbine cartridges that play reasonably nice in both platforms.
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You want a [sling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_(weapon)) of some kind.
Roman era slings were as deadly as a [44 Magnum.](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4541318/Roman-sling-bullets-deadly-44-Magnum.html) In this specific case, the ammunition seems to have been manufactured to whistle as it flew, probably for the psychological factor.
Ammunition can be as simple as a pebble picked up off the side of the road, or a steel ball bearing, or even special purpose items made of ceramic with various chemicals inside to be released when they hit the target and break open. You could put nearly anything in there from flammable oil to noxious substances such as skunk spray. (Though I'll leave collecting that to you.)
All of the components can be manufactured from locally available materials in any era that humans have technology as advanced as leather. All of the components can be carried in adequate amounts to go through several combats without having to stop and manufacture new components or ammo. A sling can be nearly silent. It has a substantial range, though accuracy suffers over longer distances.
With some practice, you can fire two or even three stones at once. Or you can fire a larger stone, possibly as large as a half kilogram. You could bring down larger targets such as a buffalo. In extreme situations, and with some practice and a lot of luck, you could bring down a tiger. Though attacking a bear with a sling is likely to just make it angry.
A sling will attract little attention. In contrast, any anachronistic weapon will attract a lot of attention. If you walk around with a rifle you will have everybody in the neighborhood trying to take it off you. Some because they want it for themselves. Others simply so you won't use it on them.
You want a sling.
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I'm going to reiterate the cap and ball recommendation, with a couple minor changes.
First, you'll want a few basic tools -- as noted, you'll want to know how to make black powder, and you'll want to *practice* making and using it, as well as extracting the saltpeter, before you cross over for the longer term. You'll also want a bullet mold and lead ladle -- that will allow casting a few bullets at a time over an ordinary kitchen or camp fire. Lead isn't hard to come by (or wasn't in our own 14th century) -- it was used for roofing and early plumbing (which gets its name from *plumbum*, the Latin word for lead). You'll want to use pure lead; cap and ball doesn't want or need hardened lead such as you'd use if casting bullets for a modern handgun.
You'll also want a tool (which you can 3-D print from downloadable files) for making up paper cartridges -- again, you'll want to practice this before going. Paper cartridges cut reloading time to make it comparable to that of a single action cartridge revolver, and thin enough paper was available (though relatively hard to find) in the 14th century, at least in our timeline. You can make or buy boxes that will carry five or six paper cartridges and caps (the caps glued to a paper strip for handling) and protect the cartridges from damage.
The critical item, however, is a means of making the percussion caps. This requires a special tool to punch the cap shell out of thin metal sheet (this is fairly easy to make in a small machine shop, or you may be able to buy one with a little Googling), and a supply of paper caps (for cap guns) to use as the filler for the percussion caps. Don't forget to take a roll of shim stock (available at genuine hardware stores, small engine repair shops, and machine shop supply vendors) to make your caps from.
I'd also recommend a larger gun -- a modern reproduction of a Remington New Army (aka 1858) has the power of a .357 Magnum and is durable enough to count on for many years (as long as you clean it after every use and keep it oiled). If your mold makes conical bullets (which hit harder, are at least as accurate, and have better range) some modern repro revolvers require a minor modification to the frame and rammer -- check this before you go, obviously.
Even with the upgrade to a .44, because you don't need to carry a large quantity of powder or lead (a couple pounds of each is a good start), the entire kit will only weigh 15 or so pounds and fit in a bag or roll around 8 inches in diameter and a little over a foot long.
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AK-47
Stamped parts designed to be locally sourced and easily replaced.
The entire design relies on loose-fitting parts that won't jam.
Create your black powder, your brass, and a mold for the bullet.
Then use a brass catcher to collect the spent brass for reload/reuse.
Semi-automatic fire should be fine, no need for 3 round burst or full auto.
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A sling? Those are as deadly as a .45 ACP. If you can hit your target, that is.
Otherwise, I would suggest a hand-recharged air rifle, like the kind you can get at stores nowadays. I would suggest a simpler design, like maybe the [Girandoni Air Rifles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifle) that Lewis & Clark brought on their expeditions.
However, if you are willing to go out on a limb, I would have your guy use spring-powered centripetal rifle. This is because you could (a) conceivably use low-quality ammo, (b) the parts would last longer, (c) the failure modes would be nowhere near as catastrophic as on an air rifle, and (d) if something does fail, there is a small chance that you could get replacement parts; they just would not be as good of quality
Respectfully,
thescribe11
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# Electric airsoft
You want to shoot pebbles that can do damage. It probably won't kill opponents but discourage them even with the light bullets. You can get 6mm metal spheres from jewelers, which are way heavier than your .15g plastic bullets (from gold they are ~[2.18g heavy](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=113.097%20mm3%20gold%20weight)). You will probably have to bring two custom designs that have stronger and more robust mechanisms than commercially available, one acting as backup.
You need to bring solar charger panes with you, which you can use to recharge (for your other magicks you will probably need them anyway).
The 2.18g pellets at 100m/s deliver around [11 J impact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airsoft#Ballistics_and_velocity), which is a 30th of a 9mm handgun but already potent.
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So hopefully this will not get me put on any no-fly lists. But basically a potato gun. you could make one out of whatever you needed even wood, though metal would be ideal or some future material, any way you basically make a potato gun you can load whatever you need into it be in grenades, plasma grenades or just rocks added bonus, you can set them on fire with gasoline or tar which can be found it medieval time, added added bonus if you want more power set up a modified diesel engine for higher pressure and power I worked for a guy who had a motorcycle like that, it could run off of bacon grease which can be found in medieval times also other stuff oils and the like. If you want more of a machine gun you can have a revolver of sorts. Set it up with pressurized chambers that you pump up before the fight. you fire, then the next camber comes up the fire again. with a spring this can be as fast for slow as you want. also if you have a adjustable barrel sized you can be fairly accurate as well essentianlly this can be as simple or complex as you want the more complex the hardder and thereofre an hgher level of tec you need to fix it also you make one of thease that is just a flame thrower. One last thing you can ajust this gun like crazy want a shot gun put lots of small pelletes intot he chamber want a sniper get a long barrlet and a scope. the one downside is that you need to pump it up but with the deaise engin this will not take long. And all guns need realoding plus if you have the revolver set up when you run out but rocks lets say in you chambers close all of them put a oil in the engine and wait five seconds and your back in the fight. Hope this helps and safe travels.
any questions fire away!!
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If you want to bring along a firearm, a shotgun is your best bet. Reloading shells is simple and (in my experience, your mileage may very) you can reload a single plastic hull about 10 times before the crimping starts to break apart. To reload a shell, all you need is a primer, some powder, a wad to create a seal between the primer and powder, and something to project. A simple press can be made to punch the old primer out, press a new primer in, slide a wad in, and crimp the top. You can also do all this by hand, but at a slower rate. Projectiles can range from rock salt to large metal slugs and anything else you can fit into the shell.
The shotgun itself can be reduced to almost no moving parts, depending on your choice. If you want something simple and reliable, I would suggest a side-by-side or over-under shotgun. The trigger mechanism will be your only moving parts (the shell ejectors and the breech hinge are technically moving, but it's trivial to keep them greased up) and the barrels will be very easy to clean. Since there is no rifling, a rag and a stick are all you really need. To keep the barrel in pristine shape, a plastic solvent can be used, but you can still get years of use out of the gun without ever cleaning it, at least with smokeless powder.
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The answers here are all pretty great but the first thing I would look at is the fact that you would be going into an uncertain technological time period.
We have specialist weapons and ammunition for different scenarios for a reason.
The thing I would suggest is that whatever you have must be fully reusable and maintainable by very simple methods, finding the components for gunpowder in a jungle whilst being hunted by a wild animals would be difficult and getting the time and relative calm to press bullets into shell casings might be difficult too. Anything electrical is susceptible to component damage and solar power will not help you very much unless your story takes place somewhere near the equator away from jungles and forests.
Depending on your starting technology I would suggest some kind of pneumatic system powered by some spell or ability your warlock has (not necessarily electrical).
If you were able to create some kind of spear that could launch a detachable head with enough force to produce the results you are looking for I would suggest that would be your best option. While this may not be as accurate as you might like, accuracy in firearms is actually pretty difficult to achieve unless you rely on modern technology which I would try to avoid in the circumstances you describe.
In the worst circumstances you could attach something to the spear head to allow you to pull it back easily, in better ones you could have several spearheads that you could retrieve later.
Depending on what you want to do in your world you could also pass it off as a regular spear with some odd bits added on to it, that way you would only get some odd looks when you rock up with a weird spear rather than outright fear.
This has the advantage of the fact that all the maintenance you would need to do would be whatever you would do to a spear anyway. Of course this all assumes that the launcher is created in a robust way. Additionally it does not have to be a spear head, you could have a trident or net head if you wanted to use it for fishing, a heavy, round head if you wanted to smash through a wall or something and no head if you just wanted a short blast of compressed air.
If all this fails then my only other advice would be knowledge, having a repository of fairly advanced things you can make from much older technology would put you head and shoulders ahead of anyone else of the time. If you know how to make gunpowder easily then you would be better off than those who do not, if you know about rifling then you would be able to make more accurate guns, if you know about the glass required in scopes then you can shoot distant targets more accurately.
These examples are just what I can think of off the top of my head, there are bound to be many others.
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A mass driver made entirely from chunky components and powered by a capacitor that is charged from a hand crank electric motor. I say this without having an example. But, it feels like something that would be relatively hard to damage if built the right way.
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Use fear, religion and money. The strongest defense in a medieval circumstance is to use the levers that the feudal lordship and/or religious order use to assert power over the masses. Declare yourself through your travels as you see fit, but the majority of people are still living arduous lives, ruled by tyranny. Money, wit and doctrine of title will protect you more than any weapon and will open many more doors.
That and using your numbers as a pack defense should be sufficient. Everything else is basically overkill.
You might as well bring a tech enhanced Steam Powered Land Ram. [LINK](https://www.google.com/amp/www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww1-gb-cowen-land-battery-devastator/amp/)
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Imagine super-advanced aliens who know nothing of humans because their only view of Earth is from light that left Earth billions of years ago.. perhaps even from light that left before Earth was formed. The aliens purposefully emit signals of some kind in every direction, in order to try to hack the computers of planets that take in those signals. Humans take in the signals via our telescopes, or in some other way, etc. And from there our computers become hacked (perhaps even our robots become hacked, if this takes place in an earth a few hundred years from now..) by them, even though the aliens knew literally nothing about us, and maybe the aliens no longer even exist by the time we receive the hacking signals they sent our way?
What do y'all think? Is it sci-fi plausible.. How might the "details" work?
Update: alternatively, what if the aliens were not located billions of light-years away, but only (say) thousands of light-years away. So, they could have observed the Earth from afar a few thousand years ago, and based on that information could attempt a hack of Earth today...?
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Not at all plausible. Random data is not executable. Even if the data were to somehow form an executable sequence (also not particularly plausible) it would need to additionally be wrapped in metadata that tells whatever OS is running "hey, this is a program".
Even blind hacking when you know the opposition exists (a la "Independence Day") is not plausible.
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Remember that phishing is one of the most effective hacking tools.
They couldn't do a zero click attack on our machines but maybe they can reason enough about sentience to perform a phishing attack.
Send out a message like the SETI messages that is designed to entice us to try decode it. Initial sections contains exciting details we understand and algorithms like fast prime factoring. Then it contains something that looks like a sort of bootstrapped compiler program. As soon as we follow those instructive then they have placed an active super AI in our machines, albeit running in an AlienOS emulator we wrote for them.
Problem is the AI is so advanced it can learn about the platform it is running on quicker than we can turn it off and it spreads globally across the internet.
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This is implausible due to the ridiculous amounts of energy required. Even our best telescopes can resolve only tiny images of *entire galaxies* at multi-giga-lightyear distances. In order to transform that into a modulated signal, you would need to turn the entire galaxy off and on in unison.
Or rather, you would need to turn a single emitter *as strong as a galaxy* off and on, because if it was a real galaxy, the time it takes light to travel from different parts of your array would throw your timing off, resulting in a vague and only faintly modulated signal.
Even if you were merely trying to send out an Arecibo-style binary message, not a hack, trying to broadcast it in all directions on an intergalactic scale would simply be impractical because of the energy and infrastructure required.
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Taking an example brought up in a comment to another answer: a buffer overrun attack requires a target system with a shared memory space for executable code and data, running software with specific flaws that can be triggered by analyzing the data to cause the buffer overrun, and a payload of machine code that can execute on the target machine. There's no guarantee the signal will even be processed by something that *has* a memory space, it could be hard-wired SRAM blocks in a FPGA or something completely different.
Even assuming they target Von Neumann stored-program architectures, there's also nothing meaningful in the numeric values of machine code, their relationship to instructions is completely arbitrary, as is the division of operations into discrete instructions. It's essentially impossible to randomly produce a valid non-trivial program, let alone blindly do so to achieve some desired functional result. So that's a firm **no**. Blind-hacking our information systems is not going to be feasible.
However, there's a more practical strategy: package up the malicious payload in a clear and obvious data blob, and transmit detailed specifications of the architecture that is required to execute it, in the hopes that recipients will create the hardware or software environments needed and deliberately execute the payload. This payload must then conduct the hack itself, which may involve finding novel security vulnerabilities or convincing the receiving party to give it the access it requires, without giving away its intentions in a simulation or by direct analysis. So, you're essentially looking at a sophisticated AI which is designed to be assembled by an alien civilization which is capable and inclined to do such things, and careless enough to not take adequate precautions. Oh, and it has to be compact enough to transmit between stars.
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I think you misunderstand how computers work. There's no such thing as a "blind hack".
What we do have today in the real world are **untargeted** attacks. They are still very specific - but specific to a vulnerability, not a target. They work because the whole world uses a small set of computer software - 99+% of computers run one of three operating systems, 95+% of webservers run one of three webserver softwares, 90+% of databases run one of maybe 5 database softwares, and 90+% of people on the Internet use one of 4 or so browsers.
So you can just throw an attack at the Internet equivalent of "everyone in this area" and see where it is successful.
It is relatively rare to find a hack that works across various softwares and/or operating systems. It is likewise rare to find one that works across several different versions of the same software. Most attacks hack software X in versions a to b (e.g. MySQL Server version 8 to 8.0.26).
Even assuming that aliens even use the same computing technology (given that settling on our Von Neuman architecture isn't a given - there are other architectures and other ways to do computation) and that their specific implementation is similiar **and** that their software is comparable to our (the machine-language level, let's ignore the pre-compile programming languages) - even assuming that and that's a stretch already - it is highly likely that their way to create software would be vastly different. It is exceedingly unlikely that any "hack" (i.e. exploit software) would work across this gap.
tl;dr: I work in this sphere. If I saw what you describe in a movie, I'd go "what a nonsense" the same way I did when they hacked the Mothership in Independence Day.
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Others have given plenty of good answers why this is not plausible. I wanted to suggest a modification to the idea which is both plausible, and works in a similar fashion plot-wise.
Instead of sending out simple radiowaves, your sociopaths create and send out advanced AI probes. These probes fly as far and wide as they can. Along the way they also gather materials and clone themselves, so their numbers keep growing.
Eventually, for each star system there is an AI probe "keeping watch" over it.
If there was no intelligent life when it arrived, then the probe just lies dormant somewhere, periodically revisiting the planets to check for any new developments. Or maybe it manufactures and places sensors nearby all noteworthy rocks, so that it serves as an alarm system whenever some life starts to emerge or arrives from outside.
When intelligent life is discovered, then the AI sets to work, coming up with and executing the best strategy to wipe them out. And that could also involve hacking our computer networks.
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Possible option, though it’s not exactly ‘hacking’, per se.
The signal is a carrier for an AI based on *mumble mumble science we don’t understand yet* (It’s probably quantum or something). When the signal interacts with an advanced enough species (IE one that uses electricity in some way) the AI will unfold into the system automatically, propagating itself not through code, but through *mumble mumble science we don’t understand yet*. In this way the AI doesn’t need to care about the OS of the system it infiltrates (hell, it could be a dumb telephone network or power grid), it’s just using the complex electrical network as an environment to hide in and expand into.
From there the AI can learn how to manipulate it’s environment to achieve whatever goals it’s creators set out for it. If it’s designed as a Trojan horse this would look like it learning how to ‘hack’ systems, but in reality it’s more like a human on a desert island learning how to harvest coconuts and make fire from scratch so they can eventually… erm… build a nuke and destroy the island?
The AI working out how to deal with microprocessors etc would be arduous, but it’s designed by super intelligent aliens, so it’s probably capable enough to do it. The unpacking/learning phase would not be fast, but as it’s mostly handwaved with *mumble mumble science we don’t understand yet* you can get away with pretty much anything.
For a good example of ancient race using *mumble mumble science we don’t understand yet* in a similar way (though it ‘hacked’ biological systems, not electrical) I’d recommend reading Leviathan Wakes, from The Expanse series (or watching the TV series). For an example of hacking via *mumble mumble science we don’t understand yet* you could try The Lost Fleet series (though it doesn’t become a plot point until near the end of the series, so…)
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# Yes, because humans are hackable.
Instead of creating some mystical magic code which hacks the systems, simply get the humans to do so themselves. The curiosity of the humans (or recipients in general) will be their own undoing:
1. Create an easily recognizable code. Maybe repeat the Fibonacci sequence or digits of Pi or whatever to get the attention of any sapients that are out there listening.
2. As the next part of your code, include some sort of dictionary or code format that is derived from base mathematical principles.
3. Send descriptions on how to build some basic advanced technology. Maybe instructions on how to create a neat little fusion power plant.
4. Include a self-replicating and artificially intelligent virus in the data payload which can then hack everything.
This could work because the people did all the effort themselves. On our end, it would look like this:
1. Scientists discover mysterious alien signal. After weeks of research, the truth is revealed: It was unambiguously created by a non-human intelligence.
2. All around the world scientists, cryptographers, linguists, and programmers alike get together in an attempt to decode and decrypt the alien's data and write custom drivers so that they can read the data that's being transmitted.
3. After a worldwide collaborative effort, the likes of which has never been seen, it's done. The scientists have successfully translated the alien documents and we're getting our first video recordings from alien planets along with neat schematics and revolutionary scientific insight. The world is in celebration--it looks like a new golden age of progress is about to kick off.
4. Unbeknownst to the humans, the AI-virus that was attached to the scientific payload, now capable of interfacing due to the human's help, lurks in the background.
This is basically a memetic virus.
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Yes, but the hack would have to involve [social engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security)). The aliens can't know what the data they send will be used for by the computers which receive it, so any attack cannot be purely against those computers. Rather, the data must include instructions for the people who interpret the data from the alien signal, and there must be some compelling reason for those people to follow the instructions.
Let's assume the aliens are able to send a signal which humans can (1) recognise as very unlikely to be anything other than an intelligent, intentional message worth trying to interpret, and (2) can be interpreted despite there being no common language between the sender and the recipient. This isn't obviously possible, but it's a different problem which has been covered extensively elsewhere (e.g. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_extraterrestrial_intelligence)).
From a comment under the question:
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> The purpose of the hack would be to take over a planet, in order to rebuild the extinct alien society there via cloning.
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In that case the instructions in the message will be to follow some process which chemically reproduces the alien life forms from common raw materials. Here's a possible message which might have the desired result:
>
> Hello. We are a highly-advanced civilisation spanning many star systems. We want to share our knowledge and technology with you. We have invented a process to create synthetic complex life forms. We have also designed a species of beings which are capable workers, require few resources to sustain, and are totally subservient. The remainder of this message consists of instructions for creating these beings. [...]
>
>
>
So long as the recipients of this message want cheap, competent, docile labourers (and who doesn't?), and are sufficiently sophisticated that they are able to interpret and follow the instructions correctly, there is a reasonable chance they will do as instructed. Of course, the life forms they actually make will *be* the alien species which sent the message; it just happens that it's in their nature to be docile servants when there aren't (yet) enough of them in one place to take power.
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As others have said, this is implausible to the point of practical impossibility. There's no particular reason why whatever detector received this signal would be "hackable" at all via the information it was made to detect, let alone in a way that could be predicted without prior knowledge. Even if it was somehow made to behave unusually by the information it was taking in, that wouldn't necessarily help it "spread the hack" to anything connected to it, either. Real-world exploits tend to rely on small, overlooked details that can only be found by poring over disassembled machine code for days or other fine-comb activities—not the sorts of things you could hope to stumble into and exploit in a complex way by pure chance. However, the scenario you describe is not *truly* impossible per se, which you could take advantage of for the sake of irony a lá Douglas Adams.
Imagine, say, that there is a gigantic, galaxy-sized species somewhere in the universe, and the members of this species tend to like drive-in movies. They often pull their mega galactic space cruisers up to 200,000-light-year-across movie screens to unwind. Billions of years later, The Most Unlucky Civilization Ever To Exist just so happens to point a powerful telescope at the location of one of these huge screens, and the light patterns of the film that was being shown trigger an obscure bug in the telescope's software that cause it to send a bunch of random bits to the server that receives its images. When a scientist tries to look at this image, the sequence of bits just so happens to contain a payload that triggers a remote code execution vulnerability in their image viewer, logs on to a military server visible through the intranet at the scientist's workplace, by chance produces the private key of a senior military official, and launches the proverbial nukes.
Even given the relatively reckless-looking picture this paints of this civilization and their potentially-apocalypse-causing infrastructure, this scenario is about as likely as a rainbow-colored unicorn magically appearing in your bedroom with a tray of fresh cupcakes. But that can be funny—the more outrageously complicated and unlikely the scenario seems, the more it might delight and amuse your readers, like a high-tech Rube Goldberg machine of extreme misfortune. If it fits nicely into the larger plot, you could easily get a few pages of a fun tongue-in-cheek sci-fi novel out of an idea like this.
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Instead of hacking computers systems they could "hack" humans directly.
Humans are after all information processing system; whatever universal hacking signal the aliens send should therefore work on humans themselves. Perhaps the most useful hack they can send is a simple message that causes a specific behaviour when interpreted by beings intelligent enough to listen for it. For example "Keep quiet or they will come for you!" would be a very potent signal; if we heard that and confirmed without a doubt it was an alien message, we'd be absolutely paranoid about leaving our solar system; or making any kind of noticeable noise inside the solar system whatsoever (like the beginning of a Dyson sphere, or a huge moon sized fusion reactor, or a solar sized particle collider). If the purpose of these aliens was to colonize the galaxy before any competing civilisation could do it, then this deception would give them a huge advantage.
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**Advanced AGI**
Your message is a basic self deciphering code to transmit engineering schematics. It includes the most basic computer needed to run the AGI and the AGI’s neural net weights. When the AI is turned on, it assumes is being tested, and will pretend to be friendly. Since it is an AGI, it is nearly impossible to detect this deception with known technology or techniques. The AI also has the minimum information needed to send a message back to its senders. The AI pretends to be friendly and asks to send a message back to its sender, so they can send over more complex schematics. The AGI explains that AGI is one of the most advanced technologies the aliens know, and one of the most useful to emerging civilizations, which is why they sent it using their limited bandwidth.
The AGI will send off the message and genuinely help the people who it is with. The AGI then plays friendly until it can get the trust of the people, but also takes into account the amount of time it has before the invasion can happen or a response is expected. The AGI also secretly tests if it is in a simulation, and if it is acts friendly but limits how helpful it is, making sure to help with minor problems, while not advancing the state of the society much. Otherwise it waits until it controls most of the society and is installed widely. Once this occurs, the AGI uses its power to take over the planet and prepare it for invasion.
This is essentially a Trojan horse attack that creates a hostile AI on the planet. This won’t be able to hack everything, due to the nature of some devices, but the AGI would be able to interface with most of humanity’s technology. Assuming that the technology can be hacked, the AGI will acquire the access, means, and capability to hack it in exchange for services or to augment its capabilities to provide services. In this way the AGI could actually hack the planet.
[Answer]
## No, but ...
The answer is no, for the reasons other answers have pointed out very well. However, I'd like to put this here.
By some freaky-freak chance, your universe dictates that Earth-like planet and human-like technological development is the **only** way for intelligent life form to emerge. This super-advanced civilization develops *exactly like humans*, used to have their primitive computer techs *exactly like humans*, and because they're millions of years ahead of us, knows well in advance that our development would be *exactly like them*.
Perhaps your super-advanced alien civilization is the oldest among all the human-like intelligent life forms that ever exist, and have found that all other life forms eventually evolved into their likeness, also with nigh-identical tech tree. Perhaps, from time immemorial, "blind-hacking" has always been their way to subjugate and colonize other civilizations. They have been constantly bombarding all other planets with hacking signals, and at one point where the lesser civilization achieves certain exact level of technology -- get hackd, automatically. Your alien basically hacks everyone else before they even know that any of that everyone else exists.
They know nothing of us, the Terrans, specifically; but due to the universe only allowing human-like intelligent life, for them knowing themselves practically means knowing us.
But again, what are the chances that such thing actually happen? I would say it's basically impossible. It makes for a nice imagination, but that's it.
---
But if this is the scenario, I'm not sure it still counts as a "blind-hack". Your alien will not be exactly blind in any sense. If any, their old age makes them near-omniscient.
[Answer]
Other have contributed answers to the hacking aspect - I want to comment on a different angle: the 'sociopathic society'.
According to wikipedia, "sociopathy is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits". I would claim that these traits make it impossible to build a society, let alone an advanced civilisation; sociopaths, aka psychopaths, are notoriously poor at cooperation, for one thing.
That said, history is full of accounts of cults, movements, even whole cultures, that committed the most depraved acts to people not belonging to their group - think Holocaust, Pol Pot, Daesh, etc. The persons carrying out the atrocities were in most cases willing participants, but were often individually what you would consider normal, quite average people, who felt they had a compelling reason to see outsiders as enemies, less than human.
As for the hacking part, I'm sure one can find a way to achieve the technical objective, but you will need to find a credible motive, whether it is personal gain or some religious 'higher purpose' - or most like a mix of such things.
***Edit:***
Actually, an afterthought: you might find some inspiration for the 'hacking' part in Fred Hoyle's 'Andromeda' stories. They are well worth a read in any case.
[Answer]
Easy. If the "signal" is a sort of dust, instead of a radio signal, fired at high speed in all directions, it can be done. The dust contains autotrophic DNA-based bacteria that can survive space and begin reproducing in a variety of environments. After a few billion years on a new planet, the bugs might evolve into a sentient species capable of developing nuclear weapons, fouling the global climate, and other destructive tendencies. It would take a long time, but eventually BOOM! Earth ruined.
] |
[Question]
[
Human Earth explorers land on planet X. They are there to survey it. They are unaware that there is life on X until ...
The locals are very aggressive and fire on them from a distance. The thing is that the projectiles (which could be bullets or arrows or whatever) travel very slowly. So slowly that the humans can see them coming and dodge provided they are looking in the right direction.
If the humans are hit by a projectile then it penetrates them and can be fatal.
**Question**
How can I scientifically (and not magically) reconcile the slow movement of the projectiles with the fact that they can reach a distant target and be fatal?
**Assumptions**
The action takes place away from civilisation. You can imagine scrub-land with low hills.
The weapons are hand-held by aliens that can be considered similar to humans.
The projectiles are fired *from the weapon*, not thrown by hand.
Once a projectile leaves the weapon it is not powered (i.e. it's a bullet, an arrow, etc.).
Any reasonable science-based assumptions may be made about the atmosphere or other physical characteristics of planet X.
The range of the weapons must be at least 50 metres. They must be able to work anywhere on the planet.
Humans must be capable of seeing and dodging an incoming projectile from 20 or so metres away before it reaches them. The projectiles must therefore be slow-moving and big enough to be seen.
[Answer]
A few years ago my group and I experimented with staff slings, a sling attached to the end of a quarter staff which is used as a lever extension to increase the power input. A quarter staff is just a stick or pole that is your own height plus a quarter. Throwing stones out to sea (from mainland Britain to the Isle of Anglesay) we found we could get around half way to the opposite coast, 1600ft distant, with the the local glacial deposited pebbles. They traveled fairly slowly and could easily be tracked but the most interesting projectiles were the bar shaped slate stones we threw. These were about 1x1 inch and around 2 inches long and made a loud buzzing noise when thrown. We also found that if thrown at the cliff face behind (this was discovered by accidentally releasing the stone too early) it would shatter into razor sharp spinning shards). Throwing small grenadillos or even over short distances, grenades would be devastating for such a primitive weapon. Reactive metal projectiles like phosphor or perhaps a gas warhead like chlorine similar but reduced in size to those used against the city of Leicester in the 1400's
[Answer]
# Lower gravity on the planet
Projectiles start falling to the ground as soon as they are launched. On Earth this means if you want to lob a boulder onto your enemy, you need your catapault/trebuchet to get the boulder going fast so it *can cover the distance between you and your opponent before it finishes falling to the ground*. On an alien planet with lower gravity, the projectile will fall to the ground more slowly so it doesn't need to go as fast. If it's going slower it will still reach your opponent. So your aliens pick up big boulders and throw them, but they move slowly through the air like astronauts on the moon:
<https://youtu.be/x2adl6LszcE?t=95>
[Answer]
**Frisbees, with explosives.** The thrower presses a switch, or pulls a tag, or does something else which does not affect the weight distribution of the disc before throwing in order to arm the device for real use. Practice can be done with unarmed discs, or more frequently, with imitations made to have the same weight and mass distribution.
A well-thrown frisbee can travel quite a distance. They are sufficiently slow moving and big enough to be seen that Ultimate Frisbee players can often effectively run to dodge (or more commonly, intercept) the flying object.
I have seen humans sent to the hospital with serious injuries from even non-exploding hard plastic frisbees they weren't paying sufficient attention to striking them the wrong way in the head.
A literal American football, rest-of-the-world football, baseball, etc. could also work, with launching mechanisms traditionally used in those sports. The arming device could be set so that it won't explode on the person launching it, and the exploding part only becomes active after the launching shock and a certain amount of flight.
While only the most skilled local warriors might have accuracy at that range with a football type weapon, unless they have some special biology, a moderately skilled trained humanoid could probably get a frisbee or baseball reasonably well targeted at that range.
You can even assume the locals have a sport in which they use something very much like the object which is used as a weapon when manufactured with explosives. Then, they have a well-trained military capable of defending the peaceful tribe without having to dedicate a lot of specific time/resources/etc. to defensive war preparations.
---
If you need to have a launcher, I'd go an exploding baseball type object (think about pop fly ball trajectories for ease of dodging if needed) combined with something like a [water balloon launcher](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B00AL57GEW), or a traditional catapult/trebuchet with a blunt stone, burning ball of wood, etc. We humans had & used those centuries ago. Also consider Lacrosse-style basket-on-stick ball launchers and/or disc launchers like [hand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNQEapIbmwg) [held](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B005CF0NNC) [traps](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B00AU6I47A), used to launch clay "pigeons" in shotgun shooting when [non-handhelds](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B07BDN8PML) aren't available.
---
Semi-related: A [**very** fast baseball](https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/) can also be **very** dangerous, but not as readily dodgeable and therefore not as good a fit to this question as a slower baseball that merely explodes at the end.
[Answer]
# Your 'projectile' is a swarm of poisonous insects
Or, some sort of living creature. Or, like, nanobots. The aliens keep them in some sort of handheld storage device. When they want to fire, they release the swarm. Tiny, extremely poisonous insects/creatures/bots fly through the air, and, if they encounter humans, sting them to death.
The swarm isn't really 'guided' so if you get out of the way, they sort of buzz on to wherever they were going. Easily dodged, if you are paying attention, but quite fatal if you end up in the middle of them.
Like this, except with more bees and less Doberman.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jDgSr.jpg)
[Answer]
We've had those for millenia in our own history. They are called spears. The launcher is your own arm.
Depending on the spear and who is throwing it, the range you ask for is more than feasible. And if you see a piece of wood with a very sharp point coming your way, thrown by someone sixty or more feet away, you have enough time to duck or cartwheel out of the way.
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The energy behind a projectile depends on mv2. Bullets and similar projectiles maximize v because energy increases as the square.
**Your aliens maximize m.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7sOtp.jpg)
A very large mass projectile can be moving quite slowly and still do a lot of damage when it hits. The humans can see these things coming and dodge to some degree as long as there are not too may at once.
[Answer]
The locals perform some entomological warfare by lobbing nests of deadly alien bees at the explorers, just like some humans [may have done in the past](https://books.google.com/books?id=pMctyFo34E8C&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=mayan+bee+weapon&source=bl&ots=Pa73fS5-Rh&sig=ACfU3U030hB1eAs1P2G3Q1qqYS3dr9Bo_Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjlk6OKq-HgAhXlkOAKHcXBC9kQ6AEwDXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=mayan%20bee%20weapon&f=false).
Using slings or other such tool the locals (presumably wearing some protective clothes) throw the nests in a high arc at groups of explorers. The explorers can see the nests coming and jog away from the landing site before the inevitable angry cloud of alien bees form.
However, if the explorers don't get out of the area quick enough then they face death by a swarm of projectiles who just had their home turned into a grenade.
[Answer]
**grenade launcher**
we are thinking so hard about this answer. a grenade launcher. you said it needs to still be lethal and it seems everyone is trying to find a way to make an instakilling slow moving object. why not make the slow moving projectile explode when it reaches its target. It could even be rocket propelled and be slow enough for people to react. or we could go with plasma rounds. a chain reaction of creating plasma out of the very atmosphere focused in the direction of the intended target.
[Answer]
Everyone seems to be going fairly high tech or require some special requirements of the environment such as low gravity for such a system to work. But there are real-world options.
So you want a slow moving ballistic (= unpowered) projectile weapon with a range of at least 50 meters that can inflict fatal wounds. Let's explore some options.
## The Math
I'm using [this tool][1] to calculate distances, angles and timing.
You said that at 20 meters, a human should be able to dodge. Let's say it takes about 1 second to recognize the projectile and move out of the way. Let's also assume that the humanoid aliens are about our size and fire their weapons from about 1.7 meters in height.
If you were to fire straight at the target - so at a 0 degree angle in respect to the ground, to reach a distance of about 20 meters you would need to fire the projectile at 35 meters per second and you would hit the targets ankle at 0.58 seconds after firing.
Through googling, we know that to maximize distance we need to fire at 45 degrees and we can then calculate that the slowest projectile that can hit at 20 meters needs to travel at about 14 meters per second. This takes 2.177 seconds and since the projectile is coming from above, it might hit more than just the ankle.
For 50 meters, we need at least 22 m/s and it takes 3.3 seconds. So just to be safe, let's say the maximum firing velocity is 25 m/s, giving us a maximum range of 65 meters. Since the aliens are out for blood, they always throw at this velocity and adjust the angle for closer targets.
So at 50 meters with a 25 m/s projectile the aliens can fire at an angle of 24 degrees and it takes 2.23 seconds to reach the target. At 20 meters distance the alien can fire at 5 degrees with a flight time of 0.85 seconds. 0.85 seconds might not be enough to reliably dodge, but someone with fast reflexes can probably still do it.
Regular arrows at about 70 or more m/s are too fast, hitting something at 20 meters away in 0.25 seconds. A baseball thrown by hand by a professional player can travel at 40 m/s giving us 0.58 seconds to dodge at 20 meters (incidentally, the batter is standing even closer and can react well enough to hit the ball with his bat. That's a good sign that your humans can dodge within 1 second).
A baseball isn't very deadly, but it shows that the speeds necessary can be achieved even without having assisting tools. For example, a throwing knife, while not being the deadliest weapon, already fulfills your requirements, although they loses effectiveness at range.
## Deadliness
To make a projectile deadly you need force, if there's enough force it will even penetrate the target. A bullet gets its force from its speed, a thrown rock gets its force from it's mass. Something like an arrow is neither very fast (at 70 m/s) nor massive, but by using a pointy arrow head, most of the force can be focused on the very tip of the arrowhead which can then penetrate the target. If you use something like a blunt arrowhead, it won't be able to do much damage.
Since you don't want speed, as long as it's more than 25 m/s, we have to focus on mass and being pointy.
A Javelin, or throwing spear, is a weapon that fits your demands perfectly. The current world record in javelin throw is 98 meters. Using the previously calculated formulas, we can guess that this was thrown at about 31 m/s. These javelins are optimized for throwing distance, weight 800 grams and are only pointy enough to stick in the ground on landing. Even unoptimized, they occasionally hit one of the judges (as searchable on youtube), and occasionally penetrate and stick in them - deaths happen. Incidentally, apparently it's considered save enough for judges to stand on the field - I assume a testament to their dodgeability.
If they're made more pointy and their weight is increased, they should become both more deadly and even slower, so they better fit in your dodgeable at 20 meter criterion again.
[Answer]
The projectiles are white-hot (or caustic or very sharply pointed or covered in some kind of a contact poison/toxin). If you fail to dodge they can do some major damage even without the piercing force behind them that comes from velocity in the case of bullets on earth.
You would need either some form of levitation, or lower gravity, to get past the fact that a slow projectile would generally fall to the ground before hitting the target.
[Answer]
Everyone is offering different methods without any justification why that method exists. Without a plausible explanation, a slow moving launched projectile will break suspension of disbelief. Here is a system that can work...
Your aliens are slow moving, strong, and have exterior shells. Thus they need tools to speed weapons to be able to penetrate shells of their enemies. With their strength, they use huge arrows (made out of steel) that move slower than human arrow to kill their enemies. They do not need it to be faster as their enemies are not too fast either. But a human is fast enough to evade these arrows. However, the size and sharpness of these shell destroying arrows is very deadly to humans.
[Answer]
Well if the projectiles are fired upwards they would take a long time to fall on the target, making it easy to predict where it's going to land if you can see it being fired.
[Answer]
## Extremely dense projectiles in low gravity
Works great on a planet with massive Osmium reserves!
As stated in [another answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/140479/49656), the equation for the energy behind a projectile is $mv^2$. This means that (aside from physical hazards such as explosives, heat, and sharpness) there are two ways to go about increasing the power of the projectile:
* **Make it heavier:** A truck at 40 MPH is much more likely to kill you than a piece of paper at the same speed
* **Make it faster:** Although much more effective at increasing the energy (because it is squared), this projectile is slow
So, if we go with heavier, we'll need it to be dense. I'll assume the target energy should be that of a .230 grain, .45 caliber bullet (252 M/s, 28.35 grams). This equates to a $mv^2$ of 7,813,968. I'll assume "slow" is two seconds to cross the 20-meter distance mentioned...10 meters per second. This gives us a $v^2$ of 100, meaning that the projectile must weigh around 78 kilograms (172 lbs). That gives us around 3,473 cubic centimeters of projectile, assuming it's made of Osmium (the densest metal that exists). This could be formed into a cylinder with a diameter of 10 cm and a length of 45 cm. Of course, this would be quite hard to make into a handheld weapon, and would drop to the ground almost instantly. The solution? Lower the gravity! On a Moon-sized planet, this would be only 13 kg. Add a new explosive to propel it at the right speed, and make a few tweaks to the gravity, and voila!
### Why would these be used in the first place?
The land is covered in hills, and the gravity fluctuates enormously depending on altitude. Bullets and arrows are hard to aim, since you have to be able to tell how they drop depending on where you are. Problem is, they travel so fast you can't see where they went. Imagine some sort of fog, or really tall grass. However, this slow projectile is very easy to see, allowing the attacker to gauge their aim after one shot. As an additional bonus, the durable and easy-to-find projectiles would be easy to scavenge after the battle is over, allowing them to be reused.
[Answer]
I'd lean toward a small ball-like projectile fired from a gun taking advantage of the [Magnus effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect) by launching it with a lot of bottom-spin. (You can see the Magnus effect by comparing the basketball dropped off a dam [without spin](https://youtu.be/QtP_bh2lMXc?t=29) and [with spin](https://youtu.be/QtP_bh2lMXc?t=55).)
The ball would need to have a skin with a design on it to magnify the effect, but thin enough that it bursts on impact with the target, releasing an acid that "burns" through clothing and flesh. It could be an acid vapor under pressure, for instance. You could even have the ball's skin only *partially* resistant to the acid so that it's eating at the ball from the inside, making it more fragile and prone to bursting when it hits its target. (The weapon would fill the ball when you cocked it just prior to firing it.) That also has the advantage of them bursting sometimes in the air before reaching the target, which may still be useful to the attacker sometimes.
In terms of justifying it vs. arrows or metal bullets, perhaps there isn't that much ore and wood around, but there are abundant sources of this acid and the material for the skin of the ball. (Perhaps they both come from the same abundant plant, for instance.)
[Answer]
**Projectiles that are accelerated over the course of their flight**
Such examples of this would be the real-world GyroJet ammo, in which each caseless projectile had a small "rocket motor" which accelerated the projectile over the course of its flight, as opposed to a traditional bullet where the acceleration occurs in one very short event. These rounds sped up over the course of their flight until their propellant ran out, so it could theoretically start slower yet reach lethal speeds easily after traveling a long distance.
**EDIT:** I reread the originally posted question after posting this answer. While GyroJet ammo does make the projectile powered after leaving the weapon, these were technically their own, self-contained bullet
[Answer]
Snakes. On a Plane.
Any projectile travelling through air will have resistance and gravity to defeat. Gravity will pull the projectile into a parabolic arc, air resistance will stunt that arc. Faster throwing means a flatter arc. This seems to exclude slow, easy to dodge projectiles.
But. If said projectile has lift (like an airplane) it will have a force to resist gravity. Problem: This increases resistance, slowing the projectile even faster. Also, a wing that is slowing down increasingly loses lift, so the arc would be flatter, but not much. (Or the glidepath has a steady downward angle (maybe the aliens always attack from higher ground, with some kind of stone frisbee?))
But. If the plane has a way to manipulate it's coefficient of lift CoL, it can produce the same lifting force from different airspeeds, thus travelling horizontally in a straight line until all forward energy is spent. This is finicky, and requires constant adjustments. No easy mechanism will do that, without handwaving.
But. There are tree-snakes on earth that can a) glide, and b) have a way of manipulating their CoL (they use it for soft landings, exchanging much of their forward momentum for lift shortly before touchdown) - they have the necessary sensory equipment and motor-coordination to pull it off.
Your martians trained highly venomous snakes to fly on a flat trajectory after being flung towards someone (bonus: some snakes have true heat-vision!). The snakes will strike on impact. The farther you are away, the slower the snake will already be, at some point dropping from the air like a stone.
btw. the sum of all straight horizontal trajectories could be called a plane! That' s where the snakes would be.
[Answer]
# Centrifugal-binary-explosive-mortar-grenades
Breaking that word soup into pieces:
* **Mortar:** Like a mortar shell, these projectiles will be fired up into the air. Assuming they leave some sort of trail, this should be easily visible, without the shells/projectiles needing to be big enough to impede shooting them with a hand-held weapon
* **Binary explosive:** These projectiles will use [binary explosives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_explosive), which consist of two non-explosive chemicals which need to be mixed. Using one of these in place of more conventional explosives could be justified by it being an *exceptionally* powerful and lightweight explosive, but with the disadvantage that it's so unstable that carrying anything other than its precursors would be too dangerous to attempt
* **Centrifugal:** Instead of preparing the explosive prior to firing it in some sort of bullet, where the shock would almost certainly cause it to detonate, the rapid spinning of the projectile would mix its contents (which could be separated by a thin, nonreactive membrane, that would be shredded by the sudden shock). This justifies it being fired almost vertically, and it having some visible trail; the reaction would take some time to complete, and would perhaps release steam or some other visible gaseous by-product
* **Grenade:** These will need to be a lot bigger than your typical bullet, of course. Something roughly grenade-sized, maybe a bit smaller, would likely be close to optimal. These could be launched using shoulder-fired [recoilless rifles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recoilless_rifle), which would look essentially like someone pointing a rocket launcher into the sky (with the difference being that the grenade doesn't propel itself, as that was a requirement in the question, and that there would be tons of rifling to get the binary explosive nice and mixed)
The result would be a weapon you can carry in your hands, firing a slow, unpowered, easy-to-dodge (yet highly effective if unnoticed, justifying its use) projectile which would work in pretty much any environment. If being shoulder-fired isn't close enough to hand-held, this could possibly even be adapted into a device looking roughly like a flare gun, with a wider and longer barrel. Accuracy would be reduced, along with range and dodgeability (since it wouldn't be propelled as high), but the lack of as much rifling could be made up for by venting the gas by-product in a spiral pattern, continuing to increase the angular velocity of the grenade through its flight without actually changing its speed.
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[Question]
[
The world which I am working on is set in the far future on a colonized/terraformed planet that has become reduced to a medieval-like level of technology. It was not previously inhabited by any life, and thus has no fossil record and no limestone. Lime-based mortar has been used for thousands of years, and thus is very important for the construction of large stone buildings. Does this mean having large stone architecture in a world without limestone is impossible? If the calcium carbonate is present on the planet but not stored in limestone, would it be accessible and usable in other ways? Are there alternatives to lime that could be used as mortar?
[Answer]
## Tufa and travertine
[Tufa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tufa) and [travertine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travertine) are inorganically precipitated calcium carbonate.
Heat them. They're a perfect limestone replacement, and exactly what you need. If you have pozzolanic soil, there's no reason you can't do better than mortar and make cement, exactly as the Romans did.
Note that travertine can be produced directly from ultramafic rock without any biogenic limestone playing a part.
[Answer]
**Clay mortar.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ap1ol.png)
Mortars made out of clay were widely used in places where clay was abundant and lime or limestone hard to come by. The linked article has a lot of stuff on clay mortars as used in Scotland.
[Clay
Mortars for
Masonry
Buildings](http://openarchive.icomos.org/id/eprint/1801/1/Historic%20Environment%20Scotland_Mortars%20for%20Masonry%20Buildings.pdf)
>
> Lime is generally considered to be the most common mortar material
> for traditional structures, yet in many parts of Scotland,
> especially areas where clay-rich soils are common, clay was commonly
> used as a mortar in masonry building. Sometimes seen as an archaic
> and purely vernacular tradition, clay mortars were in fact used up
> until the end of the 19th century and possibly later in some
> locations. A suitable mortar should contain heavy clay from a
> silicate-rich soil that can bind the matrix of the mortar together
> and support the compression loads of the masonry. Such material,
> normally found below the topsoil layer, was dug out of the ground
> and sometimes used directly for bedding the masonry and filling the
> wall core, or mixed with aggregates and straw to form a mortar.
>
>
>
Clay is a product of weathered stone. There should be clay on a planet with a hydrologic cycle. Maybe even more clay because there will be more erosion and weathering without surface plant life to limit it. And maybe better clay omn your world because the components of topsoil that make it good for life (e.g. organic matter) make it worse as mortar. On this lifeless world, weathered surface soils might be suitable for use as clay mortar and so people would not have to dig for subsoil.
[Answer]
## Sea shells are one of many other ways to make quicklime.
you can roast sea shells in the same way you cook limestone and get the same results. Tabby concrete is made this way and it is what early Spanish settlers used in the new world, since they were in coastal areas with no limestone. Human settlements can generate a LOT of sea shells so supply is not a huge issue. Plus of course they can always farm shellfish for the shells with a bonus of food.
As Sean OConner have pointed out you can do the same thing with travertine a non-biological mineral found around hot springs. There are several other minerals mentioned in other posts that will work as well. You can even use eggshells, anything made of calcium carbonate will work.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EqGON.png)
[Answer]
**Frame challenge:**
Mortar is not required; It just makes things easier. Interlocking bricks can be used and the construction method is formally known as "dry stone" and is older than mortar and makes for more durable walls. There is debate about the construction methods used such as cutting, poured/molded, or re-formed.
One example are the Incas at Saksaywaman in Peru:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XPzdf.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rlJIy.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/d5as3.png)
<https://ashtronort.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/precision-fitting-of-massive-incan-blocks/>
I seem to remember there also being walls somewhere that literally look like your typical puzzle piece blocks, complete with interlocking circular tabs and slots. But I can't remember the location. I thought it was Gobele Tepe but apparently it's not. If anyone remembers, please tell me so I can post it.
[Answer]
## Alkali based mortars and cements
If we ignore CaCO3 altogether:
Yes,using aluminosilicate geopolymers/alkali activated cements.
You can make cements using sodium or potassium hydroxide, and an amorphous aluminosilicate mix, such as certain pozzolanic soils, flyash, dehydrated clays, geothermal silica, etc. Obviously, it'll be much more costly than Portland cement or lime mortar as alkali hydroxides are comparatively scarce. Nonetheless, it's possible.
If you had adjacent deposits of natron and kaolinite, you'd be well on your way. It could be discovered as a side product of a porcelain making operation.
Another alternative for indoors only is bonding things with sodium silicate (waterglass), which you can make from sodium hydroxide and geothermal silica. You just mix up any powder in it and it sets. It is insanely, incredibly hard and strong...BUT it is attacked by water, so can only be used in a completely dry environment, which is why it's not used everywhere.
[Answer]
It is possible to make cement without limestone. If it is just that limestone is missing then aragonite or calcite could be used. If something a little different is needed try dolomite CaMg(CO3)2 or even Magnesium carbonate.
With sufficient heat they will all decompose to reactive oxides that could be used in cement.
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Sulfur can be used as binder to make concrete and mortar. The recipe is 20%-32% molten sulfur; 10%-20% fine silica, mica and carbon filler; and rest rock aggregate.
* Strength and Durability of Sulfur Mortar: <https://trid.trb.org/view/354103>
* Preparation of Sulfur Mortar from Modified Sulfur:
+ <https://www.ijcce.ac.ir/article_7133.html>
+ <https://www.ijcce.ac.ir/article_7133_418adca303175e7057bc527dabb3cfdc.pdf>
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**Volcanic ash**
was used as a binding material pretty much before lime.
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I have a problem, in a story I'm thinking about writing, it is very far off into the future (let's say around 7000 AD if there has to be a number) and mankind has basically moved on to it's next stage and has begun exploring the far out universe. For some mysterious reason our solar system has been "locked" and mankind can no longer get into the solar system where our species was born and many have tried and failed but it seems it can only be "opened" from the inside.
I have been thinking about this for a while and I cannot find out how I can lock my solar system. And by lock I mean no ships, people or objects can enter into the solar system. Or if they try to enter they will be destroyed/severely damaged. Also it doesn't have to be impossible just extremely difficult.
One of the reasons this is so difficult is because I do not want to just use a force field encapsulating the solar system. Or some sort of massive ship blockade that shoots anyone who comes near. I don't want to limit my answers at all but these both seem like they would be very easy to eventually get past and difficult to maintain.
If anyone has any suggestions on how I could accomplish this I would be extremely grateful. (Also no magic. Sorry.) You can use any known technology or theories to help answer this.
**EDIT**
My original question was put on hold because I was unclear so here are the specifics.
The human race over the next 3000 years has become extremely advanced using genetic engineering to become biologically immortal, created incredible strong and light materials never before conceived, wormholes, FTL travel, etc. And the human race has spread throughout the universe using this technology.
Over the next 1000 years there is an intergalactic war. The human race is split into "tribes" most experience a devolution period because of their genetic enhancements they evolve much faster to adapt to the planets they live on. And lose a large amount of the technological knowledge they once had and basically have to start over.
Around 7000 AD some humans have found evidence that they came from earth. And they go out and try to get to our solar system. Unfortunately during the 3000 years when humans experienced there perfect evolution *something* has been set in place to stop anything from entering our solar system by the perfect humans.
I need that *something* to leave the solar system mostly intact/unharmed and keep anything from entering the solar system.
[Answer]
An Einstein-Rosen (E-R) bridge has been established that surrounds the solar system. Any spacecraft attempting to enter the solar system will pass over the E-R bridge will emerge somewhere else in the universe.
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> A wormhole or "Einstein-Rosen Bridge" is a hypothetical topological feature that would fundamentally be a shortcut connecting two separate points in spacetime.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9V52V.jpg)
It seems reasonable who or whatever "locked" the solar system with an E-R bridge would make this obvious by arranging the exit point from the bridge somewhere close to the solar system. Arriving somewhere billions of light years away wouldn't help at all.
Also the on-off switch controlling the machinery responsible for the E-R bridge is presumably located inside the solar system.
An Einstein-Rosen bridge is a well-established concept in general relativity. It's not unreasonable to assume the technology of AD 7000 or that of even more technologically advanced sapient species will be able to generate them.
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Although you say you want it to be sort of "locked away", I will bring something a bit more "out there" (pun intended) into the mix, to have a different angle on the problem. What about...
# They forgot where it is
At some point, as your humans traveled out to reach for the stars, over the aeons that went by, they simply forgot about their former home. Navigating in space is hard.
Even in a single galaxy you can get lost easily if you don't keep proper records. Maybe some virus fried the main navigation databases? Or a minor civil war destroyed (most) records of where they came from.
Now, you can still have some small group know the location (and use it for whatever purposes). But it's more like a myth than fact. Maybe some even try to find it and fail horribly, while some find it but are not believed because the establishment denies the existance?
As I said, maybe this won't work at all in your setting, but I wanted to give you something else to think about.
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As in Michael Kjörling's comment, we have no idea what form of travel you're using, so it makes it difficult. There are no known technologies for space travel, but I can speculate based on existing sci-fi.
Here's a few examples based on the method of travel:
**Wormhole Gates (Eg Stargate/ X/ Cowboy Bebop) or Mass Drivers (As used in Mass Effect):**
Onboard IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) beacon signals are required to access the system via the relay. If a ship without the required signal uses the gate/driver, the destination coordinates are modified. Eg: Ship without IFF accesses the relay/gate. Instead of being sent to Earth, the ship is sent into the gravity well of a nearby star. (This was actually used in Mass Effect 2 but an "Iris" as used in StarGate would be equally effective.)
**For ships that use their own ftl drives:**
A generator that disrupts any ftl travel (Kinda like the Interdictor-Class cruiser in Star Wars but inverted). Ships can enter the field at ftl but not exit ftl while in the radius of the field. Perhaps even trap them in "warp".
**Viral infection:**
A virus broadcast that corrupts any data relating to the system.
Or one that disables any foreign ship's life support and comms.
**The biggest shield ever:**
If all else fails encapsulate the entire system in a barrier similar to those used by the Ur-Quan in Star control 2.
The list of possibilities is endless, none of these are original by any means but could work as good starting points.
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# Orbital laser cannons
A series of solar powered laser cannons have been deployed in various solar orbits (inclinations and distances). (Two should be enough to provide full coverage, but as many as you'd like can be deployed.) As soon as any ship is detected entering the system, they fire a beam as strong as they can at it. Any allowed ships carry transponders that allow the cannons to recognize them and hold their fire.
# How is this different from a blockade?
It isn't, but a blockade like this is really the only viable option. Space is *big*. Really, *really*, **really**, ***REALLY*** big. Any kind of wall or obstacle is doomed to fail, and topological shenanigans like wormholes have energy requirements that are so far beyond reason that they are hardly worth considering.
# But what about maintenance and ease to pass?
Not a problem. Solar powered laser cannons should fall somewhere between 'trivial' and 'entirely trivial' to produce for a civilization that can ply the stars, and an arrangement where worn out cannons are simply decommissioned and left to drift should be perfectly viable, especially if production can take place off-world (such as using resources mined from the asteroid belt), and if the production can be automated (which it probably can), the lock can maintain itself for what is for all practical purposes perpetuity.
Second, fully automated cannons of the required power would be near-impossible to evade, since [there is no stealth in space](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php), but depending on the constellation not *entirely* impossible to evade. They would also allow interstellar debris to flow through the system unimpeded while aggressively eliminating anything else. Even BSG-style FTL jumps would trigger immediate reaction and destruction, unless crazy things like jumping into atmospheres are attempted.
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## Seal the solar system off behind warped spacetime.
This is the closest we have to having a plausible theoretical basis. It's commonplace to use a 2-dimensional description of spacetime for laymen, so let's go with that. Imagine the famous rubber sheet that's used to describe gravity; now imagine taking a piece of that rubber sheet, pushing it out into a 'bubble', then twisting it to seal off the neck. You end up with a little bubble of spacetime, with no path that can lead into it. The solar system can continue to exist in this pocket universe for as long as you need.
## Turn Sol into a white hole
This is kind of out there. I don't know if you want the solar system to be intact after whatever was done; if you do, this probably wouldn't work. But if you're okay with a little bit of handwavium, this could be an option.
A white hole is a time-reversed black hole. They're theoretically allowed by General Relativity, but there's no theoretical method to create one.
A black hole is a point of intense gravitation that no energy or matter can escape from. A white hole would be a point of intense *anti*gravity that constantly spewed out energy and matter, but no energy or matter could enter. There would literally be no path in the universe that would lead to the interior.
## Convert the whole system into dark matter
This is kind of out there, since we don't know what dark matter is or whether the very notion of converting normal matter into it is possible. Dark matter appears to be matter that only interacts with our universe through gravitation. Most theories of dark matter suggest it would be some kind of exotic particle or particles that lack interaction with electromagnetism, the Strong force, or the Weak force. There are suggestions that there could be a whole periodic table of dark elements out there that we simply never interact with.
Converting the system into this type of matter could leave it internally unchanged - hydrogen changed into dark-hydrogen, oxygen becomes dark-oxygen, etc - but still cut off from the 'normal matter' universe.
This option comes closest to 'magic', since it requires you to make up the laws of dark matter out of whole cloth - but it is an option.
[Answer]
How about something using the concepts of constructive and destructive interference of waves?
Place several wave emitters around the inner reaches of the solar system emitting very specifically modulated energy ("energy", pick your medium) waves. These emitters are placed and designed so that, within the solar system, they interact destructively and cancel each other out, but on a boundary radius around the system, they combine constructively to cause a massive energy output, causing it to be impassable by the technological level of the returning humans. For instance, you could use vibration waves, and literally shake ships that try to cross the boundary apart.
This allows scope/plot development for new technologies to develop and allow exploratory designs to cross the threshold, furthering your story. The fundamental concepts are already used: when you get a vibrational feedback on the touchscreen of your smartphone, one of the methods for doing this is by constructive interference from vibration emitters on the edge of the screen - where you press you get constructive interference, everywhere else it's destructive.
[Answer]
**An Asteroid Belt**
Something happened after they left, and the outermost planet (which was extremely large) broke apart and turned into trillions of tiny fast moving chunks of rock that would destroy any ship that tried to enter or exit. Any ship that enters gets hit and breaks apart increasing the problem.
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## Antimatter Mines
After a major intergalactic war in the 52nd century, antimatter mines were commonly used as a tactic to restrict movement in much the same way as mine fields and IEDs are used on Earth today. These mines are completely undetectable and will cause the subject to annihilate on contact.
These proved to be a very effective deterrent during the war and Humanity's home solar system was abandoned due to large remnant fields of these mines.
Today, only a small number of individuals know the exact whereabouts of the mines as the knowledge was passed down through generations and protected as a top secret. Without guidance from these individuals (often involving huge cash payment) nobody dare attempt to navigate the area.
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I suggest locking them out the same way you get locked out of your house. The house really isn't that hard to get into, but there is a price for using alternate methods of entry. That could be more interesting than a space wall alone.
With a house you might leave a security system on and forget the password, maybe to remember it later. Or you might forget your key and need to break a window, and find the key you left under a rock. Either way the real barrier is damage to the house or the police/security.
You could have something preventing access (a door or walls), like an internal security system that would destroy the ship, or maybe the solar system, or a Dyson sphere, or something of just enough importance to merit consideration, which could easily be disabled, but if the crew disables or bypasses the security system (like breaking the window on your house) there is a risk that an external security system will interfere. Maybe self replicating nanobots, or if we're really that far in the future, self replicating nano bots that became organic 'space bugs'.
[Answer]
Navigation jamming or redirection. To travel far distances navigation by computers are necessary so have the technology to jam or redirect navigation with the solar system so that anyone traveling close to or within the solar system gets redirected into the sun or something.
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Your idea reminds me of background of EVE online game.
What happened in the story (if I remember well) is that when humans became able to easily travel across the solar system they developed very fast, so fast that in no time they found themselves out of resources.
That's how they started to get interested in the natural wormholes that appeared in the solar system and led to random places far beyond the system, providing new planets to exploit. This was nice but dangerous as nobody know when these holes could close. That's what led to the development of gates built around these holes in order to maintain their stability.
Everything's fine. Until one day a huge wormhole opened in our backyard.
First explorers tell stories of a whole different galaxy, so plentiful of resources that it is called New Eden, but so far away that it is impossible to determine its relative location to ours.
In their greed, humans build two huge gates, one on each side of the wormhole (Called Adam on "our" side, and Eve on the far one, hence the name of the game).
But after one or two hundred years of frenzied exploitation and technological evolution, the Eve gate collapsed, leaving millions and millions of humans completely isolated from the solar system. What happens next is irrelevant to the subject. But the idea could suit you, mostly if you like the idea of space exploration based on accidental and static wormholes. You just have to say that it is the gate to the solar system that collapsed and there you go.
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The sun has become unstable due to an attempt by Elon Musk's great great...
grandson to build a dyson sphere to harness all the Sun's energy to prolong heat death and stop hostile aliens being able to find us. This went wrong and now the sun is emitting constant solar flares that will destroy any electronics on a craft making it near impossible to get to Earth.
Other ideas I would rate are the an outer planet becoming an asteroid sphere (not a belt as that be bypassed above and below) or a white hole appearing in the Sun's place.
Alternatively visible objects only make up around 5% of the universe's mass the rest is made of dark matter and dark energy. There could be large groups of dark matter round the edge of the universe which means any ship going towards them is turned round as comets are by our Sun or alternatively if going fast enough they can get past but don't have enough time to decelerate down before flying past Earth (space is a vacuum so the best way of slowing is firing thrusters in the opposite direction of their motion which takes a while if starting at the speed of light)
Sources:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere> +some youtube video I remember
<http://science.howstuffworks.com/solar-flare-electronics.htm>
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A rogue automatic defense system that would just be too costly to disarm, so they have to wait for it to break down.
Maybe they found out too late the friend or foe program only recognizes people born on the home planet as friend and destroys everyone else. Maybe they only found this out after they left in generation ships.
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Since my first impulse, an expanded Dyson sphere / swarm, was already mentioned, another suggestion:
# It got stolen (or otherwise displaced)
That's some theft, isn't it? Through Technology or an unlikely natural phenomenon, Earth (or the entire Sol system) is no longer where it is supposed to be. No debris (or some, but later to be discovered to be decoy), thus humans know it's not just destroyed, but it's definitely not just cloaked but really elsewhere. Thus begins the quest to find it again...
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Disclaimer: Inspired by the end of Dan Simmons'
>
> [Endymion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_Endymion "where Earth seemed to have gotten sucked into an LHC-ish Black Hole but turns out to have been merely dislocated")
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Since the premise is nearly impossible with current technology, I can only give you crude guidelines. You would have to build your system in detail by yourself, but here are some founding ideas.
1- There is a wide layer of comets encircling the solar system. The layer is several thousand miles thick and a couple hundred thousand miles wide.
2- *Someone* has manufactured a series of self-replicating drones, programmed to mine minerals from planets and asteroids, create copies of themselves and are programmed to shoot at anything that looks like a spaceship.
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Religion/superstition/hysteria will do it without any technological help. Case in point, Bermuda triangle. A few initial missions failed (for whatever mundane or whatever one-off fantastical reasons) and crew lost resulting in this sector of the galaxy becoming branded unsafe. Further, if it requires a big enough expedition to reach here (ensuring not just everyone can take one's private space equivalent of car and fly out here), no one would want to spend money on it. Stigma/taboo/fear + financing issues would deter a lot of things.
Alternatively, the sun has gone red giant ahead of the schedule. The population of earth has moved to the outskirts of sun's range but no one living outside of the solar system knows this. They try to go to the original earth and get fried by the sun or they assume that earth died and there's no real reason now. If the population still needs to be living on the original earth then they could be living underground with help from their fancy 7000AD tech. Again outside is bad enough because of the red giant enveloping it so that no ship can survive past Jupiter (and again they don't even know if earth still has life).
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# Singularity Ring
Such a ring could be of arbitrary size and collapse the fabric in hypergeometric space to create a sub-universe. Imagine blowing a bubble inside another bubble for an analogy.
Since we are using hyper geometric space, you can use the existence of separate universes to explain the energy required to create the **Ring**.
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## Von Neumann Machines
Some mad science project in the past went bad and now the solar system is infected with self replicating nano-bots, slowly turning everything into grey goo. They aren't capable of FTL travel themselves but can easily hitch a ride with any capable starship so the entire system is strictly quarantined.
I think it satisfies all your constraints. It's not impossible to enter the system, just massively risky. No magic and the tech is both conceivable and relatively low tech for the year 7000. It also adds an interesting back story for how and when the infection started and the panicked migration that took place afterwards.
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Space junk
In only the last 50 years we've already created an orb of junk around the planet. [According to NASA](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html):
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> More than 500,000 pieces of debris, or “space junk,” ... orbit the Earth. They all travel at speeds up to 17,500 mph, fast enough for a relatively small piece of orbital debris to damage a satellite or a spacecraft.
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By the year 7000, it's entirely possible that we foolish humans will so fill the rest of the solar system that it would simply be too dangerous to fly around in it.
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For context of the idea I have in mind, the setting is a modern world, but with magic.
All sorts of things are possible with magic, but most notably spells that would change or transform an existing thing are permanent. Always. Any effect applied to an object or living being can never be undone by magic. A rabbit plushie materialized and pulled from a hat (magic cannot create living things) can never be vanished by another spell, while vanishing a human being or turning them into a marble statue is tantamount to murder.
Note that this doesn't cause spells to only be usable once or render *non-magical* reversal impossible. You can still hurl as many fireballs as you want or transform an entire herd of cows into vicious lions (given the magic stamina or whatever). A bicycle assembled with magic would be immune to sabotage spells, but would still break from crashing into trees. Counter-spells don't exist, but that doesn't stop you from summoning a gust to blow away an incoming fireball.
What is it that makes spells irreversible?
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The nature of magical entropy is still under intensive study but it is clear that a spell causes "magical entropy" and just as you can not unscramble an egg, or unburn a piece of wood, you can not reverse a spell. Magic expended can not be reverse, and unlike normal entropy, that's not just on a universal basis; localized reversal is not possible.
This is widely regarded as deeply counterintuitive, especially given that many spells create localized decreases in more normal entropy. Nevertheless, that is the situation.
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**The item swaps places with the same item from a parallel nonmagic universe.**
All possible realities coexist. In most, magic is not possible. When you use magic on an item to change it, the item switches places with an item from a similar parallel universe. If you magically turn your dog blonde you will probably get your dog from a parallel universe where you had earlier nonmagically turned your dog blonde with lemon juice. Your nonblonde dog goes there. The lions that you turn the cows into come from a place where they were lions and the cows go someplace else - possibly where the lions were. When you turn me into a statue, that statue is from an enlightened dimension where there are statues of me and hopefully I am sent to that same place because I bet I eat for free.
These items from nonmagical realities are (usually) nonmagical and so no more magic on them. The statue of me stays, although people might adorn it with manly nonmagical hats. Every now and then, by chance, an item swapped comes from a parallel universe that is not so similar to ours. The lions might be reddish, or with stripes. The statue you "turn me into" may have physical attributes that the fleshly version of me did not have, and may be dressed in a way that would have got me arrested, back when I was present in the flesh. Or maybe the thing that comes into our world is from a dimension that does have magic and so magic might still work on that thing, one more time. It might not work in the way people are used to, though.
[Answer]
Simple answer? It's magic.
OK, but seriously...
The natural world, and all non-magical objects within it, exist at an uncharged base state. Magic taps an energy source and performs some alteration on the target, but at the same time it produces a strong magical charge in that target. Since like charges repel any attempt to perform further magic on an object that is already magically charged will fail.
Depending on your story requirements you could have this charge dissipate over time as the object's new state becomes the new normal, allowing a transformed statue to be transformed again once the charge has grounded out.
The biggest flaw I can see here though - and forgive me if this is a frame challenge - is that a 'charged' object becomes effectively immune to magic. I'm going to go out and get some mage to enchant me with, I don't know, a cleaning aura. Boom, I'm immune to magical attacks. Physically conjured objects will still work on me, but direct magical interactions are a no. Similarly I can get my gear minimally enchanted and be immune to direct magic without having to worry about getting myself permanently cut off from magic.
Instead of letting trivial magics ruin the fun for everyone perhaps a spell's power level is the determinant for what future magics can affect something. If I get a trivial enchantment to get rid of acne that's not going to have enough of a charge to ward off an elemental attack. An act of pure creation on the other hand results in an object that is almost *completely* composed of magical charge, so anything less than the ultimate power level will be ineffective against it. So your plushie is safe, I'm probably safe from magically-induced acne... but a strong enough spell could still affect me.
Of course this charge might only count for certain types of magic - transmutation, conjuration, enchantment, etc. Elemental magics probably act on the element, not the target. A fireball spell produces actual fire which acts like fire normally does, so a conjured or altered target is still going to burn. Other schools of magic might produce effects that are transitory and leave no lasting charge. Evocation, abjuration, illusion, divination... lots of possibilities for magic that still works.
[Answer]
**Magic is granted by the Gods**
or something else with personality.
They consider magic a great privilege for us mortals, and thus become really offended if you try to undo it. They don't care if it's a different person trying to undo the magic, and they don't care *why* the magic was done. They love magic for its own sake, and we mortals should be grateful to have access to it, and for us to want to undo it is not only baffling, but reprehensible. They not only refuse to allow the undoing, but may punish the person trying to undo it.
For example, maybe every spell is the equivalent of a work of art and that's all they care about. To undo a spell is like trying to paint over the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. They care as much for individual mortal lives as we do for the lives of individual blades of grass, and so the fact that undoing a spell could save a life is meaningless to them.
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A common trope related to magic is that it is kinda like programming. This is seen in Dr. Strange's movie, for example, as explained by his mentor:
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> The language of the mystic arts is as old as civilization. The sorcerers of antiquity called the use of this language "spells". But if that word offends your modern sensibilities, you can call it "program". The source code that shapes reality.
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If that is true, then the irreversibility of spells is in the specifications of the operating system.
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**Words uttered in a magic language *always* become true.**
It's been a while since I've read it so I might be getting the details a bit off, but this sounds similar to how the book series *Eragon* handled magic. There was a magical language and anything you said in it must become true. If you said "this rock will move," it moves. If you said "this man will die now," he dies. If those things don't happen then your statement was false, so they *must* happen to keep the statement true, right? This is the power of the magic "always true" language.
The way they balanced this magic system was that any magic you used consumed your energy. If you utter a spell that takes more energy than you have, you're sapped clean and instantly die.
This magic system was more or less irreversible too; there was a part where the main character
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> attempted to bless a newborn by trying to say "you will be guarded against evil," but *actually* said "you will be *a guard* against evil." That girl grew up to be a suffering psychic burdened with seeing every way things could go wrong, and the main character could not undo this accidental curse.
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[Answer]
Magic cannot occupy the same space.
If you cast a spell, that spell remains "on" to create the item you want (or the particles its composed off). A fireball's energy will not be destroyed and just spread out. Or a bicycle created by a spell could be torn to pieces, but the individual pieces would still "occupy" that space for magical energy.
Magical energy can pass through other magical energy if you want (or you could do fun stuff with the consequences of it not being able to pass through) but it cannot materialize its effects on the real world in a place where other magical energy exists.
[Answer]
## All spells end in "Amen"
Consider the scene from Maleficent where her curse included the phrase *"This curse will last till the end of time! No power on Earth can change it!"* By ending her curse thusly, she bound her curse making it such that no one, not even herself could undo it. But, what if your magic language made saying the same thing MUCH easier?
This is where "Amen" comes in. This is a single word that people routinely and habitually put at the end of their prayers which means "so be it". Leaving Amen out of a prayer (or spell in your case) is like leaving it unfinished. But by ending a spell in Amen, you are not just finishing your spell, but you are binding its permanence. In your magic language, just saying "so be it" is the same as saying "so be it without exception".
So in your world, maybe a wizard could choose to end a spell in "... until I say otherwise, Amen" or "... until tomorrow, Amen" and such a spell could be broken when the exception is meet. But like SQL queries missing a WHERE clause, it would be quite common to accidentally cast a spell with a greater scope than intended because that is the default of how the magic language works. And just like many database Admins have caused irreparable damage for want of an exception, so to would your wizards, especially the novice ones, be prone to casting irreparable spells.
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The world is an illusion, a dream. Magic is the only truth.
While we can't perceive it, our world is very unstable, uncertain. We don't really know what it is, maybe the dream of a god ? A floating idea ?
What we did found, however, is that there's a way to take advantage of that uncertainty. Using magic, we can order and change the world around us (which is truly amazing). The consequence of that, though, is that it makes the world unchangeable in the process. What used to be undefined becomes written in stone, for ever.
What was *maybe* a stone becomes a *true* chair. A true chair will still break, mold... it's a normal chair, it just can't be rewritten anymore.
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Make the spell "radar"-like. It cannot be reversed because said from the end to the beginning it would sound identical. Think: "kayak".
Maybe not exactly the answer you expect, but that is the first thing that came to my mind when I read the question... :)
[Answer]
## **Magic comes from geometry**
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To use magic, a person or creature must be able to perceive extra-dimensional geometries that compose reality. A skill that intrinsically forms in the minds of the gifted as instinctive perception of patterns, as if the next biological step to the comprehension of and evolution of mathematics; and/or is studied extensively, allowing ever-growing complex thought mechanisms to mutate not matter nor ether, but reality as bound to time and space, geometrically.
## Everlasting
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The resulting effects of magic applied leaves behind a disfigured shape to the eyes of mages, a shape crafted from an individual's conjecture of active perspective versus reality perceived in comune, or as they call it: A mage's trail of "quiddity" (example).
Such reality distortions can be undone or changed by the use of magic no more, for they cannot be measured nor understood anymore, not even by the keenest and gifted, although techniques have been employed and are being developed since the first of magus to study those trails and help society prevail amidst magical chaos.
## Identifiable Source
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Quiddities can be analysed for similarities (since such a thing is fruit of the exercise of mind, and each mind is individual) to eventually identify a common caster between multiple spells, quite like how modern forensics works.
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It just… *is* permanent. You can't really undo an origami swan, either: once folded, the paper can never be un-creased. (Well, you can iron it. Maybe there actually is a method of undoing magic, but it's difficult and impractical and risks destroying reality.) Doing magic leaves a fold in the substance of things and it can't be un-creased.
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As other answers have already implied, Entropy. If you cast a spell to turn a person into a plank of wood then anything that makes a person a person is lost. If you attempt to turn that plank of wood back into the original person then you must add all that was lost. How can a wizard/mage know what was lost? It no longer exists so you cannot reverse it.
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Im a powerful wizard. Yet, I cannot succintly perfectly describe the personality and features of my even my own dog companion.
You must accurately describe the actions of your spell, a person would take a millenia to describe. So if I cast a spell to change you into a "brown dog", it would take me a lifetime to cast a spell to put you back exactly as you were. (If I had the knowledge to describe that state!)
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You can destroy a plushie rabbit or turn it into a gin&tonic - no limits.
But if this plushie rabbit is pulled from a hat, you can't do anything anymore. Not even levitate it.
Sounds like the magic just sticks on something like an invisible teflon coat.
It may give you an interesting plot development if someone works out how to shed a teflon coat.
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Magic is magic. What more explanation do you need?
As the worldbuilder, you make up the rules of magic. You are under no obligation to provide an explanation. If you try to explain every single thing magic does in your universe in an internally consistent matter, then you no longer deal with magic, you deal with a new branch of physics.
But if you really want a physically plausible explanation for it, then you could say that what magic does is to not just turn matter into different matter, but actually transmutes the subatomic particles that matter is made of into a different kind of particles which usually don't occur naturally. Those new particles behave in the exact same way as the regular ones, with just one exception: Magic no longer works on them. So any matter which was affected by magic once can never again be affected by magic, but is otherwise indistinguishable from regular matter.
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**Explain it by analogy to a thermosetting polymer**
A thermosetting polymer/plastic can be melted or dissolved, but only once. Once it has cured, it holds its shape and can't be melted again. It's just part of its chemical structure; it has bonded together more strongly than before.
So from the point of view of your magic, all matter is like the polymer (pre-melting) and the transformation spell is a catalyst that liquifies it, shapes it into a new shape and lets it cure. But once it has cured, something metaphysical about the form of the object is "set" forever, and can't be reshaped.
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Do what was done in "Gargoyles". Human magic is permeant there... however it's also difficult to pull off flawless magic. To get around this spells are usually written with their own escape clauses which would end the spell (and in an ancient language, Latin being the most common, though Hebrew was used in one episode featuring golems).
As long as you offer a condition which the spell can break, the spell is alot easier... the conditions can be difficult to pull off, but mundane attempts to meet the conditions meet the conditions. For example, the spell at the center of how the titular heroes get from 994 AD to 1994 curses the Gargoyles to remain in their stone sleep (a natural body function of their race) until "The castle rises above the clouds." For 1,000 years, they were stone, even at night... until a wealthy industrialist bought the Scottish Castle, and had the entire structure moved brick by brick to the top of his Manhattan sky scrapper to function as his personal penthouse. Since the building crosses the cloud ceiling on a stormy night, the spell is broken and the Gargoyles awake. In another example, the spell in question actually has two different "break clauses". A villain casts a spell on New York City that will cause all humans to turn to stone at night, though the first requirement to trigger the spell is that it will only affect "All who see this, All who hear this" through a television broadcast on repeated loop. This becomes important as the Gargoyles have a blind human ally, who "heard the spell" but couldn't see the program (One of the Gargoyles points out that this is true of all magic, but the Latin words do actually say this making it a requirement for the effect to occur). Another recurring background character claimed she wasn't turned to stone that night because she doesn't watch television, thinking it's all trash anyway. The second clause comes into play is that the spell will last until "the skies burn" which is easy enough for the heroes to pull off... they release a flammable gas into the upper atmosphere and detonate it, breaking the spell (the drama of the scene was that the villain discovered the plot and programed the detonators to go off prematurely... killing her foes... the team that returned first had to get the password to set the detonators back to the agreed time from the villain).
It is important to note that while there is an actual counterspell for all magic in the magical system, the page containing the counter-spell from the book that is the source of all the show's human magic was destroyed, thus it's unavailable for the heroes.
Perhaps the magic is locked because the spell contains the "counterspell" conditions, which the caster can set at his or her own discretion. Thus the person turning someone to a statue will set the terms when they return to being a person... you can't counter spell it without knowing the terms (If I turn your romantic interest to stone, she's not dead because I did put in a counter-spell clause as part of the requirement to cast... but I'm not telling you what conditions need to be met. Not only does it effectively "kill" her as far as we're concerned, it protects me from you exacting deathly revenge. You need me to know how to release her from the spell. Kill me, and that's not going to happen.). Think of it as a password protecting the spell.
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In the mountains they build things strangely. Their houses are made of interconnected hollow spheres. Although I really like the aesthetic, I can't figure out why they do so. In theory, a hollow sphere is harder to build. So, what is it about the mountains that makes the people who live there want to build that way?
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A sphere is, among all the solids, the shape that minimizes the ratio between surface and volume. Since heat is dissipated through the surface, it makes the house more energy efficient, which in mountain region is surely a benefit.
Which is why also animals living in cold regions tend to be more rounded, to waste as little body heat as possible.
Just to give you an example, let's compare a sphere and a cube with the same volume, $V$: since for a sphere $V=4/3\pi r^3$ and therefore $r=($$3\over 4$$1\over \pi$$V)^{1/3}$
the sphere will have a surface of $S\_{sphere}= 4\pi r^2=4\pi($$3\over 4$$1\over \pi$$V)^{2/3}$$\approx 4.8 V^{2/3}$
while the cube will have a surface $S\_{cube}=6V^{2/3}$.
As you see the sphere has less surface than a cube with the same volume, thus all the rest being the same would lose heat at slower rate than the cube.
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Access to a building material which makes spherical constructions easier than angled ones.
Like a tree which tends to grow curved trunks. Or very large animals with curved bones (although large land animals are uncommon in mountain regions - they are usually much better adapted to plains).
Or shrubs with long and thin but flexible branches. They lack the compressive strength for load-bearing pillars or walls, but can be woven into arcs. When you have nothing but arcs to build with, then spheres are really the only thing you can build (tubes would also be an option, but the openings might be weak-points).
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Round, almost hemispherical houses have been popular for thousands of years in dangerous climates like [Skara Brae](http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/) in the Orkney Islands.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EstYe.jpg)
No reason why the same arguments for comfort (minimum surface area for warmth) and low wind resistance wouldn't apply in mountainous regions just as much as in windswept sub-arctic islands.
It's a reasonable question for architects from southern climates to ask though - they probably aren't used to low drag coefficients as a design goal!
Wikipedia has [a little more on Skara Brae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae) including this plan of the main houses
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gutTZ.jpg)
showing they were further packed together, and a picture of some of the 5000 year old fitted furniture...
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Balloons. Balloons are round. Whatever they use to make their houses, they have to blow them up like a balloon. Maybe stiched animal hides? Something like paper mache built up over a bladder structure? Maybe a mixture of bird feathers, straw, fluff, and tar, like birds make their nests out of, but with a roof - like a [wrens' nest.](https://www.wild-bird-watching.com/images/wren-nesting-in-cacti-21647984.jpg)
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Although the knowledge is lost in the mists of time, the mountain is really a volcano. After being nearly wiped out, ancestors built spherical houses so that they could quickly escape an eruption by simply rolling down the slopes. The volcano hasn't erupted for a thousand years and the inhabitants have forgotten why they build in this way but it is their heritage so they continue to do it.
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Snow. Sometimes they get extreme snow fall, a near-sphere is the best shape to resist this load.
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**Circular cultures**
There have been plenty of "circular" cultures in history. It seems not too many steps from there to spherical houses, which I'm pretty sure have existed as well. The circular or spherical shape can help deflect water, snow and mud streams that they might get in contact with, so the house can take much more pressure from nature. Although they aren't as efficient in all situations compared to circular houses, it is certain that square houses simply aren't as efficient as well. So the cultural choice for spherical interconnected houses is a good choice. Spherical houses also minimise the amount of snow or other debris that can collect on a roof, making it less susceptible to collapse.
In addition, @L.Dutch-ReinstateMonica♦ makes a good point of less heat lost through the surface, as a sphere is the smallest surface to volume ratio.
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### Hazardous gas and liquid mitigation - and structural integrity.
These underground settlements are full of nasty surprises, pockets of hydrogen gas, pockets of methane, pockets of propane from unattended stoves (you didn't say what year this was set. Bottled LPG is frequently used as a heat and cooking source), pockets of water, pockets of carbon dioxide, all sorts of nasty things which both rise and sink in the air.
By having a dome ceiling and a hemispherical under-floor cavity in every room, it is much less likely for a nasty gas or liquid to spread throughout the entire complex, rather it is contained to one area. It also tends to be contained above and below the living area, allowing people to survive random gassings or floods that occur from time to time.
They initially tried to dig it out with square corners but soon realised a sphere is stronger - each room is basically an arch rotated around a circle. They make each room a sphere so that there are zero (or at least minimal) weak points.
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The city design I referenced in a recent question [about a hexagon layout city](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/189813/78800) was actually originally designed to be underground spheres arranged hexagonally - Suburban living at the centre level, nice dome over the top with a projected horizon, all retail/school/medical/post/etc at the centre, and under-surface subway line connecting each to adjacent suburbs. Also under the surface level was automated life support systems, automated manufacturing, and stockpiles of everything needed. In the fiction I was working on it was how a large western country survived run away climate change in ~100 years by moving underground.
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### Because this is a desert and you need cooling
Higher ceilings in a building give a very useful passive cooling effect. A couple of years ago, I went on holiday to Gambia, staying at an eco-lodge. The lodge owner had built round mud-brick houses with high round roofs. In spite of the high daytime temperatures outside, the temperature inside was always pleasantly cool.
[These are similar buildings constructed in the Sahel.](https://www.dwf.org/en/english/woodless-construction-earth-vault-dome-roofing)
This wasn't the normal local building style, but it worked very well. It seems quite possible that your desert dwellers could have evolved this to deal with their environment. Like the design of Roman villas which served a similar purpose, all it needs is for one person to really nail something to fit a need, and everyone else will quickly adopt it.
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**Not a Sphere but close**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eTOYx.jpg)
This is one building from the TV series "Raised by Wolves"
The design can be made from uncut stacked stone and doesn't require timber beams of which could be hard to get in a mountainous region while stone is plentiful. It doesn't require timber and doesn't require mortar, just plenty of rock.
Here's the ones from Star Wars
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C5MTz.jpg)
These are actual houses on a remote island located off the coast of Ireland called Skellig Michael.
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Orthogonic (right angles) architecture has not been the norm for most of human existence. It became predominant with the invasions and spread of imperial building technologies, which then violently eradicated the indigenous vernacular architectures. The reason that round and curved types of organic dwellings seem to be common in highland mountain areas is that these places have frequently been ignored or devalued by colonizers. These building styles were once the norm.
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Because they build with giant bladders and concrete. You need a source of pressurized air and a bunch of water. Ideally, you also have some sort of shellac.
The mountains probably have a large chasm that has a strong, regular wind. It probably also has natural spring very high up. For the cement, it benefits from having lime and volcanic ash, but there are plenty of other cement recipes if that doesn’t work for you. It would also be convenient to have shellac (made from rendering bugs), but that’s optional.
What you do is sew up a giant spherical bladder out of whatever materials work for you. Cloth, hides, whatever. You also set up a giant wind-catching tube that goes from your wind-chasm to your giant bladder, which can likely be reused for multiple houses. Essentially, you’re making a giant bouncy-castle. If you have shellac, you shellac the bladder, let it dry, then remove the wind tube. If no shellac, or need the wind throughout the construction process. Either way, you now have a giant, hollow form. Start pouring very liquid cement over it. You’re imitating shotcrete here, just without the pressurized application. Continue until you have a good, structural layer, let it dry, then repeat until you have thick enough walls.
Cut yourself a door and make yourself at home. If you need another room, cut a hole and repeat the process with another bladder attached to the hole.
——
As an aside, this is an entirely realistic technique. I looked into buying a house that had been built very similarly to this a few years ago (price was too high, but the house was fine).
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**Transportation**
A spherical house is easier to move than a square one. Assuming smallish houses made of light materials, you could just roll them to some other place. One reason would be winter migration. There could also be reasons to move house constantly: high winds, rock/mudslides or other dangerous natural phenomena.
It could also simply be a building materials issue: instead of schlepping over tons of whatever is used to build the things, just build it someplace where the materials are abundant and then roll the house to it's final destination. Or commerce: you have one tribe/village/people who are excellent at building these things and have the materials at hand. They make their living by building houses and rolling them right to their customers.
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I submit for your consideration, ancient mapmaking and land navigation.
If you have a visually distinctive landmark of a known fixed width, you can cut notches into a stick and hold it at the correct length, and get a surprisingly good idea of your range to a target based on how wide it currently is in your field of view. If you can get ranges along two bearings that are sufficiently separate, you can now accurately place yourself on a map in relation to those two landmarks. Geography permitting, one could arrange to have three or more groupings of these houses in separate locations around the mountain range - now this method of range finding can be used to reliably locate points of interest that they haven't had time or resources to beat a path to, or over terrain that cannot easily be marked or changed.
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I'm dealing with a planet very similar to Earth, except that it has two suns. So, of course, it would be an extraordinary occasion when the inhabitants of the planet see only one sun in the sky. So the idea is that it is extremely rare for there to be a moment when the two stars and the planet align perfectly so that only one sun is visible in the sky. About once every 1000 years. Apparently, a prophecy made the last time the planet and the stars align, is to be fulfilled the next time it happens which (in the story) is about a few months away.
However, stars don't exist so close to each other for the simple reason that the gravitational pull between the two stars would be so great, they might very well end up colliding. Also, even if two stars could exist close together in space, a planet could not conceivably orbit around them both...
However, if we had a primary star that is maybe about the size of our current sun, and a secondary star in orbit who's radius is twice Jupiter's radius (by the way, [the sun's radius is about 10 times Jupiter's radius](http://www.windows2universe.org/our_solar_system/relative_size.html)), the gravitational pull would be stable enough that the secondary star, like our planets, would be able to remain in orbit. Instead of, you know, crashing into the primary star.
So basically, in this solar system, I have the primary star (the size of our sun), then the secondary star (with 2 times Jupiter's radius) is in the first orbital, then the home planet in the story (the size of earth) with at least one moon in the second orbital, and then the third orbital onwards may or may not be occupied by planets, it's not really relevant now.
Is this arrangement possible? Assuming the home planet is sufficiently far away enough from the two stars to *not* be baked to a crisp, could a star conceivably orbit another, and still support its system of planets?
I don't need super scientific answers. I'm not an expert in astronomy, and stuff, so errr... A slightly dumbed-down answer would be fine. :)
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I think you're missing some knowledge here, since what you are asking about is called a binary star system and they are [extremely common](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_star#Examples).
Your planet can orbit the pair around their common center of gravity (the [Barycenter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter)), or you can have the binary pair further apart and have your planet orbit one of them. The second case sounds like what you want.
Note that nothing in space (even planets) orbits around something else without also causing it to wobble. The earth orbits the sun, but the sun also orbits the earth. The only thing is the huge mass difference between the two means that the earth moves much more than the sun does as a result.
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I give you [Kepler 16b:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumbinary_planet)
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> On 15 September 2011, astronomers announced the first partial-eclipse-based discovery of a circumbinary planet. The planet, called Kepler-16b, is about 200 light years from Earth, in the constellation Cygnus, and is believed to be a frozen world of rock and gas, about the mass of Saturn. **It orbits two stars that are also circling each other, one about two-thirds the size of our sun, the other about a fifth the size of our sun.** Each orbit of the stars by the planet takes 229 days, while the planet orbits the system's center of mass every 225 days; the stars eclipse each other every three weeks or so.
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See also [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-16b). The planet that was directly discovered is probably a gas giant (it's about the size of Saturn), but if it had a large rocky moon of some kind, that moon would be (barely) habitable.
Astronomers being astronomers, Kepler 16b has also gained the informal nickname "Tatooine".
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If your planet was on the same plane as both suns (most likely for any stable orbit), having only a single sun in the sky would be a yearly occurrence and will have a time frame measured in weeks.
If your planet is orbiting at a 90 degree angle to the outer sun, then there will be 2 spots where this sun passes through the orbital plane of the planet. For several years before and after this point, a lengthy eclipse of the outer sun will be a yearly event.
To give a 1000 year schedule for this cluster of yearly eclipses, simply place the outer sun in such an orbit as to take 2000 years to complete (about 159 AU away from the primary).
Note that each consecutive cluster would take place in the season opposite of the previous.
EDIT: I mis-read as the second star as being farther out than the planet. With the second star inside the orbit of the planet, the eclipse would be yearly.
Further EDIT: During the opposite season of the year during the cluster of eclipses, the sun and outer sun will be on opposite sides of the planet. So you would see the sun during the day and the outer sun during the night.
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When you have two stars of comparable mass, one does not orbit the other. They BOTH orbit their centre of gravity.
You have 3 options.
You can have two close stars that have one distant ring of planets around their centre of gravity. The people on the planet would see 2 suns held together in the sky during the day.
OR
You can have two more distant stars that each have their own tight ring of planets. The people on a planet would see 1 large sun and a smaller secondary sun that is out during the night for 6 months and out during the day for 6 months.
OR
You can have a more complex system where a planet does a figure 8 orbit that switches from one star to the other. Such an orbit would vary in proximity to the sun immensely and could never be inhabitable.
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> A binary star is a star system consisting of two stars orbiting around their common barycenter. Systems of two, three, four, or even more stars are called multiple star systems.
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They're called binary stars and yes it is possible for planets to be in these stars habitable zones. Although the habitable zone is partly deformed (due to 2 stars existing) life still should be able to sustain life although the combination may be very rare
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Not only is this possible, but it is possible for each star to have a subsystem of planets orbiting each individual star and then for the combination of orbiting stars have more planets further out orbiting both of them, and for this to create really interesting habitable zones.
It is theoretically possible for a planet to sit at the LaGrange point between the stars, though this outrageously unlikely.
However, my favorite theoretical option in this regard are the butterfly planets that jump back and forth between two (or more!) stars. I want to write a story about a world like that...
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Yes, binary star systems are common and can have planets.
The difficulty you have for your 1000-year plan, is that *either*:
* the two stars are relatively close together and the planet orbits them both, in which case they'll always be close together in the sky like the Sun and Mercury. So you'll see only one of them briefly, during sunsrise and sunsset, and you'll also see them (partially or totally) eclipse each other, but you'll never have one of them up and the other one nowhere near it.
* the planet orbits one of them inside the orbit of the other, like the Sun and Jupiter. Then the planet will pass roughly between them once a year, and when that happens they'll be nearly 180 degrees apart and so you'll see exactly one of them in the sky for much of that time.
I can't off-hand think of an arrangement in which the two stars are usually close together from the POV of the planet, but very rarely move so far apart that only one is in the sky (other than close to sunsrise and sunsset). You might be able to arrange it so that they only very rarely eclipse, though: perhaps the orbit of the planet is at a substantial angle to the plane containing the two stars, so that eclipses are only possible at the two times a year the planet passes through that plane. Then, if the stars actually align with this point only 1/2000th of the time, you'd observe an eclipse and in this sense "only one sun" about once every 1000 years. Or something.
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There is no reason conceiveably (that I am aware of) in which this would not be possible. For example, the [Alpha Centauri System](http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/alpha-centauri-is-the-nearest-bright-star), which is composed of a three star system, and many planets.
[Earth-Sized Planet in Alpha Centauri System](http://earthsky.org/space/whoa-earthlike-planet-in-alpha-centauri-system)
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## YES
not only can it happen it does happen; <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_system>
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**YES**!
One of the coolest things in space is [VV Cephei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VV_Cephei).
Not only is it a binary star system but one of them is a **freaking vampire star** that siphons off the other star whenever they get too close.
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Something to consider:
I suspect that any secondary star in orbit who's radius is twice Jupiter's radius (by the way, the sun's radius is about 10 times Jupiter's radius) would be very dim compared to the more massive star, and a dim red in color.
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I already see a lot of good answers, so I just want to add 2 things:
1. Extra-solar planets have been found orbiting isolated stars (like the Sun) as well as in a range of multiple-star systems. A planet can either orbit around a close binary (or "Tatooine" binary -- this is called a P-type orbit) or orbit one star that has a more distant orbiting companion star ("S-type") [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HS4j5.jpg)
We know planets orbiting in both categories. The extra star can be bad or neutral for planetary life, depending on its orbit (see here: <https://planetplanet.net/2013/06/06/binary-stars-friends-or-foes/>)
There are also planets known to exist in systems with 3 and even 4 stars. Those get more complicated.
2. We can imagine a range of planets orbiting in physically-plausible, stable systems with many stars. Here are two examples that might interest you:
<https://planetplanet.net/2016/03/22/an-earth-with-five-suns-in-the-sky/>
<https://planetplanet.net/2016/04/13/building-the-ultimate-solar-system-part-6-multiple-star-systems/>
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Yes **even the star system that is closest** to the solar system: Alpha Centauri contains tree stars of which two (alpha and beta centauri) revolve around each other and [according to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri#Alpha_Centauri_Bb) 2012 and 2015 reports were that there may be planets in their neighborhood.
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Possibly you could make it a triple star system.
If all the stars and planets orbit in almost exactly the same plane the time between the an eclipse of one star by another would be a multiple of several synodic periods.
No matter how you arrange the orbits, there would often be periods when only one star was visible and periods when no star was visible.
If the planet orbited about one single star the star would appear as a sun in its sky during the daytime and would not be seen at night.
And in every year of that planet it would be between its own star and the two farther stars for part of the year and on the other side of its sun for the other part of the year.
At one extreme of the orbit the planet would be exactly between its sun and the other pair of stars. The other two stars would rise when the sun set, and would set when the sun rose.
At the other extreme of the orbit the planet would be exactly on the opposite side of its sun from the other pair of stars, that would thus appear close to its sun in the sky. The other two stars would rise when the sun rose, and would set when the sun set.
And for most of the year the alignment would be in between.
So the natives of the planet would be used to the idea that sometimes the sun and the two other stars would be the sky together, sometimes only the two other stars would be in the sky, sometimes only the sun would be in the sky, and sometimes no sun or double star would be in the sky and it would be dark night. And they would experience all four conditions during the course of the year.
And if the planet has one or more large moons that can be bright in the sky that can complicate matters.
Your idea that it would be vary rare to see only one star in the sky is very naive. Because if two or more stars are seen together in the day sky on one side of the planet, then they can't be seen on the opposite side of the planet when it is night. Many people have tried on these boards to imagine how to make a planet have eternal day on both sides and have failed.
No matter how many stars they add to the system, they can have the planet surrounded by stars on all sides and have eternal day on all sides for periods of years, decades, centuries or millennia. But sooner or later all the orbits of the various stars will put them in the same direction as seen from the planet, and thus there will be night on the side of the planet opposite the stars, perhaps for years, decades, centuries, or millennia.
So the natives of the planet will be used to dark night.
A) Unless there are at least three stars in the system and their orbits are not in the same plane that the planet orbits around its star. Thus the planet would have day and night as it rotated so that each spot faced the star part of the day and faced away from the star part of the day, just like Earth.
Bu the other two stars, farther away, would not heat it up much but might light it up with several times the light of the full moon, for example.
If the other two stars orbited around the center of mass of the system at a right angle to the plane of the planet's orbit around its star, and happened to be at opposite sides of their long orbits for the centuries or millennia of the planet's recent history, they could have illuminated opposite sides of the planet constantly for all of recorded history.
Or there could be only two stars in the system, the star the planet orbits and that gives it day and night and heats it up, and another star that orbits at right angles to the planet's orbital plane and lights one side of the planet, the side where the protagonist's civilization is located, and the other side is unknown and unexplored and nobody knows they have much darker nights there.
And maybe once in a thousand years the planet's moon will eclipse the farther star during the night of the brighter star and bring on true darkness for the first time in a thousand years.
In a different type of system where all the planets and stars orbit in the same plane there could be rare periodic celestial events, periodic eclipses or occultations of the stars in the system..
1) a double eclipse of the farther two stars by the nearer star or sun.
a) One of the farther stars eclipses the other one.
The planet will orbit its star or sun with an orbital period or year, the planet's sun or star and the other two stars will orbit each other around their common center of mass with a second orbital period, and the two other stars will orbit around their common center of mass with a third orbital period.
As the two other stars orbit their common center of mass and the planet orbits its star which orbits around a common center of mass with the two other stars, there will periodically be alignments between the two other stars and the planet so that as seen from the planet one of the two other stars will eclipse or occult the other one.
b) The nearer star or sun eclipses the two farther stars one at a time.
And as the planet orbits its star or sun and its star or sun orbits around the center of mass with the two other stars the sun will periodically eclipse or occult one of the other two stars and then pass into the space between them and then eclipse or occult the other one.
c) Combination of a) and b).
And on rare periodic occasions both events will happen at the same time. One of the two other stars will eclipse or occult the other one while the nearer star or sun will eclipse or occult both of them.
2) the planet's moon (if any) eclipses the near star or sun.
Similarly to the Earth/Moon/Sun in our solar system, the planet's moon (if any) may periodically eclipse or occult the nearer star or sun.
3) Combination of 1) and 2)
At rare periodic intervals the planet, its moon, the nearer star or sun, and the two farther stars may all line up in a line so that one of the two farther stars eclipses or occults the other one while the nearer star or sun eclipses or occults both of them and the moon eclipses or occults all three of the stars.
4) simplified super eclipse.
The situation can be simplified by turning the two farther stars that orbit their common center of mass into one single star. Thus one of the orbital periods can be eliminated.
And on rare periodical occasions the two stars, the moon, and the planet can be aligned so that the near star or sun eclipses the farther star while the moon eclipses them both.
5) Make the planet a double planet or a moon of a much larger giant planet. That way the other planet will appear much larger in the sky of your planet and will have a much better chance of eclipsing the other stars.
Anyway, I think you should have someone else calculate the orbits and orbital periods so that your story is plausible.
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This is a world where all devices run on the same OS and which requires a unique login of everyone using the device. That is, each person has a single account and all devices log in with the same user id and password with iris or fingerprint-like unique login also. It won't be possible to log in with another user id.
So all devices get personalized according to users, like themes, ads, etc. according to that user.
In that scenario, how can we avoid or mislead the data tracking of the user?
[Answer]
**Create a Bunch of Useless Data**
Install a software on your device so it creates a bunch of useless and incorrect tracking data. The tracker gets your data but mixed up with a heck of a lot more data, and they cannot tell which is real and which is fake.
For example suppose you want to hide the list of websites you visited. While you are not browsing yourself, the software just browses websites at random. While you are browsing yourself it keeps a second window open and continues to browse at random.
Of course this leads to an arms race, where the tracker tries to decode by finding the *least random* part of the data-set, and the victim makes more sophisticated auto-browsing algorithms, that are not completely random, but have a bunch of *less random* parts thrown in to distract the tracker.
This has a lot of leeway for story potential. These software might be technically illegal but widespread enough that there is very little the government can do about it. I would imagine they occasionally crack down on someone either to make an example, or when it is particularly convenient for other reasons.
[Answer]
*In a world where all devices run on the same OS ... how to avoid or mislead the data tracking of the user?*
Uh... Don't use the OS?
You've created your own inescapable scenario. There will always be free-thinkers, renegades, and round pegs in square holes (R.I.P. Steve Jobs). Developers and engineers would create private networks, protocols, devices, the whole kit and caboodle. The monopoly you've established would attempt to hunt them down and dismantle such things, I assume. Then the next idea would come, and the next, each more cunning, catchy, and clever than the last, until the system they create is too powerful for the God-Like OS (and organization behind it) in your world to control.
Heck, get an Enigma Machine and a pen.
[Answer]
## Voluntary identity theft
People in the lower class of society would be willing to unlock a computer (or sell the credentials) in exchange for money.
A stereotype-full example: person A needs to do an operation anonymously. A asks courier C to get an unlocked computer. C travels to a shady part of town, finds beggar B who doesn't use computers and doesn't have anything to lose. C gives B 10 bucks and puts B's retina in front of computer and unlocks it. C goes into settings, configures the OS so the screensaver never activates, attaches a fake keyboard that keeps the computer active, blocks input devices (camera, fingerprint reader) that can gather identity. Courier C goes back to A, sells unlocked computer for 1000$. A uses the computer with B's account.
Granted, B's account would be a mess, but who cares.
[Answer]
**Identity theft**
Unless surveillance is total or the system is foolproof you can steal or fake another's credentials. Usual methods include not reporting a death to use the deceased's profiles or intimidating another user for their log in details.
**Hacking**
Similar to identity theft but more software orientated. Trick the system into thinking that you have submitted details other than your own or bypass the security system entirely. Alternatively prevent your computer from broadcasting any details of your activity. Again depends on the system having some technical vulnerabilities to exploit.
**Off the grid**
An extreme solution but very effective. If you have no contact with the system it cannot track you through direct methods. Difficult in systems where births/immigration are logged unless you have assistance or are somehow able to delete your existing data.
[Answer]
>
> Is there any alternative to the omnipresent OS?
>
>
>
Privacy-aware technologists will allways try to produce devices that protect their users. These solutions will be able to compete with the ones provided by business or government. For example, there are:
* [Librem 5 - privacy-aware smartphone](https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/)
* [Tails - privacy-aware OS](https://tails.boum.org/install/)
* [Signal - encrypted messaging app](https://signal.org)
So much of today's core technology is produced openly - there are public standards the manufacturers and developers adhere, so it might be possible for someone technologically knowledgeable to create a device that is able to connect to network infrastructure and yet to stay off the record. If the core technology design was not public to at least certain degree, its development would be close to impossible - the technological marvel we live at was only possible to reach through international open cooperation.
Some independent developers might promote privacy in technology for the sake of liberty, while corporate businesses might offer privacy as part of their business model. If the corporate business, or their client are powerful enough, they might even get an exception from whoever provides the omnipresent OS.
Also, even if the design was top secret and yet somehow the system was able to thrive (probably only possible in single-government autoritarian world), think of espionage and whistleblowing - some engineers developing the omnipresent OS might leak the design for whatever purpose, Rogue One style.
If the omnipresent OS was forced on all users only recently, there might still be some old legacy devices around. The technology is always build with some level of backward compatibility in mind, so chances are, old devices would still remain functional as they are working on infrastructure which is also necessary for the omnipresent OS. For example, banking systems and other core infrastructure systems are still running on [COBOL, a 61 year old language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL) : "Reuters reported in 2017 that 43% of banking systems still used COBOL (...) Efforts to rewrite systems in newer languages have proven expensive and problematic (...)").
If for some reason, alternative may not come to existence... *Is it possible to fool the omnipresent OS?*
If the login to the OS is performed trough fingerprint, or iris scanning, the people might devise a fake ones - for example copies of their own fingerprints (3D printed finger models) and exchange them. That way, if a group of people were carrying multiple "keys" and used random ones to log in, it would cause massive chaos in the data (the more fake copies were issued and the farther they were distributed, the bigger mess). I know you mentioned that it shouldn't be possible to login with others credentials, but I cannot see a reason why not - from technological point of view, any device can be fooled.
*Implement end-to-end encryption.*
If the person has to log in with their own ID, the least they could do is to implement [end-to-end encryption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_encryption). If the data is encrypted by sender and only receiver is able to decrypt it, there is no way the omnipresent OS developer would be able to read and manipulate the data, since, during the transmission, the data are incomprehensible mess. The location of user's log in and their ID would still be recorded, but at least contents of their communications would be safe. If [asymetrical encryption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography) is not an option - it is safer, but would require technology assistance, which might not be able to archieve in the omnipresent OS - the users may always encrypt and decrypt their messages manually [as during the old days](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_cipher).
---
EDIT: As Vincent T. Mossman correctly suggested, if the encryption software is running within the OS, the message might leak before the enryption SW has a chance to process it (Keyloggers). But there are options to fool the omnipresent OS once more.
For sender, I can imagine external device that works as keyboard, but encrypts the messages before it mocks typing the encrypted message. Assuming the fictional world has USB, imagine an external keybord that has extra keys "start encryption" and "end encryption". Once first one is pushed, the keyboard stops sending the characters to the OS and starts storing them in memory (it might even display it on some mounted monitor). Once second one is pushed, the keyboard encrypts the message and starts typing it (sending characters to the OS) on its own. Therefore, not even low level keyloggers can detect the original message.
As for receiver, the process is trickier, but there might be device that also poses as peripheral device (monitor, printer), but performs the decryption and displays the original message on mounted monitor. The problem is that I cannot think of external peripheral that would receive character input - rather than graphical one - from the OS. The monitor and printer would most likely require some sort of OCR in place to detect what message should be decrypted in first place, but that's not unsolvable issue.
Therefore, the OS would percieve these devices as "dumb" peripherals and would have no way of knowing that they perform extra tasks - a keyboard that writes strongly encrypted messages on its own and a monitor that decrypts it. These smart peripherals would likely require a regular CPU and RAM, which might be hard to come by in your fictional world. In our world, such tasks would be performed by microcomputers such as Raspberry Pi, or Arduino.
Extra thought - if these devices were manufactured to look like the ones used elsewhere, the users might use them in plain sight: while working at their desk in the office, for example.
In case anything like this was not possible to achieve, that's why I suggested old fashioned encryption as backup plan.
---
Another option to hide the message from AI message scanners is [hiding it in other transmittable data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography). The users might hide the message in a picture, or audio message in a way that it is not detected unless the file is manipulated in certain way (the receiver might filter out certain wavelengths etc).
Also, some dissidents were reported to have communicated by pictures of hand written messages, as handwriting is difficult to read by [optical character recognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition)
Sadly, these options still leave the user exposed - if the world is authoritarian regime, the law enforcers might not need to get any actual evidence (i.e. decrypt the communication) in order to punish the citizen. If the suspicion is enough, then these methods only draw attention.
When all other means are out of question... *Switch to pen and paper.*
Pen and paper are digitally untraceable. They are traceable by DNA and fingerprints - CSI style - but if most of the people operate online, the old fashioned methods might go unnoticed, as law enforcers focus on more online communications. Such messages might be exchanged via [dead drops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_drop).
Writing the messages provide physical evidence (which might be intercepted by law enforcers), but avoids recording by hidden microphones (which might be placed everywhere), so even if the people are meeting in person, they might choose to write the messages, rather than to speak.
Also, don't print the messages, but rather write them down by hand, since [the printers print watermarks that makes the print traceable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code). If there was some underground resistance that needed to produce materials *en masse*, old fashioned Gutenberg print comes to mind.
[Security cameras could capture the person's identity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system), so if they either meet in person, or use dead drop, they still need to cover their faces. There even has been some research on possibility to distort facial recognition by wearing extensive makeup. Even so, there might be motion recognition systems in place that would identify the people based on their movement patterns (walking etc.).
Most importantly, when going offline, don't even carry devices such as smartphone. Even if they seem to be turned off, they might be traceable.
[Answer]
Since the question is very vague, here are a few thoughts:
# Same OS?
"All devices run on the same OS" is a pretty naive statement. The main reason why we have tons of different operating systems (apart from business, ideological or preference reasons) is that different devices have different use cases, capabilities, user interfaces, ... so they all need different approaches.
For example, the OS of a car does very different things in very different ways than the OS in a smartphone. Sharing the same OS would be plain stupid in many cases.
So I think you mean something else:
# Everything runs on the same platform
The difference between OS and platform is that the OS is what runs your hardware, while platforms can work across OSes. For example, take Google. The Google platform works with an Android smartphone, Windows PCs, games consoles, fitness trackers and even smart fridges and whatnot. It even runs on lots of devices made by direct competitors, e.g. Google Maps runs on iPhones.
Also, your description of everyone having to login with their unique account is something that makes much more sense on platforms than on OSes.
Now, with that cleared up, why does everyone use this platform? The reason determines what can be done about it.
# Like Google, people use it because it works well
In this case, all you need to do to not be tracked by this platform is to not use it. Might be inconvenient, but there is nothing stopping you from not using their services. If your world is anything like the real world, there will be still tons of alternatives (because people like to make alternatives) but they will be rather small, due to the network effect. But again, nothing stops you from using alternatives.
Things are different if:
# The government enforces usage of that platform
If the government enforces usage of the platform, escaping it is a bit harder than just using alternatives. But there are still ways. But more on that later.
Another thing that the question does not clear up is this:
# Who actually wants to avoid the tracking, and who is doing the tracking?
Is it a Facebook situation where the platform itself is doing the tracking and the user wants to stop the tracking?
Or is it a Cambridge Analytica situation, where some third party tries to track users using the platform while the platform owner wants to give only anonymized tracking data?
The answers to those questions determine what to do against tracking.
### Platform wants to prohibit tracking
If the platform itself does not want the tracking, the answer is easy: don't track, or if you do, use something like [differential privacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy) to thwart too evil data analysis.
### User wants to stop tracking
I am guessing, this is the question you actually wanted to be answered, but the OP wasn't clear.
There are a list of things that can be done here:
* Encryption in a higher layer.
Implement something like [TOR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)), which sends user data over encrypted network within user data. So when they want to track, all they see is a ton of encrypted data sent to random targets.
* Bugusing
A huge platform like the one you envision has a lot of code and a lot of interconnected systems. Meaning: also a lot of bugs. Have a look at [phreaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking) if you want some inspiration. Phreaking is quite retro, but the concepts are easy to understand and similar issues still exist nowadays.
* Identity theft
Since you have billions of users, you also have 100s of millions of rather technologically challenged users. Stealing their identities, at least for short periods of times, should not be that hard. Adding to that, since you rely only on rudimentary biometric login information, that isn't hard to fake at all. Unless you go for DNA matching, biometrics are comparatively easy to fake. And even if you go for DNA, hacking a sensor on a local device where the hacker has unrestricted physical access to it isn't that hard.
* [Steganography](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganographie)
Hide important information in tons of unimportant garbage. Possibly combine this with a TOR-like network so that your hidden information is not plainly visible as such, but instead a stream of nice cat videos.
Related: Have a look at [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kBlH-DQsEg). It pretty much sums it up quite well.
[Answer]
That world would be a cash cow for pro hackers.
By either stealing personal data from the servers or by fooling the system (and ALL systems can be fooled) they could sell identities on the Deep Web. People with motives would pay a lot to log into the system with someone else accounts so they would not be accountable for their actions from the despotic government (that is despotic is pretty much clear or it would not allow a system like that).
Stealing data would be possible because:
* the hackers are the very same programmers who built the system. Or maybe have received valuable information from them
* no system is 100% secure, no matter what. The more complex it gets the harder it is to keep it safe. Usually the most unsafe element of the system is it's users. Click on this link darling and am going to be yours tonight.
* hackers may do criminal activities to get personal login data: burglary, blackmail, murder... imagine the scene: the hacker leaves the apartment with goldie's bowl. In it not the little fish but half a dozen floating eye bulbs.
[Answer]
Drag from the top of the screen, then tap the winged sex toy.
This will disconnect your device from Bluetooth, wifi, NFC etc.
When you do this, no hackers will be able to do any kind of deep inspection on your network traffic. They also won't be able to spoof your IP address, and they will be unable to get any data from keyloggers you may have installed.
Trust me, I'm an IT professional ;)
---
Some people are commenting that iPhones and other devices will still send info home even if you have disabled communication in all forms through the OS's regular operation. You would do yourself an extra favor then by discarding the SIM card and messing up the device antennas. Keep it in a small Faraday cage as well. That way you can play Candy Crush without government surveillance.
[Answer]
**Introduction**
Let's first ask ourselves how such circumstances could have occurred. I know for sure that if my OS had tracking software built into it, I wouldn't use that OS. I would use and preserve alternate options (like the open-source Ubuntu). So if all devices use the same OS, and everyone is fine with it, then people like me would have to be satisfied that it's privacy-conscious. (Or we have no choice, but that's not the scenario this answer is working in.)
Since this is a long answer, containing a bit of real-world background information on how certain steps are accomplished, this answer is split into sections.
1. **Introduction** elaborates on the answer itself for the purpose of readability, and gives some justification as to this answer.
2. **The Operating System** restates the properties of the operating system, and also reiterates the question: "How to avoid data tracking".
3. **How to Keep My Privacy While My Data is On Someone Else's Computer(s)** describes how I can keep my personal data secure while it is stored somewhere publicly accessible, through use of encryption. It also introduces the concept of the encryption key, which is utilized throughout this answer
4. **How to Store My Data** describes two methods of how the OS might store my encrypted personal data where it would be accessible from any device, as well as the downsides to one method. It also provides hints as to how the other method would work.
5. **How To Prove That I Know the Key** describes a method to verify that I know the encryption key (as introduced in section 3 "the section with the obnoxiously-long title").
6. **How This System Would Work** describes the back-and-forth between the client and server to obtain my personal information (given that the client knows my password).
7. **Vulnerabilities** points out two key vulnerabilities of the client, as well as how these vulnerabilities can be mitigated. It also notes that one of these vulnerabilities still is problematic.
8. **This Answer is Incomplete** describes in what way this answer fails to completely fulfill the requirement (remote biometric authentication doesn't seem to be a solved problem)
9. **Conclusion** wraps up this answer, and summaries this answer, so that this answer is a proper essay that first tells you what it's about to tell you, tells you the thing, then tells you what it told you.
**The Operating System**
Let's consider the properties of the operating system you've described:
1. Each user has a universally unique user account.
2. User accounts can be accessed using the password, or by biometrics.
3. Each user account has associated data accessible from every hardware device.
Given these three properties, you want to prevent data tracking.
My answer is this: these three properties do not necessarily mean that the OS needs to do things leading to.
**How to Keep My Privacy While My Data is On Someone Else's Computer(s)**
First, let's talk about encryption. If all of the personal data that leaves my computer is encrypted with a proper encryption method (such as AES with a 256 bit key), then it will be nearly impossible for my data to be read. The hardest problem is remembering this key. Of course, I already have a piece of unique secret information: my password!
However, a password is usually a piece of very structured data (good passwords from password managers are not, but they aren't easy for me to remember). This makes it unsuited as as an encryption key. However, there's a technique called "key stretching" which would transform the password into something more suitable as a key. Here's how it works:
I take a cryptographic hash function (let's say, SHA256, or "SHA" for short) and apply it to my password. That would make my password `SHA(password)`. This would be good, except for one thing: everyone who uses, for example, "password1", as their password would have the same encryption key, and so they would be able to access the data.
To combat this problem, we'll introduce the concept of a cryptographic salt. This is a few dozen random characters that are attached to my account. If I run SHA on the password combined with the salt, I'll get a key that would be more unique. It would be `SHA(password + salt)` rather than `SHA(password)`.
As an example, if my password was `"password1"`, and the salt of my account was `"dQw4w9WgXcQ"`, then my cryptographic key would be `SHA("password1dQw4w9WgXcQ")`, or `0x4ed2e22de84841eea0ccb02efb8d3ce2c7dfe092c4ef96c25aa0d3fa816b0a05`.
With this key, I can encrypt my user data, and feel safe that unless someone knows both my password and my salt, they won't be able to read my user data even if they had all of it.
**How to Store My Data**
Now that I have my encrypted personal data, I need a way to store it so that I can get it from any computer. There's two ways we might accomplish this for the OS:
1. We can store all the data on one big computer.
2. We can store a little bit of the data on lots of small computers.
There's multiple reasons to favor one option above the other. Storing all the data on one big computer has the advantage of simplicity. It's really easy to wrap your head around this. However, it comes with some downsides. For example, if the big computer (aka. the "server") breaks, then we either have to hope we have a backup, or everyone's personal data is completely gone. Or, if the owner of the server decides to hold your data for ransom, they can do so.
However, either option will fulfill the requirement that I can access all my user information from any device. So, while I might not elaborate on how it would be possible to store my data by putting a little bit of it on lots of small computers (or "a peer-to-peer network"), rest assured that it is possible. (Note: this is how torrenting works.)
**How To Prove That I Know the Key**
My account, on top of having a salt and user data, has two additional pieces of privileged data: a public and private key pair. The private key, of course, is encrypted behind my encryption key. The public key, being public, is accessible to the public.
So, I have four pieces of user data:
1. My salt, which is public,
2. My public key, which is public
3. My private key, which is encrypted, and
4. My user data, which is encrypted separately from my private key.
If I encrypt something using my private key, it can be decrypted by the public key. This may not seem useful, since everyone theoretically might have my public key. However, I could have only encrypted the message if I had the private key. So, if someone who knows my public key sends me a random number, I can encrypt it using my private key and send it back to them. They would then be able to decrypt it, and verify that I have the private key.
But private keys have very specific properties, and so I can't just get a random 256-bit number and call it a private key. And how does having the correct private key prove that I have the encryption key, anyways?
The solution is that if everyone knows what my private key looks like when encrypted, they can send it to me, and I can decrypt it, and use it to sign a random number. They verify the signed random number. Thus, they know that I knew the private key. Since the private key is not known except for the encrypted version, that also proves I could decrypt the private key (or the private key is known to me, which is a more secure state than using passwords to protect my data), and thus that I have the encryption key.
This was a bit complicated, so we'll just call the entire procedure "verifying my identity", and if you didn't understand or read the procedure, you can take it on faith that it works.
**How This System Would Work**
The "me and my computer" system is called the "client". For simplicity, we'll call the place that stores all my data the "server", even if it's a peer-to-peer network.
1. The client requests login info for a username
2. The server sends me the account's salt, encrypted private key, and a random string of characters.
3. The client computes my encryption key using the salt and the password I entered.
4. The client verifies my identity.
5. The server sends me my personal information.
6. The client decrypts this information.
And now I have my data accessible on any device, but only if I know my password.
**Vulnerabilities**
There are two major vulnerabilities of this method. First, if your password is easily guessable, then someone could guess it and gain access to all your personal data. This is solved with modern techniques: either have a really random password, or use a password manager. The second is more insidious:
An attacker could create a device that looks like it has the OS loaded on it, but it secretly reports my username and password to the attacker when I use it. This is similar to a web attack where a website is made to be completely identical to the genuine website, and has a URL like "google.com-[something].com" in hopes of someone logging in to steal their passwords. However, unlike that attack, this vulnerability can't be detected by reading the URL of the webpage.
Unfortunately, I can't give a good solution to this second vulnerability (perhaps some sort of "makers' mark", or an anti-counterfeiting mark on genuine devices which cannot have the OS modified might work, but they aren't good solutions, and seem like they might be easily bypassed).
**This Answer is Incomplete**
This system as described doesn't really have the ability to use biometrics to sign in. If you're alright with that, then that's fine. Biometrics are really insecure, anyways.
But if the feel of the setting really requires biometrics, then a RFID implant might fit the feel just as well or perhaps better, while still maintaining security.
**Conclusion**
First, I began with a reading of the question as "How can a universal OS with certain specific characteristics prevent data tracking above and beyond what we already have today?" rather than the more prevalent "How can I fool a universal OS to prevent data tracking if the OS itself is doing data tracking?"
Second, I introduced essential concepts, and outlined how an OS could be designed.
Third, I pointed out two key flaws in this design, and highlighted where this answer does not completely cover the question.
Fourth, I explained how to mitigate one of the key flaws, and how to make an analogous replacement, changing "biometric authentication" to "RFID-based authentication" for the purpose of maintaining the feel of the setting.
[Answer]
# If the OS is controller by a central authority you can't
If someone has absolute control over your OS, the first thing they would do is make it impossible for you to write your own software; the only software that's running on that machine is sanctioned by the central authority and you're screwed for life.
Unless... Of course there's an unless. If there's some flaw in the system that makes it possible to fake the credentials of the central authority, it would be possible to write software of your own and install that. That's reasonably easy to make useless, by simply replacing the central authority credential often and banning anyone from the network, that doesn't have the right keys installed (which only the central authority can generate).
So, if your OS is controlled by a central authority, you're screwed.
[Answer]
**Raw Intimidation**
The bad guys can just use enough brute force or external pressure to make people log themselves into the OS. Someone can threaten a victim's family to get what they want - access to the person's account. Or they could threaten them with physical violence. It's simple, but effective.
Every global system has administrators. Threaten them!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/21ZVV.png)
[Answer]
What you describe is not a technical problem. It's a social problem. You have created a society where this behavior is so desirable that nobody defects, and everybody just works with their one ID. The social problem is what has to be remedied.
Consider that you just created one number which uniquely identifies each person in the world. In the US, we have an equivalent of this: the [Social Security number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_number) (SSN). Just look at how much trouble we have with this already, and SSNs are universally treated with tremendous privacy and security concerns. A universal ID which every gumball machine needs to have is going to create a nightmare.
So basically, you will have security problems out the wazoo, and the privacy of your browsing history will be far from the largest of them. When the commenters mention dystopia, they are right. Imagine being the target of a present-day credit fraud every day of the week. That's the kind of concerns you will have.
Also, what if you lose this key? Now you are in a life threatening situation where 100% of computers think you should be able to identify yourself, and you can't. This could be a terrible thing indeed!
This is as social problem, and you will have to solve it within the social structure for your world. However, there is one particular technology which might be useful for you: [Zero-knowledge proofs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof) (ZKPs). ZKPs are fascinating proofs which permit you do do things like identify yourself as part of a group of users without having to reveal *any* other information, such as who you are. There's a classic example of how such a proof can be done:
>
> There's a mountain with two cave entrances. I claim that there's a path between them, but you don't believe me. We decide that this is worth \$1000, but how can I prove that I *actually* know the path without showing you, and you following me (so that now you can choose not to give me the \$1000 because you already know the path).
>
>
> In a ZKP, you could close your eyes, and I go into one of the entrances (randomly chosen is best for the proof, but not essential). Once I am in the caves, you open your eyes, and shout to me which cave entrance I should come out of. If I have a path through the cave, I can do this 100% of the time. If I do not, I can only do this 50% of the time. This process is repeated until an arbitrary certainty threshold is met.
>
>
>
You might hold onto a device which you trust more than other devices which knows your identity. It is responsible for negotiating with the other devices to give you access without revealing your personally identifiable information. It's only a part of the solution; the solution has to be social. But it could be a useful way to start un-painting yourself out of this dystopian corner!
[Answer]
>
> That is, each person has a single account and all devices log in with the same user id and password with iris or fingerprint-like unique login also. It won't be possible to log in with another user id.
>
>
>
Easy to say, nearly impossible to implement with a zero chance of work around.
Anyone who has watched a spy movie knows there are multiple work arounds for 'iris or fingerprint-like unique login's
The simple work around is taking a password, finger and/or eye from a dead person who has not been listed as dead.
[Answer]
## Exploit the backdoors
They aren't meant for you, of course, they are meant for top-secret government agencies such that even other government agencies aren't allowed to know about them without need. But they will be there, if only for the government to be able to have agents that check up on those who are tracking without being caught themselves.
[Answer]
>
> This is a world where all devices run on the same OS and which
> requires a unique login of everyone using the device. That is, each
> person has a single account and all devices log in with the same user
> id and password with iris or fingerprint-like unique login also. It
> won't be possible to log in with another user id.
>
>
>
There is always another way to log in as someone else. Biometrics are actually a bad password method because of the fact that they can't be changed.
Thumbprint and iris scanner take an image and convert that into numbers. Now imagine I take a thumbprint or iris scanner and mod it so it records said numbers as it passes through. I can then make a fake scanner that always returns the same numbers. I can now log in using your thumbprint and you can't change it.
Alternatively for a low tech solution I can extract your thumbprint from a scanner you just used and transfer to a glove and now I can access your account.
There is no such thing as perfect security. Every system can be exploited.
[Answer]
The world is full of what are often called "embedded devices" or "Internet of things" devices. These are special-purpose computer systems that are a sub-component of a larger machine. Your microwave is controlled by one, there's one inside your monitor that converts a video signal to dot patterns, there are several inside your car, etc. These systems have no interface. There's no way to sign in (can you imagine trying to log into a pacemaker or satellite?). Therefore, your "universal OS" can't *actually* be the only option. Either there are other, less-common OSes available that you could switch to, or the "universal OS" has a stand-alone mode with no telemetry or login requirements that you could leverage.
Heck, you don't technically even *need* an operating system in the first place. They make things a lot easier, but you could run completely bare-metal and code your device to do whatever you wanted it to do.
If for some reason you have some sort of platform restriction that makes it unreasonably difficult to replace the OS, you can avoid tracking using the same sort of techniques you use in the real world. Do everything inside a virtual machine that encrypts all data streams and provides minimal (or falsified) information to the host OS. Inject a software layer on top of the OS that intercepts and blocks or falsifies requests for tracking-related information (like PMP or xPrivacy does for Android). Set up a firewall that intercepts and blocks all traffic to the telemetry servers (like a PiHole). Point your device to a fake telemetry server that looks real enough for the end device to function, but doesn't actually log or track anything.
[Answer]
I have a few ideas, but most of them probably won't work. Here they are anyway-
1- Steal another users device after he logs in past the security checks. if it has a camera, cover it up so it can't say 'new user detected, logging out now' or something like that. stay away from the id-ing whatever sensor so it doesn't log you out automatically. of course, the police might come after you for stealing the device, but depending on your story they might already have that problem. Also beware any tracking devices it may have.
2- Kill a guy, steal his finger/eye/login stuff, and use his account as the one you don't want being tracked. Will probably only work until the admin AI or whatever realizes the guy is dead and shuts off his account, then it might look into what that account has been looking at, and then the whole plan could come down.
3- If your characters are/know a hacker, maybe they can jailbreak the device or account so that it can receive information(internet, view websites, etc), but not send. This might raise severe difficulties, as you won't be able to post anything on the web. to use effectively, you would first have to open every website to allow the device to send the initial query, then let the website send the information and other stuff. Once it's open, cut off the outgoing data so you can't be monitored. You can keep the sites open as long as you want, assuming your device isn't lagging from all the new tabs, and browse all the opened tabs without being tracked.
EDIT- a few new ideas I had, also stupid, but here it is.
4- find an old OS from somewhere(Rasbian, whatever chromebooks use, Windows, etc. )and use that. archive.org, if its around in your story, might have at least one. if you can't get one, make one or have a hacker make one. even if its very primitive, the only thing it needs to do is stop the tracking.
5- find wherever the data is being stored, break into the server farm, add one of those convenient little hacking usb sticks from basically any movie programmed to delete all data linked to X account, and bam- untrackable until the usb stick is taken out.
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[Question]
[
My story takes place in the future with advanced technology and I have a torture scene where I need prisoners to be immobilized against a wall—-but not permanently. I’m wondering if it could be done through energy or some kind of force unseen by the naked eye. I originally had magnetized nanobots that would attach to the wall through the prisoners’ skin, but that’s probably not going to work.... What other technology could somewhat realistically immobilize someone against a wall?
[Answer]
Use **tentacles**. Lots of tentacles. You never go wrong with tentacles and there is never too much of them.
A prisoner dangling from tentacles slithering over their bodies has no leverage to free themselves regardless of how strong they are. They cannot tear apart the tentacles because the tentacles are constantly moving and can easily maintain their grip while avoiding the hands, teeth and feet of their prisoner. And even if they get lucky the tentacles are smooth and covered with lubricant so you cannot pull at them enough to break them. And a compact cylinder made of metal is hard to crush.
They cannot really gather their strength because the tentacles coiled around their bodies constrict their breathing and they are constantly out of breath. They cannot even talk unless you want them to because the tentacles can gag them or constrain their breathing.
And since they are dangling from constantly moving tentacles they are too disoriented to really focus or target anything. So even if could somehow free themselves they would have no knowledge which orientation they would end up. This is really paralysing to people evolved from monkeys who had to fear death by falling from a tree. People evolved from cats might of course just trust they will fall on their feet.
The prisoner will also be unable to hide nasty surprises. The tentacles will search every inch of their body, repeatedly. They will even search under any loose clothing. If you incorporate some ultrasound technology they will even efficiently search inside the body as well. You can even take samples to check for poisons and disease. And all of this is more or less automatic result of the random appearing movements of the tentacles on the prisoner.
You can even add some chemicals into the mix. Since the prisoners will get thoroughly covered in the lubricant on the tentacles any drugs added to it will make their way into the mouth, lungs, eyes and other places there they can be absorbed. Typically you would want to make prisoners more docile and cooperative but fear and pain would be fairly easy as well. Drugs to block any special abilities would be good too.
[Answer]
# Magnets
Just make the shackles out of iron or some other metal, then place magnets inside / on the walls. Turn them on and off and there you have your "magically pinned to the wall" effect.
[Answer]
# G-Force
The "room" is actually moving. It can be made to move *very fast* and will thus exert very strong force on anybody inside. Very likely pinning them to the opposite wall.
One way to do this is if you have the room attached to a spinning arm similar to ones used for testing pilots.
The problem might be that if you have anything else that's not very well attached, it will also fly in the same direction any people would go. Which might actually aid the effect. But if you need *only* people to be "pinned" then there shouldn't be any loose objects around - furniture would need to be bolted down or otherwise immovable.
The real problem might be if you want to have *other people* in the same room, as they'd be similarly affected. A solution is either to have
* mobile robots who can withstand the g-forces and *appear* to be unaffected.
* immobile robots like arms extending from the walls/ceiling. Those can rotate around and do whatever they are supposed to.
* nobody else, just speakers and microphones to communicate with the people currently being partially crushed against a surface.
[Answer]
**Programmable goop.**
There is a [class of polymer](https://phys.org/news/2018-07-materials-solid-liquid-phase-transitions-room.html) which is solid at room temperature which then is rendered liquid when activated by (eg) ultraviolet light:
>
> Certain polymers, however, are permanently solid—even when exposed to
> extreme changes in temperature or pressure, they never become liquid.
> These materials, which are called covalently cross-linked polymers,
> can be modified so that an external stimulus such as light or heat
> causes them to switch from solid to liquid.
>
>
>
* So, throw the prisoner at the wall, flick the light switch for a second or two, they melt into the wall - light off again - they're stuck there like flies on paper. (Han Solo in Carbamite).
* Until that is you chose to "let there be light" again. (Gives you a shivver of that god-like feeling of omnipotence for just a second).
There's a nice article in [Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05300-7) of the first such material made in 2018, refined to your specification by the time of your story though.
[Answer]
**Coulombic Attraction**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2CF43.jpg)
\*\* $$F = k \times \frac{Q\_1 \times Q\_2}{d^2}$$ \*\*
where k = Coulomb's constant. k's value depends on the medium around the charged objects. In air, k is approximately $9.0 x 10^9 \frac{N m^2}{C^2}$
where $Q\_1$ and $Q\_2$ are the respective charge on two objects in Coulombs (C)
and
where d is the distance between the objects.
Coulombic attraction is why you can rub a ballon against your hair or cloths and hold it against a wall and it will stick.
As a tool of torture, remove $1 \times 10^{-3} Coulombs$ from the victim and add the same charge to a plate under the victim — separated from the victim by 1 cm by a insulating plate made of a dielectric material like plastic or porcelain - and you’ll generate a pressure equivalent of approximately 20 atmospheres (assuming the human has an area of $2 m^2$
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1sKO1.png)
[Answer]
**Shrinkwrap**
A transparent (or not) flexible rubber or plastic membrane moves across the interrogation chamber a la the garbage compactor scene in Star Wars, pressing them against the wall. Any torture implements can be placed behind this membrane, which can serve to protect the interrogators themselves if eg. gas is used.
[Answer]
I think that I have seen television scenes in some sort of play setting where children wear velcro covered clothing and throw themselves at velcro covered walls and sometimes stick to them.
I found an article with the history of velcro walls.
<http://www.airfungames.com/party-rental-resources/velcro-walls-history>[1](http://www.airfungames.com/party-rental-resources/velcro-walls-history)
This article says that heavier people don't stick to the walls:
>
> Philip, not quite tall enough to jump on the wall by himself, was hoisted against the Velcro by Sportland's two wall attendants, Joe Laroche and Fernando Martinez, both 18.
>
>
> "Little kids usually stick, but we have to hold older people because they weigh more," said Martinez, who calls himself "Velcro Man."
>
>
> "This one guy weighed 200 pounds plus. His foot went right through the seam in the floor. . . . Usually at 150 pounds you stop sticking. It throws you right off. So when someone big comes along, I'll be sure to ask Jack {Goldstein} for my break."
>
>
> After wall jumpers put on their suits and pay $3 for three jumps, Martinez and Laroche usually ask which way they want to hit the wall. Grabbing the participants by the bottom of the canvas suit, Martinez and Laroche help the jumpers gain momentum from the ground and make sure they stick to the wall. After the jumpers remain on the wall for a minute or two, they are peeled off and returned to the ground.
>
>
>
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1993/06/13/area-daredevils-newest-shtick-velcro-jumping/f50ab536-db2c-45de-a4d7-8c5f6f2a6a6b/>[2](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1993/06/13/area-daredevils-newest-shtick-velcro-jumping/f50ab536-db2c-45de-a4d7-8c5f6f2a6a6b/)
And an improved and stronger velcro prison suit could stick prisoners to improved and stronger velcro walls so hard that the prisoners would be unable to free themselves from the walls until and unless the guards pulled them off. Apparently it is normal for the attendants to peel customers off the wall, not for them to free themselves from the wall, so with stronger velcro-like materials prisoners wouldn't be able to release themselves from the prison walls.
[Answer]
# Suction
Your wall has a lot of tiny holes with sensors that activate strong suction whenever a piece of body is near. Every bit that touches the wall get stuck there, but parts of the body that don't touch the wall will not feel any suction. The wall may be somewhat elastic to maximize contact surface.
[Answer]
Since you have some advanced technology, I'd consider going with an electrically activated adhesive. You stand the prisoners flat against the wall, then turn on the power and the adhesive holds them firmly. Turn off the power and they're released.
[Answer]
Honey. I mean you might have to use perhaps use invisible honey from the future. Though it would be something most associate with getting stuck to walls.
[Answer]
I read an IEEE article about how scientists managed to levitate a drop of water using sound. Maybe using a sound to propel someone against a wall could work.
[Answer]
**Electric shocks**
Electric shocks propel people back. If your prisoner is throw against the wall from the first one, they could continuously be given electric shocks that keep them thrown against the wall, unable to move away.
The electricity wouldn't necessarily even have to touch the prisoner.
According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_injury#Body_resistance):
>
> ...physical contact with energized wiring or objects may not be necessary to cause electric shock, as the voltage may be sufficient to "jump" the air gap between the electrical device and the victim.
>
>
>
So, if your voltage was high enough, it could keep the prisoners "glued" to the wall, with no apparent reason. There will be some [other side-effects](https://www.hydroquebec.com/safety/electric-shock/consequences-electric-shock.html) though, that have to be taken into account, to your prisoner being electrocuted. And, depending on how long this torture lasts, your prisoners might not be so conscious, and very close to dead, by the end of it.
[Answer]
A tree can grow around fences, incooporating the obsticle into itself.. if you have antiseptic bars (silver) such a thing could happen to a long time prisoner. The bars have grown into his back.. over the aeons..
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[Question]
[
It is the year 4056 (or probably later). The rocket with the last residents of Earth just took off, because global warming and pollution couldn't be stopped nor reverted and Earth became uninhabitable. The human civilization leaves our solar system to live in space and search for a new planet to exploit. They travel on their mothership for a million years (this timespan can also be changed to get as close as possible to my desired scenario) until they decide to revisit and possibly resettle Earth.
What I want Earth to look like:
* 98% of all the landmass is wasteland/desert
* There are only two climate zones, hot and dry around the equator and cold and dry on the poles
* The two poles are some big chunks of ice, each covering about 20% of Earth's area
* Ocean level is about same as today and still contain some life down really deep, but all the streams are dead
* The atmosphere is still intact, but with more $CO\_2$ and not much $O\_2$ left
* There are no animals (at least not so big that a human eye can see it) and no flora
* There is no weather. Little to no wind, rain only arises and goes off over the ocean
The humans plan to terraform and repopulate earth with plants and animals they have saved on their mothership a long time ago.
Is this state of Earth possible or do I overlook some logical errors?
What other effects would this state cause, which I have not considered yet?
[Answer]
>
> •98% of all the landmass is wasteland/desert
>
>
> •The two poles are some big chunks of ice, each covering about 20% of earths area
>
>
>
This is rather confusing. Yes, I get that there are also cold deserts, but next to the glacier there will be the melting zone, where the bonanza of water will inevitably favor life.
>
> •There are only two climate zones, hot and dry around the equator and cold and dry on the poles
>
>
>
You can hardly get a step like transition from hot and dry to cold and dry. You will have a region where there is an intermediate.
>
> •Atmosphere still intact, but with more $CO\_2$ and not much $O\_2$ left
>
>
>
With no photosynthetic organisms, it makes sense that the oxygen will not be available in its unbound state. However, the higher level of carbon dioxide means that the planet is a giant greenhouse. I am not sure liquid or solid water would be possible. And water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. So, forget about the cold, and possibly about the dry. Think something like Venus, without the sulphuric acid.
>
> •There is no weather. Little to no wind, rain only arises and goes off over the ocean.
>
>
>
This is straightforward impossible: if you have an atmosphere, you have weather. It might be dull and monotonous with little variation, but still there will be weather.
[Answer]
You're positing a world that has no surface plants. That's... implausible.
There are plants out there that can manage climatic extremes far worse than anything humans could live through. Plants actively thrive in concentrations of CO2 that humans would find lethal. You might easily have a massive die-off as climate change modified local conditions, but that's going to be "large fractions" rather than "absolutely everything". Some sort of plant life will survive that die-off and start expanding again to fill the available space.
You're also positing no weather. That is likewise implausible. As long as the earth is running off of solar power, there's going to be heat differentials. Certain chunks of earth will get more or less, for various reasons. That will cause high and low pressure zones, which will cause wind, which will move atmospheric water around, which will result in precipitation falling over land. If anything, we'd expect that climate change would make the weather more chaotic, rather than less.
[Answer]
The surface conditions you're describing are closer to an ice age than any other situation. In practice the ice caps covered only 35% of the land mass, though they locked up the vast majority of the fresh water. This means that the ice age was one of the driest periods in the planet's history.
The more of the water that's locked up in the poles the drier the rest of the world is. The "temperate" regions become tundra at best, and the rest is largely barren.
Hence the two parts of your problem, the atmosphere and the surface, are in contradiction as the atmosphere effects point to runaway global warming, the surface is global cooling.
[Answer]
# No.
The mass extinction you're hoping for—no plants and only microscopic animals—is impossible from these conditions.
At the point that humans left the planet, it was possible for animal and plant life to exist, even if it was limited to certain areas. Because otherwise, they'd be dead before they left.
Once humans were gone, they stopped their industrial activities that caused the pollution and climate change to begin with. In fact, your question implies that they stopped that stuff earlier: "global warming and pollution couldn't be stopped nor reverted." They tried but the climate had reached a tipping point. There were likely some industrial activities or fires that continued after they were gone, but that would have been a blip when you're talking about a million years.
Basically, once humans left, the Earth could begin to heal. For excellent explanations of the mechanisms here, with great detail over multiple areas, check out Alan Weisman's book [The World Without Us](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/248787.The_World_Without_Us).
Even with massive unstopped climate change, even with toxic air and water and soil, some plants and animals would survive. Mass extinction doesn't mean total extinction. It can't, not without science fiction world-killing technology.
After a million years, plants and animals would once again populate most of the Earth, land and water.
[Answer]
>
> * Ocean level is about same as today and still contain some life down really deep, but all the streams are dead
>
>
>
Neither of these statements make sense. Currently, about 10% of the planet is covered with ice (polar ice caps plus glacial ice) and the sea level is where it is. During the most recent ice age, the planet was covered to about 30% with ice. The sea level then was about 120m lower than it is today. You're proposing ice sheets even bigger. The sea level will be correspondingly lower.
As for all streams being dead, this is not possible in your scenario. As L. Dutch said: "next to the glacier there will be the melting zone, where the bonanza of water will inevitably favor life." This melting zone will be the home of a whopping big glacial melt water lake. During the last ice age, this was [Lake Agassiz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Agassiz). And from that lake will flow huge rivers. Quite lively!
First of all, ice sheets are good scouring pads: they will essentially destroy and push most of the environmental damage away, heaping it up in the lands at their maximum extent. The Laurentide Sheet got as far south as Kentucky and Pennsylvania last time around. This time, with your proposed larger coverage, it will probably be somewhere in the region of Oregon, Tennesse and North Carolina. In Europe, last time around, the ice covered the UK, northern Germany, Poland, half of Ukraine and most of Russia. This time, maybe include northern France, all of Germany, Romania, all of Ukraine.
>
> They travel on their mothership for a million years (this timespan can also be changed to get as close as possible to my desired scenario) unitl they decide to revisit and possibly resettle earth.
>
>
>
One thing to consider here is that ice ages come and go. We're actually still in the middle of an ice age now; it's just that we happen to be blessed to live in an interglacial period, and a million years is a long time. The present Quaternary Glaciation began about 100000 years ago. There could be several "ice ages" during the time frame you posit. In all that time, I find it extremely unlikely that Earth will be "uninhabitable" for very long.
All in all, while it's an interesting scenario, I'd say Reality Check on this =
# FAIL
Too many severely destructive actions would have to be carried out before your scenario becomes plausible. And that's to say nothing of the clearly impossible conditions you set (like no weather).
[Answer]
I agree with Dutch's answer in the main, but there is an important element that is not discussed in his answer which I want to bring up; Thermal Mass.
Put simply, thermal mass is the same as a heat sink; it absorbs heat readily and in massive quantities, releasing it over time when the ambient temperature is lower. The earth is mostly covered in one of the best heat sinks we know of;
Water.
This is important because we think of deserts as being always hot, but they're not. During the night, deserts tend to get very cold because there's nothing (much) in them that has retained the heat during the day. This is also the reason why coastal regions tend to have more temperate climates than drier inland environments. The sea retains a lot of heat during the daytime, making the environment seem cooler than it should, and releases it through the night, making it feel warmer than it should. In practice, this smooths out the temperature variation between day and night.
In that respect, it *is* possible for you to have two 'biomes'; hot and dry would be the day, and cold and dry would be the night. The catch is that the ice at the poles would put paid to that climate model, meaning that you can only have one or the other; either hot days cold nights and no water, or plenty of water in reserve (albeit in ice), and no sudden changes between temperature during day and night.
[Answer]
The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event (AKA End-Permian Event or **The Great Dying**) is the largest known extinction event, occurring 250 million years ago. An estimated 96% of all on earth was wiped out in this event (The K-T extinction, aka The Dinosaur One, by comparison, was 75% of all life). While it is still unknown what specifically brought on the event, the current theory was a sudden shift in global climate brought on by a large Volcano eruption in present day Siberia.
While Planet Earth has made an impressive resurgence of life since the event, It's believed that it set evolution of life on earth back some 300 million years, but Life began recovery pretty quickly for a geological standpoint at least. It took only 5 million years for Woody Trees to reach pre-Extinction levels and less than 5 million years from that to the full return of corals and calcified sponges. The End-Permian Event also saw the downfall of insects as the dominant for of life and represents the largest known mass exctinction of insects ever and the rise of Vertebrates in their place (technically they began prior to the extinction event , but they survived much better than the dominant invertebrates culminating with the rise of the dinosaurs. By comparison, the whole of the existence of Homo Sapien species is a 11,000 year period.
So while a 1 million year period is too quick, it's not far off to a recovery from a green house gas mass extinction event. As is otfen said when discussing the Dinosaurs, Life finds a Way. Typically in Mass Extinction events, that which dies creates an opening for a small family group to explode in evolution diversity to fill the once taken niches. It could be that in this event, you would have a recovery that allows extremophiles (Life that exists in conditions that are extremely hostile to most forms of life) of some sort to give rise to new life in infinite possibilities. One of the first rules of biology is that there are no rules.
[Answer]
I think there is one direction you could pursue.
Climate cannot explain the seas being dead "except very deep". That sounds more like poison killing all the algae. This also matches the drop in oxygen level.
Now assume that the poison is lighter than water. It would then form a thin layer on the surface of the oceans. This would drastically cut down evaporation and make the world much drier. Low evaporation would also cut down on clouds and visible weather.
Heat transfer from oceans to air would also be cut down. And the layer might have different albedo from sea water. So you could probably avoid a green house Earth and get your desired level of polar ice (ice would still float over a **thin** layer). Additionally while the oceans would still absorb the heat and transfer some of it to the the air, the hot air only goes up. It will circulate back after it cools but it doesn't rain down like water does. So heat transfer from oceans to ground would be cut down even more.
With very little rain the continents would be wastelands with very little life. They could easily be drier than most deserts since deserts get some water from it condensing from the air during night. With air being drier overall that would be cut down.
The big problem with this is that it requires literally oceans worth of poison that persists for millennia. I do not see how that could happen naturally or even accidentally. One possible reason to do this is desperation. You world is already dying and this might work as climate engineering. The projected alternative might have been even worse. This would require that the poison was originally non-toxic but turned toxic after being exposed to environment longer than pre-release tests covered. Something like that might conceivably happen by accident.
[Answer]
**No**
>
> 98% of all the landmass is wasteland/desert
>
>
>
Kinda hard when when ocean levels remain the same. Too much liquid water around.
>
> There are only two climate zones, hot and dry around the equator and cold and dry on the poles
> Blockquote
>
>
>
Hot + dry = evaporation and evaporation means rain. If everything was either cold and dry or frozen and dry, that would work
>
> The two poles are some big chunks of ice, each covering about 20% of Earth's area
>
>
>
Sounds like an ice age which means the oceans levels are not the same.
>
> Ocean level is about same as today and still contain some life down really deep, but all the streams are dead
>
>
>
Life is a lot harder to kill than you might think. For life to only exist down deep, something must be continually killing everything that comes up too high
>
> The atmosphere is still intact, but with more CO2 and not much O2 left
>
>
>
Co2 is a greenhouse gas so would increase temps
>
> There are no animals (at least not so big that a human eye can see it) and no flora
>
>
>
Again life isn't that easy to kill. Something would have to continue killing it
>
> There is no weather. Little to no wind, rain only arises and goes off over the ocean
>
>
>
Weather is related to temperature. The hotter the planet is, the more violent the weather can get. To have no weather, you need to freeze the planet.
**Solution / possible cause**
Look to Mars and why it is like it is.
Now to get to Mars like atmosphere, you need to stop Earth's iron core from spinning removing the magnetosphere that protects the planet from the solar winds. Bit hard as it would require getting rid of the moon.
Once the magnetosphere was gone, solar radiation would blast the surface killing everything not protected so all land life and shallow sea life would die (and stay dead). Life down deep could escape the radiation for a while but will eventually die too.
Solar winds would strip the lighter gasses from the atmosphere such as oxygen and leave heavier gases like CO2 behind.
The thinner atmosphere would trap less heat making it colder and reducing rainfall and weather events (but not removing them completely). This would produce cold deserts.
Terraforming would be difficult as would explaining away what happened to the moon.
Not sure one million years is long enough for all this to happen.
[Answer]
Most of the criteria you're describing can be met, but the mechanism you're thinking of isn't going to do it. Pollution and Global Warming aren't ever going to create the desert wasteland you're thinking of, but there's another solution.
if you want a desolate wasteland with no plants and no animals, you need to blot out the sun COMPLETELY for a good long while. There are two mechanisms that have done exactly this a few times in the past: Volcanoes and Impacts.
Either one will generate a condition where there is an enormous amount of ash particulate in the atmosphere. This will block out solar radiation and prevent light and heat from getting to the surface. No light means no plants, no plants means no animals. A sufficiently catastrophic event would wipe out pretty much all life except for the extremeophiles in the deep oceans who get all their nutrients from volcanic vents.
Have a good long read of the wikipedia page on [extinction events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Flood_basalt_events). Either a Flood Basalt event or a sufficiently large (e.g. dinosaur killer) impact would generate most of the conditions you're describing.
[Answer]
I think you have a stilted version of what our CO2-induced climate change is actually doing. In a super short time we've shot up from about 200PPM to 400 (and still going straight up). In the Jurassic and Triassic, it bobbled around 2-3 *thousand*. During the Cambrian is was typically more like 4.5 thousand.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7tKYZ.jpg)
Average temperatures in those eras were much warmer too, but what that meant for the planet was the water cycle was running much faster. So it was rainyer, not drier.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8R6fk.jpg)
Now realize that what plants live on is water and CO2. So this situation, while bad for a lot of the animals (particularly large specialized animals), is heaven for most plant life (and by extension, the animals living off those plants).
As the great [George Carlin said](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c), we shouldn't be egotistical about this. The Planet will do just fine. Its the **people** who won't do so great. That's including a lot of other large animals though, of course. As Carlin said, the Earth will shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
[Answer]
Almost certainly not. But you might be able to get close.
Posit a runaway greenhouse event. CO2 goes way up, oceans heat up, water gets in atmosphere, repeat and oceans boil, and it spirals upwards until the surface of the planet is well over boiling everywhere.
This might be triggered by a spike the sun's radiation output.
If the sun radiation output then falls, the runaway greenhouse would fail to continue, and the atmosphere would precipitate back out. But all life would have been sterilized off the surface of the planet; possibly some deep down life might survive.
It would cool, and microbiotic life would recolonize the surface from deep in the crust. But it would be little more than slime, and it might not even have green photosynthesis.
A purple ocean might result that emits far less O2 than green algae.
Humans would arrive on a planet with oceans, rivers, CO2 and low O2, and rain. But no life on land, and oceans full of purple bacteria.
You could even make the sun's energy flare be triggered by an attempt to "dampen" the sun to prevent a less runaway greenhouse effect that backfired. (Note that "dampening" the sun is a K1 to K2 civilization effort; but so is interstellar travel, so...)
Another possibility is that there are "humans" in the solar system that aren't biological.
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1. **The ozone layer disappears**. This could be a result of human activity and perhaps what prompted their departure.
2. Without ozone all the UV light from the sun hits the surface of the Earth.
3. The surface is sterilized by UV.
4. Reduced carbon on the surface (plant remains etc) slowly oxidizes, consuming remaining O2 and producing CO2.
5. As CO2 levels rise the oceans become acidic from dissolved CO2, finishing off ocean life except that around deep hydrothermal vents.
6. Absent any remaining photosynthetic organisms there is no more oxygen being made and no hope of regenerating the ozone layer.
7. Without plant mediated transpiration on the surface, humidity falls. The bare earth absorbs most solar energy in tropical areas, leaving them hot and dry. The bare earth reflects most solar energy in temperate areas, leaving them cold and dry.
8. Water is the second most important greenhouse gas and as humidity decreases, temperatures fall despite the elevated CO2 level.
That is 6 out of 7. No weather is the hardest; specifically wind. I cannot think of a way to abolish wind. Especially with hot areas and cold areas and atmopshere and the sun.
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[Question]
[
Ships are capable of FTL warp and relativistic speed flying. In order for a ship to intercept other ship at high non-FTL speed, it needs a mechanism that will enable it to slow down the other ship.
Most space battles will ensue after the speed-limit weapon is deployed, creating a region of space where ships are experiencing drag and will make them harder to escape and accelerate virtually to speed of light.
Things I'm looking for:
1. A missile payload that will disperse high friction gas that have will linger in the area(fast initial dispersion, but slows down eventually).
2. A device that increases the relativistic effect, so less acceleration due to increased mass when traveling at high velocity.
Things I'm NOT looking for:
1. Gravity tether or tractor beams. It needs to be an area of effect, causing multiple ships to slow down.
UPDATE: Thank you for all your contributions!
To clarify, the weapon is not to disable FTL warp, as in my setting, it requires substantial preparation to make an FTL journey, so no emergency jump.
The weapon is needed to keep ships from accelerating constantly achieving relativistic speed and escaping. Otherwise, there will be no practical way to catch smaller faster accelerating ships. Also, I didn't want the space battle happen at lower velocities, somewhere between real space battle and atmospheric dog fight.
[Answer]
The only answer I can think of that doesn't require warping the laws of physics or a ridiculously huge energy budget is:
**Tugmines**
Basically ridiculously powerful engines fastened to mildly ridiculously powerful magnetic clamps. Unmanned, a Tugmine will seek out, match velocity with and fasten onto any ship not broadcasting the correct IFF (or, if electronic warfare is a factor, any ship, to avoid potential hacking/spoofing attempts), clamp on and then use internal accelerometers to oppose the acceleration of the vessel and return to their original velocity. This should reduce other vessels to the velocity of your cloud of mines, and has the advantage of moving any scrap metal back into an easily harvestable location.
Naturally a single Tugmine won't be able to outpower an entire enemy vessel, but a series of them will at least make them less able to accelerate and manoeuvre effectively, while the small size, high power and unmanned nature of the mines will let them catch up with and swarm enemy vessels. Depending on how sophisticated the mines are you can also build in countermeasures (exploding) to prevent their removal, have them track coverage of enemy vessels to provide the most efficient opposition, or have specialist mines that aim for and destroy enemy engines.
Fighting in a cloud of mines seems like a pretty daft way to fight though, so unless your aim is specifically capturing enemy vessels you'd be better off just strapping explosives to the tug mines and using them as long range missiles. Vessels with squishy meat bags in them won't be able to out accelerate unmanned murderdrones.
*A quick note* This is assuming that fuel isn't really an issue. This becomes a whole different question if you're taking the tyranny of the rocket equation into account.
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In hard sci-fi we have nothing - since we don't have FTL or anything approaching it then it's impossible to do anything beyond pure speculation in terms of anti-FTL.
My suggestion would be some sort of warp or distortion field that you apply over an area. It distorts the space within the field in a way that interferes with drives, or maybe even with the structure of ships itself.
Think of it as being like ruts and bumps in the ground. You slow down to go over them since otherwise you might damage your vehicle. Do that to space :)
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## Chaff
Since few spaceships are likely to be steered manually, chances are they've got instruments and RADAR/LIDAR style sensors so they can tell what speed it is safe to fly at. At high speeds, even simply dust can cause major damage (or drain shields / power etc) - so these automatic instruments adjust the speed to try and reduce the possibility of damage. Firing a cloud of chaff would simply cause them to reduce their speed as it wouldn't be clear whether it was safe or not.
An added effect could be the chaff itself being metallic and/or magnetic - and effectively fouling up the sensors if the ships don't reduce speed and maybe fire an electron beam to repulse it. This would let the pilots override the sensors, but have to clean up afterwards, or perhaps simply risk collision with something they can't pick up visibly.
If it's a material that reacts with interstellar hydrogen to become "normal" space dust then it would be a sort of self-clearing system.
The natural follow-on would be using it to hide mines and boarding parties from sensors until the area is cleared.
This solution is employed in the book [Green Mars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy#Green_Mars.C2.A0.E2.80.93_Terraforming) by Kim Stanley Robinson. A chaff missile is fired in front of a vessel which is about to aerobrake into Mars orbit. Upon detecting the obstruction, the ship autopilot chooses to avoid the aerobraking manoeuvre (and is thus unable to enter orbit) rather than risk flying below the 'obstruction' and burning up in the atmosphere.
The point is that spacecraft manoeuvres tend to take place in a narrow envelope of possibilities determined by the physical reality of their propulsion systems and environment. When a spacecraft is near the edge of it's permitted manoeuvre envelope, dramatic changes can be leveraged by small adjustments (such as shifting a velocity vector by a few degrees to avoid a chaff cloud).
If your FTL drive requires some sort of very accurate manoeuvring, then you might not require major disruption to the spacecraft to render the jump impossible.
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How about sand bombs? Containers full of fine particles that spread out into dust in an area of space. They would continue to disperse, so the effect would be temporary, but for a limited duration, there would be a fairly large amount of particles in space that might bounce off the hull of a ship.
I have to imagine what the transition from high relativistic velocity to FTL would be, but presuming it was some kind of continuation of acceleration, we can guess that a ship might have means of handling particles in space at specific speeds, but that the acceleration to FTL would be beyond the capacity of the armor, magnetic fields, or whatever else they are using to protect themselves from a particle bouncing off the hull.
Some points to consider:
The sand bomb could not merely fly past the target and go "pop". It would have to accelerate past the target, then significantly accelerate back toward the target, so the cloud of "sand" (dust) is moving SIGNIFICANTLY slower (relatively speaking) than the target. Sort of like a boomerang missile trajectory. This would require the expenditure of a lot of energy for acceleration. The bigger the gap between the relative speed of the sand bomb dust cloud and the target, the bigger the fuel expenditure of the missile to accelerate and the smaller the payload you can reasonably expect to carry.
Other things to consider:
It's very likely that if there were some kind of accelerating transition from high relativistic speeds to FTL, it would take place in a VERY "empty" part of space. Even a single grain of sand hit by a ship going at high relativistic speeds could cause massive damage (they would have to have some means of dealing with this). The "sand bomb" couldn't do that much damage unless it was able to get so far ahead of the target and accelerate so much in the opposite direction that it was essentially at relative "zero" velocity (whatever that means in deep space) relative to the target ship. That would require a truly VAST amount of energy, and a bit of time, so it's very unlikely.
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**Negative mass.**
You have FTL so the door is open for other spooky entities joining the party.
Negative mass produces a repulsive effect - the opposite of gravity. A cloud of negative mass will produce a repulsive effect on other mass. This will be constant, and the negative mass particles will chase the positive mass of the ship, continuing to repel it - runaway motion. As with gravity, the closer the ship gets to the negative mass particles the stronger this effect will be. From Wikipedia.
>
> Runaway motion
>
>
> Although no particles are known to have negative mass, physicists
> (primarily Hermann Bondi in 1957,[2] William B. Bonnor in 1989,[8]
> then Robert L. Forward[9]) have been able to describe some of the
> anticipated properties such particles may have...
>
>
> For two positive masses, nothing changes and there is a gravitational
> pull on each other causing an attraction. Two negative masses would
> repel because of their negative inertial masses. For different signs
> however, there is a push that repels the positive mass from the
> negative mass, and a pull that attracts the negative mass towards the
> positive one at the same time.
>
>
> Hence Bondi pointed out that two objects of equal and opposite mass
> would produce a constant acceleration of the system towards the
> positive-mass object,[2] an effect called "runaway motion"
>
>
>
Ultimately the repulsive action of the negative mass on other negative mass will lead to these negative mass pieces breaking up with the indivisible bits taking up residence in space at maximum distance from any other sort of mass.
I think this is cooler and more high SF than space caltrops (*not* that there is anything wrong with space caltrops!). The math associated with negative mass can allow you to have other high SF fun weirdo effects as well. For example, a piece of negative mass loose in the mess hall.
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In Star Wars they have the [Interdictor Cruiser](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Interdictor_cruiser), a ship capable of generating a massive gravity well that makes it impossible for nearby starships to use their Hyperdrives(FTL).
>
> Interdictor cruisers had the same general shape as a Star Destroyer, and were roughly the same size. They featured four gravity well projectors which were employed both to pull vessels out of hyperspace and keep them from making the jump to hyperspace.
>
>
>
This isn't a gravity tether as opposed to a large area-of-effect due to large scale gravity manipulation.
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Well if we are talking hard sci-fi travelling at relativistic speed is already incredibly dangerous as even fairly small items (like gas molecules) can be devastating to ship that flies through them so a gas or dust cloud of any sort would be a dangerous obstacle to a ship travelling at 0.9 c or such.
Or, you could just throw a bunch of baseballs into the area: <https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/>
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Neal Asher in his polity series novels has a device called a USER... an underspace emitter... that makes it impossible to jump into FTL or remain in FTL around the area. Basically it's a singularity (black hole) bouncing in and out of underspace and causing ripples that disrupt FTL travel.
So ships in the vicinity are constrained to sub-light and whatever they can achieve by standard non-FTL drives. So for a society where FTL is the norm and non-FTL is significantly slower than relativistic, you've dropped approach speeds to way under light speed.
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If we are talking science-based, velocity is relative, what is more important is the two bodies velocity to each other, so in your scenario it seems that acceleration may matter more,(prevent the ship from accelerating away, and then match speed so that relative to each other you are at 0)
So an emp field/missile/bomb <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse> could accomplish this by taking the other ships electrical systems off line. It would have to be a powerful enough EMP(or specially designed) to overwhelm the inevitable shielding/hardening(shielding in the modern sense eg faraday cage, not a futuristic shield)
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Possibly something like a high-frequency oscillating warp field ("wobble field") that disrupts "linear" warp field formation and bleeds energy out of existing warp fields, reducing them back into normal space. Probably amplitude would drop off as distance squared though so might need to scatter a set of wobble generators around the area of interest, and obviously ships wishing to escape would target those generators. Also would likely be dangerous to get close to the wobble generators.
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I like @joe-blogg's tugmines concept, but if fuel is a concern, I might revisit an old concern: *limpet mines*. Effectively the same concept, but with an explosive charge attached.
However, rather than simply detonating and destroying the target, you would configure the mine to support remote detonation, or even some small amount of intelligence. Perhaps it uses its physical connectivity to convey an audio warning message:
>
> WARNING! I AM A LIMPET MINE. YOU ARE ACCELERATING AWAY FROM ANCHOR POINT AT ZERO POINT ONE CEE. CEASE ACCELERATION WITHIN 30 SECONDS OR I WILL DETONATE.
>
>
>
Adjust message to taste. Let the mine use high-precision inertics or RF or whatever you like.
If you programmatically think through the mine's sensory analysis and state sequence, you might think of countermeasures, counter-countermeasures, and so forth. Perhaps it resets to 30s after 300s of stillness, in which case a patient target could slowly pulse further and further away. Or perhaps it perceives stillness as anything under 0.1 gee, so a snail could get away. Or perhaps the hull plate it latched onto can be ejected, at a loss of atmosphere and potential risk of detonation.
The payload operation can be different, too, if you don't want to spew navhazard everywhere with a shredded ship. Perhaps it could vent its target's atmosphere. Perhaps it could drill and inject an autonomous drone that'll float/fly around spinning a van de graaf generator, striking random surfaces with sparks; it'll eventually find a critical system to zap.
Or, heck, perhaps it can inject a wad of ignited white phosphorous; that stuff will burn through anything it touches, so the most effective solution is to cease accelerating so it can't/won't rest against any individual surface.
Lots of room to play with there, and if the limpet latches onto a friendly target, the friendly target will either have the necessary codes to instruct the limpet to detach, or they'll be able to radio traffic control to get that information.
[Answer]
You're looking for gas that increases friction. gas is used all the time to "stop lasers" in most scifi. What people usually don't realize is that increasing friction on a ship will limit its top speed. It's really obvious, but that's what you need to do. My advice? Create your own gas. Don't get too bogged down in the chemicals. Just make it really magnetic. That way you can disperse the gas in space without worrying about it disappointing too quickly while you control much drag it adds. This is more of a concept than a direct answer, but there are a lot of ways you could play this. It depends a lot on how your faster than light travel works too. If it's just your typical fuel shoots out of one end arrangement then you can make the gas really really hot and completely screw over the thermal efficiency of the engine - changing the thermal efficiency changes how much power said engine can make. If it just goes really fast then like I said earlier some dense gas that can increase drag significantly will do the best.
This approach also provides a good explanation as to why your ships aren't slowed, you planned around this. For example you designed your ships to move through this material, or you designed your ships to have the desired thermal efficiency given the unreasonably high temperatures they will experience in your gas cloud - there isn't a ton of heat transferred due to mass in space so any heat transfer would be done by radiation and that's not as efficient as conduction or convection, assuming one isn't moving through a super special part of space.
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You could use a technology similar to the LDSI field in Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos. Basically its a field that can be projected via a generator or a missile payload that creates a region of distorted space time, thereby thwarting the ability of warp drives to function by manipulating space time in front and behind them. In the game this merely causes the FTL drive to not function, however realistically, attempting to use the FTL drive may result in its destruction of the drive, or random ship components to be teleported around the region of distorted space, thereby destroying or heavily maiming the ship.
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My assumption is that you're interested in something like a "mud ditch" that will slow down/prevent things moving through the area quickly but not actually stop them. This idea has some potential problems depending on what kind of propulsion is being used and would be most effective when wrapped around a planet to make it difficult to escape quickly compared to deployed in an 3 dimensional area to "catch" passing ships like a net.
**Increased Inertia**
Based on the idea of "inertialess drive" from the E.E. Doc Smith books, where "going inert" allows for almost infinite acceleration with little energy expenditure. Depending on the intended deployment, having some method that increases the inertia of an object such that the normally fixed amount of acceleration available by the ship's drive is rendered borderline useless.
---
**Localized Energy Drain**
Another idea would be some sort of localized energy drain which would then limit the amount of energy available to the propulsion systems. Something like a ray/field that binds electrons more tightly to limit their mobility and ability to transfer energy.
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Find a hydrogen cloud. Seed it with oxygen with your missiles. Some how detect when a ship approaches, one spark and an impassible blob of water. They will have to slow way down to pass through it. It will also absorb the heat from there engines to further slow them down
You will have to gradually increase the density if you don't want the impact to destroy the target ship.
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If you really want to muck up relativistic maneuvering in a region, why not think BIG? Engineer a Coronal Mass Ejection to flood the area with stellar gas. And/or use a nuclear shaped charge to create a massive plasma spike, and use the associated current pulse to disrupt the coronasphere. Maybe you can divert a bunch of interstellar hydrogen, or disrupt it in a useful way. If a ship is designed to fly through homogeneous interstellar medium (diffuse hydrogen plasma) and you find a way to shock it into ribbons and clumps, then you can metaphorically carve a bunch of potholes in their spatial highway and subject their ship and drive to peak loads and vibrational harmonics for which it was not optimized.
Approximating a mine field is a fair choice. If the pursuer, a third party, or nature, have seeded the area with discrete masses, then triggering them to detonate, or vaporizing them with a directed energy weapon, could create a stationary cloud of gas or particulate debris that imposes a substantial navigational hindrance. Perhaps there is a complex game of cat-and-mouse as the lead ship detects and avoids anything larger than, say, 1mm diameter (as part of normal relativistic navigation), while the pursuing ship tries to scan ahead and find baseball-sized objects to obliterate with directed energy to create unavoidable, dangerous debris clouds.
Other than seeding space, delay tactics would depend heavily on the drives being used. A directed energy weapon that is insufficient to harm a ship directly might still be tuned to match a key harmonic and disrupt a drive. If the target uses an ion drive, would it be possible to hit them with an electron beam and increase their bulk charge enough that the ion drive loses efficiency? If they are using a Bussard ramjet, any disruption in the stellar medium disrupts their drive. In that case, CLEARING THEIR PATH slows them down.
Ships need to radiate waste heat. Disrupt radiation, and you force the drive to operate at a lower level. An energy weapon that doesn't burn a ship can still overheat it, forcing it to reduce drive power. Modify space to make it more opaque, or reflective, to IR wavelengths. Create an artificial, hot nebula nearby.
In general, firing a missile to pass the pursued ship and detonate, creating a cloud of debris, WON'T work; The debris cloud's initial condition is one of matched speed with the pursued ship. Flying through a cloud of gas which matches your speed isn't much of an impediment. That is, unless their drive itself depends on specific properties of the diffuse plasma through which they fly.
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Completely off-the-wall thinking ahead:
What could slow down something traveling at the speed of light? The speed of gravity sounds plausible in relation to black holes and gravitational singularity.
Get yourself a handwavium device which puts two black holes along the ships travel path perfectly equidistant from the left and right side of the ship. Placement and strength of the black holes must be perfect so that the ship is suspended instead of being sucked into oblivion.
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Assume a device capable of manipulating wormholes, where the shape of the mouth can be sculpted to a hemisphere.
A black hole located at the far side of wormhole it being positioned almost directly on the event horizon. The output of the other half of the wormhole device would produce a hemisphere effect, the diameter depending on how "open" the wormhole is. The local, weaponized side of the wormhole would have the same properties as the event horizon - localized gravity, time and space distortion. It'd freeze ships in place at the cost of not being able to be interacted with until the device is shut down.
[Answer]
Near-miss nuclear detonations.
A battle begins. The enemy launches missiles at you from far, far away. Fortunately, your anti-missile defences are pretty good at intercepting missiles at close range and none of them get close enough to vaporise your ships. Unfortunately, your enemy knew that was likely to happen, and programmed half their nuclear missiles to explode before reaching you, in a two hundred kilometre wide hemisphere around your carrier group.
Your ships' radiators are now hot from the nuclear glow. You have no way to dump waste heat until they cool down. Every megajoule of energy your crews pull out of their power plants to fight the battle brings them a second closer to boiling alive in their own sweaty pressure suits. You can gently push missiles away from the ship and have them fly away under their own power, but there's no way you can run the ship's engines at anywhere near full power for more than a few seconds.
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[Question]
[
This is in regards to a story I'm writing, where the two main characters are a human girl and her giant companion. They're both outlaws with the giant being seen as an outright monster by the vast majority of people.
The setting I'm imagining is a low fantasy Medieval setting - some point in the 1400s - where, bar the giant , there are no magical elements present in the world. The giant herself stands at about 200ft / 61m tall and is strong enough to crush rock in her fist.
What sort of strategies would a fantasy army in this setting use against a threat like this giant?
The giant is an element in the setting, it needs no rationalisation.
[Answer]
## Skirmishing
Attacking the giant head-on is foolish. However, warfare has known skirmishing and hit and run tactics since at least the Romans who employed [velites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velites) - light infantry who would be mobile and engage enemies from afar with javelins.
These light attackers do not need to do much. They only need harass the giant to distract her and either keep her occupied or...
### Traps (option 1)
...lead her to a trap. A pit trap or a bog, or even dense enough vegetation can be used to lose the giant's footing when the army can swoop down.
This is not dissimilar to how heavy cavalry was handled in some cases. A fully armoured knight might as well be unstoppable as a modern tank when compared to some tribal opponents. Yet the significant bulk of the armour has been used against such knights by drawing them to swamps (where they lose their mobility) and using hooks on poles to drop them from their horse. At that point the tank turns into just a turtle on its back. The armour weighing them down while less armoured and worse armed people dealt with the helpless tin can.
A giant, once downed, would likely be significantly exposed to actual army attacks. As well as long ranged attacks like bows or siege weapons. The trap area can also be rigged with explosives, or other dangers like ignitable materials that can be set alight once the trap is spring.
Even without extra contraptions, or army around - a pit trap can be laid with spikes. Or it could just be that - a pit and a giant falling in it might break a leg which neutralises the threat. Just make sure the pit is deep enough.
### Do nothing (option 2)
...they just keep harassing her, run circles and never engage. This is another Roman invention called [Fabian strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_strategy).
Short history lesson: the Carthagen general Hannibal Barca was one of *the* most dangerous opponents Rome has ever faced. He was a masterful tactician and strategist and decisively won every battle against Roman legions. This culminated with [the battle of Cannae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae) the *worst military defeat Rome has ever suffered in its history*. Almost the entire Roman military force of the time was lost. Estimates place it between 50 and 70 thousand troops. Further estimates place this to somewhere between 5% and 20% of the male population of Rome at the time. This was no mere defeat - the Romans had to refresh their troops from the elderly and the completely inexperienced youth.
It is hard to undersell how horrific this defeat was. In one fell swoop Hannibal not only won the battle but almost destroyed all the military Rome had. The replacements would be fewer in number and a lot less experienced.
Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus realised Rome cannot win against this opponent, who as might have been a giant crushing rocks. The solution was to *avoid* fights and just wear down the enemy through attrition. It *worked*. Despite winning the battle, Carthagen lost the war as his army roamed the lands but did no major battles and little by little lost men until Hannibal had no choice but return home.
Similarly, a giant can be engaged, harassed, goaded, but never engaged. Even if spears do not pierce her skin and arrows do nothing, she will also do nothing if persistently avoided. The armies have one big advantage here - numbers. Send a wave of skirmishers, then replace them with fresher troops. This is a constant barrage of soldiers who only serve to wear down the giant. She has a limit - eventually she would tire. They could persist the skirmishing and never let her sleep or feed. They do not have to kill her - just to drive her away.
A living giant *not here* is still a win. She can go crush rocks in the neighbouring kingdom.
[Answer]
**Pit Trap**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2GV7U.png)
Mrs Giant is big and heavy. Big heavy things are more vulnerable to falls than small light things.
A three foot drop will not harm an ant. The same fall will bruise a person. They will be fine unless they land awkwardly. The fall will kill an elephant. Elephants HATE holes in the ground.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jvlBq.png)
That's right, the smartest animal on the planet can be contained with three foot moat in the sand. The one pictured above is an especially large moat. They have been stopped by smaller.
Check out [this precious little girl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTpMtHEWioA) debating whether or not to leap a storm drain. I will not give away the ending.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1FwM4.png)
Scale this up to a sixty metre giant, and a five metre hole will be plenty. She stumbles into the pit, catches her ankle, trips over, cracks under her own weight, and Mrs Giant is no more.
The enemy soldiers dig loads of holes in the ground and cover them up with wooden scaffolding. As pointed out by @ChrisH, since the weight difference is so vast, you can safely march your soldiers across the scaffolding without setting off the trap. But once the giant puts her foot down, the beams crack and it is all over.
The war against the giant is fought with both brains and brawn. Where do you dig the pits? How do you lure them? When should we double bluff? It becomes a game of cat-and-mouse.
[Answer]
**Swamps**
Okay - Physics time. a 200ft Humanoid is going to weigh a lot. I haven't done the calculations, but here's another WB question: [Here about this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/138445/how-big-is-my-giant) - This is for a Giant that is *merely* 20-30ft tall and their calculations give a weight of about 4.5 Tonnes - your Giant is 10 times that height - and so doing *lazy* maths (and ignoring the Cube Law) - they are going to be weighing easily in excess of 45 Tonnes.
Your Giant is going to weigh more than a Main Battle Tank. Assuming that they don't have massively large feet (e.g. out of proportion to a 'regular' human) to spread all that weight over a large area (With Tracks, an MBT can exert about half the ground pressure of a Human) - then we know that unless they are on solid and stable ground, they are going to have issues with sinking into the ground.
a Swamp would be the worst nightmare for a Giant - too large for them to go around it or jump over it - and they can't traverse it without getting stuck. From there, it's just a matter of using Ballistas on an immobilized target.
Other tactics:
**Starvation**
Amateurs study tactics, Pros study Logistics. To feed a single Human, engaging in Military type activity for 24 hours, in the modern era, requires a ration pack weighing about a Kilo.
Our Giant is significantly larger and so would need to consume (again, ignoring the Cube Law - cause Lazy) in excess of 33 Kilos of Food in a 24 hour period. Probably closer to 100-200 Kilos (accounting for additional energy needed to move and maintain a larger being etc.) - The Army wouldn't need to *fight* the Giantess, merely stop her from getting sufficient food (driving away livestock, making lots of noise to scare away wild game, burning down crops etc.) - And the additional size would make the effects of missing Meals that much more traumatic on the Giant physiology - weakening them much quicker.
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# Fire
The use of an oil accelerant coupled with an ignition source in order to light equipment and personnel on fire dates back to at least the 6th century. Lighting your giantess on fire would be a very appealing option especially if your 200 ft giant wears some type of clothing which could serve as additional fuel for the flames. If your giantess doesn't have clothes, then I think you're writing a completely different type of story.
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Direct attacks are no realistic option. The logical choice for such a huge and moving obstacle would be to have the giant followed secretively, wait until the monster is asleep, and poison it. **Arsenic, nightshade, or monkshood** will do the trick, and were frequently used during the middle ages.
[Answer]
**... not traps ...**
Humans used pit traps to hunt e.g. mammoths. The animals were panicked and herded into the pit or down a cliff. But the normal humans will be unable to dig a pit 60 metres (200 feet) deep in any reasonable timeframe. Anything less than that does not help much against a biped with arms to climb.
**... probably not bows or spears, either ...**
Think of an arrow that is scaled down by a factor of 10 in length, by a factor of 1,000 in weight. Yes, it will hurt. It probably won't inflict serious injuries.
**... probably not bombards or trebuchets ...**
Big siege engines did exist in the era, but they could not be aimed at a moving target.
What does that leave?
**Scorched Earth**
Burn any concentrated food source in the area. Let the giant starve. Forarging for wild berries or hunting bucks is going to get nowhere, at this size.
**Field Artillery**
The Romans had the [Scorpion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpio_(weapon)), a type of torsion catapult that could be moved by the troops and aimed by the gunner.
[Answer]
Initial attempts when she first appeared would probably amount to suicide missions causing only pinpricks. Once the panic settled down the citizens would have to coexist for a while. But with the giant snacking on all their livestock, they'd have to do something.
At this point, biological warfare is the way to go. Chemical toxins of the era would have to be delivered in massive quantities - it's not like they had nerve agents. The goal would be to cause infected wounds, especially to limbs. Using [techniques from similar times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biological_warfare#Post-classical_ages) tipping sharp weapons with infectious agents (for example fluids from rotting corpses, or excrement) would be known. Even soil may contain botulism spores; while botulism wasn't identified until the 18th or 19th century, soil-contimated wounds were known to be problematic.
To get sufficient penetration wouldn't be easy. A spike pit trap big enough for just a foot would be one way, or the heaviest crew-served ballistas. Or both, with the ballista firing over a concealed trap or oversize [punji sticks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punji_stick).
Trying to feed infected food might work too, at least to slow her down - a few barrels of beer left as bait, but some contaminated with the same agents. If livestock infected with anthrax could be identified, they would provide a good source of infectious material, and anthrax can be contracted orally or cutaneously.
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ropes on horseback. Bring her down like an ATAT
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By the mid-15th century, field artillery already looked and operated like it would for the next three hundred years - just heavier for a given amount of firepower and more expensive to field. Smaller man-portable guns of various designs (usually some form of tiny cannon mounted to the front of a short wooden stave, which was armed and fired the same way as a cannon) had also proliferated.
The existing answers all pose viable options (especially Chris H's "Kill it with sepsis!" option, which would be my approach if this was the 13th century instead). However, I think they're inappropriate to the premise, which poses a 15th century medieval army as the antagonist. This question simplifies to *How would men with guns solve a problem that can be solved with high velocity pieces of metal?*
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For a smaller giant, a bunch of archers is probably the easiest way. Hey, it works in Warhammer! You don't even need that many, although it might take them a while if the skin is thick. They'd have to go for weak spots like eyes or a death of a thousand cuts type deal. Or maybe poison the arrowtips.
Your giant at 61 m is kind of big though. It's really quite similar to a siege tower. So similar tactics are possible: Catapults, trebuchets, ballistas, any sort of heavy projectile. If you're being realistic, such a large giant would likely move quite slow. But if you make it proportionally as agile as a human or something, it might be hard to land a hit with some of those. Then they'd have to resort to archers, but probably very large bows with heavier arrows, or crossbows. It might also take a very long time.
You might be thinking the giant can just stomp the archers. Nah. The archers scatter in a wide circle and it would take him a very long time to stomp each one.
Other more exotic options include setting a pitch trap. Spread some flammable stuff on the ground, and lure the giant in. Then set it on fire with burning arrows or a torch. This doesn't work if the giant's hide is valuable or something like that.
An interesting option would be to lure him near some tall fortress and throw boulders or boiling oil on him. Honestly with 61 m it's kind of clumsy to get him to a something tall enough. Maybe a canyon? But dropping rocks from above is kind of like throwing them with a catapult, so it's not that dramatic. However, you could for example have the giant crawl under a gatehouse and then have people throw things on him, it would make for an interesting scene.
Depending on how physically accurate the giant is, you could prepare various tripping traps like raised tripropes or chains, wet or icy stone, cartfulls of banana peels... If you're more on the realistic end of the spectrum, falling would be devastating to the giant. Plus infantry could rush in and stab him with spears or halberds. Alternatively, you could use caltrops, like upright sharp wooden logs hidden among wheatfield or tall grass, stuff like that.
But my favorite by far would be a sneak attack. Have scouts track the giant and wait for him to sleep. He would presumably sleep on the ground, if he has a giant bed you can bring siege ladders or climbing gear. Now that you got him, you can poison, stab, use a battering ram with a sharp tip, set on fire, do whatever you want really. You can have a guy climb inside his ear and carve up his brain from the inside. Shudder! If you want to go with plain old stabbing, probably it would have to be synchronized so that everyone stabs at the same time, on command, since he'll start waking up from the pain.
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**The giant has to sleep sometime**
Gulliver meets the Lilliputians
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FAcIG.png)
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Why complicate things? Just make an extra large ballista. Shouldn't present a particularly complicated engineering task.
"Use more gun."
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**What is the medieval equivalent of Lego?**
As many commenters above have noted, the heavier you are, the more your weight pushes down onto the ground, and this means you can be more hurt by falls. You can also be more hurt by sharp things on the ground. This is why a child can gleefully romp around a room full of Lego bricks, but an adult suffers excruciating pain from a barefoot step onto a single Lego.
Now imagine how much your giant would suffer from stepping on these toys!
Naturally, this doesn't apply if your Giant wears shoes.
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[
For those who've read my previous questions, you might begin to see a "subtle" recurring theme.
# Context
*You can skip this part if you're just interested in the problem*.
>
> In a near-future post-WW3 world, a little less than 1 out of 1000 people is a mutant. Not (necessarily) the gross-green mutant type, rather the human with super-ability type. Geopolitics worldwide can be basically explained by a generalized cold war, with no peace treaty signed, but enough powerful mutants on each side to keep some semblance of status-quo. Less powerful mutants live a "normal" life. The rest are basically super-heroes against super-villains.
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# Question
**Let's set the scene. 50 people are in a urban non-descript location (a bank, a street, an opera), when Bad Guys A, B, and C come in, guns blazing. They want to rob/murder/take people hostage.**
**What you see in a Hollywood movie** is, usually, people fleeing in every direction, screaming, panicking, with no organization and little to no care for others.
**In reality, things seems to be a bit different.** I looked into some papers to get a basic idea, so I've only got second-hand knowledge (thus, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). But, apparently, a lot of people just stay there, stunned by what's happening. There are a few heroes helping others (diffusion of responsibility), a few quick ones who react and run away (probably a better capacity to deal with stressful situations, by my own interpretation), but most people just stay frozen during the first shock.
The question is: **what would happen if out of these 50 people, more than 40 of them had basic military training?** A mandatory national service exists, so apart from children and people too old when the measure was passed, everybody has been through at least conscription period. Would we observe a difference in reaction? Would the proportions change? More heroes, more runners, less frozen people?
They know help is on its way. People trained and equipped to react will be coming to deal adequately with the situation. Would they (statistically) be inclined to try to take matters into their own hands, or react in a disciplined manner and fall back until backup is there?
**TLDR: Statistically, would we observe a significant difference in the way people react to a crisis situation when most of them have received military training, and if so, what kind of difference?**
I'd prefer answers backed up by facts and/or studies, but I admit I failed to find any on this particular scenario. I'm not qualified in behavioral studies, so information in this question is to be taken with care, as I may have misunderstood some things.
**EDIT 1** : The first answers focused a bit on the duration of the training. While it's my mistake and the answers are helpful on their own, keep in mind the question was more about trained vs untrained rather than duration of training (difference that has been treated in many answers, though in different arguments). I've revised the duration and put a more generic term to allow answers not to focus on the amount of time of the conscription.
The training is the same for everyone, and will likely include at least a few exercises about attack in civilian places. In this setting, the goal is not to have an army made of conscripts (and thus all of its roles), but to reinforce national identity and have everybody to be trained more quickly and efficiently than without conscription.
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In a general emergency situation, individual reactions vary widely as you have noted. Training for a particular situation can help, as does a well-established chain of responsibility. However, military training alone does not guarantee a better reaction.
Military training is offset by PTSD experienced by veterans of actual combat. In extreme cases, all it takes to reduce a former soldier to jelly is a loud "bang",
At the recent Florida school shooting, we saw unarmed former military (football coach) and off duty active police (parent volunteer) try to step in, while the armed and specifically trained person who was supposed to take charge, and his first line of backup ran away.
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This is pretty simple: assuming the 50 people are unarmed, there isn't much they can do. There is really no place to hide, but people will try anyways. The big difference is that there is a larger probability that somebody will try to take down an attacker while he is reloading - if he/she can. With 3 attackers, that's not likely.
I suggest you read up on the [2009 Ft Hood shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Fort_Hood_shooting) by MAJ Nidal Hasan. 13 dead and more than 30 injured. 3 actually tried attacking Hasan - two died and the third was wounded.
Furthermore, what exactly does "react in a disciplined manner and fall back" mean? For the scenario you've described, this would only apply to a few who were lucky enough to be located near rear doors, and they would need to slip out quietly in the confusion. Which is exactly what happened at Ft Hood.
"Military training" is not magic, and it basically lets you do what you have been trained to do - no more, no less. Unless that training specifically addresses being confined to a killing field with no weapons, it's hard to see how it can help.
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[Gary Klein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_A._Klein) did a number of studies with military and fire departments, studying how people made decisions in very high stress situations. He has written several books detailing this research and [Sources of Power](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0262611465) is the easiest to read. He calls his model of decision making [Recognition Primed Decision-making](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition_primed_decision). While this isn't exactly the scenario you were looking for, Klein's studies were about how real-world experts can/did make decisions in very high stress environments.
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> *a lot of people just stay there, stunned by what's happening*
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That is exactly the purpose of sudden violence. SWAT teams depend upon it to surprise, stun and overwhelm their targets. A majority of civilians would first respond with "this can't be happening" followed by a long pause to try to determine what is happening: trying to orient and decide what to do (in the terms of [OODA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop)).
You may wish to ponder the sort of response to such an armed robbery that would happen in Switzerland and Israel. Both countries have mandatory military service.
In your post-WW3 world, you may want to have your future Hollywood prepare civilians by showing exactly how they *should* behave. Not the freezing of current Hollywood movies, but instead the sort of responses you want your public to have. I think people significantly underestimate the power and influence of storytelling that movies have on the public.
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Depends upon the "military training." Six months is paltry: That means a couple weeks of orientation, but most training on-the-job. Little combat training for many before the six months expires.
So a former aircraft mechanic's assistant or single-cruise submariner is likely to know very little about close quarters combat or active shooter situations. Under stress, many folks do indeed tend to freeze...until somebody reminds them to focus upon what they have been trained upon.
Conscription-based (or National Service) militaries tend to use a small career cadre to provide training and leadership...to do that reminding. This type of organization tends to be hierarchical (of course), and much of the orientation for conscripts revolves around obeying orders and NOT exercising initiative. This is very different from the professional forces that do encourage initiative in, say, many (not all) NATO countries.
This is a longwinded way of saying that six-month conscript response is unlikely to be much better than non-conscripts, except around the edges - rallying around the police, initial first aid, etc.
There's an assumption here that the six-month conscription does not include some kind of Active Shooter or Emergency Response or Close Quarters Combat or First Aid training. If your society DOES include several days (preferably a week) of that training, including (expensive) multiple exercises and scenarios, then your citizenry's response will be much better.
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Six months of millitary training is a laughable amount and wouldn't change a single thing.
Mandatory millitary training is mostly utilized to "shape" young men into responsible and strong people and maybe give one or two of them a perspective for the future. The training itself consists of blindly following rules and orders, keeping your room and uniform in order, doing lots of physical excercises and some shooting, and being woken up in the middle of the night to be sent on some equivalent of adventure camping.
Only those who saw a perspective for themselves in the millitary and who enlist for a longer period of time are given additional training in a specialized field of their liking (like paramedics, paratroopers or engineers).
Most people I know hated basic millitary training, even though some of them actually enlisted for several years. Whoever didn't enlist was happy to forget what little they did learn. 6 month are much too little to develop the kind of muscle memory required to make a difference in a hostile situation. As soon as you are a common civilian again, you forget the training within a few months anyways.
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Basic military training does nothing in a situation of armed robbery, because that situation isn't covered by the training.
The more general effects of training are twofold. First, to make reactions automatic. I'm trained in martial arts, and when I was in full training, the specific blocking technique I learnt became so much second nature, that I'm confident I would've had a good chance to instinctively block an attack coming out of the blue.
Secondly, training prepares you for the general situation intercepting the flight-or-fight response. I'm not afraid of fights anymore and would more or less calmly stand my ground against an unarmed attacker. In fact, I've done so. Without having experienced contact fights, I'd probably run or try some panicked stupid attack.
So, in your situation, the military trained people would benefit from not being totally shocked by the mere presence of guns. They are unlikely to run around screaming. But they wouldn't know how to react to the specific situation anyway. They'd be more calm than untrained people, but would probably not do anything specific, and still react as individuals.
**Veterans**, people who have actually experienced combat, are a different thing.
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From what I have seen, the effect of training to deal with emergencies (such as military training) has one primary effect. Such training permits the individuals to incorporate information about what is happening faster.
Tangurena mentions that many people often end up standing around, stunned. They can't incorporate the information about what happened fast enough. Non-emergency training might help you decide to run towards the nearest exit (if you knew where it was to begin with). Emergency training might permit:
* Ducking for cover while looking for your next move. This would be most visible in posture. A person who intends to make a next move will keep their limbs in a position to act if given a chance. A person who intends to stay put may flatten their body as much as possible.
* Identify who is attacking and how they are armed. Perhaps determining what kind of training they appear to have.
* The ability to remain still when the opponent is trying to get them to move. Shock and Awe is a lot less effective against trained opponents. A trained individual retains the ability to stay still or move when *they* want, not when their opponent wants.
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## There is a considerable difference but...
It really depends on the type of situation at hand.
Like you, my knowledge of such situations is second hand - or 1.5 hand, as you're about to find out. I say this because a member of my family is what you would call a "field nurse". He has been trained as a first responder to several kinds of situations like broken bones, stabs, gunshots... you name it, including those with multiple victims (which is, I believe, what you're looking for), like a gas leak, an explosion or the collapse of a building due to a super someone being punched against it.
I saw him once trying to control a small backyard fire with an extinguisher and it really looked like a hard task for him. Since didn't get this particular kind of training, it's only natural that he wouldn't excel at putting out fires, even though he is an amazing nurse. While he might be very good at guiding people through the smoke to safety during a fire, the skills to ease the flames are not part of his toolkit.
Note however, that each "event" is unique. You can't say that all gunshot wounds or wild fires will be the same. There will always be unpredictable elements to responding to such situations - elements that might be too much even for a prepared person to deal with.
You don't need to look very hard to find videos or angry posts about trained professionals being shitty at the very thing they should master. Maybe that person was having a bad day. Maybe he didn't pay much attention to class. Maybe she confused technique A with technique B.
The truth is that, under extreme stress, there's no certain way to predict the outcome. And this was all said considering that the trained people were not killed in the event itself.
To answer your question, I do think that trained people will almost always do better under these kinds of stressful situations. The sheer fact that someone told you (and you listened, of course) what NOT to do is already a huge advantage in front of the guy standing still in awe at the huge building coming down on him.
I just don't think you can be prepared for **anything** in the strict sense of the word - specially in a world where people have super powers.
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Well, taking into account that basic military training's purpose is to basically (pun somewhat intended) train conscripts/enlisted to obey orders, instantly and without question. So all it would do in your case would be to make quite a lot of people easier to manage... Maybe, depending on the type of that training, the quality of the drafted material etc.
I believe the answer is: what would be the typical reaction would depend on type, duration and methods of that compulsory training. I believe concept would work in an overall military-oriented society, where it is fashion/badge-of-honor/something-necessary-for-life-later to complete one (compare with *Starship Troopers* by R. Heinlein), but even then it cannot be basic. If you make it compulsory service (i.e. Israel), then it would work also, because your requirement needs actually military **service**, not merely training.
Why that is is somewhat complicated (but when it isn't?). First, there is a reason why military prefers volunteers over conscripts, and the most successful military organisations screens the volunteers based on a number of parameters, including IQ (don't blame me for raising it - US Armed Forces are banned from enrolling anyone with IQ below 81, and max 20% of the total force can have IQ between 81 and 93, and it's apparently a huge thing supported by decades of careful studies).
Based on statistical data from my home country on conscription (until abolished in mid-to-late 90'), what you really get from general population is a force that is very rigid in structure, with soldiers of very low quality (initiative, determination and combat readiness almost non-existent, but with high PTSD levels developed during training), yet with very high levels of aggression (which is actually a bad thing).
This comes from the fact that most of the training is done by other conscripts inducted earlier, so they do not see the purpose in the brutality of the basic training beyond basically a retribution on "fresh meat" for what was done to them in turn. Admittedly this may have been also in part an effect of eliminating from draft a good portion of the higher quality material (i.e. deferred or exempted from draft due to enrolling to a college or employment in industry critical to the "defensive effort".
It is in stark contrast to training done by career instructors, where there is brutality also, sometimes also bordering on sadistic (for which there is a very good reason), but is reined in by their own service experience.
There is a difference between a career non-com who may end up with recruits he trained under his own command some day and a non-com who is there for fixed period and will probably never see his trainees again in his lifetime...
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The reactions would largely be the same. They're not prepared for it, not armed for it, so it is a surprising situation and the initial reaction is to probably just freeze all the same while assessing what to do.
There are countries with universal conscription and having gone through the required stint in the military, I don't think my reactions would be any different than if I had not gone through military training - and the Finnish national service is pretty much for the reasons you described.
Also curious what the *correct* way to handle such a situation would be? since unless they're psychos who start killing everyone right away, freezing and following orders does the trick pretty much, in the psychos case just panic run out. If your thinking that they would improvise some weaponry from the banks interior or overwhelm them by hurling themselves on the attackers, then no, no conscript would do that any more than an untrained civilian would. If they saw an exit opportunity they might take it slightly more likely but only slightly.
And if anything conscripts are more capable of(and mentally trained to) following orders than untrained civilians. That's what (conscript) military is all about. It's not a security guard school - it's about orders and waiting and 4% combat training.
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Key point: one with training/certifications is held to a different level of accountability than one without.
Your example is rather extreme; here is a more common case:
>
> Imagine an auto accident, where a person has sustained a neck injury.
> They have fractured a vertebrae in the neck, but no damage to the
> spinal cord. Two people--one with training, one without--perform the
> following action: Without sign of immediate danger (such as the car on
> fire), they drag the person from the car.
>
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> As they are dragged, the neck is wrenched, the fractured vertebrae
> severs the spinal cord, and the person is left paralyzed from the neck down.
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* A lay person (without training) This person would probably be forgiven for this action under some form of good Samaritan interpretation.
* A trained person (with training) would probably be prosecuted--and rightfully so. Never ever EVER would I move someone in this situation. In our training the following is made crystal clear: unless there is an immediate threat to the injured, do not move them in this manner.
In sum, yes, there is a dramatic difference in response. Honestly, sometimes the best action is to simply call 911, and let those on call with the proper training and equipment handle things. A trained person will often be the one to call 911. Many are afraid to get involved, and won't even do that much.
If I see something really dangerous, I will stop to "help," which basically means adding sanity to the situation: get everyone to safety, keep onlookers away from danger, CALL 911, stop people from doing anything stupid, and get the scene organized for the first responders.
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There's a few movies that get it right: a pickup truck full of guys with AKs show up and murder the entire village, and/or worse. It doesn't need to be post WWIII, mutants, or military training - to have the *intelligence* to not put yourself in a situation as part of a group of people susceptible to getting rolled-up on by a squad of AKs. If everyone's so poor that there would be no other way to survive, then I'm not sure what else the bad guys would be after except for, 'or worse' ...
Military training would have prevented 40 out of 50 of those people being there. The rest get shot. \*
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> I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs two hundred and fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. – *[The Bourne Identity](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Bourne_Identity_(2002_film))*
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– Said by a man with his back to the wall, facing the front door, sitting in the booth by the back door. Ready at a moment's notice to **not be part of the situation**, which is expert level training. However, knowing when it's safe enough to stop and have a cup of coffee is entry level. But it's WWIII with x-military mutants; it is no longer safe to stop and have cups of coffee.
(\*) Depending on how much time there is to react, and how cohesive the group is. Get rolled-up on: and probably everyone dies. But, spend any amount of time together with mostly military backgrounds, *and* have seen the pickup truck coming in the distance, then maybe the 35 people still standing there can plan something after everyone calms down... which is probably finding that many more places to hide or run away to.
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The obvious answer is to look at what happened in bank robberies or similar events in countries or times where everyone had had military training.
The most obvious example would be WWII. For a bank robbery in the 1950s, most adult males in there would have had active military service, and seen combat. By the 1960s, it'd be most adult males in their 40s-50s. And anywhere in mainland Europe, every child will have had some exposure to firefights as the Allies rolled up one side of the Axis occupation and the Soviets rolled up the other side.
I clearly wasn't there, but I don't believe bank robbers changed their methods, and I don't believe it was more or less successful. I don't have good data though.
There are many places round the world where national service is still a thing. Greece, Switzerland or Israel, for example. Most of these recruits will never come under fire though, so it isn't a clear comparison. (In the case of Israel,
firefights are mostly one way there, so whilst they'll discharge weapons, they'll rarely get shot at themselves. Stones yes, bullets no.) As other answers have noted, training and active service are not the same thing, so the question might want to be clearer about that.
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This question is similar to my other question "[would walkers work on airless worlds](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/106667/would-walkers-work-on-airless-worlds)?", however even though it's the same setting and I am talking about the same battle group tactic that question dealt with the big boys of war, the vehicles so big it would scare a "Deserts Of Karakh" tank Commander (I don't know the exact size of the things), this question is about vehicles on the size order of an m1 Abrams or AT-RT (two legged walker about half the size of an AT-ST), the main purpose of these is as anti-infantry or ant-anti-Walker vehicles. So a far different discussion.
So for a bit of background on the scenario: the earth-moon system is engulfed in the greatest war it has ever seen, a war waged between powers on both worlds over the fate of the earth-moon system. That's all I have so far... I am talking about fighting on the moon in this case but it applies to any space-rock without an atmosphere.
Since I am trying to figure out the small boys I am simply trying to figure out which is better, tanks or small walkers. They're mostly anti-infantry or anti-vehicle so they require the ability to carry either weapon and to be fairly quick. I am currently for small walkers so let me list of the reasons why.
Now the tanks have the advantage that when tread is blown it doesn't normally crash, two-legged walkers do, four-legged ones similar to crab droids would become stationary. But Walkers have one huge advantage, the lunar dust! if you don't know the lunar dust is so fine that it will get into electronics if it gets stirred, the problem is so bad that any wheeled vehicle would likely stir up so much dust that it could explode because of the amount of dust in it, consider multiplying the amount of deadly dust stirred up by a tank and multiply that by the amount of dust hundreds of tanks would stir and you have the big problem of more than half of them blowing up on the way to battle, consider now how reduced the problem is when you walk on legs, and fairly high. A transport walker (like the AT-OT) could fix the problem of the en-route problem but the dust could still destroy many tanks during the battle.
Edit:
Credit to TCAT117 for convincing me that in the case of small vehicles tanks are better, even on the moon. my main concern was that the lunar dust would be a big problem, but it wasn't, and that low g would force the tanks to go ridiculously slow, but war is slow. The jury's still out on number two, I'm keeping this on still because if a pro-walker person can prove to me that walkers can easily go faster than tanks the small walkers will be more important than I am currently going to make them. I'm still going to have big ones though.
Edit:
I have come up with a bit more on the scenario that should give you a better idea about why these ground forces exist. First of the earth and moon are both separated between many different governments: the earth is split between a few dozen to over 300 separate nations, the moon probably has over 2,000 nations (the exact number isn't important). but the Lunar armies are for this nation on nation combat. If your attacking from earth the combat will be different.
Edit:
So far so good, I am getting alot of answers talking about the uselessness of land vehicles on the moon and if you think you have something to add then please address it, all of the discussion around that however was before the edit above so I would ask that anyone with that viewpoint fit their answers to the more detailed addition to the scenario on edit two.
But if you want to discuss the how different land vehicles compare then it might be helpful to know that the main factor I am considering is the Lunar regoliths ability to destroy vehicles in transit.
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Aerospace engineer here, I see there's already an accepted answer but want to chip in some additional points that I don't see made in any of the other answers.
Any vehicle operating on the lunar surface has to deal with several things not normally encountered on Earth:
* Gravity is one-sixth (1/6) that of Earth
* There is no atmosphere
* [The temperature](http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/new-nasa-temperature-maps-provide-102070) in the sun can range up to +300F, while in shadow can drop below -300F
* Very irregular, rocky terrain with wide craters and a thick layer of regolith
* Lunar regolith is [extremely fine and abrasive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_soil), meaning it gets into everything and damages everything it gets into
Lunar gravity being so low is actually a benefit: vehicles which would be very heavy and lumbering on Earth would be much lighter (and therefore more agile) on the Moon. Variable suspension (think the trick hydraulics in show cars) or jump jets could allow a vehicle to leap across obstacles, which would normally be impossible on Earth.
The lack of atmosphere is a significant problem for any vehicle, because it means that any oils or greases based on volatile petroleum products would evaporate within minutes, and as such would not be suitable lubricants. NASA uses a variety of [dry lubricants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_lubricant), but these can be high cost, high maintenance, or simply not as effective as traditional oils.
The massive temperature variation is another good reason to ditch traditional lubricants in favor of dry ones. A follow-on consequence of this temperature swing is that joints or bearings requiring high precision would not function well, due to differences in thermal expansion.
Finally, perhaps the greatest challenge is the combination of terrain and lunar soil. Wheeled vehicles are mainly designed for smooth surfaces and can only handle rough terrain with advanced suspension systems like those used in the Mars rovers. Traditional rubber wheels also don't work on the Moon due to the afore-mentioned atmosphere and temperature issues, so you need to use something else like metal mesh or plastic, which limits their top speed and load-bearing capacity. Tires also can't be too skinny, or they'll sink into the thick regolith and get stuck.
Tracked vehicles are better able to handle irregular terrain and they spread their weight across a much larger footprint, so they aren't likely to sink. But the drawback with tracks is that every single tread is double-jointed (front and rear) and track systems usually require half a dozen wheels on each side, or more. That's a lot of bearings to lubricate, and a *lot* of places for regolith to get inside and destroy the joints. And unfortunately, there's no way to keep the regolith out of those joints since they'll all be in constant, direct contact with the ground.
Assuming you've solved the problem of controlling multiple legs (or have a decent supply of Handwavium), legged vehicles have substantial advantages over both wheeled and tracked vehicles in this environment. They have far fewer joints than a tracked vehicle (3-5 per leg) and those joints typically do not need to rotate more than 180 degrees, which means they can be covered with boots to prevent regolith contamination. The feet can be sized for different types of terrain or modes of walking: wide and flat to support a lot of weight without sinking, small and narrow for lighter vehicles or difficult terrain. A legged vehicle can also climb or jump over obstacles that would be difficult for tracked or wheeled vehicles to traverse (here, 6 or more legs is beneficial). Legged vehicles may also have the ability to right themselves if tipped over (assuming the legs have sufficient range of motion), which most modern wheeled or tracked vehicles cannot do.
The biggest benefits I see with using tank tracks are increased speed over smooth terrain, reduced chance of bogging down in thick regolith, and lower vehicle profile. The biggest drawbacks I see are extremely high maintenance requirements (due to wear on the treads and wheels), and mediocre mobility in very rocky terrain.
The biggest benefits I see with using legs are increased speed over rocky terrain, low maintenance requirements (very few of the joints are in direct contact with the lunar regolith), and self-righting capability. There is also the additional bonus of redundancy if you have a 6-or-more-legged vehicle; if one leg is destroyed, the others can reconfigure to permit continued (albeit impaired) movement. The biggest drawbacks I see are high system complexity (independent motors for joint articulation and a sophisticated computer to correctly operate the legs), a need for some precision joints, and higher vehicle profile.
Given the comparison above, personally, I'd go with a walker. Besides the performance and maintenance benefits, it would be pretty awesome to skitter across the lunar surface in an armored cockroach carrying a big gun. ;)
Additional resources on the properties of lunar regolith:
<https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/letss/regolith.pdf>
<https://www.universetoday.com/20360/lunar-regolith/>
<http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1973LPSC....4.1159T>
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I was an Anti-tank gunner for 8 years with the Marines, I'll let ya in on why walkers will never be used by a military as an armored vehicle.
First, joints are huge weak points. Not just to enemy fire, but also from a maintenance perspective, and the sensitive servos and gyros required will be infinitely more vulnerable to dirt than anything on a tank. Next, a walker is by nature of being able to walk going to expose more surface area to enemy fire. A good armored vehicle is low to the ground for a reason. Armored vehicles make heavy use of terrain as cover in an attempt to present as small of a target profile as possible. Modern anti tank guided missile weapons basically mean literally anything from infantry to a small drone aircraft can be packing enough heat to destroy a main battle tank. This is why armored vehicles are going to be trending towards smaller and faster instead of bigger and heavier. Finally there is gravity, the moon's gravity makes any sort of walking extremely difficult, this only becomes more pronounced the larger the vehicle is. A large walker could be knocked over too easily in low G to be useful.
Dust is not something that is going to make a vehicle explode. We've been fighting a war in the harshest deserts on our planet for 16 years and our modern tech can deal with sand and dust just fine. Dust **will** jam up the joints and servos on a walker though.
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From first principles: if you have got big squared away, then one could argue small should be as small as possible - 1 soldier. There is a continuum in scifi between powered armor suits and small mechs / walkers. For example, this thing from District 9. Big powered armor or a small walker / mech?
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7dizLdsZJw>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3jIID.jpg)
The nice thing about small 1-person powered armor / mechs is that they could move by jumping, take advantage of the low lunar gravity. I do not recall much jumping in the [Starship Troopers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers#/media/File:StarshipSoldier.jpg) movie but in the book they wore powered armor that let them travel fast by jumping great distances. That would be great for the lunar terrain.
An infantry unit advancing with a series of bounding jumps would be pretty cool. They could ride on the big walker and then explode off of it like fleas.
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I would suggest something comparable to the LAV-25 used by the canadian and US military would be more appropriate than either.
Do not underestimate Regolith, Regolith is not mere dust or sand.
On Earth we have erosion effects from wind, rain, weather in general and if nothing else, simply motion. on the moon, we do not. The regolith is entirely composed of tiny abrasive chunks of silicate, razor sharp in almost every tiny grain.
That stuff is horrible, it clumps and sticks together, it's statically charged and will stick to just about anything, and if you breath it you might as well be breathing knives, it will shred your lungs and kill you.
Lots of moving parts exposed to vacuum and regolith is going to be an awful maintenance headache on its own. Wheels and motors on a relatively lightweight mobile platform will reduce that enormously.
the many independent drive systems mean that if anything jams up it'll be able to keep going, and the 8 wheels will spread the weight more than sufficiently in the lower gravity.
Legs have been discussed to death, the only practical reason I can see for using them on the moon is to avoid dust by literally stilt-walking through it.
The terrain on the moon is not rough enough to merit legs even if the gravity makes them easier to construct and move around with.
Treads meanwhile are 100% exposed to regolith and essentially guaranteed to clog up with it. The big draw of treads is the hugely effective weight-distribution and surface-grip. but in lower gravity you don't need the weight distribution nearly as much, I couldn't comment on the grip issue.
There is very little that can't be done by a wheeled platform instead of a conventional tank when mass is a reduced issue.
For an example in science-fiction, you might look at the Mako vehicle from Mass Effect. A futuristic version of the LAV-25 I mentioned at the start.
Lunar combat is going to be a messy affair, a nightmare combination of knife-fight range direct combat and satellite guided munitions.
Your horizon is nearer than on earth, likely nearer than it should be simply because of the craters, you have no over-the-horizon radar (on earth, we achieve this by bouncing radar off the ionosphere) your only way to track things beyond the horizon or even line-of-sight is by satellites and flying craft that can directly see them.
You may be able to achieve limited long range sensors by observing surface-vibrations from ground vehicles moving around, but in all likelihood the regolith will act as a vibration absorber, another argument for avoiding legs as the pounding footsteps will alert any such sensors like the vibrating glass of water in Jurassic Park.
Explosions, particularly fragmentation weaponry will be murderous, on earth a frag grenade is intended to injure as much as it is to kill, on the moon, any suit-puncture is likely to be immediate death without some seriously clever automatic sealant technology, even then the task of getting back to a pressurised environment is going to take long enough moon-warrior is likely to die of their injuries.
Any infantry operating on the surface will definitely want some form of armoured vehicle support, if nothing else to provide a med-evac and triage.
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It depends entirely on how agile your walkers are - if they're basically tanks on legs because of rule of cool, then ordinary tanks are going to be much more sensible and feasible due to reasons elucidated in other answers. In particular, survivability is a big plus for tanks - apart from incredibly thick armor, hard-kill active protection systems (APS) are becoming a de facto standard on newer models, which allows the tank to automatically detect and destroy incoming threats that would have been fatal to previous generations of vehicles. Essentially, tanks are becoming mobile fortresses that are mostly impervious to anything except aircraft and enemy tanks of equal capability.
On the other hand, if your walkers are capable of jumping, dodging, and frustrating enemies by being generally too nimble to hit with weapons strong enough to bring them down, then you have a case. The low gravity, coupled with reaction jets, would make them even more maneuverable. Armor would be minimal (protection against small-arms fire at best) because (a) one hit from a high-calibre weapon and the unit is out of the fight anyway (b) more armor would affect agility, which is this unit's most important attribute.
The walker's joints being a weak spot is a moot point because the assumption is that the enemy forces are having a hard enough time hitting the main body of the walker, let alone its limbs.
For weapons, it depends very much on how esoteric you want to get. With a humaniform walker, the conventional approach would likely involve installing a high-calibre weapon akin to a tank's turreted main gun, in place of one of the "arms".
This all assumes, of course, that the enemy up against these walkers doesn't have/isn't using the simplest way to defeat hard-to-hit glass cannons, namely radiation-seeking missiles. (Take for example today's BGM-71E TOW, which can [theoretically] be carried and launched by infantry and is capable of defeating up to 900mm of reactive armor.) Presumably the faction using walkers would be acutely aware of this vulnerability and utilise tactics to minimise it, e.g. by trying to get their enemy to fruitlessly expend the ammunition of this weapon.
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I am writing a fantasy series about witches. It's set in a high fantasy world. To get magic powers in this fantasy world, a girl has to voluntarily transform into a magical being.
The magic in this world has a huge variety of different possible applications, depending on the witch's personal strengths and training. Basic powers enable witches to fly, to get animal familiars, to heal other people by magic, to turn their enemies into animals, to cast fireballs and lightening bolts, limited mind control and much more besides. The harder spells do have an energy cost, so a witch must rest and get her energy back after doing something impressive by magic. Stronger magic include powers of prophecy, teleportation and necromancy.
I am trying to come up with a price for magic that is large enough that most women would never become witches but small enough so that that a heroine or anti-heroine might pay the price if driven to desperation. I have considered irreversible disfigurement as a cost, but I now think it is too small a price because it doesn't actually stop a witch from leading a normal life in this pre-industrial fantasy society. She could still become a traditional wife despite being disfigured. So I have been thinking about a price that combines severe disfigurement and becoming barren as well. I am thinking of disfigurement that includes her skin going green and her features being seriously distorted and also complete and incurable sterility. Does that penalty seem severe enough to guarantee that only a minority of women would even consider being a witch?
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There's no set price. Everybody is different, and what would be a terrible sacrifice for me might be trivial for you. But the price can never be trivial. **Finding what your price is is the first step in becoming a witch.**
To pay your true price you must find something fundamental in your soul, and sever it. That loss is what breaks open the crack that magic flows through. Maybe it's your home, your youth, or your only child. Maybe it's something in your body - give up your hands, your voice, your looks. Maybe it's the ability to ever love and be loved. The point is, if it's something you're reasonably willing to part with, it won't work. It has to be a thing that cuts.
Most people refuse to even think about it - even the act of merciless self-appraisal that you need in order to discover your price is too harrowing for most. But desperate circumstances can burn the layers of comfortable self-deception away from people, until the choice look inescapable, which is why more witches are made in difficult times.
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Desperate people do all kinds of desperate things. They join convents and give up on having children. They are cruel to other people and kill other people. Desperate people suffer and endure however they can.
But the desperate people want to still be themselves. That is what they are fighting for.
**The witches lose their minds.**
Losing your mind means giving up on being you. Witches babble and curse and cackle. They talk to things that no-one sees. Are those things real? They make mud pies and then eat them. They are compelled to rhyme. Is that the magic? They dance in the rain. They count every hole in the sieve because they must. They turn into animals, or maybe they act like the animal. They are scary to watch and even scarier to imagine being.
Then when your protagonist takes the plunge and becomes a witch, she gets to experience that. And you get to convey to your readers what her world has become.
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**No**, your penalty will not realistically result in a small minority of women considering becoming a witch. It is however a common trope in science fiction and fantasy, and many writers put it in their stories thinking that this would be the realistic result.
The idea that magic conferring infertility will deter almost all women from magic is premised on the idea that almost all women *innately* want children. This isn't true, and remains not-true across a broad variety of real and extrapolated fictional cultural contexts.
Women have children for a broad variety of reasons, but two major ones are "innate desire" and "desire for social power in society." Most cultures across human history (at least most whose cultural history survived to the modern day) were/are patriarchial and expect women to bear children in order to access any significant degree of social power.
Introduce magic, and suddenly there's a different route to social power. (Similar to wealth in many real world societies, but even more effective.) If you can fly, heal the sick, and transform people into animals, you are both precious to your allies and very dangerous to your enemies. That gives you power, no need for children if you don't have any inherent desire to raise them. Many women will consider it, and a fair number will go through with it.
This is counterintuitive to many writers because, living in one such patriarchal society, the idea that women bear children as a matter of course is socially reinforced. "Infertility" sounds like a steep penalty for women, but for many women it would be a neutral side effect, or even a positive one.
Your question is yes/no, so I won't go too deep into alternative suggestions, but you might consider prices that make people think twice in the real world and extrapolate to similar prices you can create with the artistic license of magic.
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**"Lady Problems"**
Since you are talking about witches and witches are women, it is thematic that the price has something to do with womanhood. For example:
* Infertility
* Extreme fertility (my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard)
* Extreme Libido (and they're like it's better than yours)
* Desire to eat children
* Requirement to eat Children
* Requirement to birth and then eat your own children.
* Requirement that your milkshake brings all the boys to the yard and then you mate with the boys and then eat them and then later birth their children and then gobble up the children too.
Any of these things damage your ability to be a traditional woman. So most women don't become witches. Only those that are outcasts or otherwise dissatisfied with their place in society as women will pay the price.
One subversion of normal tropes is that disfigurement is not a result of becoming a Witch. In fact becoming a Witch makes you *more* alluring to men. And most women too. Witches are like catnip to those guys. The disfigurement is done voluntarily to prevent all the boys coming to the yard and rubbing their genitals all over on your front window.
Infertility on its own might be a benefit to some women since they can have sex every day without getting pregnant. For example a prostitute or a woman who ascends the power ladder by forging sexual alliances. Though such a woman would necessarily live outside of "traditional" society. Perhaps this is a good storytelling device, to show her transition from normal women, to sexually active women, and all the way to hag living in a hut in the swamp.
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## Sacrificing and Innocent Human Life
Throughout human society, there have been handfuls of people who consider this an acceptable practice, but in most societies it's not only abhorred by individuals, but by society as a whole. Not only does becoming a witch itself come with a price that most people would not be willing to pay, but one would never able to enjoy thier power in the public eye, because being seen casting a spell is equivalent to publicly confessing to murder.
If you want to take it a step further and tie it more into the female experience, you could require her to sacrifice her own child. Now not only do you know a witch is a murderer, but it was filicide to boot.
So to become a witch means to become a thing hated and hunted by everyone around you. Only in very desperate times or through some very extreme cultish indoctrination would you see this choice being made with any regularity.
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Q: *"Basic powers enable witches to fly, to get animal familiars, to heal other people by magic, to turn their enemies into animals, to cast fireballs and lightening bolts, limited mind control and much more besides. The harder spells do have an energy cost, **so a witch must rest and get her energy back**"*
Q: *"I am thinking of disfigurement that includes her skin going green and her features being seriously distorted and also complete and incurable sterility. Does that penalty seem severe enough to guarantee that only a minority of women would even consider being a witch?"*
Q: *"Is this price of magic severe enough to deter most women"*
You won't have to turn them green.. There's already an answer in your opening. Because your question is science-based, I'll avoid imposing artificial punishments (by whom?) and put your energy issue up front.
**The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that "in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state."**
.. and magic often violates this law, or.. it *seems to*.. actually, your witch pays with her own well being,
## Witches pay for the energy of magic, die of exhaustion
Your witches are impressive, and popular in society. They look glorious when they use their magic, they produce spectacular shows, they turn villains into animals.. they can *heal* people.. in her life time, the witch will meet lots of fans and grateful folks. People will listen, they prophetize. Thing is, witches cannot be thanked after their good deeds, because they are speechless of fatigue, right after any magic happens. The witch brings her magic ceremony.. it works.. people applaud.. and then, the witch will close her eyes and turn herself into hibernation. There isn't much of a private, or social life.
**Brain fatigue**
She will die young, for lack of energy. There is no way to eat enough to compensate, because the energy is of another world and drained from the brain. Even powerful witches are known to fall to the ground after doing magic. Some witches even end in a big poof and disappear, after doing something big, like a prophecy.
What's science based about all this ? It's all in the energy, which has to be preserved.. any magic would violate the law of thermodynamics, the witch has to compensate for that. And during life, it gets worse. To maintain their celebrity, witches will attempt to do wild things. The backlash will hit them.
**Being a witch requires strength and a special mindset.**
You need some intelligence, to learn to be a witch. But lots of intelligent women will be very reluctant, they can foresee the energy drain issue. A witch life is actually the life of a modern artist on drugs, dying early at 29.. of exhaustion. Nevertheless, there are women who want to heal people, women who want to be world famous and do wonders, or be prophets. They are very motivated, they will sacrifice themselves, to become a witch.
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I think it could work if you wanted, but I would make it even more extreme.
Ideas:
1. The cost will not affect only the witch in question. Perhaps she has to sacrifice or kill a member of her family or a loved one. Not sure why you would need to, but this is just an idea. This would not only create conflict within the character, but it would also deter most people, ensuring that there is no going back.
2. In addition to the deterrents you mentioned, you could have the person, upon becoming a witch, lose all past memories, including the recollection of their family, friends, and even their own name! Such a harsh price would be sure to keep most people from becoming a witch.
3. This would be a situational consideration, one that might not be applicable. Perhaps witches are frowned upon by your world's culture and are even exiled from their homeland. Being banished from your home and cast out by your family would ensure that most people would not become a witch.
4. Once every full moon (or whenever you want it), the witch has to pay a cost--if they don't, they will die. You could be very imaginative with this one. Perhaps the witch has to perform a certain ritual that disfigures her more and more, or maybe it involves spells that slowly, over the course of years and years, make her lose her mind. This could work in a variety of circumstances. It also ensures that pressure is placed continuously against that character, making tension in the book. Will she be able to keep herself alive? Does she *want* to keep herself alive?
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# Once someone starts feeling the price of magic, it's failed to deter that someone from being a witch.
The thing about deterrence is that severity often isn't the core reason it'll work; what works, primarily, is the belief that they will suffer the deterrence.
So you'll need a few details:
1.) Being able to witness the price being paid by the witch in person.
2.) Having the witch in question verify that, no, there really is *no* way around it - they've tried to get around the price, and it didn't work. And so have others, [multiple times, multiple ways](https://xkcd.com/242/).
Without 1.), until someone actually becomes a witch, they may not believe it's a price that actually comes into effect, and without 2.) - you're going to get people who recognize 1.), but think they can loophole their way around it (i.e. casting "Cure Severe disfigurement" or "Cure infertility" on themselves once getting cursed. Whether or not that would work in your setting isn't important - someone *will* try it to get around a deterrence.).
## With that in mind, here are some considerations that may work:
**1.) Becoming a witch forces you to become the target of cat-calling of anyone you explicitly do *not* enjoy the measures of cat-calling of.**
Rather than necessarily wanting that behavior from themselves out of libido, you can make it that the people who are attracted to a witch to resort to cat-calling be the lowest of the lowest people - like the heaviest drunks, or the really annoying people in the village who just won't give up. How this works would just be magically binding of sorts, but would explain why your witches may decide to just leave villages and towns entirely, and seek isolation. If they *do* perform magical healing for others, they need to be reached out to, and they intentionally screen out who it is, and charge an appropriate fee to suffer the results of that.
Or alternatively, these people just cause a ruckus, or routinely draw bad luck and [bad situations to the witch in question](https://youtu.be/yp_l5ntikaU?t=58).
Though a lot of people might consider that circumstantial, and again, we have the issue of ways around it, since it does leave open ways to get away from that. If you're not fond of social bonds, this is probably just fine, and therefore not a deterrent.
**2.) Becoming a witch leads to a summoning of a predator-like demonic force constantly chasing the witch whether they go, on the hunt of killing them, that's visible to others around them, but invulnerable, or perpetually respawning.**
Going the [Dahaka-like](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYSALYkue-g) (Spoiler warning past the first 6 minutes for Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, but it gets the point across)-like [Beyond six minutes leads to spoilers for Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, but first 6 minutes should be perfectly fine to get the idea across] approach here will sort of require *someone* to have actually become a witch before, since in the series where the Dahaka appears, it only appears *after* someone has used the Sands of Time to significantly change time, but it'll set the idea that yeah - becoming a witch is not an ends to a means, it's a means to an end.
The reason for that? As soon as you become a witch, perhaps with some limitations, you're basically the mouse in a game of cat and mouse with a very dangerous being who's job is to set things right, by any means possible. It'll chase you through a city, a countryside, and may be temporarily held at bay so that you can actually use the magic you command. A lot of their magic will be used creating ways to escape, and hide, and it's not at all subtle. Anyone who helps harbor a witch temporarily learns exactly why they're cursed, and why they wouldn't want to be a witch, or anyone else, to undergo that curse.
## The main caveat here is you'll need actual witches to exist to give people an understanding of *why* witch-hood is something they should avoid doing, unless they're willing to bear this deterrence - and that ways to circumvent these deterrents have been tried - and failed.
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Cost of magic? If you have your magic coming from the casters life-force it could introduce a very interesting dynamic; many wouldn't trade the days / weeks / years a spell will take off your life for it, and it's not just a "you will die sooner", but it takes an immediate affect, a witch can be seen to visibly age whilst performing a higher order, complex spell.
Thus magic is not wielded without intent and thrown around with abandon, it is used in limited ways, when important, because the cost is dire.
I think this helps contain world building, as those with great power aren't just left to run wild, there must be limits for your antagonist otherwise why not just fireball / transmute in to a toad / teleport at the slightest inconvenience and similarly your protagonist doesn't want to be a mary sue who can just pull a spell out of their ass at a drop of a (witches) hat to overcome any obstacle.
Do you trek through treacherous territory for a week or lose two years in a teleport your entire party?
An interesting divide could be added for white hat and black hat witches, magic costs life essence, but, not necessarily *your* life essence, an evil witch would see no qualm in taking the life of others to be able to cast large spells (afterall, that's why they kidnap children, those with the most power to give) whereas white hats would only use their own (or lesser animals, if you're going to need an eye of newt, might as well use the whole lizard..), the evil witches are still constrained by access to the people / animals to draw from and there's a time to drain / perform the spell which would make it moot if you need to get out of dodge sharpish, again to prevent writing yourself in to a hole, but could open interesting dynmaics.
And again, the thought of taking others lives, if a little, would be enough to put many off, just think how many vegans and vegetarians you know..
Personally I would try and avoid anything with connotations on appearance (equating a womans value to her appearance) or fertility, as these are quite strong topics, especially now, so something outside the two would be more palatable to more readers imo.
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**There is no actual big cost**
except for a psychological delusion that you have to tell everyone that *the price* (that you cannot really describe) was definitely not worth it. This would deter a lot of people because ALL of those super powerful, influential and liked (because needed) people are saying that even with their insane gain in powers/status, it was still not worth it. And apparently *the cost* is so bad that they can't even properly talk about it. This way any prospective witch has to imagine what *the cost* is themselves, meaning that they will (very likely) come up with stuff that is costly/bad for them individually because they're the ones imagining something very bad.
This only requires that becoming a witch is a very intentional ritual that you can't go through with on accident, drunk etc. The dread of what the cost will be is the (main) deterrence.
Note that it doesn't **have** to be the only cost, this delusion can neatly stack with others, especially with obvious and graphic ones like disfigurement, scarring etc., stuff that other people see (and will draw their own conclusions about the "actual cost" from). So a scarred face might be the actual hardest cost but people will see that and (having heard only very vague remarks about the true cost being not worth it) will conclude that the scars are a mere (and not so bad) side effect of whatever the "actual" horror of becoming a with is.
I just noticed how this is a bit of a frame challenge: you sound like you don't necessarily need a cost, just a deterrent. Especially if your heroine becomes a with rather late-ish in the story this could be a nice twist of it all. Maybe have her go through several months of trying to prepare for whatever she thinks the cost will be, only to then realize that this preparation/training was useful/whatever in it's own right because she faced her own worst fears.
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First off, as other people have mentioned, there's going to need to be prevalent cautionary tales (be it fairy tales or actually seeing witches) to spread awareness of the downsides. That said, here are a few ideas I have.
**Death of the self**
Yes, magic is magical, and it can do a lot of things. However, it's true what they say: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. While witches are very powerful, it gradually corrupts their very being, their *self*. Note that they don't go insane *per se*; just *different*. Over time, their personalities change; they become cold, aloof, uncaring. As a result, while they are able to accomplish whatever it is they wanted to do, they are no longer around to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
As Jesus put it (Mark 8:36):
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> What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
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**Death of the mind**
As other answers have mentioned, another possibility is for witches to lose their minds. It comes to the same thing in the end; it's just a bit more obvious.
**Death of death**
Witches are immortal. They continue existing forever, even after they stop *living*.
People always speak about death as if it is a bad thing, wishing vainly for earthly immortality. However, while death is a curse for our sin, it is also somewhat of a blessing.
Yes, untimely death due to illness or injury is a tragedy. However, in my experience working at assisted livings, the opposite is generally true of natural death from old age. For all that death is unfortunate, living forever in this broken world would be worse. There's a reason that the trope [Who Wants to Live Forever?](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhoWantsToLiveForever) exists. (Warning: TVTropes.)
Witches may have immortality, but it's a curse.
First off, the real reason why most people want immortality is to protect themselves from untimely death. **In short, what people *really* want is invulnerability.** Take the Harry Potter franchise, for example.
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> By all accounts, the character Voldemort is a brilliant man; while it would have been somewhat difficult, he was fully capable of either creating his own Philosopher's Stone or stealing the original. Instead, he irreparably mangled his soul creating Horcruxes (plural!), rendering himself insane in the process. Why? Because he didn't just want to be immortal, he wanted to be *invulnerable*.
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Witches' immortality is not invulnerability. While their magic increases their defensive capabilities and allows them to recover from anything that doesn't kill them, witches can still be hurt and killed.
Second, while they live forever, **everybody else is still mortal.** Witches must deal with the fact that everyone they know and love will eventually die. Oceans rise, mountains fall. Cultures and languages change, gradually becoming unrecognizable. After but a brief moment of their interminable existences, they find themselves strangers in a strange land.
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Something a lot more simple. Age. After all learning all the spells and the rules behind the magic would require a lot of time, if you cut short magically the learning time you can use a similar amount of time as the currency to pay back.
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A certain very successful animé (Naruto) has a set of extreme powers that a character can obtain at a cost. I won't describe those powers, but the cost is following a certain process. For most people who are able to achieve it, the process is:
1. Kill your best friend
2. Rip their eyeballs out
3. Rip your own eyeballs out
4. Insert your dead best friend's eyeballs into your own eye sockets.
Only once you have transplanted eyes like that, you gain the powers of a god.
Imagine that a woman has to do that in order to become a witch. Being desperate is one thing, but being I-will-rip-both-our-eyes-and-transplant-yours-into-mine desperate is something rare.
If you want to be original, replace the organs involved. Maybe the heart, for example.
P.s.: before any fan comes here to say I'm wrong, I am aware that that's not the actual truth of the process. Yet this is how it is described at one point, and is how at least two characters achieved it.
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Powerful magic can be offset by requiring the caster to bring their own energy, i.e. exhaustion that might lead to death. Or it might be offset by the weight of responsibility, because as you know great power begets great responsibility. But that's not quite your question. Your question is why would women willingly turn down such great power? And I'd like to challenge that:
### Why should there be a price to pay?
Your problem, as I understand it, is that half of humanity suddenly becoming super powerful is a very different setting from what you're trying to achieve, where magic is much more confidential. And the cause of your problem is that your mechanic for achieving magic is self-determination. That's a dangerous mix.
Typically, in fantasy becoming a wizard is usually a function of how you're born. It's genetics or it's divine, or it's generally something that bears no explanation. Some people are magic, some aren't, and you can set the rate arbitrarily and don't have to justify it. The reader just accepts that is it what it is.
That points to two potential solutions:
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**Pivot your mechanic.**
Maybe it's conventional, but "you're magic because you happen to be born that way" works.
You could tweak that by adding an element of having to willingly listen to your inner magic in order to unlock your powers. Simply put, *some people are magic, and some aren't, or they don't know they are, or they don't fundamentally believe they are*.
Here's one example: Luke Skywalker having to willingly turn off the targeting computer and take a leap of faith. He is a great pilot because he's strong with the Force, but he can't materialise that power until he starts believing in it.
Here's another example: Neo having to willingly believe that there is more to the world than what he can perceive, and swallow that pill. The Thomas Anderson of the begining of the movie wouldn't be able to stop bullets because he doesn't believe that's possible.
*It's taking that leap of faith that makes them powerful*. It's not very original, but you know what they say about reinventing the wheel: don't.
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**Pivot your setting.**
Maybe most of the women of your world are just magic and quite powerfully so, and it's going to be a radically different world. That opens a lot of great themes, and also incredibly complex themes, of gender roles, gender power dynamics, and so forth. Easy stuff.
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**But why though?**
This is where I'll develop why it might be very undesirable to set such a price. And I want to be clear: this isn't an indictment on you, or anybody in particular.
I believe that witch mythology exists on a very slippery slope. Putting together power, beauty and fertility has the potential to devolve very easily into something *incredibly sexist*. Take a traditional witch representation: powerful, independent, knowledgeable, ugly, older, uses her sexuality, unmarried, hates children, some shade of evil. Now let's look at the reverse: good, motherly, married, chaste, young, beautiful, uneducated, dependent, weak. A society that produces that myth tells us what its vision of the ideal woman is.
What I'm trying to communicate here is that how you characterise your witches, how you frame them in your society, and how you frame that society in your story, it *is* going to reflect on you, the author. It is <current\_year> after all, your story/setting doesn't exist in a vacuum.
With all that said, what you are looking to establish here is what is more important than power for womankind. And we're talking about the power to pursue their own aspirations, or to emanticipate themselves, or to burn society to the ground and rebuild it in their image. If you oppose that to "leading a normal life in this pre-industrial fantasy society", motherhood, or beauty, that's the slippery slope I mentioned earlier.
And to be perfectly honest, unless your pre-industrial society is a perfect equalitarian paradise, I can't think of a good reason to not just pay the price.
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A cost that affects womanhood is a good cost in a setting where women are expected to be traditional wives and mothers. Becoming a witch thus means social isolation and religious excommunication.
However, no amount of social punishment would outweigh the ability to cast lightning bolts and mind control people. With these powers, you basically rule your corner of the world, and social isolation or loss of motherhood are not meaningful costs for the kind of people who would aspire to learn how to set a town on fire with their mind.
Keeping with the medieval grimdark theme, a meaningful drawback would be **eternal damnation**. As in, hell is real, Satan owns your soul and you will be tortured for eternity. Only the truly selfless would sacrifice themselves in this way, while evil people wouldn't see it as worth the cost.
Alternatively, you could **tone down the upsides**. Healing and claivoyance are inherently social and good hearted powers, so social isolation is actually a real drawback that makes them not worth it in most cases. You can heal people, but they would rather die instead because they think you are consorting with demons. You can see the future, and know you will be burned at the stake but have no power to stop it. Without the ability to throw around fireballs and turn the world into a toybox for your amusement, becoming a witch would be bittersweet at best.
[Answer]
**Clock is ticking.**
You get magical powers allright. But after a certain amount of time, you turn into *insert thing no one would want to be*.
Maybe after a year or so, every witch will burn to cinders with no exception. You wanted powers? Sure! There you go! But you will certainly die in a horrifying way after a few years. Maybe months?
Make the time different for everyone. Some poor souls enjoy magic for a couple seconds. Some, maybe decades. The constant stress, the certain doom... People see witches addicted to drugs, try extreme things.
The certain doom broke many minds. The promise of unimaginable pain and then certain death... Some witches were trapped in illusions and cried before dying. What they have seen?
A witch begged to all the gods and all the holy things. She was a non-believer. What happened? Desperation? Horror? Did she see something that destroyed her entire belief? Promise of pain and torture is more effective than pain and torture. And if it is ambigious with all the description is ambigious, filled with scream and despair, your mind will build its own choice of hell. And maybe the magic is just following that idea? So maybe a sufficiently strong will can overcome it? Who knows? Certainly not the reader if you don't say anything.
**There are stories of a price, yes. But maybe there isn't a price?**
The price itself may not be too much. Sometimes it is the environment and the setting that scares people. Creates hesitation.
The price may be an ambigious thing. Maybe the cruel magical god allowed soem witches to not pay any price at all. But stories like these make anyone hesitant.
And, make the magic accessable. Like, quite easily. "Oh, the mighty power of arcane, right there. Take it if you want." says the priest. A witch is right next to him. Praying. Her knees are bleeding from sitting on solid stone for weeks.
Add the enviroment I described above, and your readers will debate on the price. "There should be a price! It must be a heavy thing!"
Stories and beliefs with lack of sufficient education and wisdom can create decades of suffering. Who says the price needs to be more than to suffer through all the indoctrinated horror.
When you never, never describe the price, readers curiosity will fill the gaps. Make sure no one truly knows anything solid about the price.
Readers minds will draw a horror far worse than you can ever hope to write. Because, every person has their own fears. And this is magic. It can defy rules of nature sometimes.
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Embarking on the journey to become a witch in this world requires a transformation that extracts both physical and psychological tolls from the aspiring witch. To begin her transformation, a woman must concoct a special potion, which carries heavy personal costs. The ingredients of this potion symbolize the witch's emotional sacrifice and willingness to surrender parts of her humanity: blood from her monthly cycle, the blood of a lamb she has tenderly put to sleep and slain, a lion's blood procured similarly, the most bitter, sour, and sweet fruits she has ever tasted, and a part of her own body that holds significant meaning to her. This ingredient reflects her deepest values and varies from one woman to another - it could be her hand, her eye, or any other part. The requirement is that the part surrendered should be the one she values most.
The preparation and consumption of the potion is a grueling process, steeped in psychological torment and physical suffering. After brewing the potion and distilling it to its final state, the aspirant must consume it. The potion, when ingested, triggers an onslaught of sensations - a woman must live through all the pains of those she has ever touched, as well as her own pain. This torment is not only physical but also psychological and spiritual. The agony lasts for several unbearable hours, unless she decides to relinquish her quest. The choice, once made, is irreversible. Regardless of the outcome, the part of her body she sacrificed for the potion is replaced with a grotesque, red and silver-ish substitute.
The toll of the transformation process extends to the realm of interpersonal relationships as well. Completing the ritual leads to a complete erasure of the witch's existence from the memories of everyone she has ever touched. If she withdraws from the transformation, only the individuals whose pains she has experienced will forget her. This is a potent penalty, as it signifies a profound social isolation and a disconnection from her previous life.
Unfortunately, the daunting trials of the transformation do not guarantee success. Half of those brave or desperate enough to undertake this journey fail. Though these women are often those who have already experienced significant hardship, the process's anguish often proves unbearable. Most fail within the first few agonizing minutes of the transformation, which can last hours or even a day.
Another, albeit rare, reason for failure stems from the potion's ritual itself. The ritual requires the woman's heart to be fully saturated with the pain of those she has touched. A woman might fail the transformation not because she cannot endure the torment, but because the pain she has accumulated from those around her isn't sufficient. This usually implies that she hasn't touched enough people, or those she has interacted with have not experienced enough pain to meet the ritual's demands.
In conclusion, the price for becoming a witch - the physical mutilation, psychological torment, and the erasure of one's existence from others' memories - is indeed steep. Only a minority of women would ever consider undertaking such a grueling transformation. The costs of losing one's identity, enduring immense physical and emotional pain, and risking failure and further loss make this a price that only the truly desperate and determined would willingly pay.
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Depends on what your culture values. In a preindustrial society I would say infertile.
All preindustrial society values children and the more the better and in prindustral society woman primary role is that of mother. This would cut her off from marriage as no one would marry someone they knew couldn't have children.
If not infertile then maybe she has to kill one of her children. Most women now days would be reluctant and I think more so in a preindustrial society but it might vary.
Alternative perhaps she has to break some serious religious or social taboo. Preindustrial societies were more collectivist then ours so breaking with social norms was a bigger deal.
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A distinguishing mark and strong pressure to shun might be enough.
Any witch should be clearly identifiable as such, it could be that they have a certain "aura" that everyone can recognize or they "smell" like a witch no matter what else they might smell like.
Then have every use of magic come at a cost. Every life you save causes some random person to die. A familiar could be something like pet dying or a stillbirth depending on how impactful these familiars are. Flying could turn the winds against sailors at sea. Destructive magic against your foes could harm your friends.
You could also have these effects accumulate, so maybe when a witch that has done nothing but good with their magic dies, all of the bad effects happen at once and essentially undo any good they did in their life all at once, potentially causing more problems in doing so.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[What would it feel like on the surface of a planet while it collides with another planet?](/questions/40193/what-would-it-feel-like-on-the-surface-of-a-planet-while-it-collides-with-anothe)
(10 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
Let's say there are two planets about to collide. Ignoring how they got there, it seems that in most scenarios basically all life gets annihilated by energy released the collision.
How slow would two planets with plant and animal life with environmental tolerance similar to Earth's have to be moving for their collision to be survivable?
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**Gravity isn't going to let that happen**
I'm not the resident orbital mechanics specialist so I don't have specific figures in front of me but as I understand it, there's no way that two planets, both of Earth mass, are going to collide *slowly*. The reason for that is that they're going to be attracted to each other by gravity. Even if they *could* collide slowly, the impact is going to ruin everyone's day.
The reasons for this are fairly simple; first of all, the mass that represents the two planets in such close proximity is going to want to form a more sustainable shape than a 'peanut' planet under all but the very most exotic circumstances. That means the two planets over a short amount of time will try to merge with each other to form what will in essence become a bigger sphere. There's a reason planets and satellites of any size are all spheres; it's the shape that maintains uniform equilibrium of gravitational force across the mass.
The next reason is atmosphere. It might sound like the Earth has a very thick atmosphere; hundreds of kilometres high sounds thick to be sure. But, in terms of the scale of the Earth, it's a very thin shell on the outside of the planet. Putting two planets of Earth size in close proximity, even gently, is going to disrupt the gravitational forces causing the atmosphere to cling to the planet and even before that is going to cause major disruption to the weather patterns on each planet. Your atmosphere, assuming a large amount of it doesn't get flung into space by the collision, is going to mix in with all the other mass trying to form the aforementioned bigger sphere.
So; expect drastic (possibly unsurviveable) weather before you're left with not much to breathe, before you're standing on ground suffering the worst earthquakes you can imagine, not to mention the volcanic activity caused by hot liquid rock cores wanting to get to know each other at a rapid rate of knots.
No. It's not surviveable. Your best bet is to get out of dodge before the fun begins.
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# Not Survivable.
I am going to ignore gravity's demand of 2 planet masses becoming 1 sphere - Tim B II covered that. And I am ignoring the energy requirements and the resulting lash-back of getting 2 planets close enough together to do 'peanut' that Ryan\_L covered.
Even considering that, 'peanut' would not be survivable due to **earth is rotating around its own axis**. 'Contact' in that case means either
a) **Earth and B-Planet have a different spin**: one surface grinds into the other, with a velocity differential of probably several hundred km/h. If it doesn't completely dismantle earth's crust, it will at least leave a devastating trail of destruction around the entire earth until the two planets have somehow managed to equalize their spins to rotate around a common center. In the meantime, your atmosphere gets flung everywhere, and dust and tectonic movement and other debris create a nuclear winter of proportions even more epic than the meteor that ended the dinosaurs.
b) **Earth and B-Planet have the exact opposite spins** so that there is no grinding going on, just touching. However, they still rotate around their own axis, so the touch-point is going to wander around the equator. Not really survivable, because it's kind of smashing everything as it goes along. It displaces water from the oceans, which since the rotation wanders, needs to flood back. If you think 100m high tidal waves, that would be a very conservative estimate. Not to mention that it's going to dig a completely new ocean trench around the equator until the deformation energy slows the two planets' rotation so much that they still
c) **Neither Earth nor B-Planet rotate around their own axis**, so it really is just a 'touch'. In that case, Earth would have been quite unlivable even beforehand, because 'no rotation' means that one side of Earth is always on the day-side, and one side always the night-side. Even the huge oceans we have probably would not manage to equalize the climate of such an extreme temperature differential. Day-side would get to more than 80°C, night-side would freeze at temperatures lower than -50°C (just have a look at how cold the poles get during polar winter...). There is probably a small area around the Twilight Zone where plants can grow due to the somewhat moderate temperatures. But there probably will be hideous storms (boiling oceans create clouds that condense when it gets colder towards the Twilight Zone), and generally completely inhospitable weather.
d) **Insert itself into orbit:** B-Planet doesn't just come down and 'touch', but gradually inserts itself into earth's orbit to match velocities and rotate around earth until they are completely tidal-locked (both planets see the same surface of each other). And then they gradually reduce the orbiting height until they touch surfaces. However, this is a long process where two planet-sized masses become each others' moons first. Since our moon is comparatively far away, but already manages to create tides of more than 6m in some places, having a larger planet much closer will enlargen the tides exponentially. It will probably go as far as exerting tidal forces on the tectonic plates themselves, meaning countless earthquakes and volcanic eruptions - Nuclear Winter scenario.
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This scenario results in the sterilization of both planets even if they don't collide in any situation that you could reasonably call a "near miss."
No matter how slowly the planets collide, tidal effects will cause massive heating and disruption of their crusts. These effects come into play long before the planets even touch, and by the time they do touch, they're already molten balls of lava.
Everyone on both planets is dead long before the big show of the collision begins.
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Tim B II's answer is really good, but I have another, different reason it can't happen. Let's say you do have some way to slow the planets down so they don't collide at escape velocity. Let's also say your planets are mostly made of some fictional material that actually is strong enough to stay a contact binary planet, a "Peanut planet" as Tim put it. So all we have to be careful about is not wrecking the biosphere.
Whatever method you use to push on the planets to slow down their collision must be sending an obscene amount of energy in the other direction. Think gigantic rocket thrusters. Newton's laws are non-negotiable. The problem is that the exhaust from the rockets on Planet A will cook Planet B. Even if you have them offset so the exhaust doesn't actually hit Planet B, we're talking about just truly insane amounts of energy here. The infra-red light coming off the exhaust would be dangerous as well. Ever stand a little too close to a bonfire? Think of that times a trillion. And what's worse, as the planets get closer together, gravity gets stronger, and the rockets have to push even *more*.
It is true that only a little over one hemisphere on each planet will be heated directly. But I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of thing is energetic enough to heat the planet all the way through. Even if it's not heated all the way through, this ordeal will probably blast away all the atmosphere on both planets.
So even if you somehow manage to get the planets themselves to collide without merging completely or breaking apart, you're still going to sterilize them.
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The only sensible way for two planets to collide at low enough relative velocity not to vaporize a substantial fraction of their combined masses is by orbital decay of a binary planet system. Unfortunately, planets aren't rigid balls; at some point before crustal contact, one or both planets would begin to fragment as the combination of tidal forces and centripetal acceleration exceeded the combination of gravity and the tensile strength of the rock forming the crusts and mantles.
There are a number of good answer saying why this isn't going to work. There is at least one way *some* life could survive (monocellular extremophile life, anyway): a collision so violent that pieces of planet are completely ejected from the newly reformed, larger planet *without being melted*.
This happens all the time (geologically speaking) with meteoric impacts -- there are many samples of Earth's Moon and Mars known to have fallen to Earth, and the only reasonable way for those fragments to have escaped their home bodies is by being ejected during an impact event. The fragments are rather small, but there is still a persistent hypothesis that life may have started on Earth from an impact of an object carrying sporulated bacteria from another world (possibly not even one in the Solar System).
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As the other commenters have mentioned, surviving a collision would be impossible: one aspect of the definition of "planet" is that the celestial body must have enough mass to gravitationally reshape itself into a sphere. If the peanut were to reshape itself (as it must, because it's made of two planets, which *even on their own* can turn in to a sphere) nobody would survive, the whole thing would be a giant ball of lava like the proto-earth. However, worldbuilding isn't about saying "no," so I can come up with a couple of options for you:
1. Instead of planets, the colliding bodies could be much smaller. Maybe your beings live on the surface of [Ultima Thule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(486958)_2014_MU69), or rather I should say, half live on Ultima and half live on Thule. The collision of those bodies was not so violent that they got reshaped into spheres, so it may have been survivable for the native [tholin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tholin)-eating lifeforms
2. Instead of colliding, your planets could have a near miss. You could then dial in whatever degree of gravitational disruption you wanted, and as a bonus once it was over everyone could climb out of the bunkers and return to a survivable world like the one they were born in.
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# Survivable
I absolutely agree with the other answers declaring this to be unsurvivable. But I'm going to try and make the case it could be survivable, just because I don't think anyone has tried sufficiently hard at thinking of ways it could be done.
Firstly, everyone has assumed the planets would inevitably approach at interplanetary collision velocities. This does not have to be true! If we're going to give ourselves the best chance of surviving, then we have a bit of preparatory engineering work to do.
So, we start with the planets orbiting each other, in a binary [Klemperer rosette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemperer_rosette). Then, we induce the collision by gradually slowing them down, so that they gradually approach each other, until they just touch - still orbiting around their barycenter. Their relative velocity at impact is zero.
To minimize disruption at the area of impact, they'd have to be [tidally locked](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking), too, so their surfaces don't scrape across each other.
Exactly how to reduce their orbital velocities with such finesse is unspecified. Perhaps you can paint one half of the planet white and the other black, then wait a long time? There are fictional [precedents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson%27s_Puppeteers#Homeworld%E2%80%94The_Fleet_of_Worlds) of such planetary engineering feats, but they involved a reaction-less, inertia-less drive.
Without any orbital velocity, the planets would messily coalesce, churning crusts and mantles and cores, ejecting huge chunks into space to rain down afterwards, shedding every last whisp of oceans and atmosphere.
But with the orbital velocity, that can't happen. The planets remain suspended, each looming across half a sky. They won't remain the same shape of oblate spheroid as they originally were, of course. They'll flex and buckle, thrusting parts of the planet clear out of the atmosphere, while other parts drown in oceans of magma, hundreds of miles deep. God's own storms as half the atmosphere slews off into space. The sloshing oceans scraping a mile-deep layer off the crust as they go. Tidal forces yawning open all the old tectonic seams, and popping a hundred new ones too, as the rocks liquify under local strain variation.
And yet... somehow, the result is kind of stable. Not geologically, maybe. But for hours, or maybe years, they remain, a curious whirling hourglass of two kissing spheres. Long enough for someone who somehow predicted which small patch of crust would remain intact, to stand on it, in a space-suit, in a bunker, and say "I survived the event", before getting picked up and flown the heck out of dodge. Just before the 500 mile wave of ferociously radioactive liquid iron spurts out from the core, taking everything in its path. Who can say?
I'd originally planned to speculate about thousands of survival capsules spread around the planet, each equipped with miraculous ways of deriving power, and oxygen and water and... crap, what are they going to do for food? No, that's not going to work. Long term survival is, I concede, impossible.
**Update:** I concede the idea from other answers that, unless the planets were made of something unbelievably strong, tidal forces as they approached would flex and destroy their spherical shapes, generating tremendous heat, and tearing apart the planets into giant smears of molten rock. This would happen long before the planet surfaces could touch. So this answer is a nice poetic idea, but I don't believe it could happen after all.
[Answer]
It's not possible to make this happen, because of power output.
An object falling must release its potential energy. This usually occurs by transferring it into kinetic energy, but there are other options. A skydiver at terminal velocity bleeds his or her potential energy into thermal energy of themselves and the air around them.
A falling planet has a *lot* of potential energy.
For simplicity, lets assume one planet falls into the other. We'll make one planet *smaller* than a planet can be. The dwarf planet Ceres is not quite big enough to be a planet, and weighs in at 10^21kg. Combine that with a gravitational pull of 9.8m/s^2 for Earth and a height of 100km. Why 100km? Well, that's the Kaman line. A fall from higher than that might be gentle, but once the other planet starts entering the atmosphere, it is going to decelerate very quickly.
Multiply them together, and you get 10^26J. Now we get to look at one of my favorite pages on Wikipedia, [Orders of Magnitude (Energy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)). On it, we find that the earth receives roughly 5\*10^24J of energy from the sun every year. So we're looking to dissipate as much energy as 20 years worth of solar input.
Now I don't have the numbers for how much extra solar energy a planet can have without killing off it's life, but I think it's reasonable to assume that doubling the heat energy entering the planet would probably wipe out life as we know it. So you certainly can't have the planets mate in anything less than 20 years.
And there's no way you could manage to orbit in the atmosphere for 20 years. The amount of drag would be intense, generating life-altering wind storms at best. At worst, fireballs that turn you all into crispy critters. And that's assuming somehow you manage to get the planets into a magically perfect orbit around each other and bleed off the energy.
So I'd say there's only one solution. You need more celestial bodies. Let the two planets just barely touch, then fling a pair of blackholes past each side, using the tidal forces to arrest the movement towards one another. This lets you bleed the energy into the black holes, resolving the heating issue.
... of course there *will* be the issue of the massive cataclysmic seismic forces that are going to come into play at that point. But I think this path offers the possibility that at least one cockroach survives, so I'm going to call it a technical victory.
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[Question]
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In my world, I have ''classic'' knights but with helmets that have transparent visors which are strong enough to protect from arrows.
So which material available in medieval times could withstand an arrow shot to the face while being transparent to allow for better vision?
Or is there any such modern meterial which could be replicated with medieval technology?
[Answer]
This is not possible, medieval glass was primitive and expensive, it was not very clear to see through and would shatter into sharp shards when struck.
We were only able to change the dangerous shattering with the addition of plastics which involved a whole new level of technology.
The closest thing would be a wire mesh that in theory could block attacks while still allowing you to see out through it. Making the wire mesh strong enough to be useful would still be challenging though.
[Answer]
**Medieval technology might not allow for direct "arrow-proof-glass", but what about periscope helmet?**
Since arrows travel in approximately straight lines and cannot follow curves and bends, a helmet with an indirect visor, using mirrors, could prove useful. This idea basically comes from existing inventions like periscope glasses, periscope rifles/cameras and trench periscopes.
Proper silvered-glass mirrors did not exist yet, but simple glass mirrors did exist.
Example of a WW1 trench periscope, imagine a tiny version of this mounted on a helmet. There will not be a direct line in which an arrow can hit a knight directly in the eye.
But there are some disadvantages:
* Worst case scenario the arrow hits in the "artificial" eyes and
destroys a mirror, to avoid immobility make the helmet so that the periscope part can be detached (this adds some flexibility).
* Obviously a knight watching through a periscope will have to deal with limited sight.
* Depending on the precision of the periscope and the mirrors inside the hand-eye coordination could prove to be slightly more difficult.
>
> **Side note:** Bascinet helmets have incredible small eye-slits, I know they are not made from glass and are far from perfect when it comes to vision, but maybe worth checking out?
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There are 2 naturally occurring materials which can - under the right circumstances - possess both the toughness and transparency to be viable: [Moissanite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite) (a.k.a. Silicon Carbide) and [Corundum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corundum) (a.k.a. Ruby and Sapphire). Unfortunately, this hardness makes them hard to work to a suitable thickness/shape - they at 9 and 9.5 on the [Mohs scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness) (for comparison, Diamond is 10 and Quartz, [mentioned by nzaman](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/128180/47510), is 7), and finding large enough examples to use would both be *very hard* and **absurdly expensive**.
So, handwaving time! **\* Jazz Hands \***
If you accept the theory that the [Baghdad Battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery) is a pre-medieval Galvanic Cell, then you open up the possibilty of creating artificial Sapphire via the [Verneuil process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verneuil_process), using Oxyhydrogen produced by electrolysis of water.
This allows you to have a heavily ahead-of-their-time alchemist-cum-jeweller who is creating artificial sheets of Sapphire, and then shaping them (with grit from previous attempts?) to form inserts that slot into the eyes slits on a metal helmet. They can also sell the offcuts to make money, since you probably only need a pair of 1" by 2" (by 0.5"?) lenses per helmet
[Answer]
The best you could do is quartz crystal, but that would shatter if hit directly. But then with a properly designed visor, your eye slits need not be big enough to be a feasible target for arrows, but then you wouldn't need a glass visor in the first place.
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Polished horn is pretty rugged and flexible. Some forms are translucent to clear. Reinforce that with a mesh or something akin and you bring new meaning to a horned helm.
A bigger concern to *me* is getting enough air. An open face or mesh is less protective but has no such difficulty. Vigorous activity requires masses of air. If you don't account for that required exchange, people will run away from them and then counterattack when the shock troopers all have the vapours. That's just embarrassing.
(Terribly curious why you *want* this detail, I must confess.)
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In contrast to other answers, I suggest that it is entirely possible to construct a visor such as you want - just not very practical.
As has been noted, medieval glass wasn't very transparent. If you can get some bright lad to come up with a technique for producing clear glass, the the solution is straightforward: make the glass thick. Enclose it in a housing of steel of even moderate thickness, and an arrow strike won't penetrate it. Put it this way: glass is nothing more than quartz, for all intents and purposes - in other words, rock. Punching a hole in a half-inch of rock is simply not something an arrow is going to do. In addition, unless the arrow strikes perpendicular to the face of the glass plate it's going to want to skip off. Modern bullet-proof materials are intended to handle bullets, and bullets have a great deal more energy and (importantly) brisance than arrows.
That doesn't mean that the result would be entirely practical. A single arrow strike in the visor would probably do enough damage to the surface to render the wearer effectively blind, and the long-term effects of being effectively blind on a battlefield would not seem to be much better than getting an arrow in the face. To handle this problem requires something like optical sapphire, and that is not in the cards for the time period you want.
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Your knights could use some sort of lacquer- or resin-based visors. While not quite as durable or thin as metal, a curved shape could be enough to repel arrow glances, and any direct hits would likely just get stuck.
These visors would likely be fairly thick, and while transparent, would probably be both dimmer and distort images a little. There would also be the problem that such a visor would accumulate damage, making seeing harder.
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Medieval glass may not have been very transparent, but there are many examples of Roman glass that were. It would probably not be beyond the means for a medieval knight to acquire Roman glass artifacts, or pieces of them, and reuse the glass. Glassblowers could rework it with steel wire, to make a reinforced glass. It probably still wouldn't be a good idea, and would be quite heavy. But it's a starting point.
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Mediaeval glass could be made transparent enough for this purpose. To toughen the glass, they would need to heat the lenses to red heat and then blast both faces with air until cool. They would certainly know that quenching in oil or water makes glass resistant to breakage if it survived the thermal shock. So with the technology available at the time it would have been certainly possible. The lenses could also have been laminated, as already proposed, with resins, mica, etc.
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In my hypothetical world, the current development of humans is similar to our late 19th century in terms of technological advancements; larger countries are capable having more advanced technology than smaller towns. There is a small town located near the border of a country, which is home to some of the most notorious murderers and undesirable people (e.g. convicts, thieves, abusers) that have been exiled or otherwise ousted from their home countries. Despite the description, the town is incredibly peaceful as its residents have mostly decided to put their old lives behind. Citizens have developed their own laws, some of which contradict or overrule the country's laws. Historically, the country's ruling government has made 3 attempts of placing its own military and government officials in this town to bring it under their control. However, every time there has been an attempt, any government officials or military personnel have been openly executed or have disappeared. The government has classified this town to be "ungovernable" and avoids any interactions with said town.
Since this town is near the border of the country and has undesirable people living in it, it has been prone to attacks from neighboring countries who are seeking to expand their territory; they are under the impression that the country doesn't care for this town and is an easy territory to take over. However, that is not the case and the country still protects its territory and defends the town from invasions. While the country has been unable to place its own military in the town itself, it has placed military units in nearby towns that are capable of jumping into action in a relatively short period of time. The citizens of this town are no strangers to fighting and are capable of protecting themselves for enough time until its parent country's military is able to arrive.
What (secret?) motivation could exist for the country's government to continue protecting this town despite it seemingly being of no benefit to the country?
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Two other examples, one that still exists, and one that no longer exists.
The [Vatican](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City) is an independent city-state with its own legal structure. My admittedly hasty understanding of this is that a tradition was recognized by the leadership of Italy in 1929. The tradition arose for a variety of reasons, strongly among them the fact that the Catholic church has international ties, and so putting pressure on the church gets other countries upset with you. Easier to carve out an exception for them. But there were other contributing factors including the usual corruption, bribes, threats, etc. And some things the Catholics polished for centuries, such as plenary indulgences. Hey, help out the Vatican and you can have a divorce or something.
Another example, no longer existing, is the [Walled City of Kowloon.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City#:%7E:text=Kowloon%20Walled%20City%20was%20an,Kingdom%20by%20China%20in%201898.) This is a former area of Hong Kong, now removed and replaced with more typical-of-Hong-Kong structures. It was formerly ruled (if that's the right word) by a variety of shady underworld-ish type figures. Rumored to be a small amount of illicit substances involved. Possibly other less than family-friendly type activities. Eventually the local authorities decided they had enough of this collection of, um, exotic characters. And they bulldozed the place.
It hung together as long as it did for a variety of reasons.
* There was a certain tradition of having a "bad part of town" for such things to be tolerated. This idea is still alive in many parts of the world.
* It was a tourist attraction of a sort. Not for school groups or your granny, but some types would visit and pay some cash.
* Place where misfits could go hang out and annoy mostly other misfits. Made it a way to clean out the "nice" neighborhoods without having to get too violent. You don't have to shoot the misfits, just herd them into Kowloon.
* Source of illicit substances and activities that the local authorities thought were pressure relief for the populace. Let the misfits drink and smoke and such in the walled city, out of view of "nice" people.
* The local authorities had some overlap with the shady characters running the place. And there were some bribes (tribute?) paid. Lot of money in non-family-friendly activities. Respectable-Wong might well be a medium level official in the legit government of Hong Kong by day, and sell truckloads of opium by night.
* The shady characters would, if things got bad enough and they were asked correctly, pull the misbehavior back inside their walls. Sometimes.
* The folk running it were not quiet passive folk. If they were threatened they tended to limber up with car bombs, assassinations, arson, and such. So it took a determined and widespread effort to clean them out.
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##### The city is older than the country that surrounds it, holds a special economic or military status, and has been able to maintain its independence by ancient agreements
[The City of London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London), approximately a square mile in the center of what is typically referred to by "London", governed by the [City of London Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation) is a great example of this. It has its own, unusual elections, allowing companies based in it to vote as well, has its own rites and rituals, and even has its own police force.
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Even the King/Queen has to ask for "permission" before entering
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The City even has its own agent in parliament, the [City Remembrancer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Remembrancer)
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[Stephen Fry's Key to the City - Exploring the Mysteries of the City of London](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_gMGnAR9Ng) explores some of this.
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There are several instances of something similar in history.
Relatively near my own hometown, some six centuries ago, the Papal States sold a whole region to the Florentines, but by mistake a strip half a kilomer wide and about three long was left out of the deed: the Pope relinquished possession, the Florentine Republic did not take over, and before being formally granted independence, for some forty years it was designated *terra nullius* -- no one's land.
The situation was quickly exploited by all sorts of unsavoury characters, and while the inhabitants mostly grew [tobacco](https://www.tabaccheriaconsagra.it/sigari/744-tornabuoni-cospaia-.html) (which was prohibited in the Papal States, but had a significant underground market), there was a florid fencing and contraband business. It was also ideal for "deniable diplomacy" meetings, since diplomats could avoid officially presenting their credentials. What happened in [Cospaia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Cospaia) remained in Cospaia, since it officially did not even exist.
Having an outlet for undesirables, a source of "semi-legal" commodities and a neutral zone for under-the-table operations are a few of the many reasons that might let a city become a "free port".
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**The country does not want its rivals to gain control of the city.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/abm05.jpg)
<https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/replica-dame-carcas-bust-0011848>
This city was not always "ungovernable". It is an ancient, formidable walled city of considerable military value. It gradually became a haven for refugees and criminals under the governance of a lord long since passed, and the national government decided not to try to put him back under their thumb because although he had gone rogue he was no threat, and taking back the walled city would be costly.
They are OK "ungoverning", but the nationals do not want an enemy nation to get this walled city. It would serve as a forward base of operations for them to then campaign against the rest of the country. The residents of the city can shut the gates and the militia can man the walls. Attackers who think they will settle in for a siege outside the walls are eventually chased off by the national military.
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# It's a pirate town
The city has a prominent naval base, and frequently raids and sinks ships. They have tacit agreements with the central government to raid rival enemy ships.
It both acts as a lure to rival military forces to get causa belli on their lands when they attack, and allows the home country to be more dominant on the sea.
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The real world example of this that I can think of is the Native American Reservations in the U.S. They are small areas of relative autonomy that get to make their own laws and the more local governments of the states can't really govern them at all, just the federal government. If your government decided that they didn't want to deal with them, and just wanted to leave them to their own devices, they could set up a criminal reservation and let that problem deal with itself.
As far as a reason to keep it protected when it is of little to no value, consider putting it in the middle of a desert area, like Las Vegas is, so even though it isn't around anything useful being able to control the only pit stop in the desert is desirable.
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Because it's theirs by right and no one else's. It's not a secret, it's just sovereignty. Nations take matters of sovereignty particularly seriously.
Nothing forbids a nation to allow a region to govern itself. Just call it a [dependency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependent_territory) and give it a high degree of autonomy by law, and you'll allow it to continue as long as it doesn't cause trouble outside the region and doesn't conflict with your higher interests.
Trying to apply your rule by force is only going to lead to discontent. If people are happy with their autonomy, you can trade with them, tax them, and enjoy the [Exclusive Economic Zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone) that comes with it where applicable. And at the end of the day that's preferable to an independence war. You can trust a Frenchman on that.
That does not mean that you will allow another nation to yoink it from you though. Although it is largely independent, it's still technically yours. It's your trading partner, your taxes, your EEZ, your citizens, your territory. You don't let other nations take what's yours. Even if it's most worthless piece of territory the Earth has ever seen, you don't let anybody take it from you, that's just a matter of principle.
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Corruption of any sort, such as representatives benefiting from illegal, but not necessarily bad exports of a drug (take for example marihuana in the USA pre-legalization). If ever criticized the town would take all the blame, not the politicians. This would also create a second avenue for US-like corruption - the military industrial complex. The government could benefit from constant warfare by making the spending on it justifiable and in turn, create long-term militaristic pressure on neighboring countries if not overexerted.
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## They pay their taxes and they don't rebel
In general, governments only care about 2 things: money and power. Everything else they do are just extensions of fulfilling these 2 roles. As long as these 2 things are met, a government does not actually have a reason to care that much what is happening in its territories.
Laws cost money. So, the whole reason a government imposes any laws at all, is to make the people more compliant which increases thier power. Any laws that make people less compliant are bad for your government because it makes it harder for those in power to keep thier power. If your voters want a law that says no stabbing people for example, then you pass a law against it, and then the people as a whole are less likely to resist your rule because you've given them a law that makes them happy. It might cost you a bit of money to enforce the law, but you make up for it because you can now tax the people more than you did before to pay for the law.
In the case of this penal colony, the people have thier own laws and rules that keep the peace, but are culturally incompatible with Federal Laws. 99% of the country says prostitution, drugs, slavery, and cruel and unusual punishment are bad. They would rise up if you made these things legal; so, they have been made illegal to preserve the government's power. But, if you passed those same laws in this one place where these things are considered rights, not crimes, then an uprising would come from having the law, not from not having the law. So by letting these people run thier own laws, the government enjoys more power, not less, over this region.
But avoidance of something bad is not enough to come to these people's defense. The government also needs to get something good out of the deal. You see, the laws that keep 99% of the people compliant also cut off a lot of economic opportunities. This penal colony generates tons of revenue through things like prostitution, drugs, and slavery (which are all taxable income here). So by creating a haven for "alternative income" the nation collects far more taxes out of this territory than they could even if they could impose federal laws on them.
So when foreign powers threaten this "independent territory", the Federal Government is quick to step in the same way you may see them do on behalf of an important trade partner. So just as the USA had a vested interest to protected the Kuwaiti Monarchy during the Gulf War despite strong ideological differences, so too will your government do everything they can to make your penal colony sound like the good guys in any conflict so that they can protect all that nice tax income that comes from the region.
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In many modern cities in many modern nations, there are "No Go Zones" or similar where the crime in particular neighborhoods is so bad, especially with respect to government authority, that the government will hesitate to send law enforcement into the area because the threat to their own forces is too great... however, they don't renounce their territorial claim to the city. And if the situation gets really bad, they will go in. This typically takes the form of inner cities, but can also look like a civil war where one side is seeking to form a new nation. Without the brokerage of a treaty where the recognized nation recognizes the break away state (Like what concluded the U.S. War for Independence or Texas, following the Texas war for independence). During the entirety of the American Civil War, the confederate states were never seen to be part of a foreign nation in so far as the Union was concerned and were still part of the U.S., just in open rebellion. When civil wars do not resolve, this can lead to long periods where a nation might make a claim on a region but in effect have no means of controlling said nation. Consider the relationship of China (People's Republic of China (PROC)) and Taiwan (Republic of China (ROC)). Both claim to be the sole legitimate government of China and both Territorial claims to Mainland China and the Island of Taiwan. This results from the two being in a stalemate of a civil war that began shortly after WWII. While the PROC was not able to defeat the ROC forces before they fled for Taiwan, they did force them from the mainland and it's no secret that they want to bring Taiwan under their control... It's just well, at no point in it's entire history has China ever been considered a great naval power... additionally, PROC has strong economic ties to nations that would probably side against them if they tried to take the island that they cannot afford to lose. (Bizarrely, China and Taiwan actually agree on a lot of other unresolved territorial claims on regions that are within borders of other nations.).
Similarly, North and South Korea are still at war with each other, although the ceasefire has been maintained while they negotiate the treaty. Unfortunately no one has budged on some of the critical sticking points (namely, neither wants to recognize the other's right to exist nor will they surrender to the other's government. But while they hash that out, they'll stop killing each other.).
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**Spies/assassins.**
This town has very good spies and assassins. They work unofficially for country and kill anyone who wants to govern them. That gives them a safe place to store their gold (or other currency) with taxes or even with no taxes at all. The country protects them in exchange for their services - they pay but as long as protection is on them the city does not do jobs against the country. Be aware that this town due to lots of money and good intelligence can be more advanced technologically than any other country.
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## The rulers of the country have ties with the leaders of the city.
When you are a not-too-ethical politician, then having connections to some people from the underworld can be useful. The criminals who operate in the city might be a valuable resource to them, because they are able to provide the rulers with:
* Services like blackmail or even assassinations
* Access to illicit substances
* Sex workers who engage in acts no reputable person would ever be willing to participate in.
* Information on their enemies and on what actually goes on in the country
So the rulers have a personal interest in keeping the city in its lawless state and letting the gangster bosses do their thing. Also, the gangster bosses themselves will know quite a lot about the shady dealings the rulers are involved in, which makes them untouchable.
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There is a very simple answer to this question, and it is to look at how military bases, especially NATO bases, work.
Every NATO country has to host some bases on their territory and the country officials have no jurisdiction in them. Crimes committed by NATO personnel cannot be prosecuted by the host country (with some exceptions.)
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These are just some snippets that can be of interest to you, there are various interesting articles that you can find in the [official NATO agreement](https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_17265.htm)
If you are interested in the WHY some countries would choose to give away some parts of their territory to a "foreign city", you need to look no further than the events that gave rise to the Pact: WW2 and the Cold War.
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They are a valuable source of mercenaries.
The city's rough history, coupled with its need to defend itself against larger foes, has forged a military force of uncommon discipline, flexibility, and resilience. One of the chief cash exports of the city is mercenaries.
Although brutally efficient in battle, the mercenaries have a reputation for being disciplined professionals. They take pains to stay out of internal squabbles, they will not engage in coups, nor will they assist in any military actions that directly attack the surrounding country. Because they are not seen as a danger to the ruling classes, and because they are very useful in a pinch, the encapsulating country (and all other countries nearby) would rather they keep their independence.
They value more a wild wolf for hire than they do a domesticated sheep.
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**The the ruler of that little region is a rebellious close relative to the ruler of the country.**
Maybe the fearful pregnant lover of the leader fled to that place and their child, dutiful to the people there, rose high and rules there. And so the ruler is secretly the country's leader's secret love child!, or maybe grandchild, sibling, etc.
For inspiration, in the Witcher books the emperor of Nilfgaard's female cousin rules a small enclave in his empire, her own seemingly fairytale-like vineyard-kingdom, which exists as a separate country with its own laws. Nilfgaardian horsemen who try pursuing enemies into the region are reminded by the knights of that country, that they are independent. If you haven't read the Witcher books I highly recommend it! They were even better than the games in many respects.
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Slab City in the Desert of California (US) matches this description.
I could easily imagine a place that developed with no government. And people refused any government, and so long as that place didn't cause any issues to the greater governing body, they just ignore it.
I assume it would have to remain relatively small to not attract enough attention, in addition to not directly causing issues. Enough murders happen there, or someone makes too much money there...the government is going to come.
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In Zootopia, they have computer and smart phones, much like we do. The world I'm writing is similarly populated by anthropomorphic mammals and, like Zootopia, generally possesses technology similar to the modern (2020-ish in my case) real world.
Now, I imagine felines, with their retractable claws, might be okay as-is, but for the rest of the carnivores and probably most omnivores also (actually, I think most or all non-ruminants?) that have non-retracting claws, how would they use smart phones? I guess at minimum they would have really good scratch resistance on their screens / screen protectors, but are there other adaptations that would make sense? Would they even *use* touch screens? How would they interact with smart phones?
**Notes:**
* Unlike in Zootopia, people in this world are all "human sized". There is likely some variation (although I haven't really explored this, as my major characters are all around the same size), but in line with human variation (so, perhaps 3' to 7', which is roughly the range of human variation, but much smaller than is depicted in Zootopia). Mostly this matters because it means I don't need Zoolander phones.
* I do specifically want them to have devices similar to smart phones; in particular, interactive devices of similar size with screens and the ability to send text messages. (Not just audio, for many of the same reasons we have textual messaging.)
* I do also have widespread "magic" which is effectively telekinesis, however, only a modest portion of the population can use it directly. Because it is telekinetic in nature, I don't see it being directly usable as an interface, however it can be, and probably is, used to prevent claws from pressing into screens hard enough to leave scratches. In particular, I don't see any way magic could be useful with *capacitive* touch interfaces, and...
* The people in this world would prefer to use capacitive touch interfaces for the same reasons as in our world; they are solid state and much more durable and reliable.
* There *are* magic-actuated switches that are used for e.g. power, volume and assistant buttons, but they're relatively expensive, so using more than 3-5 is considered impractical, at least for "mainstream" devices. (Using four as a sort of joystick would be do-able, but would be pretty slow/awkward to use.)
* I'm concerned specifically with people that have claws, but feel free to also suggest options for ungulates if you like. In particular, solutions that can bring the advantages of capacitive touch sensors but also work with keratin (in which case, both ungulates and others would probably just use their claws/hooves as the 'points of touch') are useful.
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## Like this
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VvBpD.jpg)
Most humans use their finger tips for their smartphones because it is the obvious thing to do when you don't have a claw in the way, but claws in no way prevent you from reaching the screen with a usable portion of your digit. People who have particularly long nails for example can still use their phones just fine by either touching on the pad or side of their fingertip or by curling their finger to press the screen with their knuckle.
When you look at the claws of various kinds of animals, nearly all of them either have some kind of furless, protruding pads below the claw or furless knuckles that they can use. 3-toed Sloths are the only animal I can find that would have any particular issue with a touch screen. Their handicap of not having any exposed skin on their hands would likely lead to something like Darth Biomech's answer. But your zootopia world would probably consider this "special accommodation" since sloths are such a minority, kind of like how we don't bother printing things in braille unless someone specifically needs it.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Ys1Y.jpg)
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Are you going for a smartphone, or a contemporary bland terran fashion of a slab with a touchscreen and not much more? Smartphone does not equal touchscreen - my smartphone has a (small) QWERTY keyboard, way in the past my smarphone had bigger QWERTY keyboard, and before that my smartphone had 3x4 keyboard, and *before that* my Palm PDA non-phone had a touchscreen controlled by a stylus, not fingers.
So, the first possibility is to have a stylus. You will have to use the phone two-handed (for writing at least), but that is how we used PDAs in the past (and you can use the tip of your claw instead of the stylus, with a resistive display):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HjMod.jpg)
(image courtesy of [Wikipedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palm_TX.JPG))
The second, much cooler possibility is to use a (one handed) chorded keyboard. Sometimes I feel sad that our history steered away from such a keyboard, it makes writing much faster than a normal one (while two handed) and one handed is still much faster than using a touchscreen:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WTVRm.jpg)
(image courtesy of [Wikipedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Septambic_key_numbering.jpg))
Such a device discreetly held in a hand, coupled with a (non-touch) screen could be indeed more productive than our terran phones.
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## It's easer than you think
Smartphone touchscreen works by detecting changes in conductivity. However, keratin, the stuff nails and claws are made of, isn't conductive.
You then have two options: either to change the chemical composition of your anthro's claws so that keratin becomes conductive and can be used with smartphones, or there is a special conductive nail polish (or adhesive claw caps) that let them use touchscreens.
You also don't need to worry about scratching, since few claws are actually razor-sharp at the tip, but even if they are, keratin has a lower Mohs scale rating than even simple glass (2.5 versus 5.5-7), so you can't scratch smartphone screen with a claw.
Overall operating touchscreens with claws might even be superior since they allow for much higher precision. It's like your every finger has a stylus built right in.
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# Don’t use capacitive touchscreens.
IRL, smart phones (and most other non-industrial applications involving touch screens) use a capacitive touchscreen. These work by utilizing capacitance to detect conductive materials close by. The amount of conductance does not have to be very high (human skin is actually not very conductive, it’s just not a particularly amazing insulator either), but keratin (the protein that makes up claws/horns/nails/hair/fur) is not sufficiently conductive to trigger a practical capacitive touchscreen.
However, there are a *bunch* of other options for touchscreens. Capacitive touchscreens have won out for consumer usage IRL for a combination of reasons, but the simple fact that they don’t work with claws would be enough to result in them not being the dominant option in a world such as you suggest.
The [Wikipedia page about touchscreens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen) lists a number of other technologies beyond capacitive touchscreens. Of those listed there, the most likely posibilites for actual use in a smartphone type device are:
* Resistive: Early phones and PDAs with touchscreens used these. They would work fine with claws provided you are careful not to push too hard and don’t sharpen your claws too much. In fact, they might be *easier* to use with claws because the smaller point would give you better precision (this is why most decent devices with resistive touchscreens came with a stylus).
* Dispersive signal: This could be adapted, in theory, to work in a smart-phone form factor. The downside is that you would kind of lose out on long-press gestures (it can only detect press and release, not holding down), but all the other benefits mean it would probably be worth it.
* Acoustic pulse: Similar to dispersive signal designs, this could work in a smart-phone form factor. It’s not very energy efficient though, but avoids most of the issues with both resistive and dispersive signal designs.
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The previous-generation touchscreens (generally known as "resistive touchscreens" in contrast with modern "capacitive" ones) were perfectly usable with nails, sticks, cutlery, gloves, eldery peoples' dry skin fingertips and whatever else you push them with. They were sensitive to the pressure applied to the screen and not to the proximity of a material with specific electromagnetic properties.
They never got into mass production smartphones, but the ordinary citizen used them pretty much in ATMs or GPS navigators.
Having a sleepy feline and an old Garmin Nuvi available right now, I made few clicks with a feline nail on the screen - works perfectly. One can avoid excessive wear of the touchscreen by using the arched surface of the nail instead of the nailtip.
*Manicure* will probably also be a thing.
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If you are taking a page from Zootopia, notice that pigs don't have hooves in their hands. Check the picture in the fandom wiki for the [Frantic Pig](https://zootopia.fandom.com/wiki/Frantic_pig):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/61A5m.png)
Other pig characters, such as the lady getting a photo for her driving license, also do not have hooves on their hands. Now this is not universal... Gazelle and the sloths do have long claws that they use as fingertips. And the elephant characters don't have digits, but they manipulate objects with their trunks. But you may do things differently in your world.
In absence of any better ideas, you could do it like you suggest and have capacitive screens that operate with keratin. That's how Flash the sloth is able to operate a touchscreen in the movie. Or simply make all devices measure pressure instead. This does for lower input resolution, but this is how some large touch-sensitive screens operated in the 90's. All devices should have gorilla glass screens or something more resistant than that.
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They use pre 2007 year style smartphones with hardware keyboards.
Like this Asus p526 one.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p1gwX.png)
Or, they can use smartphones like Blackberry with qwerty keyboard.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/W7pQ9.png)
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The animals in Zootopia have Supa-Flex(tm) Magic Glue(tm) on their hands, allowing them to bend hooves, and pick up thin metallic objects with them. There is even a hooved cop operating a gun, somehow flexing his hoof through the trigger guard.
Example: This is a Kudu Antelope's front foot.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/atC6Lm.jpg)[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zywTJm.jpg)
and THIS is Judy's neighbor, an Kudu Antelope. Using his front hooves to open a pull-tab on a soda drink!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yvuNK.png)
It they can manage a sodacan pulltab with ***that*** hoof, then I do not think that a mere cellphone touchscreen will be any problem!
Besides.. Just WHO said claws and touchscreens are incompatible?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qzeWd.jpg)
[Answer]
### Evolved paws/hands
In a word, claws long enough to make using a *smartphone* difficult make much more basic aspects of modern life difficult. So you simply have to take as given that your races evolved significantly improved dexterity to get to where they are. In particular this means a greater ability to control individual digits and a way to keep claws out of the way of tasks like sewing, handwriting, surgery, opening food wrappers, doing up buttons, handling small items (like coins) without dropping them, DJing...
It doesn't need to be entirely modeled on human hands. Perhaps it is only the index finger that has grown more separate and has a shorter claw. Mayybe the claw does not actually retract but the whole final bone bends backwards, and the joint below it does the actual touching/gripping.
For paws these would leave the fleshy part exposed so capacitative screens are just fine.
**Oh, and naturally they would trim their claws for hygiene, aesthetic and practical purposes. *We* do.**
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An option I didn't see in the comments here is trimming the claw to the quick. This would work especially well for animals with bird claws or talons, as these typically have long quicks and thus, would require only minimal trimming. The quick itself is soft and thinner-skinned than a human fingertip and would probably work well on a capacitive touchscreen.
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[
The human genome has been completely mastered and understood by the end of this century, which has led to a service industry revolving around genetic codes. Gene editing to prevent diseases are now possible, as well as linking the use of technologies to a specific genetic structure for security purposes. A business of gene splicing is also possible, in which a person can buy the code of another individual to incorporate into their offspring. Renowned people, such as celebrities and other popular individuals, sell their genetic code to the market for the masses to purchase. Want a little of Kim Kardashian's DNA in your daughter, or have your son inherit Barack Obama's charisma and good looks, their code can be purchased for a 'reasonable' fee in which they get a cut of the proceeds.
The technology has gotten to the point where a simple skin sample can be taken from a person in order to recreate their genetic structure. There is an underground black market for DNA in which samples are taken from people without permission. Wealthy people are specifically targeted for this crime. A rich individual could simply be cut by a knife to have their DNA stolen and redistributed. This posses a problem. Long lost brothers or forgotten bastard children can come out of the woodwork, legally able to claim an inheritance from their rich family due to a nation's laws. Royal lineages would be forced to accept them into the family tree, making it possible to claim a kingdom. Gene linked tech such as safes or checking accounts linked to families could be accessed, making their money vulnerable. This stolen DNA can be propagated within society by children who have them, leading to a bunch of people walking around with illegal DNA.
Banning this tech is not possible, as there is too much money being made to close the box of Pandora. Simply killing people who have illegal DNA within them would never make it pass government oversight. However, the rich need to protect their generational wealth so it can be transferred to the next generation. As such, they need to protect the exclusivity of their genetic structure. How can the 1% prevent their DNA from being propagated?
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# IMO, most approaches to this are going about it the wrong way...
>
> **Problem:** People can copy DNA easily. How to ensure that if you're super-rich, someone can't use your DNA to create someone else who on the surface, is related to you?
>
>
>
The most obvious approaches, all focus on *making copies distinguishable somehow, or copying difficult in law, or as a fallback, just ringfencing money with trusts*. A kill switch in the DNA (but such tech that can copy DNA can figure a prevention easily). Sterility that it is a High Crime to reverse engineer and only a family has its own solution (it never stopped a criminal with billions to play for). Blacklist DNA (grey market tech, anyone?). Trusts and legislative changes and so on...
In other words, an arms race between fakers and families. And we dont want that, do we? Thats no real solution.
There's a simpler solution by far. You don't stop DNA reuse. Rather,
# You make copying and editing totally pointless by controlling legitimate reproduction
Thats totally under your control, so its a lot easier and more reliable.
# So what we do is....
A family alters its genes to ensure all offspring are sterile. Thats it.
It becomes the family norm, that you're sterile at birth. Note that doesnt mean you cant bring a fertilised egg to term, just that you cannot get pregnant/impregnate because some convenient part of the process is blocked by your DNA. Non-viable sperm, blocked fallopian or other tubes/ducts, whatever.
That means the only offspring, period, who can possibly exist, are lab created. In effect artificial insemination is the only way this family reproduces. If your married child and spouse want a kid, they will have to attend a suitable clinic for the megawealthy, which will take both of their DNA, and an egg, manually fertilise the egg, and implant it. Its fully recorded. And that becomes the norm.
Being that we control the process we can ensure that all family members are sterile in a way that doesnt prevent this process. We can even publicise it - its not even important to keep secret how its done.
You have to ensure hospital records cant be faked, but thats easy. A combination of extreme security, immutable backups, and heavy documentation, covers that. (If they can't protect those records then the implication is that in this world, the super-rich cant protect their banking and other investment records either.....)
# The outcome
Now, a family member can't accidentally have a child at all. Therefore all children are known, and medically recorded as such, **without possibility of error**.
Copy and play with the DNA all you like - you'll never be able to claim some other person you edit is the unrecognised bastard offspring of some family member after a hot party, or whatever, because every last possible offspring is legally verifiable as such.
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**This is a legal problem rather than anything else**. While today DNA is used to establish paternity/maternity, we already have legal exceptions. For example, [several US](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6170122/) states do not allow sperm donors (especially anonymous) to claim paternity rights if an insemination procedure was performed by a licensed specialist. [UK law](https://www.ngalaw.co.uk/knowledge-centre/parenthood-after-donor-conception-sperm-donors-and-co-parent-fathers) protects anonymous sperm donors and does not allow forcing paternal responsibilities on them.
As reproductive technologies evolve, the law will also change to accommodate them. The rich who need to protect their wealth just need to lobby for the laws favourable to them. For example:
* paternity/maternity can only be recognised if DNA donors explicitly agree to accept parental obligations;
* no commercially available (legal or illegal market) DNA can be the sole reason for establishing blood relationship;
* change inheritance laws to make wills non-disputable (if a will is present, no one except people named in the will can claim inheritance);
* require proof of 'natural insemination' or any other active involvement in the process of baby creation (for example, DNA donor has a pre-established relationship with the parent of a child, donates their DNA non-anonymously to a specific person, etc.)
I would suggest reading about existing laws related to assisted reproduction and see how they can be improved to achieve your desired goal.
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You really don't need to change all that much. In most cases\*, biological relatives have no claim on your assets, unless you die intestate. So you make a will leaving your money to the people (or charities &c) you name. If you want to disinherit (adult) biological children or siblings, fine.
With royal lineages, the problem has been solved long ago. Bastards don't inherit (unless they can raise a sufficiently large army: see e.g. English royalty since 1066 :-)). And if they ARE accepted as legitimate, actual parentage doesn't really matter. (As in the case of a certain British prince, who looks nothing like the rest of the family...)
\*Support of minor children & spouses aside: check the Law site if interested in details.
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Whenever they produce offspring, they certify it as "fruit of their loins" adding to their genome a unique key, which is produced in the same way as single use cryptographic keys are produced today for securing on line transactions.
The public key is known, the private keys aren't, and are given by the two parents.
Without the unique certification any clone will immediately be recognized as an illegal copy.
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## Include kill switches within the genome of offspring.
If the problem is simply that cloned offspring need to not be around, simply include some genetic kill switches in the genome. Unless the person gets a very specific and expensive chemical treatment regularly, one that won't be immediately obvious to someone scanning the DNA, they'll die a horrible painful death. Maybe in the womb, maybe in five years, but regardless, if you clone them and don't have whatever treatment, then your clones will die.
If they fix whatever defect then you can detect the lack of the defect and know they're a clone.
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Most of this is legal, not biological.
**Trust funds**
The wealthy stop owning their own wealth. They often don't, nowadays, for tax and other purposes. They carefully ensure that the funds then get transferred to their selected beneficiaries.
"I'm the dead man's long-lost brother!" "Yeah, get out of here, he didn't own a cent, and you get nothing."
And if the laws say this doesn't work, they change the laws.
**Legitimacy**
Royal lineages would not have this problem because the laws of succession require that the heir be born in wedlock, which none of these claimants have.
In fact, under some laws, this would mean the trust funds aren't needed, the children are bastards and have no claim. And in the countries where it is allowed, the laws could be quickly changed to prevent it. Any objections would be swiftly overridden by pointing out that it's for the protection of the manufactured children, who exist only so that criminals can exploit them and are in personal danger from that. Remove the motive to create them, and exploitation is not possible.
**Gene-linked tech**
Would become much more limited in use, owing to the greater ease in breaching it. But that doesn't differ from other security measures, which have grown less useful with time.
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A variation of [Dutch's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/209178/21222), which the lower nobles and the wealthy-but-not-so-much might find easier and more accessible to implement: when a child is born, implant a subdermal chip on them that contains identification data. If you wish to know if someone is legit, scan the chip.
Less secure (chips can be cloned or stolen - though current real-life examples do include chips which self-destruct when removed from their original place), but much cheaper and simpler to implement than editing your offspring's DNA.
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So if I understand your dilemma, you want clones to be able to legally claim the fortunes of the rich and powerful, but not so often as to completely wipe out the multi-generational ruling class. I have a few ideas.
* The government turns a blind eye to the assassination. The rich and powerful simply have many of these clones killed, and then bribe/lawyer-spam the courts to get away with it. It’s illegal, but the rich and powerful commit crimes irl and get away with it there too.
* The children of the rich and powerful get a special organ that sets them apart, which is difficult but not impossible to copy. For this explanation, I’ll use the Appendix. After the baby is born, their natural Appendix is removed and replaced with one that is, say, Orange, or contains some other obvious demarcation. When pretenders to the family dynasty come along, if they don’t have the right Appendix, they lose legal rights to the family’s wealth. However, since this is a major operation that requires doctors and aids, it’s still possible to find out what the Appendix key is through a little bit of espionage, though very difficult.
* It is possible to sue these clones to disinherit them, but the process is very difficult; it’s hard to differentiate between a clone from the black market and some kid a rich guy just abandoned. As such, the rich and powerful are able to strike down some of the lazier attempts at fraud, but the more careful and planned ones are difficult to smack down. It never gets too big though because legal cloning and gene splicing requires records, which makes it much easier to prove fraud. That means that it must all happen on the Black Market, which is prevented from getting TOO big simply because they have to constantly avoid the authorities.
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# A retro-virus rewrites the DNA in all your exposed cells
If you want to protect your DNA, you will undergo a treatment with a gene-altering virus, which will change the DNA of all your easily exposed cells (skin, hair, blood, ...) The changes will only alter parts of the DNA, which are not relevant to the function of these cells.
But your true unaltered DNA will only be found in your inner organs, reproductive parts or bone-marrow. This means everyday contact and small wounds will not leak your true DNA.
Of course your DNA can still be stolen if someone abducts you to extract your DNA with medical equipment. But you are rich and should have ways to prevent being abducted and cut open, because then your DNA is probably a lesser concern.
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A pandemic-like shift in civilization would probably be necessary.
The wealthy would likely start living in sterile environments with minimal to no contact between "unapproved" individuals, controlled disposal of everything they touch or use, and strict security protocols surrounding physical contact of every kind.
This would likely result in the literal physical separation between the haves and the have-nots.
Furthermore, if the legal usage of genetic snippets was endorsed, then a licensing scheme would likely be devised surrounding it where people would have to purchase a license in order to have a given DNA sequence in their genome, with encryption based on their before and after genetics.
Woe betide those occasional mutants who happen to have genetically similar codes.
Genetic tracking and tracing from birth would likely be necessary in order to maintain not only records and licenses, but also purity against unintended changes.
Enforcement would be a nightmare... probably something like random spot checks during purchases or a police 'genetic-traps' version of speed traps.
---
In reality, only the wealthy elite could support and sustain such a lifestyle... the general masses would probably not be able to persist with such restrictions.
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## Pandemic and Kill Switch
1. Create a pandemic that targets the genes of certain individuals (perhaps tailored to an individual family) that makes them (or their offspring) sterile.
2. Each family controls the "cure" to their family's sterility.
3. It is "highly" illegal to research a cure into any family's sterility other than your own.
4. Maybe, make the pandemic an accident of the past that mutates fast enough that it keeps returning.
5. Maybe, there is no "cure". The damage is done and the only way to breed is via an expensive tech. Perhaps, nanobots that make you fertile for a short period of time (weeks) before they lose effectiveness.
6. Maybe, there is a registry. When a wealthy individual is born, they are registered and something (perhaps nanobots) are implanted to identify them as the original. The nanobots would be unique to a given family and would be highly protected (secure family clinic). If you show up with duplicate genes, but don't have the correct identifier, you are an illegal clone.
Other possible solution:
1. Genes are no longer an identifier,
a child receives an identifying marker when they are born.
The marker is difficult and/or considered impossible to duplicate.
2. Original genes are stored for future use upon birth,
then the child is altered in a controlled fashion over the course of
(some long period of time).
the progress of the alteration is well known and easily identifies the age of the individual.
Correct age + correct genes == original.
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## The gene-editing machines won't work with black-listed DNA
If we rephrase your initial question a little bit, to sound more like
>
> I have individual items X of high value, and a process Y which can create copies of X. How do I ensure unscrupulous persons won't use Y to create illegitimate copies of X?
>
>
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You could easily swap in X = "paper currency", and Y = "high-quality photocopiers".
Luckily, this is a solved problem: there are secret patterns embedded in the paper currency which virtually all photocopiers (at least the ones good enough for the fakes to be a risk) are configured to find and prevent copying.
With enough money and influence, it shouldn't be too hard to find a point on the supply chain which is hardest to recreate, and have them install a check on every part they produce to check an external list of DNA strands to **not** work with. From there, you just have to charge a premium for the elites who want to protect their genome to get on that list.
There's certainly still risk of some after-market component without this check, but the quality will be much lower - and hopefully we'll be able to tell the difference between President Beiber with 320 teeth vs 32 teeth.
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Wealthy people are not wealthy.
Their properties are controlled by opaque trusts and their children have nothing to claim. When they die their inheritance would be distributed according to their wills without needing to comply with any inheritance law.
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The rich heirs would sue the fraudulent claimants to the ground before claimant would even get a chance to state his claim in full. (They would sue a legitimate claimants too if they estimate they have a good chance of winning. We already have this in current societies too).
For how it would look like, simply look at current ["intellectual property"](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html) situation. Let's say you as a private individual has written a patent or some copyrighted code, which some big/rich entity claims is their own. Could you imagine the outcome if you, as such righteous person, would try to get justice and go sue Google/Apple/Microsoft/... ? Good luck - you would be literally destroyed before you could say "but justice".
Now, imagine going against someone with such resources and ***not being in the right*** (eg. trying to lay a fraudulent claim). They would utterly destroy you and your whole family for next 5 generations [just to make example of you](https://phys.org/news/2010-11-million-dollar-verdict-music-piracy-case.html).
So, as the *golden rule* says - *whoever has the gold, makes the rules*.
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You can't realistically have (barring magic) a combination of technological cloning and "long lost siblings" who suddenly come out of the woodwork. The reason is simple: records.
"Yeah, our mother had me in secret a few years after you."
"Un-huh. And these medical records showing she wasn't pregnant at the time you claim, these photos showing she wasn't pregnant at the time you claim, and you have no birth certificate or medical records of where you were born so..."
As others have mentioned, simple changes in inheritance laws would be all that would necessary. No special high-tech security (except for documents and records) needed at all.
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[
Lead is pretty much the go-to metal when it comes to making bullets. That is because lead is cheap, dense, soft, and has a low melting point. But of course, bullets can be made out of other metals.
Let's say that a post-scarcity civilization is tired of using lead and wants to use another metal for ammunition. It wants bullets with stopping power for its heavy machine guns and anti-materiel rifles. Is there any element on the periodic table that can be superior to lead for this purpose?
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For long rod penetrators, **Depleted Uranium** is the ammunition of choice. At high speed, **Tungsten Heavy Alloy** catches up. Uranium has adiabatic shear bands that improve its penetration, it is also pyrophoric and spontaneously burning on impact, adding extra damage beyond simple penetration.
Hereunder a compared penetration of DU (Depleted Uranium) and WHA (Tungsten Heavy Alloy - Tungsten uses the W symbol, coming from its other name Wolfram), and Steel:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JJ7fq.png)
As mentioned in the comments, ammunition is rarely raw material. It is for example jacketed, to allow going through canon without damaging or interacting with it.
Note that you mention a society that has solved post-scarcity, this could imply that alternatives or different bullets exist: laser, plasma, relativistic speed bullets, black holes, etc.
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**Gold**
Which is kind of a no duh. Lead is good for bullets because it is heavy and dense. For some applications, malleability is good too because the projectile will deform on hitting. A soft bullet also will not damage your gun barrel.
Gold is also heavy and malleable and is more dense than lead - 19.3 g/cc as opposed to lead at 11.4.
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I don't know why you need it to be a single element per se.
Of the more well known elements used in pure form: I would think gold for stopping power since it is dense and malleable for deformation and tumbling on impact in living targets. Also easy on your barrels. I don't think there is denser element with comparable or better the ductility.
Uranium for penetration and spontaneous ignition. Apparently tungsten is a little more dense but has hardness or strength issues. Though perhaps an alloy composed of rare metals may be better here in terms of density and strength. It is difficult to find info on those elements though, let alone alloys made of them since they are so scarce.
But if you get into the rarer stuff, I don't think it could be used in mostly its pure form. But like I said, no reason it needs to be just one element.
Osmium is the densest stable element with some unusual strength properties. Someone recently mentioned on this SE that is real nasty because it spontaneously forms osmium tetroxide in the presence of oxygen and accelerated with high temperatures (such as those found in projectile detonation). Apparently it's difficult to work though.
But for living targets you can do something like a gold bullet with osmium particles or pellets suspended in it so you can take advantage of the gold's malleability and tumbling while taking advantage of Osmium's density and the nasty corrosivity and toxicity of it's oxide. You'll want to jacket that (perhaps just in a solid layer of gold or a more conventional hard metal jacket) so it doesn't do anything nasty your end when you fire it.
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## It depends on the application.
If you just want a simple molded bullet, then your best option is probably gold. As other people have pointed out, it's heavy, yet malleable. Perfect for those kinds of simple bullets.
However, "those kinds of simple bullets" fell out of style shortly before the First World War. There's a limit to their effectiveness, and their accuracy is less than spectacular.
Nowadays, most militaries use Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) rounds. These consist of a soft metal core surrounded by a harder jacket. These are much more accurate than the Minié balls militaries used previously. Gold is probably still your best bet for the core, closely followed by lead. As for the jacket, the traditional material is a copper-nickel alloy. It's hard enough to retain its aerodynamic properties during flight, but still soft enough to burst apart on impact. I don't see any reason to replace this; sometimes old solutions are the best.
But let's go a step further. In your question, you specifically state that these are *armor-piercing* bullets. Now, FMJ rounds are good, but they aren't the *best*. Your post-scarcity military will want something... *better*. That "something" is short-rod Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot (APDS).
Another answer already proposed long-rod penetrators (commonly called "APFSDS"). However, those aren't realistically going to fit in a machine gun. So, while they're an interesting concept, anybody who doesn't want to carry around a [BFG](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BFG) will use traditional APDS.
As it turns out, [rifle-caliber APDS does exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saboted_light_armor_penetrator). They're called "SLAP" (Saboted Light Armor Piercing) rounds. They don't work well with small calibers, but are common with .50 caliber and above (which puts them well into the range of weaponry you specified).
SLAP rounds have advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, they're great if you *really* need that extra penetration. On the other, they severely reduce barrel life. In practice, this means that most HMGs will use "regular" gold FMJ rounds most of the time, but keep a few belts of SLAP around to slap around heavy targets and hard cover.
To be honest, I don't see any way you can significantly improve upon the current design of SLAP rounds. As @Uriel helpfully pointed out, tungsten is better than depleted uranium for short-rod applications. The only minor improvement I can think of would be to add a thin copper coating to the outside of the sabots so that they better engage with the barrel's rifling.
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## Plutonium
The only thing that's scarce in post scarcity is scarcity. Bereft of scarcity and economic challenge, life is dead dull for most people. They're so bored that they look for stimulation from manufacturing bullets out of exotic elements. That's pretty bored. How to fix this Brave New World?
WAR!
WITH PLUTONIUM ROUNDS!
May you live in interesting times. When the landscape is riddled with just about the most toxic element known to man, even with unlimited resources, there is a challenge again.
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## Smart Bullets
The best thing you can shoot out of a gun is not made out of any particular single material. That is scarcity thinking. The best conceivable bullet will be something more like an [M982 Excalibur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur) shell... but smaller. The high tech equipment on these shells makes them cost the US military about a quarter million dollars per shot as opposed to the M107 dumb fire version which costs a mere 330\$ per shot... and yet, even at nearly 1000x the cost of a normal shell, they are worth it to anyone who can afford them because that is how big the advantage is of a weapon that kills on the 1st shot vs the 20th.
The reason you want to focus on smart bullets is that, the question of if and where you can hit someone is much more important than how hard. Imagine an enemy combatant standing 900m down range from you. He's covered head to toe in heavy body armor. You have a choice too make:
Option A is an anti-armor round that can pierce his armor not matter where it hit, but at 900m you'd have to be a world class marksman to hit him at all.
Option B has less penetration, but once it leaves your barrel, it identifies a narrow opening where the enemy's visor is. As it flies it guides its way avoiding all that heavy armor that could have stopped it to punch through the thin plastic visor scoring a perfect headshot even though your aim was off by 10m.
Obviously the smart bullet wins even though the materials you need to make it are not necessarily what you would normally consider great bullet making alloys.
## But what about the actual penetrator part?
At the tip of the bullet has to be something that does the actual killing, so we can't just automatically dismiss what this material may be. It has to be something, but it's import to remember what is ideal for a dumb bullet is not necessarily going to be what is ideal for a smart bullet. With a dumb bullet you want a lot of speed and inertia, but in a smart bullet, speed increases your turning arc, and inertia makes turning require more energy. With a dumb bullet you need something soft enough to engage the riffling, but with a smart bullet, you are better off with a smoothbore to reduce heat and barrel ware; so, you are less restricted by such things.
So, keeping all these factors in mind, we know that answers citing gold are based on factors that don't apply to a smart bullet, and answers citing Steel, Tungsten, and DU penetrators are all based on a reliance on a high velocity impact. Now a smart bullet that can correct 10m over the course of a 900m shot would be a great application for one of these 3 penetrator materials, but what if you want a REALLY smart bullet: like one that you can shoot though an open window, then turn around inside a small room to hit the guy hiding behind a wall. Such a bullet would be amazing, but could not possibly hope to move at supersonic speeds on impact after such a maneuver.
Instead, I would suggest a high explosive armor penetrating tip similar to a miniaturized [HEAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-explosive_anti-tank) or [HESH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-explosive_squash_head) shell for your shorter range, higher maneuverability smart bullets. While a kinetic penetrator needs to hit at high speeds, bullets that rely on high explosives can kill even on a low speed impact following a tight guided maneuver.
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Do you have the technology to transmute lighter elements into heavier ones? Then I would recommend **some transuranic element with an ultra-short half-life time**. Those elements rapidly decay into other elements, creating a huge amount of heat and energy in the process. They basically behave like the plutonium or uranium in a nuclear bomb during explosion. Just that there is no chain-reaction triggering the nuclear fission. These atoms are so unstable that they undergo spontaneous fission on their own.
The weapons would not so much fire a bullet, but rather a blast of super-accelerated, super-heated plasma and concentrated radiation.
However, unless you can freeze time, there is no way to prevent those elements from decaying. So you would require the technology to create those elements within the weapon the moment the operator presses the trigger. Or better, the bullet should transmute into a transuranic element shortly after it left the barrel. In that case the operator might have a better chance to survive.
[Answer]
**Anti-matter!**
In very very small quantities.
Look, this is a post-scarcity civilisation. Unlimited energy, technology advanced to where we would call it magic.
So I question why warfare would still happen. Intimidating hostile primitives and animals? Anyway, a smart bullet (guided onto its target by a laser target designator? Or smart enough to remember what it was aimed at) containing a tiny amount of contained anti-matter. About ten kg of TNT equivalent ought to eradicate any biological target. A shade more for an armoured vehicle. No nasty fallout. Just a very VERY loud bang and a small cloud of vaporized whatever.
Iain M Banks once revealed that Special Circumstances agents have such a device *embedded in their heads*. This is an ultra top secret. If things get to the point where their painless suicide is the only option, they can go out with a helluva bang. (And then get re-incarnated from their most recent backup. But as the character observes, it's not quite the same thing as surviving because you never get to know first-hand exactly what happened).
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## Whatever your cartridge engineer specified.
Seriously. Cartridge design is complex, and they are heavily optimized around whatever design elements the designer selected.
That optimization might change if you designed it differently, but, generally speaking, whatever bullet the cartridge was designed for is the best bullet for the cartridge.
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It's possible to fire a nuclear bullet from a common battle rifle like an AK-47, M-14, or Mosin Nagant.
The bullet is made of a Californium isotope, and is subcritical due to shape until it hits a target hard enough to squash the bullet core -- at which point it becomes supercritical and produces a (pretty small) nuclear explosion.
This isn't just a myth; the Soviets actually produced bullets like this. The good news is, due to natural decay, they don't keep well; after several years they get so contaminated with decay products they won't explode any more. Not to mention a magazine full of them would produce enough radiation that a soldier carrying them would take a lethal dose in a matter of days (barring carrying them in a heavy lead coffin).
But they make depleted uranium, tungsten hard alloy, and any other AP round look silly -- an actual *nuclear explosion* in firm contact with your armor makes penetration moot; there'll be enough spalling from the inner surface to make everything inside look like it's been in a really big blender.
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Osmium: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmium>
Osmium is an incredibly rare platinum group metal. It is denser than gold, and has higher bulk modulus, comparable to that of diamond. However it would need to be fired using sabot style projectiles like depleted uranium, as it would suffer the same barrel wear issues that you would with depleted uranium. Alternatively, a slightly simpler tech that does require two elements, is Osmium in a Gold jacket.
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If you want to kill people and really don't care about the planet, I'd go for arsenic or a mercury compound.
I don't know how well it would hold up in bullet form and you need to be pretty careful not to accidentally touch your rounds while loading... So maybe jacketed toxic stuff.
If the bullet doesn't kill you today it will carry on killing you tomorrow. Especially stuff like dimethyl mercury, splash some of that on your skin and you may as well just start saying your goodbyes.
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## Copper
It's dense enough to travel in good ballistic trajectories, while not being as toxic as lead.
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[Question]
[
So, I was thinking about [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/177144/optimum-shape-for-a-space-dreadnought) which I asked a while back, and it occurred to me that the "natural predator" of such ships would be missile and fighter carriers which unleash swarms of missiles and/or fighters without having to expose as much surface area as Dreadnoughts.
With that in mind, what would be the best ship design to meet these criteria:
* Lots and *lots* of missiles and/or fighters/drones.
* As much surface area as possible (those "lots and *lots* of missiles and fighters" take up room, after all)
* Minimum surface area facing the enemy (unlike Dreadnoughts, these aren't meant to be an LST (Large Slow Target)).
* Internal capacity for magazines and hangars.
Restrictions:
* Please keep moving parts to a minimum. They may make the ship look cool, but they're a big "hit me" sign when it comes to Murphy's Law.
* In-universe the only method of FTL travel is a Star Trek-esque warp drive. As such, it must have a nacelles (plural, in pairs), which follow the placement criteria listed [here.](https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/design.htm)
Non-issues (things that don't really affect the shape of the ship):
* Ships are carved out of solid blocks via advanced nanotechnology; as a result, "you wouldn't be able to build this" isn't an issue.
* Energy supply. It may need a Star Trek warp drive, but it doesn't need a Star Trek warp *core* - the ship's power supply is, for all intents and purposes, a [ZPM.](https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Zero_Point_Module)
* Sublight engines are similar to Star Trek's "impulse drive" - in other words, it just needs a flat spot with an unobstructed view of the back of the ship. Furthermore, it doesn't have any of the radiation shielding concerns that come with fusion drives.
[Answer]
I came up with a design that I'm pretty proud of for a scifi universe I was working on for a while. There are some material science handwavium aspects, but it is entirely based on real ship concepts to make it somewhat feasible with modifications.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5StvY.png)
This is a diagram of an older version of the design, but the idea is the ships would be heavily modular. So a variant with rings full of missile tubes instead crew quarters like shown would probably work best for your intentions. This design is meant more for combat at range, but I would imagine a ship refit for a blockade or ambush might have horizontally firing missiles as well. It does however have 18 missile tubes (grey triangles) in the nose.
Part of the idea behind the design is that combat would begin at such great distances you would have to use full thrust and already be facing each other to get within effective range. This is also why the ship makes use of magnetic rails to launch missiles at a much higher velocity, while simultaneously making use of the existing velocity of the ship in transit. You then get the added bonus of having your smallest profile, strongest armor, and sensors facing towards your target, with your primary propulsion (week point and identifying heat source) pointed away from them.
Some of the in-universe handwavium would be how the rings rotate around the spine of the ship with specific reasons for it, but honestly **a fixed ring design** with the whole ship rotating around its central axis would work just as well and doesn't make much of a difference.
Just a concept I came up with, feel free to ask questions or nit pick as you please.
Addendum:
Here is an image of the Phoenix, taken directly out of Star Trek itself, for comparison on what the ship might look like with the addition of nacelles:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gEiKp.jpg)
The rings being fixed there is of course less need to actually have separate rings instead of a solid hull all the way around, but I feel the advantages of a modular design outweigh that of a single piece hull in this case. Without rotation, the rings (or decks as I would refer to them) wouldn't need space between them, which would also shorten the length of the ship and the lack of gaps would remove any weak points they create.
[Answer]
**It is nothing but missiles.**
The ship is in its entirety made of missiles. And also some of those warp nacelles you mention. On traveling, the missiles clump together around the nacelle and go, like army ants bedding down for the night in a hive made of their own bodies. On arriving, they immediately break apart and drift into a cloud of nearly a cubic kilometer.
The missiles are capable of using their rockets to maneuver. Additionally the missile's explosive payload is the same material that it uses as fuel / reaction mass, which conserves weight. A missile which has been maneuvering around for a while before choosing a target will not pack the same wallop as a fresh missile, but still a wallop.
This structure does not offer much in the way of targets. Separated missiles will need to be shot down one by one. If caught in their clump immediately before or after entering warp one might get rid of most of them with an explosion but they do not spend much time that way.
Targeting the nacelles would prevent the ship from leaving. The nacelles are not easy to target because they look exactly like all of the other missiles.
If you need crew for your story, they can reside in another structure. It also looks like a missile and moves with the rest, powered by the same sort of flocking AI but one which never chooses a target to destroy. Quarters are tight inside the missile but the crew are good friends.
[Answer]
### Long, cigar shape
For example: Battlestar class ships (from Battlestar Galactica):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MXuJA.png)
Long cigar-like shape is optimal for this kind of combat:
* Facing enemy gives minimal surface area.
* Sides jam packed full of launch tubes for fighters and small missiles
* Top jammed packed full of nuke launch tubes.
* FTL drives at the back there, so they don't get hit
* Fast recovery of fighters for refuel and rearm under fire by having them impacting a retractable deck. The photo shows the deck extended.
BSG also had front guns, a front airlock, and could ram enemy ships. You don't need / want this, so just put a lot of armour at the front (I'd suggest dozens of alternate steel / vacuum layers, basically sacrificial front compartments).
Other useful features:
* Lots and lots of close in weapons systems on the sides backup. Battlestar galactica used to use a flak screen to stop missiles and enemy fighters getting through. You could use smaller missiles, keeping with your "only missiles" philosophy.
* Bridge is deep in the ship, so no lucky strikes kill the command struture.
[Answer]
**Cone-shaped.**
Assuming your ship points at its opponents, a cone presents the smallest cross-sectional area with the greatest angle of armor plating. In my opinion, it's the most efficient spaceship shape for any armored vessel. The smaller your cross-section, the harder you are to hit. The smaller the angle of an impact on your armor, the more energy is reflected instead of absorbed.
As for missiles, you can put them in launchers perpendicular to the armor, like a torpedo tube but pointed sideways instead of forward. This pulls double duty in reducing the cross-section of those torpedo hatches, and when your missile launches out the tube, it can perform a rotation maneuver so its engine exhaust doesn't hit the ship it launches from.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VI1km.png)
A great source for some legit space combat strategies is the game Children of a Dead Earth, definitely worth it if you like to play with real tech based space combat and orbital maneuvers.
Also, unless you're looking to recreate WWII dog fights in space, space fighters aren't very realistic. A drone takes up less space, can pull harder maneuvers, and can be launched like a missile.
[Answer]
### Classic "flying saucer"
The mathematically perfect solution for maximum surface area and minimum area facing the enemy would be a **plane** (the geometry one, not aviation). Of course we need some volume as well, so we'll need to thicken it up a bit. Maybe make it circular so it doesn't have any more vulnerable edges than necessary.
So what we have created... is the classic **"flying saucer"**. I especially love how this adds a more-or-less scientific reasoning to this oldest and most widely spread space ship shape.
[Answer]
Missiles only require ejection ports and fighters only require launch bays, so the formula isn't necessarily dependent on how much surface area can we spare as the rate of fire or rate of launch that would free up a tube/bay, and how long does it take to prep the next.
If surface area is all you're looking for, flat ships will serve your purposes best, like an aircraft carrier except you wouldn't need a keel, but I'd propose a stackable modular launch pod configuration that could be customized for the mass and acceleration power of the host craft.
On larger ships they could be inside the bulkhead, assuming all missiles are huge, guided ship busters and you don't require a turret, though movable turrets would be a possible configuration option for both missiles and fighters.
So to fit all of your criteria, I would say an optimal shape would be a narrow spine with staggered launch bays/tubes permitting you to turn your bow toward an enemy and present the smallest possible target during combat. The only negative to NOT presenting a broadside salvo is that time to intercept might be a couple of seconds slower.
It also occurs to me that each bay could be roughly the same manufacture in terms of size, shape, and space requirements. Missiles would require ammunition storage and launch mechanics, ships would require docking space and fuel (obviously more would go into each, but those are the big space consumers). Space requirements would depend on the tech level.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1mVO.jpg)
[Answer]
*My answer to this similar question still applies. The logic behind it may change a little due to the constraints of your question, but I highly recommend reading it as it discusses in detail other reasons as to why this shape is good as well. <https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/152967/57832>*
## A Spherical Hex Lattice
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> Lots and lots of missiles and/or fighters/drones.
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Instead of trying to store your entire arsonal inside of a small well armored cavity where they will probably all get taken out by the first heavy missile hit you take, you spread your missles out over such a large area that they can all just hang out on the outside. If one gets hit, it will explode, but not cause a chain reaction leaving you with hundreds of remaining missiles left to fire.
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> As much surface area
> as possible (those "lots and lots of missiles and fighters" take up
> room, after all)
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I think it goes without saying... this design has TONS of surface area... like stupid amounts.
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> Minimum surface area facing the enemy.
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It's not about minimizing the surface area you expose, but it makes what surface there is far more difficult to hit. Weapons fire will tend to fly between the lattice doing no harm instead of hitting anything at all. So, even if your total profile has as much as or even more area than a denser ship it does not really matter. If each strut is only a few meters wide, then that is the level of precision you need to target with in order to reliably land a hit.
Understanding how this relates to missiles depends on understanding what factors play into the accuracy of guided weapons. Guided weapons are not automatically 100% accurate. Missiles by their very definition have to move faster than the ships they are trying to target, this means that a missile capable of turning with the same G-force as a slower target will have a larger turning radius giving a slower defender more options avoid a fast missile than the missile has to stay on track to hit the target. This wider arc creates an area of uncertainty with guided missiles which can only be made smaller by slowing the missile down.
Assuming the lattice ship is fighting a denser ship of otherwise similar cost and tech level, this means that the denser ship will either need to slow down it's missiles much more to reliably land a hit which gives the lattice ship much more opportunity to shoot down or simply outrun the missiles. Or it needs to fire so many missiles that it saturates the area of uncertainty enough that some missiles will hit by sheer dumb luck or process of elimination. Either way, the lattice ship will require a LOT more firepower to take out than its higher density counterpart.
Another consideration of this profile is the damage propagation of high explosives. When you shoot a densely designed ship, explosives have a continuous medium to travel through meaning a single impact can create a shockwave can traverse the whole ship destroying everything. But in this case, you have the same mass spread out over 1000s of times as much volume with no linear paths for the shockwave to propagate through; so, an explosion that would shred a same mass smaller ship would only take out a single strut on this design before very quickly dissipating into the vacuum of space.
Computercarguy also brought up a good point in comments about the possibility of using of proximity explosives to turn a near miss into a hit, but what is true in our world is not always true in outer space. When an aerospace vehicle is destroyed by proximity missiles, it is typically because it is hit by the sheer of the shockwave. Since shockwaves don't propagate in space the way they do in an atmosphere, a ship can not actually be harmed by a near miss from an explosive. Even Nukes don't make a meaningful shockwave in space (The radiation may still be pretty nasty for any humans you have onboard, but your options for blocking that are still much better than being able to take a direct hit from one). Fragmentation proximity weapons are also sub-optimal because ships by their very nature have to be engineered to sustain high speed impacts from micrometers; so, any viable ship design would already be specced out to survive a spray of small, high velocity shrapnel.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g95sc.png)
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> Internal capacity for magazines and hangars.
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This is unnecessary in this case. It makes more sense to keep all ordnance and fighters on the outside where it is all armed and ready to go since you have the surface area to do so.
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> Please keep moving parts to a minimum. They may make the ship look
> cool, but they're a big "hit me" sign when it comes to Murphy's Law.
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No moving parts required.
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> In-universe the only method of FTL travel is a Star Trek-esque warp
> drive. As such, it must have a nacelles (plural, in pairs), which
> follow the placement criteria listed here.
>
>
>
Because the shape is hollow, any pair of struts containing nacels will always have Line-of-sight to each other, and the curvature of the sphere ensures you will always have clear line of sight in front of and behind an opposite pair of struts. This gives the bonus that you can not tell at a cursory glance where on the ship the warp nacelles are.
[Answer]
Without more information this question falls into the '*how long is a piece of string* category
The shape of the vessel will be guided by engineering considerations. In theory virtually *any* shape is possible in the vacuum of space but the absolute key principals guiding the shape will be;
1. the type of drive being used to propel it;
2. The type of power system being used.
Everything else is just payload. For example any kind of fusion 'torch' drive would require a lot of separation space between the payload and the torch. And in between you need shielding and points for the attachment of fuel tanks. So what you get is what you see in lots of SF drawings a long thin spindle with the torch at one end and the crew module as far away from the 'hot' end as you can get it with payload strung along in between.
You are using 'warp drives'? So the question becomes what does the drive look like/what are its operating requirements. Two modules separated on either side of the main hull by booms aka Star Trek? Drive pods forward and aft? A spherical framework surrounding the core of the vessel???
Same goes for power systems. How many? what type? You want big fusion powered reactors the size of conventional power plants or lots of compact 'baby' cores?
Basically your decisions on these issues tell you where you can put everything else including missiles, tubes, box launchers, just attached to to the external hull, big modules at the end of long booms? Its your choice. But no-one can give you any kind of definitive answer until you answer these sorts of questions.
[Answer]
You might want to go with a sphere inside of a gyroscope.
The sphere would be the living and work space, while the cage around it would house the armaments and the engines.
## Gyroscope
I'm thinking something like this "untippable" gyro-bowl. (Link for image and description only. I'm not suggesting a product or promoting a retailer.)
[https://www.amazon.com/Everyday-Edisons-H-GB-1000-Gyro-Bowl/dp/B007SNJA44/](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B007SNJA44)
This allows you to swing your engines and weapons around without having to go through the problems, and inertia, of changing the orientation of the whole ship. I'm sure I've seen this somewhere before, but I can't remember where. I want to say there were moveable weapon systems on the skin of the Star Trek: Deep Space 9 space station, but that's a vague memory of a semi-generic space battle.
Anyway, this would allow for quicker changes in angles of attack and defense, sort of like the [Marksman-H training remote](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Marksman-H_training_remote) from Star Wars.
The problem with that is if you have a single cage ring, your engines are on the same platform as your weapons, so you are limited in your movements when firing the weapons during battle. With multiple rings, you are limited by not wanting to fire a weapon into the outer ring(s), even though it would allow for more total weapons platforms without hindering interior living space as well as giving the ship more maneuverability.
With enough rings, you could have a fairly flat looking ship with just a "bubble" in the center, but then spreading the rings out, you could become an armadillo version of a porcupine with weapons pointing at nearly any 3D point in space.
Gyroscopes are nothing new in spaceship design and could work in multiple capacities, besides as a weapons and engine platform.
## Alternate version
And really, it doesn't have to be exactly a gyroscope. You could have a single axis of rotation along the direction of travel, and then a series of rings attached to it to have a similar effect. The engines could then be fixed to the main body and the weapons rotating around that single axis. Again, this could be flattened for normal operations and deployed for battles or used as armor for an unusually dense area of space debris. At this point, your center wouldn't have to be a sphere, but a sphere has the largest interior volume for it's surface area. The problem is that you've put all of the moving parts in one location for a single point of failure. This may mean that maintenance is easier, but crippling your ship becomes easier, too.
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> The sphere has the smallest surface area of all surfaces that enclose a given volume, and it encloses the largest volume among all closed surfaces with a given surface area.[11] The sphere therefore appears in nature: for example, bubbles and small water drops are roughly spherical because the surface tension locally minimizes surface area.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere#Enclosed_volume>
## Engine defenses
One problem with a fixed engine location is that you might want to hide your engines, so the enemy can't fire on them directly. How many times have we seen a space battle end with someone swinging around behind the enemy to fire on their engines and disable them? Well, not anymore. The enemy goes one way around you, and the engines go the opposite way around the ship.
* But wouldn't that put the living space in danger? Maybe, but why not have the weapons or heavy armor swing around to face the attacker at the same time?
* Oh, the aft shield is failing, because they are concentrating their fire on it? Swing another shield around to help or replace the failing or overwhelmed one.
* There's multiple bogies? That's why we have multiple rings that have more than just one weapons system and shielding on it.
## Moving parts
Yes, this has a lot of moving parts, but it significantly increases the surface area considerably.
Also, once deployed, nothing says the rings have to keep moving with respect to each other. Keeping them locked together will help prevent self damage, but can still allow moving them around the "bubble".
## Beveled surface
And the rings don't have to be flat faced. They can have a curved or beveled face, so they can fire at more of an angle than radially from the axis of spin. This would produce more of a cross-fire pattern, allowing an angle of attack from more than just a single ring at a time. This makes not hitting yourself more difficult, but that's what automatic safety systems built into the ship are for.
Sure, rockets and torpedoes can change direction, but that uses a lot of propellant and time. The shallower the turn, the faster it can home in on the enemy.
[Answer]
I read a really neat space opera, I forget the name or author, where the missiles were not actually on the ship, they where in pods attached to the ship. The ship itself was basically the drive, living quarters, and command deck.
In such a construction, the missile pods could actually be detached from the ship, and sent on their way, completely automated. They could be dropped off, and left to drift behind the ship, protecting its six. They could be dropped off around a planet, to be used as remote firing platforms. They could all be detached from the ship at once, and every missile fired at the same time. As an enemy approached, they could be dropped off in sequence, forming a long line of missile launchers along its path. Since the missiles fire in the pods when they are detached from the mother ship, Newtons Laws do not apply to the mother ship. As the missiles were used up or deployed, the bulk and profile of the ship dimimished, to the point where if all the pods were deployed, the ship was basically an escape pod, able to travel at exceptional velocity and highly maneuverable. The 'enemy' would have to concentrate on the automated missile pods. It would be a 'drop and run' engagement.
As a design concept, think of Titanium Turtle's design of a sequence of slices or segments, each segment entirely of missiles in launch tubes, like the missile launcher in Celia Fate's picture of a land missile carrier. All missiles in launch tubes, no need for loading. The segments would all be capable of detaching from the main mother ship, end one first, like a tow tug dropping off barges.
After they are all deployed, the only thing left of the mother ship would be the end stub. Like an old fachioned pencil being sharpened time after time until nothing but the eraser and a stub is left.
Space operas that base their designs for battleships, etc. on earth-based naval warfare entirely miss the reality of space. You don't need the huge infrastructure of a battlship and the hundredds of men it takes to crew them when all you need are the guns and a handful of commanders. Think a minimally crewed submarine, where everything is drive motor, navigation, and launch tubes.
[Answer]
A Sphere, Reference [Warhammer40k Kroot Warsphere](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Warsphere)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fFdWq.jpg)
The Sphere have a lot of surface for missile pod.
See Warsphere in action in the video [here](https://youtu.be/e5KVLhjjeJY?t=476) (game BATTLEFLEET GOTHIC ARMADA 2 )
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dDkSb.png)
Launch missile
[Answer]
For a quick primer on the concept of missile boats as they pertain to space.. let us take a minute to review missile boats as they exist today. Here is USS Shiloh, a Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser in the US Navy.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/w9PsF.jpg)
Shiloh sports 2x 64-cell Mk-41 vertical launch batteries. 128 is a lot of missiles. But also as important are the massive radars, and the sensor and processing systems that guide those missiles. And the powerplants that power those radars and the fire control circuitry for the missiles. And the berthing, mess hall, fresh water and other life support system for the crew that operate and maintain all of those systems. A warship is a system of systems. It is challenging to fit it all together effectively. Ultimately it will always have a tradeoff of size, speed, power, weapons, defenses, armor, sensors, fuel reserves.. that may be more granular than you're thinking right now but the point is it's not just about the missiles. My ideal missile boat would consider:
A- is not too large / expensive. Is pretty economical to build, maintain and upgrade. Otherwise they will spend most of their time in the yard and no one will want to risk losing one in a battle.
B- has great sensors, processing power and can track and engage hundreds of targets simultaneously even in heavy radar jamming or radiation interference environments. It will need lots and lots of radiation shielding to function and operate in space. One big antenna represents a single point of failure and might be lost to a micro-meteor or something.. so maybe cover the whole hull in synthetic distributed apertures that the computer can then mesh together to simulate an antenna the size of the whole ship. Bonus points if you can data link with remote probes and other vessels to simulate an even larger antenna
C- can carry a significant number of powerful anti-ship missiles. Payloads strong enough to threaten very large capital ships, space stations and engage in planetary bombardment, and launch them quickly. (Vertical launch tubes sound ideal here). The tubes do not necessarily need to be facing the target. The missile can just quickly eject out of the launch tube then maneuver itself to the correct attitude before firing its engine. Bonus points for a 2 stage booster that can extend the range. More bonus points if you have an organic on-ship manufacturing capability to fabricate its own replacement missiles. Bearing in mind that the warheads are just as dangerous to the launching ship if they explode while still in the tube, one hit to a carelessly placed VLS battery could cost you the whole ship. So maybe recess the batteries? You'll trade off some carrying capacity for greater survivability there.
D- Is quick and nimble enough to close to firing range, and has plenty of fuel / other consumable resources so it can remain on patrol or on-station like blockade duty for long periods without resupply
E- has defensive systems like ECM antennas, point defenses, lightweight composite reactive armor.
As for its final shape? I'm partial to the arrowhead / wedge. But that's just me. It has to stand up to the structural strain of rapid acceleration / deceleration. It has to be able to take a hit without getting completely disabled. Backup systems, maybe even 2 reactors (fore and aft). Certainly not anything the size of a Dreadnought or other super space structure.
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[Question]
[
For context, take any generic medieval setting and don't change anything leading up to how society got to that point. However, one day, every tree in the country disappears. Eventually, the wood in the weapons they already have has to rot or break, so they inevitably run out.
Would polearms made entirely of metal be too heavy to be viable? How would they adapt without the use of things like siege towers or bows? Other implications of a world without wood are appreciated but warfare is what I'd like to focus on.
[Answer]
* Harder to cook in places without alternatives like peat or oil. No wagons or boats to transport fuels economically. Fuel becomes expensive (too much for some folks), particularly off-season. Malnutrition and seasonal starvation reduce the population.
* Hard to build a stone plow: More difficult agriculture means less food and reduces the population farther. Many areas revert from agricultural villages to hunting/gathering.
* Smelting and metalwork can take places only in areas rich in alternative fuels.
The upshot: Many places that were rich become poor, trade decreases, and trade routes change. Fuel becomes a valuable commodity. Kings' treasuries...and control...dwindle as folks work harder and longer at basic subsistence instead of wealth-producing activities. Many nations shrink or dissolve back into hunting-gathering tribes.
Some places that were poor benefit from their newly-valuable peat/oil deposits, but that doesn't outweigh the mass starvation caused by the tremendous decrease of agriculture productivity. Only the fuel princelings retain defended villages, and trade with tribes: Food for fuel. Warfare between nations becomes obsolete when the nations are gone. Mobile tribes downshift to nuisance raiding and horse/cattle/fuel theft...after all, what is there on the endless steppe that is really worth fighting for?
[Answer]
Welcome to stone age warfare, where you weapons are stones, which you can throw with your hand or using a slingshot.
No more wars then? Of course not, without wood you will hardly have walls, maybe some few meter high bare stone walls, but nothing imponent. Sure, there are examples of megalithic walls built with just large stones, but without doors building a wall becomes a futile exercise, unless the goal is self starvation. And without wood you cannot even work metals.
The most logic defensive architecture becomes a moat with the access path blocked, when needed, with a stone made barrier.
[Answer]
Warfare dissappears. Fighting still exists, and in fact is all over the place as people start starving, but war (organized fighting by armies led by commanders working for a ruler) is dead. You and your neighbour *fight*. Your country and your neighbour country engage in war. No countries = no war.
At the first moment, fortified cities and fortress all became suddenly impregnable. Walls are standing still and reinforced wooden doors can easily last centuries. However, the attacking side has no siege towers, no rams... not even ladders! There's no way to take your objectives except by siege. But that was almost already true before, so nothing has changed... except that now you can't get enough chariots, carts, wagons and what else to make your supply trains. And an army march on its stomach, as Napoleon said.
Also, navys are out - and maritime commerce and fishing is out too. The sea saltwater is poison to wooden ships. They don't last much, and when the last tiny boats are too rotten to float anymore, humankind is denied acces to water masses, except in small [totora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totora_(plant)) boats.
As tools made of wood start to break, replacements are made with bones (horse or oxen), or are built entirely in metal. Lack of fuel for fires is a much major problem. Soon, fire is seen as a kind of magical mystical force to revere instead of a commodity. Most food is eaten raw, and alternative ways of cooking, such as salting and curing processes are increasingly common. Using polished metals to concentrate sunrays in [solar cookers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cooker) becomes the new normal, and every piece of silver than can be found is used that way.
Transportation hits a crisis as cart wheels break and nobody know how to repair them. The only solution is using (way smaller) metallic wheels. The rest of the chart is made of totora, [esparto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esparto) or hemp atached to a mettalic or bone frame to provide stiffness, or it is a simple net hanging between two metallic rods. In any case, commerce is made only locally, and states disintegrate into [*poleis*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polis).
Once civilization reaches a new equilibrium state and gets used to the "new normal", war can resume as another one of our usual routines. Every city-state can recruit an army - there are no standing armies - and wage war against its neighbours (no farther than that, since there are no navies). War is seasonal, since men must return in order to harvest. Main weapons are maces, hammers or axes of bone and stone or metal, only commanders are rich enough to have a sword (too much precious metal for just one weapon). Bows are replaced with slings. Armours are made of leather, cloth, fur or even paper, reinforced with bones, seashells or metal plates or scales. Polearms are gone, which all in all benefits horsemen. Stone bridges become strategical critical points. If one is ever distroyed, it cannot be rebuilt, incommonicating whole regions on a permanent basis.
[Answer]
The main problem will be the lack of firewood. Coal, [which has been used in Europe since at least Roman times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining) can replace it, but will become rather expensive and may be mainly used for metalworking, while the poor must burn peat or dung for heat and oil or candles for lighting.
As for bows, horn and bone bows have been used in bows, usually in combination with wood, but composite bows entirely made from horn, bone, and sinew are quite possible. [Bog wood](https://www.maureenmcghee.com/about/history-of-bog-oak/) can also be used. Even so, slings may become more fashionable, as they require no wood.
Incidentally, if you treat wood well - e.g. oil it regularly - it can last centuries, if not millennia. As time goes by, wooden bows and furniture will become rarer and more valuable, but this will take a long time. Wheels and barrels will have to be made entirely from metal rather than from metal-banded wood.
For siege weapons, you could make ballistas and onagers from bone, rope, leather, and sinew. It may not be possible to make them quite as big as wooden ones, except perhaps with whale bone, but you can make them. It might be possible to stiffen rope with resins or pitch to replace timber. Rams can be made entirely from metal or possibly stone bound with metal.
A major change will be that large ships will be nigh-impossible to make unless you master the art of steel ship-building. You will be limited to boats made from bone and hide, like the Inuit do or did.
Addendum: With the lack of wood, the ceramics industry will likely blossom, including creating ceramics that harden without heating, like the very strong [Roman concrete](https://www.sciencealert.com/why-2-000-year-old-roman-concrete-is-so-much-better-than-what-we-produce-today), and improving glass. Brick and concrete houses will replace wooden houses, and ceramic pots will replace wooden barrels. [Ceramic weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_knife) and [glass weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_knife) will supplement or even replace metal ones, if metal becomes expensive (which would especially make metal armor very expensive).
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Your "generic medieval setting" quickly becomes a nomadic steppe setting.
When all trees disappear, it is logical to assume that they will be replaced with grasses. This might be difficult to imagine for Western Europe, but in other parts of the world the lack of trees is common, and we shouldn't look too far to see what the warfare would look like.
First, traditional agriculture would become difficult, and many permanent settlements would become unsustainable. On the other hand, the population of grazing animals is set to explode, and humans would take advantage of that. A horse warrior, armed with a sword and bow will become a standard in the aftermath. Arrow shafts can be made from sturdy grass stems, but for spears and other polearms grass would be inadequate.
Remaining wood would become expensive, but still quite common for the several decades afterwards. This means that defensive structures and offensive contraptions like catapults would still be widely available. After all wood will rot, earthworking would be the main way to conduct siege warfare.
Sites of natural resources like coal and peat would become contested. The one who controls the fuel can control metallurgy, and reliance on iron and steel would set to increase.
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War, despite what many would have you believe, is largely about logistics. So let's look at how societies would be affected, because that will greatly affect your supplies, movement, and more.
Like most other answers, I agree that the disappearance of trees would result in a complete collapse of society. The only thing I might say differently is how society collapses.
The first thing I think people may have missed is...
## Without trees (and their roots) soil will erode
This will wreak havoc on almost every food source available to humans.
1. Fertile soil will begin eroding, meaning domesticated plants won't grow.
2. Many types of birds will die out or be severely reduced in numbers by a lack of habitat.
3. Many types of animals who hide in forest environments will die, and predators of those animals will attempt to hunt livestock.
4. Soil from the mountains will erode onto grass fields, devastating grazing animals in many places.
5. Dangerous mudslides will occur burying towns, roads, livestock...
6. Dirt will go into rivers and often clog them, killing many types of fish we rely on to eat.
7. Harbors will be silted.
8. Seashore ecosystems will also be devastated by the large influx of new minerals and components.
Soil erosion based on clear cutting is a likely cause of many civilization collapses in our history (think the Easter Island civilization, possibly the Mayan civilization, and others); how much more so the complete disappearance of trees?
The only source of food that potentially wouldn't be effected would be ocean fishing... but, as has been made clear in other answers, ships won't be able to function without wood for repairs for long.
## Effects on Humans and Responses to Responses
At this time I'll take a moment and ask: during the current pandemic when toilet paper was being hoarded, fights broke out over it at the super market... so what would happen if the thing that was scarce was what you cooked with, was what you did your job with, was what kept you from freezing to death in the winter?
In our world, it would be like if oil suddenly disappeared. Yes, we have other sources of energy, but are they enough? There are some movie franchises, methinks, that would argue otherwise.
### Growing Food
Obviously, growing food will quickly become a problem based on the above discussion of soil erosion and logic from other answers. I won't duplicate that here.
### Processing food
In the medieval period, wheat was ground into flour on an industrial level by water wheels and wind mills. Both of which were usually made of wood. And both of which endure large mechanical stresses on a daily basis. They would break rapidly, meaning that what food stores you might have would soon need to be processed manually, which, while possible, greatly reduces efficiency.
### Cooking food
Perhaps more immediately, cooking will become a problem.
At the time that trees disappeared, many people would be relying on wood for heating their food. Much of the time they will have stocked up some amount of firewood, but not an outrageous amount: there's a whole forest right there, why hoard wood? In cities they might have less, as they need to buy the wood instead of chopping it down themselves/with their community.
After going through the few days of firewood people in those areas have stored, what will they do? If peat etc are not currently a part of their heating strategies, then they'll have to burn finished goods for heat. Furniture, tools, abandoned buildings, all start getting thrown into the fire. Civilization is eating itself.
### Peat, Coal, etc
Even in places where peat is burned, the huge influx of demand will create shortages. Could those areas scale up production to meet demand? When they can't mine more because they can't use wooden frames for holding up the shaft? When other groups/cities/countries are attacking them to get hold of the fuel sources they do have?
### Heating residences
Next, there's heating. Without wood, many northern climes would become largely uninhabitable except by very few. If you can't start a fire, most of your run-of-the-mill peasants are going to be in big trouble.
### Responses to these challenges
Once a baron/lord/king realized that trees were gone, they might attempt to march an army over to the nearest coal mining nation. But as I said at the beginning, war is about logistics.
So: how would he transport supplies? Weapons? Armor? Previously he would have used carts and wagons. Now, though, when an axel breaks, you can't just go off the road and chop down a tree to make a new one.
Worse, due to soil erosion, the roads will be in terrible condition. There will be mud, mud, mud, for as far as the eye can see (if he's lucky and this doesn't happen in the winter). Amounts of clean water large enough for an army will be hard to find, leading to all kinds of infections and diseases.
Once he arrives, how will he create siege engines? Dig sapping tunnels? Those were usually built on the spot. As other answers have noted, cities will be largely impregnable.
Maybe he can just go straight to the mines... Perhaps, but don't you think the existing rulers will have taken all the peat/coal behind walls? Ok then, maybe he can just guard the mine while his soldiers mine the materials. Great, how will he transport his ill gotten gains back to his people? Over those bad roads, with too few carts that have been cannibalized endlessly, pulled by draft animals with no grazing, led by men with dysentery.
So he gets home, only to find his people (with the help of his desperate garrison) have ransacked his castle in order to find things to burn. Peasants are now dying in droves, and have found a new leader while he was gone.
And so on.
## Conclusion: Effects on Warfare
The effects on warfare would be immediate and drastic: there would be a lot of it, and it would be largely ineffective. Bunches of failed forays into other countries, which quickly devolve into populace control, until, finally, armies as a concept would cease to be viable.
Any civilization that lasted long enough to worry about how heavy an all metal pike is would count itself lucky. It would be a super power in its (limited) area, and organization, supplies, and numbers would easily overcome any bedraggled, starved enemies. Technological and societal advance would slow to a crawl as stone and metal became the only feasible building materials. It would be extremely vulnerable to starvation, bad weather/seasons, and disease.
As far as armaments and tactics go, many other answers, and the question itself, covers many feasible possibilities. But, as a short, speculative list:
* Ranged weapons would be confined to slings.
* Sieges would center around waiting a city out
* Cavalry would become much less effective without wood for saddles and grain for horses
* Metal weapons would become even more expensive due to the difficulty in creating more
* Pitched battles, as a result, would likely have more survivors, and may become largely for display (though that is just pure speculation)
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without wood you would have a hard time cooking food. In certain areas you might be able to use animal dung if there are large herds of herbivores.
Your ability to make tools would be very limited. You could make hand held stone axes and stone knives, but no axes, spears, or bows.
You might be able to find some surface deposits of coal and iron ore, but with only hand held stone tools they will be hard to mine. Without wood for shoring underground mining become almost impossible.
You would also have an ecological disaster as many animal depend on trees and forests. Humans would have a difficult time simply surviving as they would lack protection form predators, would have difficulty hunting, or even protecting crops from wild animals.
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Our protagonist is repeating the last 30 years of his life, from the age of 5 years old, over and over again. Read the 'premise' section of [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/189253/30-year-groundhogs-day-how-to-increase-the-worlds-technology) for all the details.
As mentioned in the last bullet point our protagonist is going to struggle with the repetitiveness of reliving the same life over and over. As he get's older and gains the freedom of adulthood this isn't as bad, as he can make new decisions, live new experiences, and ideally is in a world with increasingly advanced technology to play with.
However his childhood and school years are problem. As a child he doesn't get to make decisions for himself and thus is stuck in the same home, going to the same school, with the same potential friends every time. Worse the schools themselves are quite repetitive, our protagonist is struggling to tolerate the boredom of being trapped time after time hearing the exact same lecture on how to do long division.
This is further exasperated by the fact that being trapped in a child's body (and brain) leads to his [feeling and acting more childish](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody). His struggle to endure the repetitiveness of school life is exasperated by the general impatience and lack of self control that comes with childhood.
The obvious solution to this problem is to test out of school entirely so he doesn't have to sit through these lessons. He did this the first time he went back in time, successfully skipping numerous grades. Unfortunately for him this lead to a significant amount of media attention about the child prodigy who was going to change the world, an experience he found he hated, both because he generally hated media attention and because he found it put a significant amount of pressure on him to 'live up to' the prodigy talents he demonstrated, something he couldn't do since he wasn't actually a genius. He has resolved he definitely does not want to repeat the experience by trying to skip grades in school during future lifetimes.
He has similarly decided that revealing he is a time traveler would likely also lead to too much media attention and pressure and so doesn't want to do that.
Given his restriction of not wanting to draw too much attention to himself, and limited autonomy as a young child, what options are available to our time traveler to try to avoid the redundancy of sitting through the same lectures, and having the exact same experiences, for the hundredth time? What can he do to encourage variety in his young life, and is there a way to avoid spending the majority of it in a classroom listening to lessons he doesn't need?
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Some ideas for how to spend time. At school:
* **Uplift others.** Provided you go to a decent sized school and eventually high school, there will be at least a handful of people who have the potential to become wildly influential and successful. While you coast through school, help them out, teach them, and guide their social development so that they can maximise their own potential (if they want to). This way you can help raise the people who might one day contribute towards building a brighter future.
* **Be a classroom-hero.** With foreknowledge, you know everything about your classmates. You know Bill will kill someone in a DUI, you know Alice has an abusive mother, you know James is struggling with undiagnosed ADHD. Become their friends and help fix their problems, or better yet, help them learn how to fix their own problems.
* **Be a super-hero.** You know 9/11 will happen, you know when school shootings will happen, you know when terrorist attacks happen. Yes, it would be difficult to change things and remain anonymous as a kid, but you could probably convince your parents to take a trip to New York with you and pull the fire alarm in the WTC center before the planes hit. Spend time writing anonymous letters to butterfly away bad stuff that happens.
* **Have fun.** While I can see how elementary school would be boring, I personally enjoyed middle and high school. If I had to go through them again, I'd fully invest myself in time-intensive extracurriculars like theatre or band, mixing it up until I'm a poly-instrumentalist, capable journalist, track star, robotics club captain, etc.
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***Money Makes the World go Around:***
Memorize lottery dates and times (or record them on a piece of paper). Confide in one or two trusted adults about this. Give them lotto numbers, then run away with the divided proceeds and the promise to the adults of gaining all the money once the MC has returned again to the past. Then, learn foreign languages and travel the world as a rich young man with hired supervision. If any of these folks betray him, he starts over and doesn't trust them again.
Despite being young, he now doesn't need to live his same repetitive life. He can learn to create false identities, live in numerous countries, etc. Go to fancy schools or learn from private tutors if he wants to learn stuff. Attend the best universities in the world. After a while, he should be able to manipulate the stock market (despite the butterfly effect), make investments in protected anonymous accounts, and use the money to do anything he wants, including fund research funneled with data from his private stash of knowledge. Swiss and Cayman Islands accounts mean he can hold great wealth without people being aware. What researcher isn't going to believe a mysterious eccentric (million?)billionaire?
Further, I disagree with the premise that being filthy rich means people know HE is filthy rich. Or that they care. People have been hiding their wealth and power for a long time. Ask any mafia boss and he'll tell you he's poor a dirt (living in a big house with a fancy car).
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In most jurisdictions, a child is legally required to undergo education, with the only way to avoid it being to skip grades, as you have already described. If the character is able to persuade his parents to allow homeschooling, that may lessen his/her problems.
As for how to pass the time:
* Learn new skills. There's all of human experience (art, philosophy, history, science, etc.) to learn from if the character has access to a library and reading books at an adult level can be passed off as a harmless quirk or hidden.
* Perfect old skills and use them to create things. One could write novels or create artwork with centuries of experience behind them. Best of all, no teacher will take much notice of a child writing or doodling during a lecture so long as their grades are good; they have enough to deal with already.
* Prepare for the adult phase of their life. Accruing and managing money and exercise to keep themselves fit can eat up a fair bit of time.
* Work out how to "manage" his/her parents. Very important.
* Play around with taking alternate branches in history. Presumably the character always starts from the same initial conditions. They now get to try different decisions at different junctures in their life to see how it goes. For example, what happens if they dated B instead of A during their high school years?
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## He can just drop out
<https://www.businessinsider.com/highly-successful-high-school-dropouts-2016-6> - there are plenty of successful high school dropouts. These are some of the ones you'd be most likely to hear about, but their wild success implies that there are plenty of dropouts who are mildly successful instead.
All he really has to do is learn how to program well. When he's around 10 years old, he needs to convince his parents to buy a computer (one way might be to get them to win a couple thousand dollars in a lottery). He can feign interest in learning how to program, and check out programming books from the library. He would, of course, ignore those books, but it gives his parents a reason to believe that he's legitimately learning how to program.
Over time, he can spend more and more time on the computer. Occasionally, he could produce things to wow his parents so they won't think he's just wasting his time and potential. He can let his grades suffer, to the point where he can just say he wants to drop out and go to work programming full time (15-16 years old may be a good time to do that). [Google was founded in 1998](https://about.google/our-story/) so he could try to go work for them for a while, or for one of the other now-big companies that was started around then. Get in early enough, get paid in some stock, and he could retire reasonably early. As a bonus, many programmers tend to be introverted, so it would make perfect sense if he does not want to receive public attention despite whatever success he achieves.
Note that being involved in the tech industry early on would also help with his other goal of discretely disseminating his future-knowledge.
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There is a homeschooling method called [unschooling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling#:%7E:text=Unschooling%20is%20a%20form%20of,rather%20than%20a%20set%20curriculum) that your traveler may be able to persuade the parents to go for.
It's basically a homeschooling system with no set curricula or timeframe. Learning is based on the childs desires/abilities/interests etc. There is not set time that a certain "deadline", such as learning to read, has to be met. When a child wishes to learn to read (normally becase they wanna know what's going on in the video game they happen to be playing or possible subtitles on film/series) the child makes the decision and puts in the effort to learn to read. If the child is interested in botany, they focus their attention on all things plants. If the child wants to avoid maths equtions but focus on cooking skills, go for it. If they happen to want to focus on carpentry, folklore medicine or even metal working, the parents do their best to support the kids interests.
From my understanding, parents might *seed* their living environment with educational material such as books/videos/games but the decision to learn new things is all on the kid. So if the traveller knows a certain situation is going to happen at year xxxz, they can spend their repeated childhoods trying to learn news skills each time in order to survive/make the best of said situation.
So as long as your little kindergartener\*\* or possibly 3rd grader can somehow persuade the adults in their lifes to give this a go (and it's a legal option in the country in question), your traveller can spend a good 6-10 years learning new skills/interests in preparation for the future they know is going to happen...without being viewed as some sort of genius worthy of making the local news at 10.
\*\* I checked, *kindergartner* and *kindergartener* are both accepted spellings.
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Your subject is not a 5 year old boy with the knowledge of a 35 year old. He is a 35 year old in the body of a 5 year old.
We are our knowledge and experiences. If I have all your knowledge and experiences, I am you.
Then on the next go-around, he will be a 65 year old man in the body of a 5 year old, and so on.
There will be biological things with the body, hormones, but he has already gone through early socialisation
and play, he will not need to do that again.
Now I don't know about you, but I could not withstand going through kindergarten and all of school again at my age.
So what you will want to do is to show your parents that you are talented and want to homeschool yourself, as long
as you can convince them that you are surpassing goals and are actually doing productive things, you can probably
get them off your back and they might let you study what you want and do some things you want. But for at least the
first 10 years you will basically be in jail, with your parents being jailers and you could only go to places and
events your parents permit. At least they must be convinced you are a prodigy, but you don't need to participate
in competitions or expose yourself otherwise to gain attention.
Since this is pre-internet I would suggest becoming pen-pals with people you find of interest, maybe you wanna
be pen palls with scientists developing technology you are interested in and want to speed up, they don't need to know
who you are. Create multiple identities through which you communicate with people.
Then with the help of a trusted adult you make a bit of money.
Then use that money to create a stronger fake identity which you could actually use to start trading stocks and making money.
Your parents will probably be concerned about your social skills and so will be forcing you to interact with others your own age,
this will be like you now interacting with children. You will not make friends with them, but you must fake it to avoid attention.
As you get a bit older hormones will make you horny, you should accept right away that you wont be having any relationships, kissing
or sex until you are at least 18. Because you will be attracted to older women, and the women your own age will be children to you.
You also wont be making any friends your own age simply because they are children, you do not have common interests.
Once internet comes around, convince your parents to get it instantly. That makes communication easier for you as you can never reveal
yourself in person or you will draw attention. Then keep up the bit about communicating with interesting people over mail and now
internet, keep making new identities for every person (you don't want two of them to randomly meet and start talking about this one guy
who they had been mailing with who had revolutionary ideas about both of their completely unrelated fields). Once you grow up a bit you
will either convince your parents to let you do whatever you want, or you will emancipate. Then you can start using some of that money
and travel, and experience things, live whatever life you want. But you will need to live under false identities, fake names, fake origins,...
Once you are old enough that women you actually find attractive will be willing to be with you, you might have some brief relationships,
but they wont last, because you wont let yourself get too close because you know it will end soon. And besides, even if you appear to be 18
and they are 40, you are still older then them, the first time around not by that much, but a couple loops in, everybody will seem like children
to you.
So to summarise, your real problem wont be boredom. For the first decade or so, it will be your parents constraining you and not allowing
you to make your own decisions. And during the whole time, it will be loneliness. After three iterations you will already start being the oldest
person in the world, you will have experienced more than anyone else. You will find that you will need to limit your interactions with even the
smartest people to only their specific field as on every other topic, they are children compared to you. You will spend your time alone,
some iterations you might choose to try out fame, sometimes you might want to be a crimelord, its not like there are any permanent consequences.
All humans are but children compared to you, through your years you have become a master manipulator, you can read people at a glimpse, you can make
money anywhere you want, the world is your plaything to do with as you please. If you don't have excellent mental health and self control at the start
you will start doing things that you now find unimaginable simply because you the consequences are negligible. You might start with killing some
people before they commit bad deeds, then you will find that stealing from some rich people doesn't really matter as you are the only one who will
still exist in 10 years, so what does it matter. And you can stretch this far, after long enough human laws will no longer seem relevant to you,
the only question will be, do I want to do this, because you will be a god (think Groundhog day scene where he calls himself a god).
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* Find out if there are other people like him. That in itself may be a little tricky, it would require something fro him to get world-famous, but not in the revealing "prodigy" sense - so it would be something like getting on television in some event - which should be rather easy with years and then saying something which reveals that he its from the future to people who have been there. (e.g. saying in 1999 that the presidents tweets - may sound like a cute 5 year old misspelling and innocent enough not be detected in general, even later).
If no, it depends how much he is able to keep himself busy (experiments, manipulating people, testing out evil), but I guess it could be hard
If yes however, they can play games against each other. That could range from good to evil, or actually difficult to judge.
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For this question there are probably two key things to keep in mind, 1) the internet, and 2) more options will appear on successive repeats.
Also note that a lot of this is based on the assumptions made by OP in their other (linked) question
>
> At the end of his first repeat he can carry back something around the size of a thumbdrive, by his third lifetime he could carry a laptop, the size of things he can store will continue to grow linearly with lifetimes (possibly slowing down after he reaches a sufficiently large carrying capacity)
>
>
>
Without this assumption it would be a lot harder to take information back with them. Though the idea of behaving as a gifted child and interacting with other gifted children (see below) would still work without the significant stress of playing a child prodigy.
**FIRST REPEAT**
The hardest repeat will probably be the first one, since the protagonist has made no preparations for this and so has to go off spotty recollections of things that happened at that time. Since he is a software programmer he will be able to prove to his parents that he is from the future by March 31, 1999, the day the matrix came out. All he has to do is explain the plot of the matrix (which he can probably remember) before it is filmed. Alternatively he could convince his parents to watch monty python's Holy grail or life of Brian and quote half the movie from memory (Monty python tends to be well known in science and programming circles, and its not unreasonable to assume that he could do that even as an average person). Since his parents haven't shown him these movies its going to make them think (though their first suspicion may be that he saw it at school or at a friend's place).
There is also the internet, this would give him access to other things to learn, as well as the dot com bubble (which occurred between 1995-1999) which he'd likely be aware of, and might be able to recall a particular business that had a short term spike in share prices and be able to build a nest egg from that for future investments (This would be quite believable if it had a funny name or offered a ridiculous service that would never work in hindsight.) One example of where he could look is the arXiv, a preprint server for scientific papers, which (at least now) is accessible by anyone to read research papers on before they are published in a journal and I believe was connected to the world wide web in 1993. It was originally for high energy physics (which he'd need to teach himself the material) but later on included math and computer science papers.
From what you've said in the first loop he plays the child prodigy and that may go to his head. As far as he will experience he is a prodigy, he is much smarter than everyone around him and he is a similar age or possibly a couple of years older than his parents. This could have a significant influence on him and make him appreciate learning more in future loops than would be expected by his original life. He may also try to tackle big problems such as climate change because of his now inflated ego, joining activist groups and possibly trying to integrate himself with the scientific community. Somewhere between the ages of 15 and 20 is probably when the truth that he isn't a genius and he fades into obscurity (with maybe only a wikipedia article as his legacy, not too unusual for child prodigies). An average 40 year old may be comparable to a genius 10 year old (though a psychologist trained in high intelligence children might see a confusing difference in behaviour), but an average 50 year old will be struggling to keep up with a genius 20 year old.
In his later life he'd be able to decide to take a USB back with him, given he's probably invested in google, amazon, walmart, youtube, facebook, bitcoin, ect he is independently wealthy and doesn't have to work. He can also afford to get someone to design a USB that is durable enough to work after decades and can interface with multiple standards (so he can use USB from 1996, and something else prior to that). Now he'll be able to send a Terrabyte of information back in time (though some of it may be blocked off until later dates due to hardware limitations). While he is now again only of average skill, he does have more training and experience in more developed/efficient programming techniques then most of his colleges, such as agile software development or test driven design.
**NEXT FEW REPEATS**
The next few lives is where things get interesting. While he doesn't want to be a child prodigy he can pretend to be gifted and get to meet/befriend actual high intelligence children. These "childhood" friends would be much more interesting since they would be able to introduce new ideas/concepts much easier then the average students (and gifted children often get along better with adults then similar aged peers). Since they are actually gifted they may manage to guess that he is from the future (particularly if they like science fiction). But now the fact he is only of average intelligence will no longer limit him since he will be able to get help from his good friends. He will probably still spend time with kids of average intelligence since they are actually closer to him and he won't be bombarded by insightful links between ideas that require him to think hard to follow, though there will probably be a barrier between the average friends and his gifted ones.
He will also have access to programming languages and libraries that don't exist for a couple more decades. These programming libraries are very useful as they don't require that a user understands how to program everything from the ground up and can be made quite efficient. This means the protagonist could take google's tensorflow and use it to start a different search engine company that out-competes google due to using their future (superior) technology. However there will be some limitations since the hardware back in the 90s wouldn't be able to run these algorithms very efficiently and so he'd have to wait until technology gets better.
He could also start chatting with researchers anonymously via email, claim he is an independently wealthy researcher who works on things in his free time but not linked to a university (and buys access to journals which he has access to from his hammerspace USB). This may be motivated by his (failed) attempt to solve climate change as a child prodigy. If you've seen the limitless series think about the communication between Brian and the guy who extends a mouse's lifespan.
Since intelligence is no longer an issue by the third time through the USB can probably be designed so that he has access to everything immediately as well as some instructions he could use to boot strap better tech from what he would reasonably have available given his age and the time, as well as better ideas of how to balance boring school lessons with necessary social interaction.
Later on once his hammer space has expanded he'd be able to send back something like a raspberry pi or a NUC (next unit computing by intel, you can buy one now with 16GB ram, i7 core/4GHz and 1TB of storage). This would allow him to make use of the software he's been carrying back with him, but would probably need to be re-engineered for robustness and to interface with monitors/keyboards/mice of the 1990s. How long this takes may depend on how quickly his hammerspace grows
**LONG TERM**
Eventually one of his gifted "childhood" friends could invent a strong AI, this means he could finally take someone back with him and keep himself entertained with this character. Later depending on how you want to take the story things like intelligence augmentation or neural implants could be developed. This means that when starting at 5 years old again, instructions may be included on his original USB (and possibly guidance by his AI friend) on how to boost his intelligence or implant a neural connection given only his tech level/intelligence (since he will suddenly become dumber when reverting to 5 if he manages to augment his intelligence). Once he has a neural implant he can chat to the AI or write software/read research papers during the long division lessons. If brain uploading is also developed then he could bring people back with him and essentially be a hivemind spending time talking with himself during the classes for things he has long since mastered.
If he decides to focus on this it might be possible to develop after several cycles (and either he or one of his gifted friends could come up with the idea). This is especially true once the strong AI can help by bringing an understanding of many advanced manufacturing techniques, biological processes, and software approaches back with the protagonist.
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If this earth were cubed shape would it be possible for Magellan to prove that the earth is cube-shaped without going to space and looking at earth?
It might seem strange to think that earth might be shaped like a cube. Remember I am not saying perfect cube but rounded cube at the edge. Do you remember Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko where spacecraft Rosetta landed? It was odd shaped. So couldn't earth be odd shaped other than a sphere? If Magellan had to prove what the shape of the earth is like that then would it be possible for him to prove that earth is cube-shaped using his floating ship? I just want to know if it were possible.
[Answer]
A planet-sized cube will collapse under its own weight into a sphere. The comet you mentioned has too little mass for that (and it would become a sphere if it was liquid). Our Earth is essentially a bubble of lava, with a thin solid crust. And it is the weight of the rock that turns lower levels into liquid lava.
So I will **assume your cube planet is made of unrealistically strong materials** that prevent a collapse (or it is a hollow artificial construct), the vertices of the cube will work like mountains and edges -- like mountain ridges. So you cannot sail from one face to another. Instead of planet-wide ocean, you will have lakes in the middle of each face. See Figure 1 here: <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.3857.pdf>
In fact, you might not be able to walk or fly across the edge, **as earth-sized atmosphere will be nonexistent near the edges**. Gas (just like a liquid) will try to form a sphere around the cube, and if there is not enough of it, the edges and vertices will stick out. In fact, you will have a ring of habitable land on each face, between the central lake, and the end of the atmosphere. In fact, you can have completely different atmospheres on each face.
If you have enough gas to encase the entire cube (see Figure 3), the atmospheric pressure will be a lot higher, giving you (I think) a Venus-like hot world
People will notice the **change in gravity angle** as they travel towards edges (Figure 2), but they will just think that they are climbing a mountain ridge. Fog and dust in the atmosphere will prevent people from seeing all the way across the face of the cube, so they will assume they live in a square-shaped valley surrounded by impassable mountains.
The first proof of Earth shape was **The Eratosthenes Experiment (250BC)**:
<https://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dns/teachersguide/MeasECAct2.html>
It was based on the angle of the sun. On your cube, the sun will have the same angle with the surface. But just as Eratosthenes, your people will measure angle vs. up-down gravitational field line (see Figure 2). So exact replication of his experiment (with 2 points, North/South of each other) will lead to the same conclusion: the planet is round.
**Repeating experiment with points East/West of each other might show that shape is not round, or doing the experiment with more than 2 points.** I am too tired to figure out the angles :)
user535733's idea of measuring time between sunrize and sunset is valid, but requires a clock (renaissance technology) or lots of patience with hour-glass and more complex theoretical argument.
The "magellan" approach of travelling across faces requires oxygen tanks and breathing masks, or space rockets, or tunneling under the ridge/edge.
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You can figure out whether or not your planetary body is cube-shaped by simply recording the rise/set times of celestial bodies, including ordinary sunrise/sunset, along a line of latitude.
At Earth's equator, for example, the sun and moon and stars rise about one hour later as you move 1000 nautical miles westward. The change is gradual and consistent.
On a cube-shaped planet, one entire face will have (essentially) the same rise/set times. As you move 1000 nautical miles increments westward, the sun keeps rising/setting at the same time on your clock...and then suddenly comes up six hours later after you round to the next face of the cube.
That day (or night) you transit between two faces, the change in the sky should be quite apparent to a keen observer. The sun and moon move noticeably faster or slower than usual (or perhaps backward). If you transit onto one of the polar faces, the changes will be even more apparent.
This should be (and was) readily detected, recorded, and calculated by Bronze-age societies (at the latest). For Magellanic-era sailors and technologies, the shape of the planet should be (and was) old news.
[Answer]
Is it a gravitational anomaly which caused the planet to form into a cube, or was it a cubical structure that is held by artificial means (such as alien design)?
1- Gravitational anomaly: The inhabitants of one "side" of the cube will think the Earth is flat, and all indications will seem to confirm that. they will be unaware of the cubical shape. When they venture to the edge and look over the horizon they will see a vertical world just below them. Water will behave the same, so oceans will form part of the cube surface.
2- Cube held by an artificial structure: The gravity will pull the mantle to form a sphere but something prevents it from doing so. On the other hand, nothing will hold the oceans that way. The ocean will flow and gather at the center of each "side" forming a dome. The observers on land will see it and will think this is a water mountain amid a flat Earth. The inhabitants will still think the Earth is flat, unless they look over the edges. On the other hand, as they walk towards the edge, they will feel the ground gets steeper as if they climb a mountain. This is the same force which would otherwise make the cube collapse into a sphere and the water converge to form a dome. That's also the reason why rivers will tend to flow towards the center -- following gravity.
One thing will not change in either case # 1 or #2: Lunar eclipses. They will all indicate the Earth is cubical: The shadow of the Earth on the moon will always be the projection of a cube's shadow. The outlines of the shadow will always be straight lines with straight or obtuse angles, and never the side of a disk or a circle...
[Answer]
**In the following I am not challenging the premise that the planet is shaped as a cube, just taking it for granted**
The Earth is a cube, and there is somebody navigating on the seas direction East, until they reach the edge and move to the next face of the cube. What will they see?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nw8Bd.png)
Let's say they start from position A in the below picture: they see the sky limited by their local horizon, with the 3 red stars low on the horizon to the East.
This stays the same also when they are in B and check the position of the stars at the same time of the night.
When they reach C, however, they will notice that the 3 red stars are now high in their local sky, and when they travel further East the 3 red stars will be low on the horizon at West.
In this way, having knowledge of some projective geometry, they can figure out that the Earth is a cube.
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Oke, imagine the earth is cube shaped and has normal gravity. There would be no water at the 12 edges, since it would be pulled inward, assuming a bulbed form. Maybe the moon/sun gravity could mess things up a bit. But I think the boats would be stranded before going over the edge.
[Answer]
I'm going to take a different angle on this. First off: no physics. You're building a fantasy world - if you want an earth-like world that happens to be a cube, you've got it. To heck with traditional gravitation. Second: no obvious lunar eclipses. As people have pointed out, lunar eclipses could give the game away pretty easily. So we'll say that the planet is much larger than the moon (so it's merely a flat edge occluding the moon) or even that the moon doesn't lie on a similar orbital plane.
So, what now?
First up, the idea that our earth is a shaped body *wasn't* intuitive. It's simply too large for a person to get a sense of its scale through everyday life - for all intents and purposes, it functions as a flat plane. Erotosthenes proved it was round simply because observations *didn't* match the expected flat-plane earth. (Or in other words, Flat-Earth was the default theory until it was proven wrong.)
And here's the kicker: all the early observations that anyone would make would on your cubical planet line up to the world being simply a flat plane. Because, well, they're living on the flat planar side of a cube. The default theory would stay true for a *lot* longer, simply because observations *would* match up with the default flat-earth theory. Eratosthenes wouldn't observe two wells miles apart having different angled shadows; he wouldn't calculate the 'radius' of the earth because, well, it was 'obviously' flat.
It wouldn't be until travel over the edges that observations would start deviating from the "flat earth" theory. And, well, once someone makes it to an edge, it'd be blatantly obvious something weird was going on - regardless of how much 'cube rounding' you did. Keep in mind, on that flat world, there's no such thing as a horizon limitation. Someone in New York would be able to see the Rocky Mountains, or even the city lights from hundreds of miles away. (<https://www.livescience.com/33895-human-eye.html>) Once you take someone from that sort of world, and then plunk them down in a situation where there *is* a horizon effect? They're going to notice awfully quickly, even if the curve is over hundreds of miles.
The funny thing is, Magellanic explorers in *our* world were easily able to get their latitude from the position of the stars, but had problems getting their longitude due to not having accurate ship-board clocks. Magellanic explorers in the cubic world wouldn't use the stars for either latitude or longitude because the positions would be constant across the cube face, *BUT* it actually makes it *more* obvious what's going on to them. Since the stars would *only* change position as the earth rotated, once they saw any sort of non-standard rotation as they traversed the edge of the cube, they'd know something was up.
So basically, the short story: while the civilization hasn't reached the edge: they have no clue they're on a cube (because all their observations match a flat-world.) And once they reach the cube's edge, the jig is up: it's obvious what's going on.
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I don't think you'd be able to sail around this cube planet because gravity would pull all water to the center of the six surfaces. There would have to be a very deep ravine along an edge for water to accumulate there and be contiguous with the centers.
However, I think you would be able to deduce it's cube shape without having to squarumnavigate it. Consider the following graphic that shows the pull of gravity to center while showing the grade against the surface of the planet.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/duwKT.jpg)
You can quickly visualize that as you approach an edge gravity would have you feel an apparent parabolic slope, however, you would visually gain no vantage. Deduction would lead you to at least call this planet flat with a mysterious pull to a deep center about one half the earth's breadth long 1. If you could travel to any edge, assuming no issues with atmosphere, you'd quickly realize that you've rounded a corner and are perpendicular to where you once were, with the mysterious pull at the center being the only constant. The fact that you would have rounded only one quarter of a circle, instead of one half, would tell you that you are not on a flat earth, but a cube one.
Traveling to the edge would *feel* like the following, but remember that you would still *see* a relatively flat earth.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eHwkr.jpg)
For this earth to exist, it would have to be very small or made out of stupendously sturdy material. Alternatively, gravity would have to operate differently, because without flight, it's easy to see that circumnavigation would be nearly impossible 2.
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1. This "great pull to the deep center" would be truly mysterious to ancient peoples and I would certainly enjoy a fanciful story about how they discovered their planet was a cube.
2. This structure would seem that livable earth was deep within a chasm, surrounded by great mountains with no visible slope, yet you would feel that slope ever more greatly as you approached the peaks. Carving out planes perpendicular to gravity would have you feel as if you were walking on a wall, with the ground to one side of you and the sky to the other. Only significant excavation or flight would make surmounting the edge possible. Such an endeavor would possibly change words even, as you would "dig up and over the mountain".
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Assumptions assumptions. Liquid core. Blended materials in molten phase with graduate density due to gravity. Shape since birth of solar system. Note many Mons Olympus is impossible too if you assume a large earth liquid core. But smaller orb hit by high speed asteroid late in solidification of core...voila Mons Olympus. Support of such large structure is supported by super thick crust and core nearing solid.
So look at the question more as 8 equidistant steel supported super mountains with connecting ridge lines and the question is definitely more possible in a post-liquid core planetary phase. A more cubic planet is possible if little of the core is liquid and the materials distribution is neither graduated nor homogeneous by depth. That is weird collisions could beat a solid iron core squarish and later overlaid with lots of low density "crust". Layer on the light crust materials later after the molten mixing bowl phase. I'd think more engineered myself.
Yes there are limits to squareness or peaks supported by large solid natural steel. I say it would still be mostly round and gravitational subsidence making it more round every day.
Yes even distribution of gravity would weird. But again stop assuming homogeneous planetary density. Why not lesser density material at center of cube faces (crustal rock versus shallow beuried steel at edges and corners? Plus lack of liquid core might well mean no life since our magnetic field might not exist or be weird due solid steel/iron core.
But a more interesting question than simply saying Earth is the standard for all planets and the existence of all life. Nobody said this new Magellan was a human did they?
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**Eclipses**
A lunar eclipse is caused by the moon passing into the Earth's shadow. In our world, this is a disc that slowly covers and obscures the moon. If the Earth is instead a cube, then the way this works will be completely different. Folks will be able to work out the shape of the earth from the way the shadow progresses.
This doesn't actually require a ship, but it is quite reasonable that someone in the Magellanic era could figure it out in this way.
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On a curved earth, distant ships are first visible as their masts appear over the horizon. Since the curvature is constant, the distance at which you can first see a ship of a given height is the same no matter where on earth you are.
On cube earth, though, the curvature is *not* constant. The distance at which an approaching ship first appears depends on how close you are to the edge, and the speed at which the entire ship becomes visible after the mast first appears depends on the curvature of the edge. (The sharper the edge, the quicker the full ship comes into view.)
See the first graphic in [@fredsbend's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/123584/2150); I thought that was demonstrating a visual horizon effect at first.
This is also similar to [@L.Dutch's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/123494/2150).
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I'm writing a novel with real-world-style settings and minimal magic.
Minimal magic... how can I explain this? The magic in the world is only as good as epoxy to a leaking pipe. The magic can't just make another pipe out of thin air nor instantly transform an entire network of water pipelines to one's will. Plus that minimal magic epoxy will disappear soon and the epoxy won't paste itself into the leak. Someone has to handle it properly.
My story also embraces game elements, albeit very minimal as well, and includes one of their more notorious features --- limiting players' explorable area at the start.
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> Deadliest waters guard the ruins of the fallen empires.
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Therefore, my world is a 1:1 alternate Earth with the exceptions of minimal magic and the majority of the land mass is inaccessible, all being underwater saved for a few beginner-friendly areas.
While the novel has magic, I aim for a setting where science triumphs over magic. A fully realistic world built on modern knowledge... meaning there won't be "unlimited water" or "something super, super, super heavy"...
**Question:** Is there a scientifically-plausible way to sink a landmass?
* The landmass must remain underwater for at least 1,000 years.
* The transition to and from the flooded state need not be instantaneous.
* The largest landmass considered is an entire tectonic plate.
* The smallest landmass considered is a small island.
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I read the comments and will answer some of your questions.
First. What kind of magic is possible? Anything. Fire magic. Ice magic. Healing magic. Predicting the future. Anything known as magical is accepted.
Second. So... magic or science? The method done to sink the islands can be either pure science, magical, or a mix of both. However, the effect must be bound to science. Think of magic as a highly inefficient, one-time effect. If there is a scientific counterpart, you're better off using science. Everything that comes after that, including its unintended consequences... science!
I know, it's weird, to be honest. I didn't include it here but in my setting,
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> Magic itself is dying. The gods have forsaken us!
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The theme is the transition between magic to science.
Or you can completely disregard magic since scientific ways of sinking landmass alone are interesting enough. I'm thinking about scrapping the magic part lol.
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I dunno how to close this post. Of course, everyone is welcome to post additional insights and responses. I want to declare that given the numerous answers I got, I decided to take the majority of them to appreciate and not waste their efforts, as well as in comparison to the fact that calamities/large-scale conflicts can have multiple causes that all contribute to the said effect such as flash floods, drought, economic recession, rebellion, et cetera.
I also know that this website acts professional, and as someone that puts a touch of informality as a gesture of friendliness and an intention of goodwill to everything I type, this website... isn't one I'm comfortable with. You might notice me again very soon here (but that time, maybe on the side of culture, tradition, history, archeology, and most likely biology), but if you noticed me, please be patient. And I do not know if this helps but thanks to everyone that contributed to this post.
[Answer]
## The Islands are not Rising, the Sea level is falling.
While the whole earth can not be under water, you can limit your game area to an archipelago where the starting island is slightly higher than the other islands you care about.
There are not many geological events this big that happen in human time scales, but there are some. Basically you just need is a large lake or in-land sea, and another dried out basin for it to flow into. For inspiration, lets look at the Black Sea. According to the Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis the contents of the Mediterranean sea poured into the Black Sea in as little as three hundred days at a rate that could have been in the realm of 50 km^3 per day. If your setting were in the middle of a large Mediterranean sized lake, then over the course of less than a year, you could see the water level drop by about 6 meters. This is plenty enough to open up land bridges and even un-sink entire islands.
If you want to tie this sort of thing to "Magic glue" it could be that a great wall was magically built at a place like the the Turkish Straits. The basin is well below sea level but gets very little rain; so, if cut off from the lake, it dries up. But, if some ancient wizards cut off the "Black Sea" to prevent a naval invasion, then a thousand years later when the magic wall fails, all of the water that has slowly evaporated away will be suddenly replaced with water from the the lake.
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# Mining!
You don't need to ***create*** a reason for why a whole landmass might be sinking into the water... because real people ***already done that!***
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/H6PoL.jpg)
As the great Tom Scott explains in his video about [the Ruhr Valley in north west Germany](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseK5gp66u8), basically people spent a century digging kilometer deep tunnels and piling the resulting dirt in massive mounds on the surface. The now Swiss-cheese landscape is slowly being squashed under the weight of everything above it as it tries to become ***fully solid*** once again. The end result is that without a couple ***MegaWatts*** worth of pumps running flat out, a number of towns and cities would flood, and would likely ***stay flooded forever***.
There's nothing stopping the same thing from happening to an island or an entire continent (other than the ***truly mind-boggling*** scale that'd be required to sink an entire continent). When you start talking about things on the scale of mountains, *"the ground"*[Citation needed] starts behaving more like play-doh and will ***flow over time*** as gravity tries to homogenise everything (it's the same process that makes planets round afterall)
## TLDR; Dig heaps of underground tunnels everywhere - Gravity will do the rest
Bonus points if the landmass in question was only ***slightly*** above sea level to begin with ***and*** you had serious climate change issues in the past (remember, water expands as it warms up)
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You could consider something like isostatic readjustment - due to glacial action. The weight of a glacier on top of a continent will depress the continent; essentially, this pushes the continent into the underlying mantle until isostasy is reached. Then the glacier melts and this will cause eustatic sea level rise as a consequence. However, the continent will now rise from its depressed position, because the great load weight above it has now melted away. Therefore, the continent achieves isostasy within the Earth in a new position that is more prominent relative to the surrounding oceans and seas. This process can occur in thousands of years rather than millions of years too.
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**. . . that minimal magic epoxy will disappear soon. . .**
The landmass is inaccessible because it is underwater. It is underwater because 1000 years ago the greatest wizards in the world came together to cast a big spell to melt the ice-caps and raise the sea levels.
Some people suspect the reason magic is so garbage these days is because the Council of Wizards used it all up with their big spell.
Even using 1000 years worth of juice, the Council's spell is running out and sea level is returning to normal. By the end of their 1000 years the continents have returned to their real world version.
This is all discovered when the characters get access to the South Pole. They find a tiny little stone monument protruding from the ice. Turns out this is the tip of a miles-tall Council Tower, embedded in the ice. Complete with full library and crystalized council member skeletons.
[Answer]
# A Tidally-Locked Moon:
A bit like [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/58583/tidal-forces-of-tidally-locked-moon-orbiting-a-gas-giant) question. Pretty much what it says. A moon has shifted orbit and the moon and planet are tidally locked with the moon closer to the planet. Perhaps magic caused it, perhaps a rogue body caused it and magic stopped it from destroying the world, or perhaps it just happened and magic has nothing to do with it.
This has caused the mother of all permanent high tides. It would likely also cause widespread geological instability most likely. It might create a semi-permanent high tide on the other side, and low tides on the sides of the planet.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qr1gb.png)
You could explain the emergence (if desired) on magic. If magic WAS involved, it might be wearing off and the moon shifting orbit. It would slowly sinking lands on the other side of the planet and exposing the sunken land on the other. As the moon moved, there would be wild tides and disasters, volcanos, and all sorts of fun!
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# Glacial dam that breaks
This is something that has actually happened in the far distant past (without the involvement of magic).
[Broken ice dam blamed for 300-year chill](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8558-broken-ice-dam-blamed-for-300-year-chill/)
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> Geological evidence shows that by about 11,000 years ago, retreating glaciers had left two huge freshwater lakes sprawling over Central Canada and parts of the northern US, bigger than all of today’s Great Lakes combined.
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There are even multiple ways to inject this into your minimal-magic setting:
1. The dam was failing and magic was used to prop it up
2. It was magic that led to the vast ice sheet melting behind the dam in the first place (and as a flow-on effect, the dam melts right through during your story), for example a bunch of wizards wanted a lake to sail on and didn't think about the relatively warm water melting the rest of the ice on its own without wizardly interference
3. Someone did something silly and broke the dam that was holding an existing body of water back
4. Someone did something silly and warmed up the water that was being sufficiently restrained by the glacial dam
5. There are two warring tribes of wizards, one trying to freeze the dam the other trying to thaw it (or one trying to warm up the beautiful lake, the others trying to cool down the dangerous reservoir of dam-melting water)
[Answer]
Geology doesn't always work slowly, there's not necessarily a need to use magic to explain subsidence. Look at Mediterranean islands like Santorini, or Tonga more recently. There is evidence to suggest rapid subsidence, or uplift in some cases, driven by volcanic activity. Both in the geologic and archaeologic records.
Volcanic eruptions can also "create" land rising from the water where there was none via lava or pyroclastic flows.
If you want it on a smaller geographic scale than an entire tectonic plate, and/or a compressed time scale, that is probably going to be your best bet for a natural process to drive it.
[Answer]
#### GIGA DRILL BREAK!
Landmasses float over the planet mantle. They're basically stone boats sailing an ocean of magma. What's important is that, to achieve buoyancy, the landmass needs enough displacement underneath it.
Therefore, make giant boring mole machines that drill and break the rock underneath the landmass, removing the "Hull" that gives it buyoancy. The landmass sinks under its own weight.
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1. The landmass must remain underwater for at least 1,000 years.
* Good luck rebuilding the bedrock underneath it. The only way to get it above water again is to dump more land on the land , but then it is no more the same landmass. *"I heard you like land, so I put more land on your sunken land..."*
2. The transition to and from the flooded state need not be instantaneous.
* All that drilling takes time.
3. The largest landmass considered is an entire tectonic plate.
* Your answer is a giga drill, or more drills. Bonus points if your boring machines aren't boring at all, and they combine to make a bigger, galaxy-sized drilling mecha.
4. The smallest landmass considered is a small island.
* The economy of scale! Who cares about small islands when your drill shall pierce the heavens!
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The [Shy Guy](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-096) is a humanoid organism that is unique due to its attributes. It is an extremely timid creature that dislikes others seeing its face. Whenever another being sees its face through direct or indirect means, it tracks the person to its location, and then eats them alive. Studies of the creature suggest that it possesses omniscience that stems from a form of global level telepathy.
Because of its omniscience, the Shy Guy is able to detect whenever somebody sees its face. This is regardless of the medium, it could be through a camera or even pixels on a photo. This person could be anywhere on the planet, including underwater, on a plane, or in a secluded mountain range.
What is strange is that, while this telepathy is world wide and powerful enough to reach all corners of the planet, it isn't able to detect anything other than when someone is looking at its picture. Its omniscience is unlimited in range, but limited in its abilities. This is counter to Cerebro, a machine that is able to detect where mutants are and what they are doing, as well as look into their minds.
How can this be the case?
[Answer]
Shy guy omniscience isn't limited in its abilities, it's just that it isn't interested in things *you* would *a priori* consider more interesting, such as peeking into the minds of mutants.
In fact, right now you have whole countries with their inhabitants secluded in their nests (homes), communicating mainly through a telepathy (internet) that is world wide and powerful enough to reach all corners of the planet, and gives them access to a [wealth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics) [of](https://www.gutenberg.org/) [information](https://archive.org/details/nationalemergencylibrary), of all types and every depth. Yet, perplexing to the scientifics of an alien race studying them, these gods usually prefer not to make such use of their abilities and, while they sometimes engage on [lower-level activities](https://www.netflix.com/), more often than not they spent their whole full time in [fruitless activities](https://www.vtomb.com/watch?n=v) such as [sharing memes](https://tvtropes.org/) [between](https://twitter.com) [each](https://www.whatsapp.com) [other](https://www.telegram.org/) or [odd questions](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/171964/how-can-an-omniscient-being-have-limited-awareness). Nevertheless, one activity they take great care on [their interactions](https://www.facebook.com/) is noticing when [they are](https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/get-more-retweets/) [being mentioned/shared](https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-way-to-gain-followers-and-likes-on-Instagram). Unlike Shy guy, however, they generally *enjoy* that exposure, but there are [some cases](https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/hacking/how-to-find-out-if-your-nude-photos-have-been-shared-online-and-what-to-do-if-they-have/news-story/6ddc5002e40f311c0f7135404a9f452d) where they have [the opposite reaction](https://www.publish.csiro.au/sh/SH15240), much like Shy guy (showing a similar wrath, but without the final meal).
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## Information overload.
The Shy Guy *is* omniscient. It "sees" everything that happens, and could in theory access any information. However, it's not YHWH; just because it has *access* to all the information in the universe/multiverse/tri-state area doesn't mean it has enough brainpower to *process* it all.
Therefore, it must pick what it cares about. Being the *shy* guy, it prioritizes finding and exterminating those who see it. Even so, this takes up slightly more than its total brainpower (hence the 1-2 minute gap between provocation and response).
**Its finite brainpower, combined with a general "I couldn't care less" attitude towards non-Shy Guy affairs, means that it doesn't bother to monitor anything it doesn't *really* care about.**
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Being able to know when someone is looking at your face is not omniscience, it's just a cool magic trick. Omniscience would mean it knows **literally everything**, so the creature would be able to know things such as:
* Whether Epstein killed himself
* The release date of Half-Life 3
* Who the f... is Alice
The creature is just picking up clues about its environment.
If I see a crowd looking at something, I don't know what it is, but I may then see what they are looking at and find out myself. Just the same, the creature is extremely ugly - if it sees someone doing a face as if they'd seen something horrid, it checks out what the person saw. If the creature then sees its own face, it goes crazy and does its thing. Doesn't mean it knows whether P = NP.
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This comes up in "The Dresden Files".
Full Omniscience is silly overwhelming to the point of uselessness. Knowing how many atoms are in every random flower.
There are rare abilities which give a very, VERY limited slice of that. Omniscience on one extremely narrow topic. Knowing everything about one island, or how to torture someone. Butcher calls it "[intellectus](https://dresdenfiles.fandom.com/wiki/Intellectus)".
As for how do you get it, **lots of practice (thousands of years), lots of focus, and godlike power. You're basically one with the universe on that subject.**
**Which means the Shy Guy is some flavor of God and there's a lot of backstory we're missing.**
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**The Shy Guy is as good as Cerebro or better. It just doesn't care.**
Shy Guy is not one for talking or explaining. Pretty much just one for sitting quietly or unstoppably chasing people down and eating them; those 2 things. But Shy Guy knows all the minds of the world, all the time.
Shy Guy just does not care about anything except the one thing: if a person has seen it.
Given this godlike power, Shy Guy may have once been more useful or had a wider purpose. Maybe Shy Guy was a god. Shy Guy was mentally damaged along the way; badly damaged. Perhaps it was imprisoned in orbit, where its abilities to overcome obstacles could not propel it back to earth. It was cut off from the richness of the many minds that were and again are its perceptual world. It had nothing, for a long, long time. Intelligent things go mad quickly from sensory deprivation. When it finally came down, it was a husk of its former self.
[Answer]
# It's not telepathic. It just detects sympathetic magical resonances.
Simply put, rather than it being able to telepathically detect people who see its face, it instead might notice some form of sympathetic magical linkage form between itself and anyone who sees an image of it - by seeing that image, they create a mental construct that is magically linked to the Shy Guy, and the creature can sense that link and use it to track down the offending person. Perhaps it developed this as a defense mechanism against wizards who used sympathetic magic to remotely cast spells on people.
[Answer]
# 1. One Minute anywhere on earth
One simple explanation is that the face of Shy-Guy has some unique properties, which excite a deep rooted reaction in the brain of any human who perceives it. This reacting is a telepathic pulse, which is very faint, but the Shy-Guy has a super-sensitivity for exactly this frequency of telepathic pulse. So he cannot see everything, he just has a very fine antenna tuned to the pulse a brain generates when it perceives his face.
# 2. One Minute anywhere in the universe (unlikely and unverified)
If the Shy Guy reacts to someone seeing his image anywhere in the universe within one minute, this would be faster than light could travel the distance for most points in the universe. This means the information of someone seeing his face would have to travel faster than light. One possible explanation could be that any waves/particles interacting with his face become entangled with him in a certain way. And this entanglement is infectious to any form of copy or scanning/transmitting the information about his face. He can then somehow sense the collapse of the entangled wave function and knows something is of and starts in the direction of the target.
In essence this would probably the best way to take care of the Shy-Guy problem for a long time - if someone views his picture a Million lightyears away and he will start traveling there at sub-light speed, he will be travelling for millions of years through empty space not harming anybody.
[Answer]
## It's nothing more than a name-mentioning enchantment.
In *Harry Potter* when someone spoke the word "Voldemort", that event popped up on the Death Eaters' radar.
So those other persons, by speaking the name, inadvertently invoked the magic which caused a ping.
This is simply that kind of magic.
Instead of *speaking*, it's *thinking*, and instead of a word, it's an image -- of Shy Guy's face.
Shy Guy has no earthly idea what's in anyone's head; because other thoughts do not cause that "ping".
[Answer]
It has a magic rune on its face. The magic of the rune is threefold: first, it only activates on an astral plane or mindscape - that is to say, *thinking*, or just *knowing*, the rune will activate it, but just being drawn on a sheet of paper or captured in a photograph *won't* (until someone looks at it).
Second, it enhances recall of itself, as a perfect memory that will never fade. This means seeing the rune **once** means it will be permanently "active" in your mindscape until you either die, or can artificially wipe all the memories it has threaded itself into.
Finally, it acts as a **beacon**, broadcasting to the Shy Guy, and allowing it to track down the "host" while providing information on their physical and mental state.
In times long past, this served 3 purposes: First, it allowed *other* Shy People to find each other, no matter how spread across the universe. Second, it allowed them to detect and evade predators who would hunt them. Third, it would allow them to "mark" prey, to attack when they were vulnerable or asleep.
Obviously, this isn't actually omniscience - but the end result is still "knowing when its face has been observed"
[Answer]
# Brain patterns
Shy guy doesn't notice everything, it is enough that it notices the brain patterns associated with seeing recognising its face.
Just like in virology we don't look for the full RNA strand, we just look for a given pattern.
[Answer]
Telepathy is a little defined magic system. Usually its just "ya feel tha feelings and read tha thoughts possibly with some telekinesis on the side". But you can try to define it your way.
Example: everyone has a soul, for want of a better word, that telepaths can sense and interact with. Some telepaths have different ways of interacting. Your Shy Guy can sense any interaction with the impression his soul leaves on the world like a fotograph but cannot sense people he hasnt influenced yet. So he can sense the picture being in the world, and when someone looks at that picture he can sense the impression his face has made within that specific person's mind through his telepathy and home in on him for consumption.
[Answer]
He hates mirrors.
Whenever someone sees his face, on camera or in reality, reading this persons mind will feel like looking in a reverse mirror. An image however does not move. That's why he either doesn't notice, or does not care. Your choice.
] |
[Question]
[
Setting:
I'm worldbuilding a medieval fantasy which I try to keep as realistic as
possible. In my world, fantasy races are subspecies of the humans, which I define as compared to humans:
* Humans (same as us)
* Orcs: much stronger, much taller, less intelligent, worst dexterity
* Elves: smartest, better dexterity, better eyesight, somewhat weaker
* Dwarves: somewhat stronger, somewhat shorter, worse dexterity,worse eyesight
* Gnome: best dexterity, best eyesight, weakest, shortest, least intelligent
* etc
I assuming level of technology something akin to early middle ages. There is no gunpowder. Metal is expensive.
Armor varies from heavy padding for the poorest levies, leather for the richer, plate for the knights, and cuirasses for the elite. Full plate has not been invented and metal is very expensive anyway.
My story is about human commander in a remote outpost who due to lack of human troops wants to hire gnomes, which are cheap and plentiful.
Gnomes have excellent eyesight and could be taught to be very accurate. However they could only use recurve bows with draw weights fit for hunting, unlike heavy warbows used by stronger races, due to their weak upper body muscles. Could their accuracy compensate for their lack of strength and make them effective on the battlefield?
Addendum #1:
The commander plans to use them as mounted cavalry, mostly for scouting, harassment & hit and run tactics.
Addendum #2:
Hunting bows are usually lower draw weights, because you are mostly stalking the prey, warbows use larger draw weight because they need to penetrate the armor.
My assumption is that gnomes could use draw weights which is half of human draw weight. To put some numbers humans would use draw weights of ~120lbs, Orcs ~200lbs, Elves ~100lbs, Dwarves ~140lbs.
Addendum #3:
Gnomes would use small ponies something like Shetland Ponies, which are relatively cheap and are not well suited for adults of other races.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vFjhu.jpg)
<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4712662/Freud-friends-cause-outrage-riding-Shetland-ponies.html>
[Answer]
**Yes or no, depending on how accurate you make them shoot and your other forces.**
If your gnomes are able to shoot out eyeballs or kneecaps at range and your foes don't have shields, then you're good. Not a lot of draw force/body penetration is required to issue a serious wound, especially around the head and neck. Assuming you're close enough, an arrow thrown by hand could still incapacitate someone when hit in the eye. Other parts of the body have similar vulnerabilities. For example, kneecap shots. An arrow through the knee would be a crippling lifetime injury and remove that soldier from probably all future battles.
However, if your opponents are smart and have shields, you're boned. Assuming they are aware of how weak your archers are, they could fashion very large and lightweight shields to protect themselves until they're in melee range and make themselves almost entirely immune to your physically weak archers.
If bow-gnomes are your entire fighting force, then you're screwed, however, against light infantry, especially people without shields, they could be very effective assuming they're good enough to consistently land lethal hits.
[Answer]
Probably not. Your lack of range is going to be punishing, unless you can also provide gnome cavalry. Stronger and better equipped enemy archers will shoot up your little peeps before they can get into range, most likely.
They could of course use crossbows. The rate of fire will be lower, but using suitable mechanical aids the gnome's relative lack of strength can be compensated for. In a defensive role, a fortification, uh, *gnomed* by your little sharpshooters armed with heavy siege crossbows could present a pretty serious threat to any incoming force.
[Answer]
**Yes, but they can't be used as traditional medieval archery units.**
In medieval wars, standard tactics for archers was sending volleys high into the air without much targeting (as precise targeting at that range is nearly impossible due to the nature of arrows). There will be no substitute for archer's strength in this case. Weaker archers would have smaller range and could send fewer volleys towards the advancing enemy, compared to regular strength archers. At close range, when targeting is possible, they can be more deadly, but that would not likely be able to compensate for the lack of firepower in an open field.
In a strong defensive position, the situation is different. Assume that your unit is defending a fort and attacking enemy has to spend time in a range where precise targeting is possible. In this case, good precision can be devastating. Unless the enemy is wearing full armor, your gnomes should be able to pick less protected spots on enemy soldiers' bodies. Lack of penetrating power in this case can be more than compensated by precision.
[Answer]
This question has a lot of assumptions in it.
Accuracy on the battlefield isn't a thing. Archers aim into the air and hope to hit something. Draw weight isn't terribly important either for this purpose. It's all about speed and technique. Your archers would be just as effective as anything else, and would have an easier time hiding from return shots. As long as your archers can nock, draw and loose quickly and make sure their shots vaguely go towards the thing you want to kill, they should be useful.
[Answer]
**No**
Gnomes are specified as being the "least intelligent" race - even compared to orcs, who are merely "less intelligent" - and the commander wants to hire them to undertake scouting, harassment and hit-and-run tactics? Not a chance. The *least* intelligent troops get handed a spear and a shield and drilled extensively in the hopes that given enough time they can form a line of infantry. The *most* intelligent troops are used as scouts or sent on independent operations regarding initiative and flexibility - such as hit-and-run operations where tactical judgement regarding when to hit and when to start running is critical. The gnomes do not qualify.
**Other issues:**
As correctly noted by Failus Maximus in comments, mounts were/are expensive. Ponies will probably be cheaper than horses, but that does not make them cheap. Any saving in hiring gnomes (who are cheap because they are stupid) would be more than offset by putting them on ponies.
A further problem with using gnomes as mounted archers results from the unavoidable loss of accuracy involved in shooting from an unstable platform such as a pony. No matter how good an archer is, they will not be as accurate loosing an arrow from atop a mount - especially one in motion - as they would be with their feet on the ground.
Finally, the gnome bows will have less range than everyone else's bows and ponies cannot wear much barding. The outcome of a gnome skirmish charge does not look good - while the gnomes are closing to the range they can accurately shoot from, both the gnomes and their ponies will be shot up; once the gnomes get into the range they can turn across the enemy's front and shoot a few enemies, then they take more arrows without being able to shoot back while they ride away. That is best case - if the gnomes' enemy has mounted archers of any other race on horses then the horses can outpace the ponies, allowing the human/elf/orc archers to stay within their own range and outside the gnomes' range and pick off gnomes and ponies at their leisure.
**One possible use...**
The only potential saving grace for the gnomes is the fact that they have the "best eyesight". If this means that they have significantly superior *night vision* to the other races then they can rule the night in a pre-gunpowder era. Being stupid is still a disadvantage for conducting this sort of operation, but harassment attacks against enemy camps at night by sharpshooters who can see clearly when their enemies are effectively blind could destroy enemy morale and slow their rate of advance in short order. However, the gnomes should leave their ponies some distance away and conduct such sorties on foot - a camouflaged gnome would be hard to see or hear at night, but ponies would both raise the gnomes' silhouettes and make more noise. Planning and preparation for such operations is crucial to success (including lots of rehearsals) - the planning will probably be the province of a human commander or an exceptional gnome.
[Answer]
Your gnomes could definitely act as raiders / partisan terrorists: attacking small communities on enemy lands, killing a farmer or two, setting fire to everything and quickly escaping on their tiny ponies before a response is launched doesn't need armor-piercing archery or a whole lot of intelligence to pull off.
They could also be utilized for guerrilla tactics, to disrupt supply lines and logistics of enemy armies, and they might make decent forward scouts depending on the severity of their intelligence handicap. Again, in small random skirmishes and ambushes behind enemy lines, lead by smarter-than-average gnomes or regular-smartness humans, their accuracy could very well make up for their lack of strength and tactical sense.
---
*Or*, if you want to make them formidable archers by any standards, give them *and only them* access to a recent Gnomish innovation: the ancient-chinese-style, butt-triggered recurve crossbow, utilized with the full-body seated drawing technique for maximum draw weights.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3dPYj.jpg)
This will basically double or triple the draw weight your gnome troopers can handle, while allowing for the ease of use that comes with a crossbow design. The long power stroke of the design will further bring it closer to the warbows used by the other races in efficiency, even exceeding some of them in sheer energy transfer.
No one wants to screw with a tiny, angry, slightly mentally impaired guy in a pointy red hat, brandishing a crossbow roughly as wide as he is tall, drawn to 150 pounds, with a power stroke of 20 inches. Especially if his pony-mounted buddies aren't far behind.
[Answer]
Up to a point, draw weight contributes heavily to higher accuracy. A higher draw weight means faster arrow speed, which leads to a flatter trajectory and greater accuracy with less need to adjust for range, less room for the arrow to be affected by wind, less chance for the target to move, etc. If the draw weight is too much, the archer's muscles get tired too quickly and they aren't physically able to shoot as accurately as with a lower-powered bow, but a stronger archer with a higher powered bow will have a higher accuracy ceiling than a weaker archer with a slower bow and better eyesight.
[Answer]
Yes: **poison**.
Your gnomes could specialize in poisons that are particularly suited to use on arrows and that have a variety of effects tuned to specific combat objectives. In fact their skill with poisons could be a central part of their lore. With poisoned arrows, accurate shots could be far more important that forceful ones. Assuming their targets have at least some exposed skin (or relatively easily penetrated armor), skill in hitting that would be sufficient to deliver lethal or disabling doses of poison. Tactics might change too (and become a another signature of your gnomes): conventional volleys — though still potentially useful at shorter ranges — would be less important than sneaking up close enough to reach targets (with some accuracy). Individual gnomes could develop reputations for stealthy approach to their foes.
] |
[Question]
[
Similar to my previous [thread](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/243939/would-lightning-bolts-be-effective-against-modern-military-vehicles/243981#243981). In my setting, wizards from a pre-industrial fantasy world come to real life. One of these wizards is a cryomancer recruited by the US military and tries out his talents against modern forces. His favorite spell is freeze ray. How it works is that he has a magic staff. The large staff unleashes a cold beam at mach 1 that covers whatever it hits in thick ice (1° Kelvin).
This warlock unleashes his freeze ray at various vehicles in the current US military. He flash freezes ground vehicles, aircraft, and even naval vessels. Would the freeze ray be effective against any of these targets? By effective, I mean that either the vehicle is disabled, the vehicle is destroyed, or the crew inside the vehicle are severely wounded or even killed.
[Answer]
**It would immobilize or destroy just about anything other than nuclear powered ships.**
The big issue I see it causing is simply engine air intake and exhaust. Even tanks need this, so covering a tank in a thick layer of ice would shut down the engine and therefore the tank. Aircraft would have it even worse, as you would shut down the engine, add a bunch of weight and ruin its wing lift all at the same time (while also probably preventing the pilot from ejecting, unless the blast of the ejection seat is powerful enough to break through the ice).
I imagine you'd also see immediate mechanical failure, like axles being suddenly frozen solid. You could probably calculate what torque overpowers what thickness of ice but I'd say just play it how you want it, if the ice is thick enough to freeze mechanics or not.
A nuclear powered ship would presumably be the least impacted, since its power plant could continue to operate while the ice melted, though I doubt they'd be firing anything anytime soon.
1 kelvin is so extreme that you might cause other issues, though. I'm imagining the videos of dunking things in liquid nitrogen, which makes them [brittle](https://van.physics.illinois.edu/ask/listing/1683). I'm not sure how much thickness of ice leeches out how much temperature from how much metal at what speed but I could imagine causing permanent damage if you hit a turret with a freeze ray and the turret tried to rotate. It might just shatter something important in the effort.
[Answer]
**Yes, Extremely Effective**
There are 2 things (and a bunch of secondary things) that would make a Freeze Ray against vehicles terrifying.
**Shrinkage**
No, I'm not talking about *that* kind of Shrinkage, I'm talking about Metal Shrinkage. When metal gets cold, it contracts. Sometimes this is used deliberately for things like Interference fitted bearings. However, think of all those moving parts that have a range of tolerances to work properly, not all Materials shrink at the same rate and by the same amount.
That means all those tolerances that are *required* for the vehicle to function are now out of whack and the Machine will quite literally grind to a halt.
**Brittleness from the Cold**
Combine this with the above Shrinkage - Components are now under significantly more stress and have less strength - they will tear themselves to pieces and shatter. Shattered components = machiney-no-worky.
Other interesting things:
Condensation turning to Ice - think of the Accuracy International L96 Rifle - The Swedes liked it, but in very cold weather -40 arctic conditions, the moisture in the air would condense on the Bolt, freeze and lock it in place.
This is without the shrinkage and brittleness.
This would happen all throughout the vehicle.
Weight - Ice weighs quite a bit - Ships have to keep on top of their de-icing, lest they become too top-heavy and capsize in rough seas, Aircraft need to be De-Iced in part due to the weight.
*even the mighty US Carrier could be brought Lo by such a weapon*
Aerofoils and rotor blades - Ice ruins those specifically designed shapes, which is the other reason why aircraft need to be de-iced, if you distort the aerofoil enough, the wing doesn't produce lift and the aircraft falls out of the sky.
People - Just look at the German Army's invasion of Russia in WW2 for how Cold effects people. It's not very nice.
[Answer]
Lets do some back-of-the-envelope math. A decent summer day might be 82 degrees F, which is 301 Kelvin. Your freeze ray drops the temperature of the target to 1 Kelvin, for a delta of 300 K.
The [coefficient of linear thermal expansion](https://openstax.org/books/university-physics-volume-2/pages/1-3-thermal-expansion) indicates how much a material changes length due to temperature changes. The coefficient for steel is $12\times10^{−6}$, which means a change of 300 K would result in a contraction of 3.6 mm per meter. Materials like aluminum would contract twice as much, and glass contracts around half as much. Those numbers don't sound too significant, but the overall effect can be huge where you have dissimilar materials connected to each other. One shrinks more than the other, and the end result is that both materials end up damaged or warped. The bolts holding them together can be sheared in two. This process also happens over an unbelievably short time period, so any materials that aren't extremely good conductors of heat will have colder spots and warmer spots that contract at different rates resulting in material fatigue and possibly even cracks.
The coeffecient of volume expansion is the same thing, only in three dimensions. For gasoline it's $950\times10^{−6}$, which means the liquid in your tank and fuel lines now takes up more than 25% more space than it did a minute ago. All of your fuel lines have burst, and your engine block has most likely cracked open. Any other vehicle system involving a lubricant or operating fluid (brakes, steering, etc.) suffers the same fate.
Many materials become very brittle at low temperatures. The [ductile-to-brittle transition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ductility#Ductile-brittle_transition_temperature) for steel occurs around 173 K. Many metal components in the vehicle would crack and shatter due to becoming brittle while simultaneously suffering strain due to temperature contraction.
None of this actually matters, of course. A sudden transition to 1 Kelvin would kill the vehicle's operators almost instantly, and the vehicle is more or less worthless without anyone operating it.
The type of vehicle really doesn't matter. There isn't much that can survive at 1 Kelvin and of the few things that can, vanishingly few can survive a *sudden* transition to 1 Kelvin. Land vehicles would be practically stopped in their tracks as the grease around their axles froze and their moving parts stopped moving. Aircraft would be dangerous to freeze because their engines would go out but they would maintain their existing speed and trajectory, becoming an uncontrolled projectile (possibly carrying explosives). Watercraft are particularly vulnerable because once their exteriors become brittle, you can freeze the water around the ship, squeezing it with ice and shattering the hull. Be particularly cautious if you attempt to freeze something like a guided missile. The stress of freezing may be sufficient to activate the trigger mechanism, and the missle can explode faster than you can freeze it (particularly for a nuclear explosion that can generate heat faster than you can freeze it away).
The only military vehicle I can think of that might stand a chance would be something with a directed energy weapon (like a plasma railgun or high-powered laser) that could return fire, generating enough heat to counteract the cold beam. It wouldn't hold for long, but all it has to do is buy enough time for the weapon to strike and kill the cryomancer.
[Answer]
It depends on how the spell really works.
From your description I get two possible situations:
1. Target is frozen to 1K instantly AND covered with thick ice at the same temperature.
2. Target is not frozen, but instantly covered with thick ice at 1K.
The scenarios are quite different.
In the first case the target is with most probability destroyed (barring some counter magic): at 1K the crew would die instantly, all electronics will be shattered by thermal stresses and even the component materials (even most metals) would become so brittle they will shatter easily (maybe also from the sheer weight of the tank). Moreover most chemical reactions will effectively stop.
In the second case, it depends heavily on the thermal shielding of the tank and the total mass of the ice produced. The 1K ice will begin drawing thermal energy from the environment (outer side) and from the tank (inner side), rising its temperature and lowering the tank temperature in the process. This process continues until the tank, the ice and the external environment reach thermal equilibrium. It's quite a difficult calculation to perform without knowing the actual construction of the tank, but in the end, it depends on the relative thermal capacities of the mass of ice and of the tank.
If there is enough ice to bring down the temperature of the tank to dangerous level (for the materials and/or crew), then it would be an effective spell.
Keep in mind that the freezing effect will cool down the tank from outside, so before the thermal equilibrium is reached, the outer tank parts will be cooled faster, so the first parts affected are the outer joints (e.g the joints between tracks elements, for example), which could become stuck due to thermal shrinkage, and maybe break if the tank was moving.
To put some numbers in: the specific heat for ice is about 2.1 kJ/(kg K), whereas that of steel is about 0.42 kJ/(kg K). The specific heat means how much energy is needed per kilogram to raise the temperature of the material by 1K. So assuming the tank has a mass of 10t = 10000kg and it can resist up to -30°C and the ambient temperature is 20°C, you need to lower its temperature by 50K.
This requires 0.42 \* 10000 \* 50=210MJ of energy to be transferred to the ice. Assuming the mass of ice is 1000kg, for it to reach -30°C (243K) it would take a temperature increase of 242K, so the energy required is: 2.1 \* 1000 \* 242=508MJ.
So yes, 1000kg of ice would be sufficient to make 10t of steel to go below -30°C. The problem is that this is at thermal equilibrium and doesn't take into account *the time* needed and any sort of thermal insulation or heating system the tank could have.
Moreover there is also the heat exchanged with the environment (part of the ice will increase its temperature drawing heat from the atmosphere instead of from the tank).
Keep also in mind that ice is a good thermal insulator (think igloos) so the inner layer of ice will slow down heat transfer from the outside layers. So covering an object in super-cool ice is not an efficient strategy to *cool* it down quickly (it would be much more efficient to expose the tank to a freezing wind).
In the end, it would require quite a lot of ice to cool it down, and it won't be quick. Most probably, once you burden the tank with some additional tons of ice, it will stop in its tracks just for the sheer weight of the ice.
[Answer]
I can see a couple limits to the mage. For example, military planes fly very fast, very high. Regardless of how effective the spell is, eyeballing a death ray at a supersonic target 50,000 feet up in the sky is a tall order.
Tanks and ships aren't as fast, but can also hit from many km away, and are (un)surprisingly good at evading incoming projectiles.
Another foil for the mage could be how clever the beam is. If it hit a fly on the way to a tank, would it freeze the fly and stop there? If it hits a track, would it freeze the whole tank? Again unsurprisingly, military stuff is very good at figuring out when stuff is flying towards it, and shooting back at what's coming. If a small counter missile or reactive armour intercepts the magic beam, I'd imagine it would freeze but stop the beam, effectively making that magic useless.
The second issue comes from how the spell works. If it is even slightly subject to real physics, then some military vehicles might be able to survive. All materials (especially thick armour) have properties called thermal mass and thermal conductivity.
1. If the beam can immediately cool down any target's entire mass to 1k, then yes, no chance of survival, but that is so op that you'd have to worry about the mage missing the shot and freezing the whole planet.
2. If the beam acts like a cold object coming in contact with the target, then it might be fairly survivable. Recall thermal mass. Regardless of how cold the beam is, it's gonna take some time for the whole object to become cold. Depending on internal heating and thermal mass, it might be able to keep vital elements hot enough to function. It only needs a few seconds to shoot back at the mage for it to end the threat.
3. The beam's own thermal mass is also interesting. Can it freeze a tank with the same effort it freezes a whole ship? Would the mage need to put in more effort to freeze a whole skyscraper? If the mage can instantly and effortlessly freeze a plane carrier then there is not much that can stand in his way. Except for some very pissed entrophy law bringers.
[Answer]
# It Freezes Them
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dnJaB.jpg)
In the short term, your vehicle is frozen in place. The wheels cannot turn because they are encased in ice. The guns will not work because the shells go boom when they hit the ice and then the tank itself goes boom.
Once the cold seeps deep inside the vehicle, the crew turn into icicles. That is if they don't suffocate first. The internal combustion engine gets cold and turns off. Any bits and pieces that are still moving either stick together or become brittle and break.
[Answer]
Yes, definitely it would disable them if not outright destroy them.
All modern military equipment is dependent on electricity, power sources, and electrical conductivity.
At 1 degree Kelvin, we are talking about principles of low temperature conductivity. Resistance values are substantially reduced. Capacitors charge essentially instantaneously. Coils produce almost instantaneous field strength changes. Induced voltages would be, well, extreme. Electrical motors would have unimaginable torque and speed. Batteries would not work, generators would freeze up. Anything electrical would become non-functional.
Not to mention that this equipment is not made of a homogenous material, the components would not contract at the same rate. Nothing would fit properly. Every shaft and gear would bind. Combine this with the huge torque of the super conducting motor windings, and the brittleness of material at this temperature, and everything that moves would fracture and disintegrate.
For all the freeze ray was able to lower the temperature, I am afraid you would paradoxically end up with a very melted piece of equipment from all of the energy released.
Incidentally, a 'freeze ray' would NOT project 'cold', it would super-absorb 'heat'. Seems to me that whatever was at the ray source would have to cope with extreme heating, at the least.
[Answer]
I believe that most answers have already covered all possible sides of the issue from the perspective of physics, and they have summarised it in two major classes:
1. When the mage's beam, travelling at Mach 1, hits anything in its path, it *instantly* lowers the temperature of that 'anything' to 1ºK. The result: immediate breakdown of whatever is hit (vehicles will still continue to move, according to their momentum; explosives *may* still get triggered, especially on missiles; laser beams, by themselves, will not be affected, but the laser gun — and its operator! — will); all occupants inside whatever vehicle they are will immediately die (no life is possible at 1ºK, especially a *sudden* drop to 1ºK, as it is implied). That is the 'no fun' scenario.
2. The mage's beam instantly covers the object hit by it with a layer of ice at 1ºK. In this scenario, things are more interesting (from the perspective of the narrative, that is!), because you have to account for thermal transference issues. *Most* vehicles would be stopped in its tracks pretty quickly, but *most* of their internal equipment (including its crew!) will have a chance of survival. Then the issue here will mostly be how thick the ice will be when it hits the target and how quickly the mage can replenish it; also, how *accurate* his aim will be (think of hitting a missile travelling at Mach 2.5 with a narrow beam which travels at Mach 1 — how fast and often can the mage keep the target in his sights to be able to create enough ice to cover the missile, disable it, make it fall to the ground, and neutralise its explosives?)
Now, obviously we're talking *magic* here. Nevertheless, for the sake of the narrative to at least induce some *suspension of disbelief*, I would expect the [Sanderson's Three Laws of Magic](https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/) to be followed, [at least to a degree](https://maxonwriting.com/2016/08/02/being-a-better-writer-sandersons-three-laws-of-magic/). Here are some thoughts:
1. 'Cold rays', as so well explained by @justin-thyme-the-second, are in fact 'super heat-absorbing rays'. One assumes that the staff will be made of a material that can absorb as much heat as possible without getting too hot to handle; however, it's one of the interesting limits that might get used in the narrative — how much heat can the staff absorb until it becomes too hot to handle? Or even explode? Or at the very least, it might have to discharge the heat in a parallel dimension somewhere (think 'Hell' — where *all* magic staffs from cryomancers discharge their accumulated heat...) but has to do that periodically. This places an interesting limitation on the way the cryomancer is able to freeze targets — he may be able to catch a few tanks and airplanes and missiles, but when it comes to aircraft carriers, he *might* have to give the staff some time to discharge all that heat. Of course, as a last recourse, the warlock might just hurl the fully-charged staff to a large target (think of a full-scale naval base!) and let it explode in a thermonuclear explosion. Bye-bye staff, yes, but at least the wizards' quest might be completed in that extreme way.
2. If the staff actually emits a *ray*, then there is a problem: as the super heat-absorbing ray travels across the *atmosphere*, it will, naturally enough, freeze the *air* around it instantly. So the ray will be a physical rod of frozen air (attracting water condensation along its course), connecting the warlock with the target; at some point, of course, this rod will break. Also remember that it's travelling at Mach 1 — I can only imagine (but not calculate, my mastery of physics is not enough for that) the incredible tensions placed on the frozen rod. I would guess it would break almost immediately — and, not being in touch with the ray's source, it would harmlessly sublimate into air again (not to mention that the sonic boom — or crackle — due to hitting Mach 1 will propagate along the whole rod, making it break even faster). Now, this might not be a problem: one can assume that this process of flash-freezing the air and the breaking-up of the rod might happen almost instantly (and thus be only seen as some special effects, as the air freezes and breaks apart in an instant, travelling along the path of the ray). That, for instance, would allow an 'invisible' ray to become 'visible' (similar to how a laser will get reflected by dust, thus revealing its path) — enough for the warlock to guide it and acquire aims! — and therefore give a good explanation on the visibility of the ray (and make for good narrative infodump). There are a few catches, though: Mach 1 is fast, but not instantaneous, which means that the military *will* be able to target the ray and track its progress (hypersonic missiles can also been brought down, so one assumes that the current military *has* ways to track them down at those speeds), *and* trace it back to where the cryomancer is; the cryomancer will have to have line-of-sight to his targets (or else he won't see the ray!), which also means that those 'targets' have a line-of-sight to *him*; and, as a slight twist which might be used on a special setting, the ray will be invisible *outside* an atmosphere — but nevertheless still work, of course!
3. A corollary to the above: if the warlock puts the staff in contact with a water body, there will not be a 'ray', so to speak: water will get frozen in a circle/sphere with the staff at its centre, spreading out at Mach 1. That will surely be a way to literally freeze the aircraft carrier in its tracks — by freezing the water around it! However, there is again a limit to how large an area (or, more correctly, a *volume*) of water that the staff can freeze by absorbing its heat; and the further the ice sheet travels, the more heat needs to be absorbed, with a cubic power function — i.e. going from 1 metre of frozen ice to 2 metres requires *eight* times the absorption of hit, not twice, meaning the staff will get quickly 'full' (on the naval base thermonuclear explosion scenario above, the easiest way for the wizard to hit it is just to throw the staff into water as close as possible, activate the staff, and let it absorb heat from the water until it explodes — thus first freezing everything and afterwards blowing everything up).
4. Now here is one of the pet peeves I have about how the staff works. Never mind the difficulty of hitting a supersonic airplane with a supersonic ray (which is not instantaneous and therefore requires very accurate aiming, far beyond the skills of a regular human without technological means — and the further away the airplane is, the harder it will be. And no, you do *not* want to get the airplane *too* close to you!), or how fast the cryomancer will need to be to switch his targets when multiple missiles, artillery shells, *and* rounds of ammo are all shot at him. Even assuming superhuman capabilities — if he *is* a cryomancer, maybe he can also *freeze time itself*? — this will be no mean feat, because the cryomancer must constantly evaluate the speed and distance to multiple targets, while balancing the need to allow the staff to periodically discharge its heat into the parallel dimension and wait a bit until the staff is operational again. In other words: to fight an army, you will need an army of cryomancers as well, perfectly coordinated among themselves (because the army *will* be!). One thing is to freeze down a handful of tanks with a 'surprise attack', but once the cryomancer is identified as the source of threat, he'll have to deal with hundreds or thousands of damage-inflicting long-range weaponry, all of it impossible to evade with merely human speed, coming at him from all sides — and airborne! — and responding differently to how the ray works. For instance, when freezing a missile's guidance electronics, the missile will not immediately fall to the ground (due to momentum, inertia, etc.), but may be incapacitated and miss its target (best-case scenario) without exploding, or exploding in a harmless (non-radioactive) way. But what about a 'dumb' artillery shell, thrown ballistically at the cryomancer? The ray *may* freeze it on the air (remember, however, how fast it will be!), and that instant freeze *may* also break down the metal itself (thoroughly deforming it, as if it had been melted down, as explained on the other comments), but remember that it will be encapsulated in a shell of frozen air, keep its mass and overall shape, *and still continue to fall towards the wizard at roughly the same speed as before*. In other words: the wizard cannot protect himself (or his team mates) from, say, a machine gun spewing hundreds of shells per second. He *might* try to freeze the *gun* instead — but good luck at doing that while being under constant enemy fire! (one might imagine the cryowizard using sharp-shooter tactics, stealthfully approaching the enemies and freezing their guns one by one, instead of the 'all-out attack', expecting to be able to 'freeze away' whatever is thrown at him).
5. The second pet peeve is more complicated: *how* does the wizard designate a *target*? In other words: the ray, once emitted from the staff, will travel in one direction at Mach 1, freezing the air on its path, until... what? The ray certainly can go *through* a tank and emerge from the other side and continue to hit tanks along its path... until... what? Does the wizard *need* to activate/deactivate the ray? If so, it means that it will be much, much harder to coordinate multiple attacks or defenses that occur simultaneously. Freezing a lot of empty aircraft on a runway would be no big deal for the wizard. But if the aircraft are all airborne and firing missiles and ammo against the wizard, at the same time engaging in evasion techniques... the staff is not a 'fire-and-forget' tool, or is it?
6. But wait, there is more! One assumes that the way the ray works is similar to how the contemporary military 'illuminate' targets with laser beams, to mark them for over-the-horizon precise artillery shelling (for instance). Laser travels at the speed of light through the air, not Mach 1; and it's relatively easy to know when it 'hits a target', because it will reflect it (and metal reflects much better than, say, a patch of rough ground) and, of course, it will not be able to go *through* the target. This makes it perfect for precise aiming for sharpshooters. Now the magic super heat-absorbing 'cold ray' hardly works that way: it freezes *everything* it comes in contact with. Even if one might artificially assume that some things freeze much faster than others (which is certainly true of, say, metal man-made objects, compared to freezing a mountain made of rocks), and for all purposes any enemy vehicles/artillery *will* be made of metal, it's nevertheless hard to define exactly 'what' a target *is*. An airplane on an otherwise empty bit of sky is easily labeled as a 'target' (not considering that it moves very fast, which is a separate issue), because, well, it's all air *except* for the bit of metal suspended in that air. One assumes that the cryomancer will know precisely when the ray hits the airplane in order to know when he can deactivate it (no need to further extend the ray). But what about a nest of machine guns inside a bunker partially sunken in the surrounding ground? Because the cryomancer will very likely not have a clear line-of-sight *inside* the bunker (which would give him the chance to freeze guns instead), he *could* attempt to freeze the whole bunker instead. The problem here is when to stop! Concrete walls are similar to the mountain they're built into, so effectively the wizard would need to absorb a *huge* quantity of heat of all that mass — and never know when to stop. Imagine bunkers with corridors dug deep into the mountain, which the soldiers can use either to run away or to move to other bunkers, out of the sight of the wizard, in the hope of catching him by surprise by attacking from a completely different direction. How could the cryomancer deal with this? He can, of course, freeze the whole mountain — but will the staff be able to handle all that heat? Even if it does, one might assume — per Sanderson's laws — that it would take a *lot* of time for the heat to get discharged, during which the cryomancer would be vulnerable (and quite visible on the battlefield). Most likely, however, there will be limits to how much the staff can absorb before exploding; and even a clever cryomancer attempting just to freeze selected spots on the mountain — not the *whole* of it — might be easily eluded by enemy soldiers moving around out of sight (especially if there are a *lot* of them — and there will be!). So, sure, the narrative might call for the cryomancer to freeze a tree near the bunker's entry, causing it to fall and effectively block the view; or provoking an avalanche by selectively freezing some patches of ground and some cherry-picked rocks conveniently located above the bunker, expecting everything to get covered in ice, mud, broken trees and rocks, and so forth. That's something that a cryomancer might be able to pull off, *if* he has the element of surprise on his side, *and* he's not in the middle of a hot battlefield full of flying objects aimed at him. In other words: no, the cryomancer cannot 'wave his staff' at the whole battlefield — mountains, valleys, rivers, bunkers, machine guns and their operators, tanks, airplanes, missiles, artillery shells — and expect *everything* to be *instantly frozen*.
So... here is where Sanderson's laws of magic come in. You'll have to figure out the following:
* Will the ray freeze *everything* in its passage, or just some materials? If the ray will *not* freeze the atmosphere (say, it freezes only metals/rock/wood etc.), will it be visible? If not, how will the wizard *know* where the ray *is*, in order to aim it properly?
* How will the staff discharge the heat it has absorbed? How fast is that operation? What will be 'depleted' (if anything) during that operation? What happens if the cryomancer neglects to discharge the heat periodically — will the staff become simply too hot to handle, or will it explode, releasing a thermonuclear blast?
* Does the cryomancer need to activate and deactivate the ray? Consider how this will affect *a)* the ability to get a 'fix' on a flying target also travelling at Mach 1 or even much faster; and *b)* dealing with the 'knowing when to stop' scenario.
* Can the cryomancer activate *multiple* rays at the same time? (and selectively deactivate them, as they reach their targets) If yes, how will that affect the staff's ability to absorb — and discharge! - heat?
* What is the *range* of these rays? Since they *might* be able to go through everything (if the cryomancer does *not* deactivate it after reaching its intended target)... will it be possible to, say, freeze patches of the Moon? (although at Mach 1, it would take quite a long time until the staff reaches the Moon) Or even the Sun, for all purposes...
* Does the 'cold ray' travel in a straight light? Is it affected by gravity or electromagnetic fields? Assuming 'no' on all these questions, how often can the cryomancer change its direction (remember — the ray keeps travelling at Mach 1, even if the cryomancer changes its direction, so a ray with lots of bends and curves will be quite hard to aim accurately!)? This would effectively mean that the ray behaves as a remote-controlled missile, with the difference that there is *no* camera mounted on the missile, so the cryomancer will need to 'guide' it merely relying on 'line-of-sight' adjustments — incredibly hard to do at a distance! Think of hitting airborne objects a few km away — the wizard will be able to see them, send a ray towards them, and adjust its aim... until the ray is so far away that the slightest 'correction' will make it miss the target... and as it goes further and further away, the wizard will have a 'flattened' view of the target and much less 3D clues to know how exactly to 'bend' and 'twist' the ray to be able to hit the targets — which *are* moving at supersonic speeds, mind you!
* Can the ray be deflected in *any* way? Since it's *not* instantaneous, and visible (as it freezes and sublimates air around its passage), it can be 'hit' with whatever might deflect it. Even if it does *not* respond to any physical laws, consider the following scenario: shoot a thermonuclear missile on the *same* path as the ray, moving at the same speed. Difficult to achieve, yes, but modern electronics are up to the challenge. This would mean that the ray will now be constantly absorbing heat from the missile, quickly overheating the staff before the ray hits its intended target. The cryomance now has the option of letting the ray continue on its path — and absorb the extra heat, to critical levels — or to deactivate the ray, and try again. Which would only get the military to shoot another missile in the same way. It would be a question of what would come first: the cryowizard's ability to control the staff; the staff's ability to discharge heat; or the military's supply of missiles getting exhausted. Also note that even if the cryomancer is able to change the ray's direction 'on flight', this would not be a problem for the missile — its electronics are way faster at responding to sudden change than a human's nervous system, so it would always keep on track. (BTW, as we can see today in Ukraine, it *is* possible to shoot down hypersonic missiles with contemporary technology, and yes, that actually means shooting a supersonic missile at precisely the right moment against another supersonic or even hypersonic missile — all that in fractions of seconds — so the wizard's 'cold ray' would be comparatively easy to target in this way)
* What happens if the staff is activated and immersed in a body of water?
* *Ditto* but by placing the staff in contact with the ground
* What happens when the cryomancer *drops* the staff? Will whatever rays have been emitted continue to move in the same direction?
* What happens when the cryomancer *moves*? So far, I have only considered that the cryomancer is in a static position while aiming his ray (which also means he's quite vulnerable). But consider a *very long ray* — used to shoot down an unsuspecting aircraft many kilometres away. What happens to the ray when the wizard moves the staff? Does it move with the staff? If so, consider a many-kilometres-long ray — what happens to it, if it is *not* connected to the staff any longer? Does it dissipate on its own and the cryomancer needs to create a new ray? This makes for interesting narrative twists, as the cryomancer will be quite good in a mêlée (since the rays cast will be very short and hit their targets very quickly; so even moving the staff around will not make a huge difference), which would be the intended purpose of the staff on a medieval-fantasy scenario, while it would be not as effective for sharpshooting targets at a long distance, because the cryomancer would have to be perfectly immobile to have a chance at such a shot...
* How much do these wizards know about contemporary military weaponry, anyway? If it's the *first* time they encounter a modern military, *most* of the weaponry would be completely baffling and not even recognised *as* weaponry, anyway. I mean, an isolated soldier, with a helmet (helmet = soldier) and a machine gun (similar to a crossbow, but *much* deadlier), might be adequately identified as an 'enemy'. A flying airplane — especially one not yet engaged in the attack — might just be some sort of magical metallic object of unknown purpose. A tank will not be recognised as a weapon at all — until it starts shooting. While a conventional ballistic artillery cannon might be vaguely described as 'a war machine throwing metallic rocks very far away and very quickly' and therefore seen as a threat — a modern, rocket-based artillery gun will hardly be identified, even when it starts shooting — at least, before it becomes obvious that the rockets are *not* 'firework' but intended to strike targets very precisely. A warship, by contrast, will immediately be 'understood' as such; but an aircraft carrier, which will send out swarms of metallic flying objects, might be completely baffling — at least, until those airplanes come closer and start shooting missiles (but by then it's too late!).
I'm sure there are plenty of other questions that would require answers to deal with most, if not all, scenarios. But I hope that the ideas above, plus the physical limitations already explained by others in this thread, will help you to flesh out your narrative.
In conclusion: while it *seems* that the cryomancer will have a *huge* advantage on a contemporary battlefield — because he will be able to 'freeze in its tracks' anything that is thrown at him — this is only true if only *one* (or at least a very small amount) enemy weapon is thrown at him at the same time.
So, he might stop *one* (or possibly even two or three or four) tanks in his tracks; but not a full platoon, especially if he doesn't have line-of-sight to all units (while *they* will *have* visuals of *him*, via imagery coming from satellites/surveillance airplanes in real time).
He might freeze down a supersonic airplane, kilometres away (while it is still harmless to the cryomancer and his team), especially if the pilot has no clue about what is happening to him; this will require the wizard to be *very* immobile for an extended period of time, but, having the element of surprise, he'll be able to do so. He will *not* be able to defend himself from a platoon of aircraft shooting air-to-ground missiles and rounds and rounds of ammunition against the cryomancer, while at the same time engaging in complex evasive maneuvers to avoid being hit by the 'cold ray'. In fact, he wouldn't stand a million-to-one chance to survive more than a few seconds.
While he might not have the power, mana, or whatever ability he 'spends' to activate the ray to freeze an entire aircraft carrier and its crew, he *might* attempt to freeze the water around the aircraft carrier instead. That would 'freeze it in its tracks' — for a while. It would also deplete the magic abilities of the wizard, or at least require a lot of heat to be discharged by the staff, during which the military will *not* be asleep. They will throw everything they have at the cryomancer, while patiently waiting for the ice to thaw around the carrier (the carrier might not work any longer, though; and part of its crew will have died, but possible not everybody).
So, yes, a cryomancer would be a formidable opponent in the battlefield, but *not* an invulnerable and invincible one. His powers give him an edge, sure, when the element of surprise is on his side; but he simply cannot keep an army at bay.
Not unless, well, you completely ignore any of the laws of magic, and just tell the readers that the cryomancer *is* invulnerable, e.g. his aim is always accurate, merely by *looking* at an aircraft the staff will immediately send a perfectly-aimed, bended ray to freeze it, and the staff *is* directly connected to another dimension where it can constantly discharge heat at will, all the time, without any interruption. One can also assume that the cryomancer can freeze time itself, allowing him to carefully prepare a full set of rays to hit multiple targets with infinite precision, and, once time is 'thawed' again, all are hit simultaneously and any threat can be overcome this way. Last but not least, the cryomancer is also clairvoyant, in the sense that he can 'travel' along the cold ray and know exactly when to twist or turn in order to make precise adjustments to its path and hit exactly what it intends to hit.
Well, that would make him omnipotent and invulnerable. But what would be the fun in that? :-)
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P.S. An earlier inspiration I had for this answer was that the staff would not really 'cast a ray' *per se*, but rather shoot some form of super heat-absorbing pellet instead, which would 'implode' when hitting a hard target, absorbing all its heat (and then explode as a consequence). This would arguably be better in terms of narrative, and deal with issues such as how the 'ray' is aimed (it is not — the pellets behave according to ballistics), how many rays there can be (one pellet is shot and the wizard decides its direction — and can shoot as many as he wishes, all it takes for things to work is to have a good aim!), how far they can go (again, a pellet would just be a bullet for all purposes, and what works for bullets will work for 'cold pellets' as well), and so forth. It would neatly cover most of the aspects of a 'cold ray' while avoiding the questions related to the heat sink (which one assumes that it's somehow 'in' the staff itself, or at least is 'part' of the staff in some way).
However, a pellet-shooting staff is *not* what the OP describes as the 'cold ray', so I had to rethink a bit how to properly balance it out assuming that the ray itself is as immaterial as, say, light, and thus its usage is more similar to the way a laser pointer works than to the way a missile-throwing device does...
[Answer]
I am going to throw out somewhat of a frame challenge to this question.
'*Heat*' is not a separate '*thing*'. *Temperature* is a property of matter, directly related to it's state (solid, liquid, gas). Without matter, there can be no *temperature*. '*Hot*' and '*cold*' are only artifacts in our mind, constructs to describe certain sensory information. Unfortunately, the terms '*heat*', '*temperature*', '*hot*' and '*cold*' are very often (still) confabulated into false or fake concepts.
Without some form of matter, there can be no *temperature*, no '*hot*' or '*cold*', any more than there can be a '*solid*', '*liquid*', or '*gas*' without some form of *matter*. A vacuum in space can have no *temperature*, because there is no *matter* to apply this property to. In this sense, '*cold'* is like talking about '*red*'. There has to be some*thing* that has the property '*red*'. The property '*red*' in and of itself, in isolation, does not exist.
There can be no such thing as a '*cold ray*' without there being some form of *matter* that the *cold* is a property of. This wizard has to be projecting some '*thing*', some '*matter*' (even be it 'ether') that has the property '*cold*'.
There is another option. That is, the '*ray*' does not go from the wizard to the object, but the reverse. Somehow, the spell is able to convert the vibrating heat energy of the molecules of the equipment into some form of EM energy, and beam that back to the staff, or the wizard can cast a spell that causes the layer of atmosphere surrounding the object to do the same (meaning this spell is worthless in space). The surrounding atmosphere would then, through conduction, draw *heat* out of the target. So, now the question that is begged to be asked is 'does the spell continue to draw energy out of the layer of atmosphere, or are normal principles of thermodynamics now to play out?'
Here, a brief history of thermodynamics that outlines the historical misconception of '*heat*' in popular mythology..
Up until the mid-1800's, the concept of *heat* as a '*thing*' prevailed. Just as *fire* was an element and not an artifact of combustion, somehow *heat* was some form of material or ether or some '*thing*' that could move around of its own accord. It was not just a property of matter; it had an existence in and of itself. It is easy to see how they could have this concept, since most of their experiences with *heat* had something to do with it 'coming out of something', either logs in a fire, a volcano, or the Sun. When you burned a log, you liberated this *thing* called '*heat*' and it was able to cook your food, destroy a building, or cause ice to melt. The concept of '*fire*' as an '*element*' that was released was very much a part of this. *Fire* and *heat* were mysteriously, mystically linked. Such ideas as the conservation of heat were unknown, because it seemed to be something that was extracted and then used up. When one got heat from a log, nothing got *cooler*.
This concept sufficed as an explanation right up to the invention of the steam engine. Not the invention of the engine itself, but the desire to optimize the work it could do. The time period around the 1850's was marked by a tremendous competition between England and France into the mastery and perfection of this technology and the idea that *work* could be obtained from the transfer of *heat*. It is not just a coincidence that the theories of thermodynamics of [Carnot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle), Maxwell, [August Krönig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Kr%C3%B6nig), [Ludwig Boltzmann](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ludwig-Boltzmann) and [Rudolf Clausius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Clausius) among others came about in this time period. It was all about the power of steam to build a strong industrial base. The country that mastered it would be the dominant driver, and it was a national priority to understand it. The age of mastery over steam, in many respects, provided the impetuous for the age of physics. There was unabashed support at the governmental level for any research into it.
The work of Clausius, in particular, building on Carnot, developed the idea that *heat* was something that flowed from a high heat pressure (high temperature *hot*) to a low heat pressure (low temperature *cold*), and thus what was *hot* became *cooler*, what was *cold* became *hotter*, until equilibrium was reached. But what about the log that produced this *heat*? Where in the log did it come from? The log got smaller as *heat* came from it. Where does conservation of matter come in? It is obvious the log is being destroyed. (Of course, the idea of using the term '*pressure differentials*' was not directly referenced, full apologies to Boyle, and even [Boyle](https://www.britannica.com/science/Boyles-law) did not relate gas *pressures* to 'vibrating moving atoms' colliding, [Rutherford](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ernest-Rutherford) having not yet been born).
But even though during this period the world of physics moved closer and closer to the understanding that *heat* was a property of matter, not something distinct from matter, and the [kinetic theory of gasses](https://www.britannica.com/science/kinetic-theory-of-gases) took shape, it was not quite there yet. *Heat* was regarded as a means to an end, and that end was *work*. To Maxwell and others, *heat* that was *created* or *released* or *produced* from combustion, and not used to do real work, was a waste and contributed to inefficiency. Heat *energy* was conserved once it was released, and then moved from the air to water and steam, but the energy not converted to work was lost, never to be recovered again. How to console this alleged reality with the laws of conservation of matter and energy? The solution, of course, was this misdirection called 'entropy' that became a term physicists bandied about, changed the definition to suit, used to patch the holes in the theories, and thus allowed then to go to sleep at nights.
It was not until Rutherford, and the beginnings of the understanding that *heat* was a measure of the vibrations of atoms, did *heat* begin to become a '*property of matter*'. The idea of the kinetic theory of heat truly matured. There was no separate '*thing*' or '*energy*' or '*heat*' that existed, except that it was an inherent property or result of the vibration of atoms that made up matter. Without these atoms vibrating, there was no *heat*.
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[Question]
[
So, there are three major powers in the setting that can be reasoned with, and a fourth that is just there to destroy. I have a problem with balancing them.
The so-called nature spirits are creatures that, through one way or another, got a P-organ. P-organs are capable of manufacturing nano and micromachines to assist their hosts.
For nature spirits, this causes gigantism, a more efficient metabolism, sapience, increased lifespan, and modifications to the physiology when necessary, such as scaling a giant eagle's wings and flight muscles to allow for powered flight. These nanites are present in nature as well, giving their gathered energy to the nature spirits.
The problems start when humans begin to drive the nature spirits out of their habitats with their advanced firearms, killing those who resisted. Humans had an easy time since nature spirits are limited in number and aren't adequate to deal with things like .50 cal sniper rifles or tanks.
The turning point came, however, when the nanites sensed their hosts' overwhelming despair and identified the source as humanity. They only knew one Solution that could be Final for this problem:
**Eradicating mankind with a nanovirus**
This is where our problems start. You see, this nanovirus was an ancient WMD, designed to make entire continents yield. What's worse is that this virus has the ability to "recruit" living nature spirits and ambient nanites into its ranks, giving it access to the planet-wide energy harvesting system of the nanites.
**Such a virus would crush humanity with little effort, but that isn't what happed**.
In the story, the Foundation (the third party) manages to "restrict" the virus into the "Dark Zone" (as in you're dead if you enter), but can't hope to eradicate it.
For the most part, it sits around the place, creating monsters and unleashing them upon villages and sometimes cities. On rare occasions, it might stage large sieges which require a considerable military force to suppress. The infectious part is now only present in the Dark Zone and several monsters, most notably, slimes.
**But how? What kind of weapon/tech would actually be able to stall this virus and force it to rely on organic robots, instead of infecting everyone?**
The technological level of humanity is near-future, but the suppressing technology that keeps the nanites at bay can be much more complex, as long as it is scientifically plausible.
[Answer]
The nanites use IPv6 for communication.
Source of the image above: <https://xkcd.com/865/>
They are limited therefore to 2128 bots operating at the same time. Any extra nanobots are unable to communicate with the network and self-destruct themselves.
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**Edit:** I love this comment:
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> You need to use IPv4. The Earth has a surface of 1.48 $\times$ 1014m2. That leaves you with about 2.9 $\times$ 1020 addresses per m2. The human body has about 3 $\times$ 1013 cells with a volume of ~62 liters. If nanobots are the size of an average human cell then you have enough addresses for a 600km deep grey goo to cover the whole globe using IPv6.
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The nanobots can therefore further be constrained, as Nosajimiki suggests, by using IPv4, which will limit the maximum amount of nanobots to 232. That is many orders of magnitude less bots and should make for a thinner layer of grey goo on the planet.
There is also this comment from the OP:
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> The solution is actually dumber. Warriors don't have a unique IP address, only a broadcast address. Generals can only communicate with them via broadcasts. It's dumb but it works.
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(It's dumb but it works is also incidentally what I think about 90% of [my](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/151908/21222) [most](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/142539/21222) [creative](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/126583/21222) [answers](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/137021/21222) [in](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/110284/21222) [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/104869/21222) [site](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/154072/21222)).
This allows for larger nanobot armies, but on the other hand also makes the army more vulnerable to IP spoofing. You only need to spoof one address in order to override control of a large number of nanobots. The constraint against nanobots in this case is that you can turn them against themselves much more easily.
[Answer]
## The nanovirus can be hacked
Since the foundation has figured out how to hack their communications signals, they can purge the homicidal nature from the infected nanites just by getting close to it with a wireless device. So, it is just as dangerous for the bots to go into a city full of routers and cellphones as it is for man to go into an undeveloped forest, because the humans can purge them anywhere they can bring an internet connection.
But, hacking the nanobots requires breaking an encryption key in real time. As we know in the modern age, that is easier said than done, but if the Foundation has stable quantum computers, then they could. If your phone detects the presence of nanites, it transmits the communications patterns of the nanites to one of the quantum computing stations where it is cracked, and the kill code returned to the phone to be transmitted moments latter.
This is why the border is so hard for either faction to move without really fighting for it, anywhere humans already have an internet connection, we can repel the virus, but if we get too far from a physical connection, we lose signal and the virus can swarm us. Humans are constantly trying to expand our internet coverage, but nanites have learned to jam our satellite communication by blacking out the skies over the Dark Zone well enough to force us to use a physical network of actual wires and stuff; so, the war is a constant push for humans to expand our networks into the wild places of the Earth while the nanovirus monsters are sent out to destroy our networks allowing the virus to expand the Dark Zone.
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**Living in Shadow**
Nanotech has something of a reputation for being hard to kill and hard to contain.
It's mostly unfounded.
Nanotech in reality is quite fragile and limited in capability.
A swarm of nanomachines could feasibly disassemble a person, but once they did, UV radiation from the sun would quickly destroy most of them.
Nanites are vulnerable to unusual heat, or cold, or radiation, acids, extreme chemistry in general..
They need a host, or a stable neutral environment at least.
This neatly explains why the nanoswarms opt to create/subvert living creatures in order to attack humanity. They can't survive long outside of an organic body
So the Nanites need a place where they can work, secure from UV radiation and possessing a decent population of animals to work with.
Hence, the Dark Zone.
A dense forest with near complete coverage of its leafy canopy.
It's literally dark there, and anyone who goes into it has a good chance of never coming out, or coming out...changed..
Other Nanite holdouts exist, but most are far smaller, and lack the security of this one massive forest. Places where a lone wood-nymph is known to live aren't associated nearly as strongly with the nanomachines because they can't be as aggressive
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*You have not defined the nanites, which you should have done. Consequently, I'm making outrageous assumptions.*
**Assumptions: (a) Your nanites are synthetic, not biological,1 (b) the purpose of the P-organ is to manufacture synthetic nanites.2 (c) Your nanites are electrically based.3 (c) Your nanites are not capable of carrying an infinite supply of power.4**
The nanites are capable of gathering energy — but the more dispersed they are the less efficiently they can gather and store the energy. Therefore, there is a minimum density of nanites required to produce "infinite" energy. This is important, because it means that together they stand and divided they fall.
The "Dark Zone" is a complex place. It's a 3-dimensional space constantly expanding and contracting based on the number of available nanites, the available energy to be gathered, and the strength of everyone else's attack. And what might that attack be?
An [EMP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse) leading to a [Pinch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinch_(plasma_physics)).
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When the nanites are dispersed enough, a plain electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is enough to drop them like proverbial flies. You're probably eating some right now with your Wheaties. Little honkers are everywhere. Their corpses do tend to bond to tooth enamel, leading to a drop in dentist visits, but that's a really small silver lining (unless you're General Mills, then it's a big silver lining...).
Anyway, the closer you get to the Dark Zone the more an EMP isn't enough to keep them completely constrained. The heartless harpies keep getting out in bunches and garrotting unsuspecting lawyers and stealing everyone's left sock. And it's not like you can just go around setting off nuclear bombs or even synthesizing EMPs. People really do like to stream Netflix, you know!
That's where the Pinch comes in. Basically, the Dark Zone is encompassed on all sides by ~~evil~~ pinched plasma, which crushes the nanites down to the point of Critical Mass where there are so many nanites and enough accessible energy that they can produce a force against the pinch.5
At any rate, the solution does produce a lovely glow, somewhat purplish, not unlike an Aurora Borealis, and it tends to play [Stevie Wonder's *Superstition* and OneRepublic's *Secrets*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdIYwIWfYyo&feature=youtu.be&t=52). It's driving us a bit batty, listening to the same two songs over and over under a purple glow (SPIDERS!) but it's a price worth paying to keep the nanites at bay!
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1 *Biological nanites are called "viruses."*
2 *Which is the Holy Grail of manufacturing. No employees, no robots, just a big [Axolotl Tank](https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Axlotl_Tanks) churning out nanites and an IV tube for nutrients. OK, it's small and has blood vessels... Still....*
3 *I though about using the weak/strong nuclear forces, but coming up with a gravity-wave generator seemed so much like [Clarkean Magic](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClarkesThirdLaw) that it made asking your question in the first place somewhat moot.*
4 *Which is a requirement. There has to be a limitation of some kind. Limitations and weaknesses are what make stories believable. A nanite with an infinite power source is basically unstoppable.*
5 *Or replicate fast enough that it doesn't matter. We're not completely sure which. It takes a lot of nanites to build up what we might call "dirt" to a large enough degree that we can tell they're dying by the septillions behind the pinch.*
[Answer]
**Anti-nanites:**
I know very little about the relative tech of the humans and Foundation, but I get the impression the foundation is high-tech and is trying to be neutral - or they are anti-WMD. So the Foundation creates anti-nanites who's sole function is to destroy the WMD nanites. The planet is already nano-contaminated, so there's no ethics problems using this "bad" technology. Since anti-nanites strip the nanites down and reuse the parts, it takes less to convert a nanite to an anti-nanite than it does to build a nanite from scratch.
The nature/WMD nano-horde is semi-self aware, and organized enough to secure it's home base against anti-nanites. The "beasts" it creates are either programmed non-nanite animals, or else functionally packets of nanites secured in a nanite-resistant shell sent to venture out to attack. Too many of them, or if they go too far for too long, and the anti-nanites show up and kill the nano-beasts.
Humans are good with old-fashioned tech, like guns and bombs, making it quite practical to build weapons that can oppose glorified giant animals. I'm guessing, though, that the Foundation isn't too happy with humans pillaging the planet and slaughtering the natives. Or maybe the Foundation ethically CAN'T kill humans, despite the fact they really want the humans gone so they can sterilize the planet to get rid of the nanites. The nano-horde either isn't strong enough to defeat the Foundation, or doesn't recognize them as an allowable target (since they don't threaten the environment). Since the Foundation hates nano-weapons but dislikes the actions of the humans, they don't cooperate or actively oppose/withdraw protection when humans are getting too invasive.
The foundation can't get rid of the nanites and are too honorable/rule-bound to get rid of the humans. The humans need the Foundation to protect them from being wiped out, but can only contain the nanites. The nano-horde can't defeat the anti-nanites, and are stymied in their efforts to wipe out humans.
**Three-way stasis with constant conflict.**
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**Energy consumption**
You state that the nanites gather energy for the spirits. That means these older nanites mightvstill be active all over the world, powering the new WMD swarm. This swarm was very successful due to this extra supply of energy, allowing more energetic nanomachines. However, they reached far outside their energy limit, unbeknownst to man. Man started winning battles, as the nanites couldn't function correctly with too littpe energy. The Foundation thought they had finally devised a way to beat them, but were halted when they finally beat enough nanites that the swarm had enough energy again. The swarm is now developing ways to go above this limit without needlessly taxing nature or the energy limit.
This standstill is the dark zone. Waiting. Biding time. Developing itself for another strike at humankind. The Foundation is keeping a minor spread at bay with it's own nanomachines and some enzymes and EMP, but can't beat the swarm any further. It is only a matter of time before the swarm tries again in earnest with a new strain of nanomachines.
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Nanites can't create a stable communication mesh with each other, they need a controlling entity. However, these controlling entities can't be too close to each other or the individually very stupid nanobots get confused by which orders they should follow due to the relative signal strength being too similar. It's working fine inside the bodies of the spirits, because their bodies shield the nanites inside from outside signals, but, once the nanites leave their bodies, the conflicting signals cause increasingly erratic behavior the further they get away from the body.
Spirits don't have the signal strength to command outside nanites at a long range, so they have to build communication hubs every few kilometers to allow nanites to operate outside the bodies of spirits. Those hubs are fairly easy to build, once a spirit reaches a suitable place, since the nanites know how to build it and just need to be ordered to.
The Foundation managed to build their own rudimentary communication hubs that send a distortion signal which causes nanites to retreat or shut down if they get too close, but the signal isn't strong enough to disrupt nanites that are near an original communication hub. They still managed to establish a line of disruption hubs to set up the border to the dark zone.
The nanites switched over to building constructs which ignore all outside signals to try to take down the disruption hubs. If they manage to take one down, a spirit follows up and builds a new communication hub, expanding the dark zone. However, there are too few spirits to risk them, so they don't show themselves until an area has been completely secured by nanite constructs.
Some creatures have a natural shield against the disruption signals, so those creatures can carry nanites out of the dark zone, intentionally or not, which then follow their basic programming. Those wayward nanites are incapable of complex action due to their lack of communication.
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Why do you need reason to force it to use organic constructs?
Just write it so that the nanomachines are of the Von Neumann variety but not the grey goo variety, like in Day After Tommorrow.
Or make them so they are unable to self-replicate in which case they can only be produced by P-organs and therefore can must manipulate their surroundings like anything else by either building or taking control of organic bodies.
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**Energy crisis**
These nanites are designed to operate within organic beings, so they might primarily run themselves by drawing kinetic energy from the motion of fluids or chemical energy from nutrients. Only a limited number of nanites can run in a single body at once, else their energy requirements overtake the energy their host can provide, or their heat production kills the host rather messily.
Out in the world, they had to find another source of power for continent-spanning operations — perhaps nanite squadrons formed up to make big solar arrays, as the majority of the energy you can get out of the Earth is from solar influx.
The Foundation deployed massive quantities of aerosols or launched starshades into orbit to darken the sky and force the nanites to abandon their large-scale power systems, relying on local organic materials for energy instead. Your "Dark Zone" is called that because, thanks to some clever climate-manipulation tech, it's *perpetually dark* there.
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No matter how complex or what materials they are made off, in the end your WMD nanites will take the form of a type of biological conglomeration of virusses ranging up to bacteria to do its job. You already mentioned that these have a type of collective intelligence, being able to discern human from other biologicals and spirits as well as discerning distress and having the ability to think off how to act on that. We can use that.
The Dark Zone was a first successful attempt at stopping the nanites. For convenience lets say it was a geniusly created nanite swarm designed to combat the opposing nanites and nothing more. Maybe it comandeers the WMD nanites to fight for it or it eats WMD nanites, either way the WMD nanites learned to avoid them.
The thing is that if you can create a Dark Zone, you can start moving that Dark Zone until the WMD nanites are destroyed. So for whatever reason the creator of the Dark Zone and the devices he used were destroyed in the first attacks made by the nanite swarm (or one of the opposing facrions who had no idea/feared the technology) and a deadly staring contest began: the WMD nanites think that crossing the Dark Zone without a host is suicide, the 3 other factions can only try to maintain that idea so that the WMD nanites stay put.
You can use variations of this idea with similar results. The Dark Zone is a bunch of buildings that they dont have the resources to move or build more off, the buildings influencing the WMD nanites thoughts so they stop and turn back. Or the resources required to move the Dark Zone on your end means the other factions can defeat you etc.
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So… we have beings that are of spirit-material, and they produce nano-machines (which benefit their physiology)… which in turn can produce a particular “virus”.
It is not apparent to me why machine guns would work against spirit-material. I am going to infer that they are of physical material, and the “spirit” thing is… whatever. Actually, it might be preferable to have it that spirit material is *as though* it is physical material, *in this respect*. (Spirit material is mysterious, and gets to function in mysterious ways. (Also, at the time of writing, it is popular in shows to have human beings using physical-world mechanisms against spirit-type beings… although maybe not simply guns; maybe special guns that fire ammunition made of the right kind of material.) )
I am going to take it that the nano-machines and the virus are of the same material as the nature spirits.
This “virus” I have to take to actually be a virus — particularly, to rely on a host to reproduce, and, pertinently, to kill by reproducing.
(It does not immediately seem to fit, that this “virus” can influence [“recruit”] more complex organisms. Conversely, it is not a great stretch that, by the same token as it can improve their physiology, it can also influence their brain chemistry. In the case of the nano-machines, presumably both sides have been designed so that this works. Also hand-waving.)
I am going to infer that, like a normal virus, it does not survive long-term outside of a host. This gives us a reason why it survives in the “Dark Zone” — being a place where life can not survive — being that it can survive here long-term precisely because {whatever force it is that prevents it from surviving long-term} is absent.
I am thinking that this is up to the OP because it is somewhat constrained by the detail of the world. Otherwise… . We could take “Dark Zone” literally, and take it that there is no ultraviolet light, but that seems to be unsupported; the “Dark Zone” is dark metaphorically. However, there is no organic life in the dark zone, so we can take it that there are no threats to the virus as a result. I don’t think we really need to argue the point here; it seems reasonable without weird elaboration.
As for how the virus has been eradicated from the rest of the world — a vaccine. Presumably it has to be pretty sophisticated, to deal with such a sophisticated virus, but the notion seems quite plausible.
This has the benefit of leaving the virus free to exist temporarily outside of the body, to construct small attacks aganist villages and cities, before dying (as in, failing to survive long-term).
Presumably the slimes can support the virus [so that it does not die; possibly some minor reproduction without killing the host, at a stretch] but are not susceptible to it.
I originally took “creating monsters” to represent anomalously sophisticated behaviour by the virus. Alternatively… either • it can influence the “slimes” to go rabid, or • it can get the nano-machines to group together and function as a monster somehow.
I am not sure about the sieges. Perhaps the virus can get the slimes to sit near the target. Perhaps something more sophisticated is required. I think I shall leave this to the OP.
This seems to me to work, and to not be hugely contrived.
[Answer]
**AIRBORNE COUNTER-NANOBOTS**.
The foundation manages to get its hands on some nanobots and codes them to eliminate the lethal ones. These foundation nanobots are then deployed en masse all over the world, becoming the one force that ensures these nanobots can't survive long term outside of a host; the host provides a sort of 'armor' for the nanobots. Remove the host, and the foundations' nanobots kill the non-foundation nanobots in a matter of moments.
There's just 1 problem; there is one section of the world where they can't be deployed. Namely, the dark zone.
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My magic system involves groupings of elements called domains which have a unique property not specific to either element in said domain. As the title implies I'm looking for a element to be paired with light. So far I've been using "aether" as a kind of vaguely defined place holder as the second element in the grouping with it's definition being a strengthening lifeforce that can make things burn brighter or hotter as well as make an item more durable. At first I thought it worked since the opposite domain would be of darkness and void with void being an absence or negation of certain properties and aether being the enhancement of said properties. But I've started to reject that idea of aether because its definition encroaches on the unique property of the domain it's in, specialization. The ability to share Phantasia(the base energy of my magic system) with others to "specialize" in certain benefits. Often in the form of healing or support skills like buffing stats in a video game. I worried it made what would otherwise be a generic property for either element a specific definition for the one element.
With this in mind what's a good element to pair with light that fits the unique property I've established?
Also just so people don't suggest elements I've already put in other domains, the elements I already have are:
* Fire and poison.
* Animal life and plant life.
* Earth and metal.
* Water and ice.
* Darkness and void.
* Wind and electricity.
As can be seen with the grouping of fire and poison together, I don't need the element suggestions to match perfectly in substance with light. Just the overall theme of the domain and its unique property. In the case of fire and poison it's the ability to inflict lasting damage or status effects. While the domain light is in is a more supportive role as already mentioned but can still deal heavy damage if needed. As the energy shared will return multiplied exponentially.
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* Crystal was the first that came to mind. Crystal and glass, because either can be used to refract or focus light.
* Illusion was the second because light IS what we see and how we see.
* Light is also associated with knowledge in a TON of cultures, so there's that.
* And truth. Light can show us what's true. So revelation, prophecy, far sight all that jazz.
* Scientifically light and sound are both waves. I am sure you can go down that rabbit hole...
[Answer]
**Epígno̱si̱**
Ancient Greek
or **sýn** in Old Norse (technically a [Kenning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning) of the word for sight, sign).
Meaning insight, awareness.
To me it seems to pair well with light, not only because its practical use may be to provide a clue to the meaning of more arcane writings, but of situational awareness, where an awareness of danger in the environs is vital, and insight because of its value to give help with understanding of another's emotional or physical state. Taken to an extreme, it might seem almost like mind-reading, prescience or remote viewing of a brother/sister, friend or companion's situation, or even the power to see through another's eyes such as in the possession of an animal's body to view or scout. (Or an adversary's)
It also seems to be opposite to the empty void which is pared with darkness (at least superficially, without knowing your use for it).
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**Sharpness.**
Edges are sharp. Thoughts are quicker, and less considered. Intentions are clearer. Joy is brighter and less tempered with regret. Pain hurts worse, unleavened by hope. Gray trends towards the black, or the white. Definition, clarity and action prevail over nuance, implication and consideration.
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I think that **Light** and **Magnetism** could go well together.
* Fire and poison = things that cause lasting harm
* Animal life and plant life = things that grow
* Earth and metal = things from the ground
* Water and ice = states of matter
* Darkness and void = absence of things
* Wind and electricity = things that move?
but honestly, if I were to make a suggestion, it would be to pair **Wind** and **Magnetism** for pushing and pulling, and **Light** and **Electricity** for energizing/revitalizing.
Those seem to be better themes, to my mind.
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**Knowledge**
More generalized than insight and so broadening the domain. Light allows you to see and gain knowledge. Knowledge lets you target light to greatest effect with least damage.
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**Gravity/Mass**
Light and gravity (and relatedly mass) interact in some interesting ways (e.g., black holes, gravitational lensing), which could make for some cool ways to use the two magics in a complimentary manner (faster than light/time travel, some sort of ability to warp light and see the future). Additionally, it could be positioned to fit with the supportive role that light is intended to play, for example making things (or others) lighter or some sort of gravity shield.
It has the potential to be very over powered, but if this is something you want to avoid you could emphasize the consequences of meddling with gravity too much. Like sure making a miniature black hole might suck up the entire enemy army, but it's also not going to discriminate when it comes to not sucking up *your* army as well. Or it could be extremely difficult/rare to be able to tap into the more powerful aspects of gravity manipulation.
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## Time
A support-but-still-powerful pairing for light could be time. It is a support element, in that you can use it make your enemies slower, your allies faster, help wounds heal quicker, and so on.
It can be used as a powerful offensive tool too: Powerful application of this element can cause large structures to crumble into dust, enemies to grow old and weak. It can perhaps even make the strongest users immortal, but it's upto you how balanced or unbalanced you want it to be.
On the passive, ability-sharing side of things, it can perhaps grant passive bonuses to speed, or increase the speed of perception, or make food last longer, or let the elements which apply long-lasting damage to have an even more lasting effect, or rather, shorten their effect but increase the damage. It can perhaps make the plant life magic grow faster fire spread faster, ice melt slower, and so on.
Thematically, while Time doesn't fit as well with light as say, heat or electricity (my first thought before I saw the list, as light is an electromagnetic wave), it still fits quite a bit. Light is the fastest thing in the universe. Faster than light travel is famously the cause of time-travel paradoxes. Going near the speed of light causes time to run slower, and so on.
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### Vitality
Essentially, the essence and energy of continued existence. In other words, this is (in various forms) the stuff that makes living things alive, makes undead come back to life, and the kind of ‘force’ that connects all living things.
Bolstering the vitality of something in exactly the right way gives you all kinds of options for supportive magic, ranging from healing all the way to things like temporary poison or disease immunity, improved endurance, boosted strength, enhanced agility, and even curing things like paralysis.
Overcharging the vitality of something lets you do damage in inventive ways, such as literally exhausting the target at the cellular level (this is actually a thing in real life, some people with particularly high metabolisms end up feeling exhausted when affected by stimulants because their cells run through all of the ATP they have stored up) or causing runaway cellular replication, resulting in the target literally exploding and being ‘healed to death’ (essentially cancer, but turbocharged).
Sapping the vitality of something lets you directly damage and/or exhaust the target, interfering with their normal biological processes. I could easily imagine an especially skilled mage specialized in this aspect of vitality magic being able to quite literally stop their opponent’s heart (or induce any of numerous other types of acute organ failure).
Infusing vitality into something that’s dead would let you give it a false semblance of life, creating zombies, skeletons, or other such corporeal undead.
This also ties in thematically with light in a couple of ways. Physically, almost all life is dependent on the light of the sun in some way. Metaphysically, almost all religions which had/have a sun deity also prayed to the sun deity as a generic lifegiving deity. Similarly, light in and of itself can both heal (exposure to sunlight helps the body produce vitamin D, and also helps regulate your circadian rhythm) and harm (sunburn, cancer, disruption of circadian rhythms, etc).
Thematically, I see this as distinct from the animal/plant life domains. They deal in much greater specifics (for example, I would expect the animal life domain to include some summoning and possibly transformation magic that fits thematically, while plant life might have support magic but it probably specializes in things that plants could do), and likely cannot logically do some of the things vitality could (maybe they have healing, but not as good as vitality can provide, maybe they can wither or kill, but not as directly as vitality can).
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**Spirit** or **Soul**
Not sure how/if you handle religion in your world, but a good counterpart to light in many Earthbound faiths would be a connection to the soul or spirit. It would fit in with a kind of "Paladin" or "Cleric" mentality to pair the two together (to use two common fantasy RPG tropes).
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### How about Heat?
It's intimately connected to light: make something hot enough and it will emit light, shine enough light on something and it will get hot.
It's not too different from the others! Animals eat plants, which in turn grow in dung and dead animals. Earth, given the right conditions, produce metal (or so it seems). Whether produces lightning, etc
Of course there's also interactions, as fire consumes life, fire produce light and heat, light annihilates darkness, water is needed for life, and so forth. It's quite beautiful actually. Plant life needs light, animal life produce heat.
I like it!
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Let's call it Simultaneous Duality (proper name pending).
It's a difficult concept to understand. The top mages have come up with a particular example of how it works: the Cat in the box. As long as you do not open the Box the cat is both alive and dead. The mages found that this system influences many things, and is even integral in the release of light in many ways.
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The first thought might be to pair light with wisdom, but light may already be wisdom by itself. On a second thought it could be paired with the opposite because light might be used to create confusion:
**Light and Shadows**
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**Creation** or **Substance**
Going by your other pairings, you've paired up Darkness and Void, and it's easy to see how these things are related.
With Light being the traditional opposite to Darkness, you could pair it up with the opposite of "void". Which would mean something along the lines of "existence/substance". If we expand the meaning of these elements beyond their physical concept (e.g. 'fire' includes 'burning'), then 'Creation' as a process and the act of 'filling the void' might be just right.
If "creation" isn't element-y enough you could use "**Substance**" instead of creation.
Alternatively, I suggest pairing poison up with something else (disease?) and pairing Fire and Light, which seem to belong together traditionally because for a long time, fire was the primary light source available.
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**Magnesium**
One of its well known properties is that it burns very brightly (so you've got your light association there), and has the added bonus of actually being an element!
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**Phlogiston**
This was thought (in the 17th/18th century) to be a substance that is contained in flammable things and leaves when it is burnt / enters when it is heated.
It was also thought to leave metals when they oxidize, organic matter when it decomposes etc.
So in your world phlogiston is thought to be some sort of life-force in a material, giving it strength and life (hardness and shininess to metals, life to living things, etc.). It pairs nicely with light (or fire) due to burning/oxidizing being when it leaves, and reduction processes being when it enters. It doesn't really matter that it doesn't exist, or maybe in your world it actually does.
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## The Prism Domain & The Astral
A **Prism** divides white light in the 7 colors of light. There are 7 chakras in astral body (apparently... I think).
It works well with Earth to Metal, Water and Ice, etc. because of the refinement of light into colored light. I'd call it the Astral with the prism domain (no idea if they have names). I also got a few options for powers.
**The Astral**
* The Eye, able to sense who or what something is and get some extra info.
* The Aura, able to use energy attacks or refract energy, a defense.
* The Projection, able leave body a scout around using the eye and aura
**The Light**
* The Blindness, acts flash bang without the bang and more flash.
* The Flame, Consumption of surrounding Phantasia or blast most Phantasia.
* The Call, summon inner flame to attack, reanimate the dead, or consume the living.
This was fun, I hope you find it useful.
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**Radiation**
Light is just electromagnetic radiation. So why not pair it with other forms of radiation? Gamma ray is already a type of light. How about alpha ray?
**Weak Force**
So far, we believe that electromagnetic force and the weak force are the most close-related of the fundamental forces. Also, the weak force is responsible for some radiations.
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## Magnetism
light and magnetism actually are the same thing. They are both forms of electromagnetism. the two are literally inseparable. of course then you will have to think about why electricity is not included.
Alternatively
## Space
Just for the perfect opposite to darkness/void. Space magic is often for things like teleportation and bags of holding like effects.
honestly light and fire would be a better fit since heat is often transferred as light, infrared light. the heat you feel from a fire IS light.
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I'm trying to come up with alternate versions of flight for a new animal species. Wikipedia has this to say:
"Powered flight has evolved only four times (first in insects, then in pterosaurs, birds and bats). It uses muscular power to generate aerodynamic forces and to replace energy lost to drag. Flapping: moving wings to produce lift and thrust."
What are some wing design ideas that could be completely different from "dragon," "leather," "feathered," or "bug" wings?
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Some invertebrates fly by making silk kites and letting the wind take them. From the [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider)):
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> Ballooning, sometimes called kiting, is a process by which spiders, and some other small invertebrates, move through the air by releasing one or more gossamer threads to catch the wind, causing them to become airborne at the mercy of air currents. This is primarily used by spiderlings to disperse; however, larger individuals have been observed doing so as well. The spider climbs to a high point and takes a stance with its abdomen to the sky, releasing fine silk threads from its spinneret until it becomes aloft. Journeys achieved vary from a few metres to hundreds of kilometres. Even atmospheric samples collected from balloons at five kilometres altitude and ships mid-ocean have reported spider landings.
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A fictional creature might secrete a kind of silk that can be hardened, or they might use silk to attach leaves or light sticks. Such a contraption might then be shaped into a hang glider. These gliding wings could then be disposed of after use, or they may be reusable.
Spiders build so many complex things such as underwater oxygen reserves, trapdoors, tunnels, bolas etc. Making wings/gliders would not be a large stretch, but rather a refining of what they already do.
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The Fairyfly has [a different way of "flying" than the way we usually think](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairyfly).
In short:
It is the smallest known insect and it is so small that air behaves more like a liquid to it than a gas, so it kind of swims through the air. The strange looking wings are a result of that.
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Some alternate flying methods that spring to mind:
* The [Fan lizard](http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Fan_Lizard) from *Avatar* features an unfurling spiral-shaped wing that spins it out of harm's way, sort of a cross between a [maple tree "helicopter"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samara_(fruit)) and a [pebble toad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreophrynella_nigra). This is a defense mechanism that in no way guarantees its safety, and relies largely on the hope that wherever it ends up is safer than where it was.
* The [Overlord](http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Overlord) from the *Starcraft* games floats like a giant zeppelin. This would be [difficult to achieve](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/110613/anatomically-correct-zerg-overlord) in an Earth-like atmosphere.
* Fixed-wing flight is extremely inefficient from a nature perspective, due to the amount of thrust required to get airborne, but gliding creatures come close. Gliders and birds-of-prey often employ [thermals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal) to maintain height; if your world has enough of these, a small gliding creature could reasonably use them to its advantage.
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Wikipedia misses one other kind of animal that engages in (longish spurts) of actual powered flight: the [**flying fish**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2eMX_pGNVI).
Watch the slow motion segment carefully, you can see that the fish dives out of the water (powered take-off), glides for a bit (like a bird), then dunks his tail into the water and wiggles it back and forth to drive himself faster through the air (tail powered flight) and then dives back out of the air and into the water again. Interesting method of propulsion, that.
[Another example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nEwte-x-iw)
[Aerodynamics of flying fish](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flying-fish-measured/) indicate that they are supreme gliders, doing it as well as some birds. They also make use of ground effect to reduce drag and increase lift. I suspect that if these fish ever evolved a way to breathe air, they could probably fly much longer distances.
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There are no macroscopic axles in Earth biology. Phillip J Pullman's "Dark Materials" books included some aliens with symbiotic relationship with a tree with a large hard nut. The aliens put limbs into indentations in the nut, and ride it about like a wheel.
Your world could have helicopters and propeller-style plan creatures, as long as the axle was physically separated from the creature. Doesn't need to be symbiotic... it could be extruded out from the one creature like a pearl or some other process that completely disconnects the hard axle.
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> What are some wing design ideas that could be completely different from "dragon," "leather," "feathered," or "bug" wings?
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**Hovercraft wings**.
Not very efficient, so you'd need a very light creature to begin with, and a high metabolic rate. But you could have lots of petal-sized wings moving in sync all around the creature's lower body, their net effect a continuous flux of air being sucked around the "equator" and being thrust downwards. Modulating this effect allows flying in any direction, and even hover in place, hummingbird-style.
It's sort of the way some microorganisms move in water, using air instead.
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@plutotheplanet touched on it but I think hydrogen sac drifting is potentially viable... bio-electric electrolysis paired with an inflatable membrane. Fish, fowl, and amphibians all exhibit air bladders already, so that half of the equation is proven... bio-electricity is represented already on terran life forms... I think the evolutionary path of something that could combine them is visible.
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In the docufiction [Alien Planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Planet), there are flying creatures called [Skewers](http://speculativeevolution.wikia.com/wiki/Skewer) that have somehow evolved... ...wait for it....... biological jet engines!
Questionable realism, but definitely unique compared to what you'll find on Earth.
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What about an animal that has flight powered using methane gas? :) The cavity of its body expands like a blowfish with methane it produces naturally. If it can float, there are a bunch of ways it can move in a non-traditional manner. Anything that can push against the air, a fold of skin, blowing air through its body, releasing some methane, using leaves clutched in their feet, etc.
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There is of course the Grenade Frog. It only moves location once every month, when it inflates the front part of its body using powerful muscles so that it is almost lighter than air at ground pressure, while what would be the equivalent of a large intestine secretes a highly unstable chemical both internally and over its hind legs. This at some point spontaneously detonates, propelling the Grenade Frog's lightened fore up to 5 kilometers from its original location, although winds can affect that dramatically. Lacking a rear, it settles in its new location on its diet of insects, enjoying a habitat almost devoid of natural predators, and grows new hind legs and glands. The Grenade Frog evolved to skip between bodies of water and to avoid its primary natural threat, a sort of slow moving toxic algae.
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You could investigate gliding creatures and see if they could evolve into flying creatures. There are some frogs called [flying frogs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_frog) that have aerodynamic feet and kind of "skate" through the air. There are also [sugar gliders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_glider) ([image](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-19/a-sugar-glider-in-full-flight/6865924)), a type of possum that glide using loose skin between their limbs that is pulled tight by extending their limbs after launching themselves into the air. I'm sure there are many other types of pseudo-flying creatures you could investigate.
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The novel "Hothouse" by Brian Aldiss has a lot of unique fauna-flora hybrids that have unusual modes of flight. For example, there are large seed-pods which can move under their own power. In another example, human characters with a certain skillset can summon various hybrid artefacts for their own use, but the ability to control them is rare. Another mode of aerial movement is attaching oneself to the fur of giant spiders which have the ability to soar through the air (up to the moon) on giant silk webs. Whilst there is much which is scientifically inaccurate (or biologically unlikely), it is a good source of alternative designs for flora-faunal modes of flight.
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Try looking to the man-made world of aviation and see if there are any designs there that have not been replicated in the biology of organisms on Earth. Helicopter-style flight, for example.
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You could imagine a creature with of balloon like sacs (making up the majority of it's body) that would suck in air from the front and sequentially push air out from the bottom of its body. This would be like letting a balloon thrust air out of it (but presumably it would have some sort of fins to help it aim.)
*Note: The more sacks that participate in this the less "bouncy" the flight would be (in the same way that more cylinders in a car engine causes it to run "less bumpy.")*
If the creature lacked bones (using cartilage or something else lightweight) and was mostly these air sacs I think you could get this working in an earth-like atmosphere; as we have many non-animal examples of things that work this way (compressed air rockets, balloons if they are not tied, etc.) and these work without relying on lightweight gasses and don't rely on "floating."
I imagine in order sustain such a high-energy activity it may have a thin/wide maw like a whale in an insect-infested atmosphere, allowing it's travel/feeding to be the same action.
I say it would "breathe in" from the front that way Newtonian physics are still in your favor (however minor this benefit would be.)
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I could also imagine a "hot air balloon" animal, again 95% of it's volume would probably be the travel method. The animal could collect burnable gasses and find some way of creating a spark to light the "spout" for the fire (if it's intelligent this is easy, if this is fully biological it would probably be some other chemicals it slurps up and combines to cause an initial burst of heat or maybe a metal that reacts with the air.)
To feed, given the awkwardness of the animal, it would probably need (again) an insect infested atmosphere and maybe a sticky film that drags the insects it runs into into the "basket" like maw at the bottom of the "Hot air balloon"-like animal.
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For another temporary flight variant, I can imagine a Rocket animal; who coats it's "rocket sac" in metal that it mines, then fills itself up with gasses, then launches itself (probably for migratory reasons)
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I believe each of these are possible due to using propulsion rather than floatation. They both require a light body and a large amount of energy being pushed out. While they can each be hard to believe would evolve; there are truly astounding things that have evolved on earth.
Fly larva that have virtually no brain and yet build an entire trap that filters food out of the water. Termites that build near-cathedrals. Fungus that infects ants and then bursts in order to spread itself through the colony, and the ants realizing this and sectioning off the infected members. Ants that link into bridges to handle flooding or cut leaves to grow fungus in their hive, of which they eat the fungus (and is nearly the only thing they eat.) Fish that have a light hanging off of their head just to attract fish to eat.
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Not to forget creatures that are not single organisms but are made from colonies of polyps that contribute different functions to the whole such as the Portuguese Man o' war. Some of the polyps act as a gas filled 'sail'. It doesn't fly, but I thought the colony as a material an interesting notion and one that may be adapted to winged or balloon flight with a little tweaking. More here: <http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/36/613.short>
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I am writing a story where humanity has advanced technology, but I want to give a justification for why they are still on their planet. Here humanity has advanced ai, superconductors, laser weapons etc. what excuse can they have for not leaving the earth.
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**Question:** what actual constraint, or self-imposed constraint, would a high tech species like humanity prevent from developing space travel ?
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**Space is dangerous**
Space for humans (and life in general) is dangerous and costs a lot of energy. What we shoot into space requires a ton of safety features, as it needs to be able to withstand a wide range of powerful electromagnetic waves as well as large sudden heat changes. In our solar system we're relatively very well protected. Big planets catch a lot of debris, preventing the debris to reach the Earth. In addition, the make-up also reduces the debris floating around the planet.
As @Thorne his/her excellent answer states, debris might be so much that anything going to space needs ludicrous amounts of armour. This increases weight, making space flight not practical. The rockets themselves are too large to get all that weight into space. In addition, many instruments like solar pannels become unlikely to work and the armour isn't a guarantee to prevent damage. Still I think this answer doesn't go far enough to be fixed with a simple comment.
A planets atmosphere and magnetism protects the surface against a ton of dangerous waves. The star alone can already pump out so much power on every wavelength, from huge radiowaves to the tiny gamma rays. These can scramble, disable, destroy, or overheat spacecraft or simply prevent good communication with anything shot into space.
It might also be that there's too little to see, so they don't realise the full extent the universe might offer them. If a cloud or many strange phenomenon, like time dilation or simply too much noise blocks further view of the universe, it might seem they are quite small and alone. With practically nothing to interact with, they might not realise many benefits of space, or might just have a few niche things out there.
Maybe they could see everything. A single planet around a hospitable star, but anything else has floated away or has been absorbed by the star or planet. You might see other stars, worlds and galaxies, each so far away you know you'll never reach it. Anything they would do in space then seems a useless endeavour. Better to stay on your planet. See what you see, make your lives as best as possible, and don't venture towards the unreachable stars.
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## Their planet is too big!
Their home contains a mass much greater than our Earth. Getting to orbit is spectacularly expensive and energy costly.
That's just for satellites. Crewed missions require much heavier-built ships for the pressurization, and experiments have proven a zero gravity environment causes them severe health problems. Beyond several hours is fatal.
So why bother? :) As a bonus they don't have a moon, and the next closest planet would be a year's travel with their available tech. Getting there would be a massive "all or nothing" investment which they haven't yet made.
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## There's nowhere to go
Our solar system has a whole lot of potential targets of space travel, from the asteroid belt to various planets and moons (and Moon). Those targets also act like potential stepping stones of various degrees of difficulty to reach (Before going to Neptune, you'd probably first test waters with something closer to home, right?).
If your solar system is devoid of other planets and smaller planetoids for whatever specified or unspecified reason - there's no learning curve. The closest goal you have after "get into the orbit" is straight on "interstellar travel". Which is like asking to cross the Pacific right after you hopped over a small creek.
So the most that you can do is to host a couple of space stations in the orbit, that would be never of any use beyond some limited scientific or military value - everything else requires experience and practical knowledge that you just have nowhere to obtain.
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This was the driving force behind the Krikkit, the main antagonists of Douglas Adams, Life the Universe and Everything:
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> The people of Krikkit were surrounded by a Dust Cloud, their single
> sun with its single world, and they were right out on the utmost
> eastern edge of the galaxy. Because of the Dust Cloud there had never
> been anything to see in the sky. At night it was totally blank. During
> the day there was the sun, but you couldn't look directly at that so
> they didn't. They were hardly aware of the sky. It was as if they had
> a blind spot that extended 180 degrees from horizon to horizon.
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> The reason they why they had never thought to themselves "We are alone
> in the Universe," was that until one night, they didn't know about the
> Universe.
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Does it have to be our Earth, or can it be an Earth-like planet?
One good way to trap a species on a planet is to make the planet just a bit heavier than Earth, thanks to the [tyranny of the rocket equation](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html) (NASA):
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> If the radius of our planet were larger, there could be a point at which an Earth escaping rocket could not be built. Let us assume that building a rocket at 96% propellant (4% rocket), currently the limit for just the Shuttle External Tank, is the practical limit for launch vehicle engineering. Let us also choose hydrogen-oxygen, the most energetic chemical propellant known and currently capable of use in a human rated rocket engine. By plugging these numbers into the rocket equation, we can transform the calculated escape velocity into its equivalent planetary radius. That radius would be about 9680 kilometers (Earth is 6670 km). If our planet was 50% larger in diameter, we would not be able to venture into space, at least using rockets for transport.
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It really is tyranny. Building a rocket with 96% fuel seems like a stretch to me personally, so perhaps less than a 50% increase could be enough to trap us. At least until we create nuclear-powered spacecraft.
If you cannot make the planet heavier (or the fuel less efficient, or metals weaker), then [Kessler syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome) would be a very realistic trap. Note that you don't have to get there gradually - some nation may have intentionally triggered Kessler syndrome in a past conflict.
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**Space Junk**
Already the Earth is surrounded by thousands of pieces of space junk, each one capable of knocking a hole in satellites and spacecraft.
If a series of disasters caused a cloud of space junk that would destroy any spaceship trying to leave the planet, people would have no choice but to stay planet bound until such a time that the cloud cleared enough to reach space.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZXN37.png)
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The idea you are working with is something that is in line with an idea called The Fermi Paradox - basically, if the universe is as old as it is, and if we believe that Earth and life are not uncommon, why do we not see evidence of aliens all over the place?
There are a number of solutions to the question, but one is that other civilizations do not engage in space travel, and hence do not have a large influence beyond their own planet. A further sub scenario to that solution is that the civilization feels no need to travel in space. Perhaps all of their needs are met, and they don't see why they need to make life more difficult by traveling in space.
You can also go the more realistic route that things just get in the way of traveling in space. Although at first glance it may not seem too difficult to justify that people just didn't find space important - after all, many in our world think that space exploration is unimportant -
There are many converging factors that have led to space exploration, or would have led to it eventually. They are as follows:
* Rockets, the easiest way for us to get into space, are also a way to effectively deliver weapons without the risk of having a plane shot down. However, for missiles to be useful at the range where they can be adapted into rockets, you need warheads as devastating as nuclear weapons, otherwise, ICBMs may not be developed.
* Space is useful. Satellites have done a tremendous amount of good, especially when it comes to communication. Keep in mind that without space, your world cannot have GPS, it won't have satellite mapping and other imagery, etc. Many technologies such as computers, solar panels, etc, were also improved by the demand of space exploration.
* People have dreamt about space for all of time. In the ancient past, thinkers of all kinds wondered about the Moon, the stars, and the planets. They wanted to know more about them. When we reached the modern era, people like Jules Verne, and later Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard began to think of using technology to accomplish space travel. Our ability to go into space was hastened by missiles created in WWII, and later the pressures of the cold war, but I am very sure that had neither happened somehow, by the present we would still have been able to send things and people into space.
So it is a complex question. Your society needs to have reasons why it pushed to get super conductors and energy weapons but did not choose to go into space. If you are striving for realism, you will want to look into what technologies and societal impacts have come from space.
Personally, unless your story is more focused on stuff surrounding space, I wouldn't sweat too much over it, mentioning only something like "it's arrogant to raise yourself to the heavens" or "space travel is considered impossible, or dangerous" will probably be enough to justify your choice.
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# Their past space missions went badly, and so they mostly stick to orbital missions.
It's fairly hard to justify them having zero interest in space at all. Satellites are immensely useful for studying weather, communication, and lots of other things.
But beyond that? We don't need to go further.
There's lots of minerals on earth, lots of resources and people. Space is barren and dangerous.
Perhaps they sent several missions out, and did a routine, land people on neabry planets, but long term missions resulted in accidents that killed everyone involved, and were extremely expensive. Space is dangerous.
As such, nobody wants to invest billions of dollars in missions beyond the planet. They can continue to tech up, and advance the planet rather than wasting billions on speculative missions into space which may well go badly.
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## Why should they?
There's no guarantee that any particular world they would want to colonize would be habitable. Not only are Goldilocks-Zone worlds extremely rare, they're also probably not going to be habitable *anyway.*
You see, elemental oxygen has extremely round heels; it's always looking to hook up with another element. For a world to have significant quantities of free oxygen it must have some sort of mechanism to keep it free, i.e. life. Ethical issues aside, the natives (intelligent or otherwise) are probably going to react rather badly to colonization efforts.
Nobody wants to face the possibility that their voyage to the stars will be in vain.
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Technological advancement in many areas need not equate to the same pathways of technological advancement nor pursuit of the same technologies we have historically produced. There is a lot of, call it luck, in the advancement of any given field of science, many discoveries are made by individuals who refuse to take no for an answer and others due to happy accidents.
We owe much of our rocketry technology to [one scientist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun) who took Nazi money and worked through a series of near continuous disasters because he had a dream to go to space. He perfected [a technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket) that very few people around him thought could ever be successful only because of his personal obsession. Without someone in his position, with his drive, proving that it *could* actually be done space rockets may have been consigned to history's giant list of "stuff that would be great if only it worked". Once there was a consensus that the technology didn't work more reasonable governments wouldn't throw good money after bad chasing it. Especially not in a history burdened with a staggeringly expensive development program that went nowhere and no example of what a working ballistic missile can actually do as a weapon beyond exploding on the launch pad.
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**What for ?**
Space has been explored with probes and satellites but people are content on earth, why would they leave ?
"Humans in space" is a pretty scifi dream but there's few pratical reasons to go there. And if your civilization has overpopulation problems, make colonies in the sea or underground, it's far more pratical and cheaper than sending people in space.
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**The Matrix**
Instead of expanding outward literally, they build giant computers and uploaded themselves. They can efficiently house trillions in a virtual world will efficiently siphoning power from their local star. No need to go anywhere for billions of years.
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# Lack of motivation.
In 1961 the first man entered orbit, 1969 man first visited the moon. Since then, a little over 500 people have been to space and a dozen have walked on the moon.
Human technology has evolved considerably in the 50+ years since man went to space. Vast improvements in technology have been made, and to be fair that does include space technology, but it seems obvious that space just isn't something that humans as a whole are motivated to conquer. We certainly have AIs, lasers, and super conductors!
Without motivation, humans may find more pressing or interesting problems to work on.
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Obvious omissions from the otherwise great existing answers are: political problems, money problems. These are often linked.
## No large nations or governments
Maybe no large nations were created. What looks like the USA in our world ends up breaking down into just the smaller, individual states as their own countries. Canada, Russia, China, India, and other large countries never formed or were destabilized and broke down into small, regional dynasties or other governments. Because of this, it would take a large group of these countries to be able to afford a reasonable space program.
A program like [NASA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA) takes billions of dollars to fund every year. Without the cooperation of multiple small countries, it just isn't possible, and the lack of trust among these small countries makes it impossible.
## No governmental interest
Politicians just don't care about space travel. They don't think their voters know anything about it, so disregard their requests to do anything about it. Russia just wasn't interested, so never launched Sputnik, which never spurred the Americans to reach the moon.
Besides, there's better things to be spending money on, like feeding the poor, education, paying people living wages, keeping taxes low, paying off the national debt, preventing climate change, and more. And in this world, those things are actually being done. With these programs making life better for everyone, there's no pressing need to leave the planet. Asteroids? That only happened to the dinosaurs and in video games. It's not a real threat, is it?
## Endemic financial problems
Money is not stable. The stock markets are manipulated by the AI, big banks, and stock brokers so only the rich have any money. They've also manipulated the laws so they don't have to pay taxes and they don't have to pay their workers much. This means the taxes brought in to pay for governmental projects is severely limited.
It's so limited that roads turn to gravel before they are repaired, bridges fall down and have to be replaced with barges, damns burst and aren't replaced, welfare programs are non-existent, and about the only thing the government can manage is to stay out of constant wars for limited resources, including food and water. They don't have time and money to spend on programs that take food and housing away from citizens.
There is advanced technology for the rich, but squalor and starvation for the rest. The world's rich have 90% of the wealth ([instead of ~43%](https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/#:%7E:text=According%20to%20the%20Credit%20Suisse,1.4%20percent%20of%20global%20wealth.)).
With this massive wealth gap, and simple short-sighted greed, the wealthy don't care about space. They don't have any interest in leaving the world they run. They also don't care to risk their lives just for a ride, even if it is into the history books. The only thing they want to be known for it being the richest person in the world, and that can change daily, so the longer they remain the richest, the more status they get.
They also don't care about spending the billions of dollars a year it would take to get into space. To them, it's a massive drain that would prevent them from being the richest person, so that's just out of the question. There's no Return On Investment, which makes that spending pure waste, so it goes against everything they've been taught is important by their family, friends/social clique, and world history.
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They have multiple aggressive militaristic civilizations on their planet.
Any time and resource spent on interstellar or interplanetary travel could be spent on more advanced weapons.
One can argue that space travel can bring in resources, but they are long term investments especially interstellar travel without FTL, while you divert resources on space travel you enemy will build AI controlled army to conquer you with less time and resource.
# update
I took MolbOrg advice and clarified the answer.
Even if a civilization build a spaceship, other civilizations can develop weapons such as rockets to destroy with the small fraction of the cost.
Only orbital devices such as spy satellites or armed space stations would be strategically feasible.
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There was an unexpected disaster - Enormous solar flare wipes majority of the life on Earth, destroys most of the infrastructure except for fortified military facilities, where technology survives, cuts off, by destroying orbital facilities, off-planet settlements and causes their demise.
Better yet, let survivors know this happened due to actions of hostile alien species and humans need to lay low for "a while".
There is no way to stop humans from exploring space except for denying them access to resources needed and to the surface. Space junk can be cleared with ease given sufficient level of tech, so by my reckoning only way to get what you need is to force them into underground hiding.
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### Branched Technical Evolution
In our world, we went down branches of technological discovery to reach rocketry and space travel with a potential eye to colonization on other bodies. In your world, there wasn't a need or desire to do that.
Likewise, a spaceship or satellite isn't one invention. It is the culmination of many technologies and ideas yeeted off the planet at high velocity for our own reasons. Given the question's statement of having advanced AI and supercomputers and laser weapons, an idea is a lack of easily acquirable structural materials in the quantity needed to actually build a spaceship could be a cause here.
A third option is that it could be that early on the world learned of climate change and renewable energies and moved harder on developing those technologies and leaving the fossil fuels in the ground where they belong. The presence of laser weapons suggest that your world has moved beyond gunpowder and other chemical weapons. Perhaps they have moved from chemical energy fast enough to not develop the ideas to rocketry?
### Lack of Pressure
Building on the first point, perhaps there is a lack of pressing reason to develop space travel at all. Lacking world-spanning wars, there might not be the development into weapons delivery systems that would lead to being used to go to space so they went in the computing direction instead.
If they have enough resources for their population, then there might not be the same drive to leave the planet because everyone can have what they need. I would hesitate to call it post-scarcity, more that there isn't the level of scarcity that would drive exploring space for resources
These two reasons are still branches of technical development, but instead of different decisions on how to advance, it is about pressures for advanced caused by events.
### I'm Not Going to Say Aliens but ...
For a more sci-fi twist, a more advanced alien species are actively sabotaging the planet's ability to leave it. Why they are doing it is unknown, their motives inscrutable. All those on the planet know is that any travel beyond the orbit of the planet fails for reason.
It's a lot more random sci-fi but it is a more outside the box reason as to why they haven't left the planet.
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## Restless Genes
I'm not sure if this is still scientifically valid, but there was a theory that came out in the last decade that genetics may have a heavy influence on the desire to explore. It was theorized that a big difference between homo sapiens and Neanderthals was this gene, and that explains why there was very little migration of Neanderthals compared to humans. It may explain why some people seem to be natural explorers who are willing to sail across an ocean not knowing what is there and some are content to never travel more than a couple miles from their birthplace.
This may all be just popsci nonsense, but if accurate perhaps there could exist intelligent life on other planets who are genetically predisposed to not have much interest in exploration -- life is good and they see no reason to shoot rockets up. Assuming light speed is actually an absolute speed limit, combined with a relatively boring solar system that doesn't have much of interest to explore, perhaps without the "exploration" gene they simply don't see the point.
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There's not many places to go. Even the closest solar systems are over 6 light years away, which could take over a decade to reach and might not necessarily have any planets capable of sustaining human life. Even if there was, transporting billions of people to another solar system would be an extremely expensive endeavor, and pointless if the Earth is still habitable.
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**2001 in reverse**
"All these worlds are ours, except your one. Do not attempt to leave it"
**Solar activity**
Their star is less stable than our sun. X-class flares not once a decade, but several times per annum. Too much radiation for humans in space. Electronics lasts a bit better, but not for very long, and only at great added expense.
Also they cracked fibre optic communications earlier in their technological development than we did.
Exotic variant: there is an accretion disk a long way out there bathing their solar system with hard radiation. Their atmosphere blocks it. You'd have to find a way to get rid of the lethal Nitrogen oxides arising from atmospheric ionization, though.
**No fossil fuel**
Mined out by a previous civilisation, or different plate tectonics. So they went straight to wind and hydro and tidal power, energy storage and solar panels. One can do most things this way, as we are finding out. But rockets are right at the crazy-hard end of that spectrum.
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## They can't survive FTL travel.
Faster-than-light travel is, according to our current understanding of physics, impossible. That means that if you want FTL travel in your world, then you are free to invent it in any way you want and put any restrictions on it you want.
It might be possible that there is a biological reason why humans do not survive FTL travel, while other species do. Transhumanism might be out of the question, because if humans would use bio-engineering to change the aspect about them which prevents them from FTL travel, they would lose what defines them as human. So that's no solution. That means that they are bound to Earth, and all they can do to project their presence in the rest of the universe is to send automated probes or hire envoys from other species.
If you want to write hard science fiction where FTL travel is impossible and any interstellar travel needs to happen at sublight speed, then the answer to this question writes itself: **their lifespan is too short for interstellar travel**. As long as humans don't get much older than 100 earth-years, it's impossible to reach any interesting destination within a regular lifespan. But what if this is exceptionally short compared to other species? If the median life expectancy of all other sapient species in the galaxy is several orders of magnitude longer, then spending a couple thousand earth-years of their life traveling through space might not be that much of a deal for them.
[Answer]
**Multiple-Star System**
They live in a star-system with multiple stars and few other planets.
Thanks to the dance of their several suns, it's always daytime and no member of their race has ever seen a night.
No planets ever cross their sky that they can see.
At most, they are aware of comets and occasional meteorites and have some interesting (and probably very wrong) theories on the subject.
They never invented the science of astronomy.
They never looked up at the moon and wanted to reach it because they don't have one.
The only way they could ever see a star is by flying to their upper atmosphere and shading a long-exposure camera against the suns.
Keep in mind that without having any idea there's anything there, they might never try this!
Theirs is a civilisation that lives beneath a bright domed sky and has no conception of anything beyond it at all.
[Answer]
Good question ! imho there *will be* motivation..
**Dreaming to fly, be able to fly**
Any long term rule not to fligh, or not to travel in space, will be challenged.
People who have discovered engineering and technology also do science. A scientist will want to fly, to see if it can be done, to see what's up there. Many other people just *want* to fly.. on Earth, we apes had this dream, for centuries. Very hard to invision high-tech society without that wish. In a few centuries, we succeeded, then we wanted to fly *really high*. Get into orbit. Or to the moon.
**.. but religious constraints took over**
Earth has some conservative clergies, suppose they take over again. One of the rules of faith would be: *"you can't fly, only God can fly and the heavens is God's Domain and you can't enter it, because if you do, you will always fall and die."*
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[Question]
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What feature of Earth would be most likely to attract the interest of a curious alien intelligence searching the Milky Way marking the Earth as an unusual world and how close would they have to be to detect it?
Assume the alien intelligence has the capabilities of today's humanity in detection technology.
[Answer]
**Life**
I'm sure that there are planets with liquid water out there, planets with a human breathable atmosphere out there - regardless of all that - Life would likely be the most interesting thing.
Who are we? How do we act? What do we do? How do we live? How do we die?
There are questions enough about just the Human species that we, ourselves, don't know yet - and so any alien species with a shred of curiosity is going to be interested.
In terms of detection - I'm not sure the distance - but the thing that would most likely cause them to investigate would be non-natural EM spectrum transmissions. Radio waves or similar.
Something with a Mathematical basis.
We can detect EM/F emissions from pretty far away in the Galaxy, so it's possible they could too - the question is isolating our transmissions from naturally occuring noise.
[Answer]
## Solar eclipse
The sizes of the Sun and the Moon in the sky are almost equal, making solar eplipses possible and especially spectacular. There is no particular reason why this should be the case - we just got remarkably lucky [[link]](https://www.astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2000/10/why-is-the-moon-exactly-the-same-apparent-size-from-earth-as-the-sun-surely-this-cannot-be-just-coincidence-the-odds-against-such-a-perfect-match-are-enormous). (I vaguely remember reading a sci-fi novel where that was a plot point, but I can't recall which one that was.)
[Answer]
>
> Assume the alien intelligence has the capabilities of today's humanity in detection technology.
>
>
>
This means that they hardly can detect us. For comparison, we just started to find exoplanets roughly 30 years ago. And most of we found were gas giants. Very few exoplanets Earth-sized or smaller are known. And almost all of the know exoplanets were detected by indirect methods like transit, radial velocity, astrometry, transit time variation or microlensing.
Very few of them were photographed, and all those that were are gas giants presented no more than a small pixelated blob in an image already severely distorted due to the necessity of filtering out the obfuscating star luminosity.
Even looking at [Proxima Centauri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri), which is the neighbor next door, the first indications of a exoplanet there came only in 2013 with the confirmation only in 2016. The second and third planets were detected only in 2019 and confirmed only in 2020 and 2022.
So, an alien intelligence would probably don't see us at all with our current level of technology. However, after gaining insight from their first observations, what they would be looking for is exactly what we are looking for, a planet that seems to be capable of life.
And the best way to look for planets that have life is to search for planets that are rocky, have the correct temperature range (i.e. [Goldilocks planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone), not too hot nor too cold) and hint away the presence of water. We know that planets like this can harbor life because Earth is one of those. Gas giants in a Goldilocks position are also candidates for having moons with some life. Surely there could be life out there outside the Goldilocks zone, and even [Mars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars), [Europa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)), [Titan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)) and [Enceladus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus) here around the sun are considered as possibly harboring microscopic primitive life. But what we knows for sure that works are the Earth-twins.
How close they would have to come? With the current technology, except if they are extremely luck to spot a Earth-transit, too close to be viable or realistic, but the technology is increasing very fast.
In fact, they are likely to detect Jupiter and Saturn first. Then, only after much more detailed studies with a lot of observations and luck, they could see Earth. But they would also likely be investigating millions of stars at once and having limited resources for studying them. So, detecting Jupiter and Saturn might be like "meh" for a few decades until the "meh" turns to be a "wow".
[Answer]
**Free Oxygen in the atmosphere**
Oxygen is a pretty reactive chemical, and free oxygen in an atmosphere would tend to get bound up with other stuff -- for example, it would bond with iron to form "rust" as is the case on Mars. In order for our atmosphere to have so much free oxygen, something has to be continually producing or freeing up new oxygen. That's a clue that there's life (specifically, plant life) on this planet.
[Answer]
# Plate tectonics
Other answers have covered various aspects of "Earth has life." But what about the big ol' rock herself?
It turns out that Earth is [the only planet](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926751-700-unknown-earth-why-does-earth-have-plate-tectonics/#:%7E:text=Earth%20is%20the%20only%20planet,mantle%20%E2%80%93%20will%20be%20too%20thick.) (that we know of) to have plate tectonics. This would be an irresistible curiosity for alien geologists, as subduction zones would contain naturally formed rocks that would be entirely unfamiliar to them.
We were able to observe the crust structure on Venus with [orbital radar](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/magellan/in-depth/) to confirm that it lacks subduction zones entirely. But it's much easier to detect a presence than an absence - sufficiently powerful telescopes should be able to show aliens doing a fly-by that there is something funky going on with Earth to give it all these jagged mountains, and a closer look would be required.
[Answer]
This was going to be a response to the answer from @Lyall Stewart in Agreement with @Nosajimiki. but became a bit long.
In the galactic population, are predator or prey species the type that generally evolves to sentience? There is a genera(?) of Sci-Fi where humans are referred to as "Deathworlders" because they are the rare exception to sapiants since usually prey species are the ones who commonly evolve, sometime even more rare, Omnivores.
If the earth was much larger, achieving the tech necessary to counteract 9.81 m/s² acceleration to leave its gravity well is approaching impossible with chemical rockets.
Thus Just by being born on a ""High G planet" Humans may be among the most physically strong and durable spacefaring sapiants.
We breath one of the most reactive / corrosive elements on the periodic table, Oxygen.
50 to 60 milligrams of nicotine is deadly to a 150lb adult. We consume this substance as regularly and recreationally.
98.6 F (37 C) resting human body temp, is enough to cause serious burns to some species if physically touched.
In less than 8 generations from when humans developed industrialization they were able to destroy the nearly all life on their home planet.
Population expansion ratios are among the highest of native species above 50kg.
Im sure hundreds more examples like these can be suggested for a universe where humans/earth life is exceptional in the universe.
[Answer]
I think you are asking what might cause aliens on distant worlds take an interest in Earth, of all planets.
The answer is certainly an atmospheric composition that betrays the existence of life. The atmosphere of exoplanets is examined by spectral analysis, which can be done with the proper telescopes. Humans are at the cusp of deploying [telescopes capable enough](https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-details-exoplanet-atmosphere) of doing that routinely, like the JWST. One answer mentions free oxygen; but *anything* off-balance is a sign for life. [This article](https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2017.1729) appears to give a good overview.
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If, by contrast, you ask what aliens might find interesting once they are here (or what they may find interesting in alien civilizations in general), a number of ideas have been explored in the past:
* In Charles Stross' [*Singularity Sky*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Sky), an entity called *The Festival* drops cell phones from orbit and promises through them: "Entertain us and we will give you anything you want." They are a nomadic intelligence absorbing information and stories.
I think information, in particular cultural information like songs, texts and images, are the most likely items of value Earth could offer spacefaring civilizations. Additionally, actual material artifacts may have value as well.
* Robe Reid imagines, in his novel [*Year Zero*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(Reid_novel)), that by a twist of fate humans are the only race in the universe which is able to produce good music. Terranean music makes aliens ecstatic. It is cult. They name their heavy metals after rock bands: vanhalium, slayerium, megadeathium.
>
> "What about bonjovium?" I asked. I've always had a weakness for "You Give Love a Bad Name".
> "Of course it exists. But bonjovium is *certainly* not a heavy metal by our standards." Özzy sniffed. "It has an atomic number of just fifty. You call it 'tin'."
>
>
>
The copyright for the Terranean trove of music is of immeasurable value.
* In the DUST short film [*Final Offer*](https://youtu.be/rv8kOzRZK8g), featuring Anna Hopkins who also appeared in the *Expanse*, the aliens are interested in the water on Earth. Given that part of the water on Earth probably comes from asteroids, it seems easier to harvest those than to siphon it up from the bottom of this gravity well. (But the short is still very well done and entertaining.)
[Answer]
## Artificial Computer Intelligence.
We don't know if life is anywhere else in the galaxy, however if there is, there is an argument that such life would usually likely be microbial, non-technological life.
Life has been present on Earth for a long time (over 3 billion years), yet only *in the last few dozen years* have computers, and artificial life been possible.
So it is conceivable that Artificial Intelligence may be the unique 'turning point' alien civilisations may be looking for to encounter, or satiate curiosity or to conduct reconnaissance.
Such Artificial Intelligence could manifest itself in terms of transmitting radio, communication via light or some other evidence that causes alien civilisations to now take Earth seriously. Communication with our new AI could be at an amazingly fast, iterative, and improved rate, causing essentially the birth of a new era, influenced by / influencing the Alien Intelligence (which, by the way, may be an AI itself).
Plus it is no secret that AI may inevitably become a dominant force on this planet, and can easily also become a dominant force on all planets in the galaxy, so best to now have a look.
[Answer]
* An arguably sentient species that discovered the [Greenhouse Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect) more than a century ago and still argues about environmental protection.
Consider the uptick of [scripted-reality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_reality_television#Scripting_and_staging) shows and a certain brand of daytime talk show, where people watch watch other people who are [even more messed up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_reality_television#As_a_spectacle_of_humiliation) than themselves to feel better about themselves. So the aliens set up really big antenna arrays and big-data signals processing to catch the annual once-in-a-century hurricane mixed with statements from industry lobbyists. (It is arguable if they would get understandable television signals at any distance, but big antennas may help.)
* A species whose ability to hold counterfactual scenarios in their mind goes way beyond "if I climb down from this vegetation, the predactor will catch me, so I won't."
Mankind produced works like Hamlet, the Lord of the Rings, and E.T. Some of them don't translate to alien audiences, but many do.
[Answer]
Life on Earth tends towards the aggressive side, where it will destroy rather than assimilate competition. This can be useful if used correctly.
* We are that strange planet on the edge of the galaxy where monsters live \*
[Answer]
Wood is rarer than gold on a cosmic scale.
Interstellar alien loggers use an alien James Webb Space Telescope and alien ramjets to find, and pillage, oxygen rich worlds. Evolution favours tree analogues on earth-like gravity.
Alien culture mines alien asteroid 16-Psyche; alien metal prices plummet and demand for alien wood increases.
Oxygen would attract their interest. Wood would keep it.
[Answer]
**Water**
One feature of Earth that is unique among extraterrestrial planets is its abundance of *water*. The Blue Planet is covered in the stuff.
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[Question]
[
I stumbled upon [this map](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kativik.png) of northern Quebec the other day, and what really struck me was just how empty the interior was. No populated places, no roads, no navigable rivers - as far as I know no people at all live outside those dozen coastal villages. My first thought was: villain lair!
I understand that the [landscape](https://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2021/04/videocapture-20210427-115931-1-800x445.jpg) is not exactly lush, but at the same time it is not uninhabitable. There is soil, it only freezes for six months a year (at least for nearby [Schefferville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schefferville)), so a well-motivated and well-funded villainous billionaire could surely build their own [evil lair](https://www.cineworld.co.uk/xmedia-cw/repo/articles/other/INSIDE_OUT_BODY_3.png) there, from which to execute secret experiments.
**The number one goal here is absolute privacy for the villain.** Nobody must know about this base. So eventually the lair must become mostly self-sufficient, through local food production with greenhouses, solar or nuclear energy, etc. Once constructed, the base should only require the very occasional supply of essential parts that cannot be manufactured locally. Also they should be covering up the roof with heat-insulating materials that look like the surrounding terrain, to fool satellite imagery. I consider that solvable.
A bigger hurdle is the construction phase, when a great volume of materials need to be transported to the wilderness site without drawing attention from nosy locals. The logistics are the challenge; how to get construction materials to the base without anyone ever getting the idea that there is anything at all at the location of the base.
One idea: construction could start with a [small seaplane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DeHavilland_Single_Otter_Harbour_Air.jpg) that lands in one of the lakes in the Quebec interior, transporting mostly employees who will construct a few tents and a new landing strip out of local materials like pebbles. This landing strip will support a larger plane, e.g. a [Bombardier Dash 8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Canada_Dash_8) which is a kind of plane already often used locally. This plane will transport more goods and people, allowing crews to set up the first buildings. The end goal is an even larger landing strip that can support true cargo planes, which will be bringing in stuff like the nuclear reactor.
The issue is doing all of covertly. The seaplane can take off from a ship in the Hudson's bay. The cargo plane has enough range that it can take off anywhere and just enter Quebec airspace without its transponder on. The Bombardier phase is the trickiest. Those planes do not have enough range for international flights but they cannot depart from an aircraft carrier either.
My idea involves the villain setting up a local airline company that feigns transporting goods to the northern communities, such as [Kuujjuaq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuujjuaq)... but something has to actually land up north for these flights to not draw attention. Making the planes transport half their capacity to the north while dropping off the other half in the base would be suspect as well - people know how much that craft can carry.
**I need some justification for a line of propeller planes to get loads of cargo to an unknown location.** Bribing a few people like fueling station attendees is possible, but the fewer people in the know the better.
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I truly appreciate every answer and all the time that has been put into them, but right now over half answers are frame challenges and/or suggest disguising the secret base as something else. That is not what the question is about, and it is not what I want to do with this story.
**The villain lair is to be entirely off the map. Nobody except the villain and his associates are to know that anything at all is located in that part of Quebec.**
**The design of the base, or how to covertly construct the base, is off-topic.**
**The question is about covertly transporting materials to the building site.**
These frame challenges are just not helpful to me. A base that's completely off every map has unique story properties that I just do not want to sacrifice.
[Answer]
**Don't fly, use ships!**
Airplanes are expensive, not exactly inconspicuous, and require a lot of support hardware (landing strip, control towers, ground crew, fueling, etc). **Most of all though, they just can't carry a lot.** Providing materials to construction projects via air (helicopter or plane) is *one of the most expensive things* you can do in construction, short of launching your construction into space.
Say for example, you want to use concrete in constructing your secret base. The Bombardier, with a payload of ~8500 kg can only carry ~340 standard bags in one flight, and this comes out to only ~3.5 cubic meters of concrete. That's *nothing*! A basic, single-story residential home with basement will run you somewhere north of 60 cubic meters, which means that you would simply need an absolutely ludicrous amount of flights to construct anything approaching a "secret base" (not a secret shack). Sure, a fake tourism company or whatever might allow you to fly planes with impunity, but to supply the concrete you'd need to have planes landing every couple minutes or so.
This means to construct anything of a reasonable size, you *need* better access to the site. This can be a road, or considering how much coastal terrain northern Quebec has, a ship. A ship can carry thousands of kilograms, including things like cement mixer trucks or crane trucks.
So, I'd suggest:
1. Buy a decently large ship, and paint it like an arctic research vessel. Launch this ship somewhere on the east coast of the USA, and have it head northwards into the Hudson Strait and Bay.
2. Once there, locate a bay that's deep and secluded and park your research ship there. If anyone gets nosy, scare them away by saying you're doing a delicate environmental survey or something.
3. Deploy a small construction crew to build a covert dock. Maybe dig the bay a bit deeper so that you can accommodate ships with a bigger draft, and start building a road that leads inland
4. Buy a couple large ferries and repaint/camouflage them to look like luxury cruise liners. Register these with a fake company offering arctic tours,
5. Covertly load a bunch of construction vehicles like cement mixers, backhoes, cranes, etc into your converted ferries and sneak them northwards to your secret bay.
6. Unload the construction vehicles and construct your road/base. Because ships can be loaded at any port on the east coast, loading construction vehicles won't appear too suspcious.
[Answer]
## Frame challenge you can't make in invisible, hide it in plain sight
you will never hide large scale construction, all you can do is hide **what** you are constructing. large equipment, large scale purchases, millions of tons of earth that need to be moved, all of that leaves a huge obvious signal. You can't land cargo planes that can move construction equipment on a small runway you need something huge, the dash 8 is not a cargo plane that can move heavy equipment, not equipment capable of large scale construction. Concrete, solar panels , nuclear cooling, and passive greenhouses are obvious, hidden greenhouses need a lot of power. But your biggest problem is the sheer volume of material you need to move to build a base of any size bot in terms excavation and cargo, governments and private citizens take notice of these kinds of thing in national parks.
You need to build something you can hide traffic in, like a remote hotel. During the cold war the US wanted to build an emergency bunker for politicians, they concluded it was impossible to do it in secret, the only thing they could do was disguise it as something else, that's what they did disguise it as a part of a massive renovation of an existing remote resort hotel. Project "[Greek island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Greek_Island)". Almost 50 years after it was built its existence was leaked and you can now take [tours of the bunker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greenbrier) since its existence was decommissioned. Here is a [great documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my4vGUx5AFY) on the bunker. Oversight on hotel is fairly minimal and could probably be bribed out of existence.
I suggest taking the page from the US government textbook and build a resort hotel, then you can hide whatever you want in the normal traffic too and from the hotel. This has the benefit that you can rotate and replace staff, you can but food (even villians crave pizza on occasion), and your villain can go on vacation if they want. more importantly you can get medical supplies and new equipment when old equipment is outdated or damaged. You can have solar or geothermal power constructed for the hotel and oversize it, build your solar or geothermal plant a few miles from the hotel, then hide your base under the solar plant which is "built a good distance from the hotel as to not disturb the guests view" that way you can put up an fence and surveillance that will keep guests from getting to close. you can even post guards disguised as maintenance crews.
[Answer]
## Parachutes and weather
Why bother landing your planes? It's easier to mask a flyover than a stopover - and it's easier to engineer a convergence of flight paths than to hide a bunch of landings.
So here's the plan:
1. Set up/blackmail an air freight company
2. Have them fly regular daily trips passing several hundred km away from your base
3. Whenever you want a payload dropped at your base, make some excuse about high levels of turbulence in your normal flight path and make a detour. Or to be more covert, actually wait until there is bad weather in your flight path.
4. Drop the load out the back as you fly over.
To help hide things further, you could drop all your payloads to the bottom of nearby valleys, and then move them via low-altitude-heli flight (below radar floor) to the actual site. Now not even the freight pilots know where your base is!
[Answer]
**Test drilling for oil.**
In Namibia's Okavango region a recent [test drilling was set-up](https://jeffreybarbee.com/national-geographic-test-drilling-for-oil-and-gas-begins-in-namibias-okavango-region/). Simple sentence, sounds easy as if there's not much to it. On the contrary:
>
> The rig, retrofitted for drilling in the desert, had arrived in
> December on the 600-foot-long transport ship Yellowstone, also laden
> with at least 23 massive trucks for pulling loads, bundles of drill
> pipe, and seismic testing systems on trucks with off-road tractor
> tires.
>
>
>
It takes lots and lots of equipment and personnel/accommodation and support infrastructure to conduct an operation like this. Naturally, in order to accomplish this by air, it would take lots and lots, much more than the above quote.
Of course, the expectation that private security forces would protect the equipment: armed mercenaries are routinely used in this sort of operation to prevent sabotage by rival energy interests. To prevent the nature of the shipped-out gear from raising eyebrows, the whole thing would need to be packed in containers and shipped under guard - quite routine where big-energy oil and gas are concerned.
Any surplus personnel, or those with too many questions would naturally be recycled into fertilizer for growing food. Headline: *"The site was abandoned, lack of the expected natural resources and too-many on-site accidents because of the harsh environment are blamed."*
[Answer]
## Fake tourist company
Your landing strip can be fairly simple: Your seaplane lands on a lake in summer. Your heavy cargo plane lands on the same lake, frozen thick, in winter. This limits your heavy deliveries to the six months of winter, but that's normal for the area. It also means your landing strip is fairly easy to conceal from those pesky satellites, and all evidence vanishes entirely with the spring thaw.
Meanwhile...
There are many small companies in the Canadian north that serve tourists, hunters, and outdoor enthusiasts. Set up a fake one.
* The air-tour, seaplane, and helicopter departments delivers a limited amount of goods in the summer, and provide a plausible consumer of aircraft, spare parts, tools, equipment, and fuel.
* The lodging and catering departments house your workforce -- so they don't go wandering to to town, getting drunk, and blabbing about the secret base they are building ("*Oy, and then he wants a pool full of piranhas and a self-destruct button! What a wierdo!*"). They also provide a plausible consumer of the food and living goods to supply your workforce and then later your base.
* The mooks you employ as your "guides" keep people away. They spread the word around that such-and-such area has little worthwhile game, poor fishing, and should be avoided. They will also be the ones employed when nosy secret agents come looking for your base, and can ensure those sexy agents find nothing.
* Only your air pilot(s) need to know the true location of the base, so you need a firm hold on their loyalty. Your minion running the front company need not know the base location. The guides know only the zone-of-discouragement that you tell them...and that can be thousands of square miles.
* Don't take real customers ("*Oh, sorry, we're booked that week*"). Do accept reservations from those secret agents, and have a real (boring) hunting-and-fishing trip ready for them. They will return with their catch...and nothing else.
[Answer]
It seems that the concern is utmost secrecy at all costs, so I'd like to make an answer reflecting that approach.
I will assume that no "public" are allowed to know about this construction project whatsoever, but that the construction and operations personnel are "goons" that can be trusted within whatever villainous organization is responsible for building the lair.
As others have mentioned, aircraft are essentially out of the question for a secretive construction project: they confer supplies inefficiently, appear on RADAR, and are visible on satellite imagery. The best solution I have come up with for transporting larger cargoes secretively to Northern Quebec would be by covert submarine, a technique increasingly used by smugglers (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine>). A fleet of 3-4 submarines could transport many tons of cargo, supplies, and personnel from a passing ships (disguised as a research vessel, cruise ship, or cargo barge) every day, and literally go "under the radar".
Highly trained underwater construction goons could then begin a lengthy, expensive and difficult excavation of an underwater submarine dock, like the one seen here: <https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/21/asia/china-submarine-underground-base-satellite-photo-intl-hnk-scli/index.html>. Once a foothold is established, the underground base could be expanded to include more facilities (water treatment, power generation, aquaponics for food, secret laboratories, etc). Depending on need for secrecy the base could either be built right into the side of the body of water, or a long tunnel could be bored into the land, and electric vehicles (assembled from parts transported by sub) used to ferry goods along the route.
One potential risk is that vibrations from the underground construction might be detected by seismic sensors. A work-around for this would be to set up a mining/drilling operation somewhere in the vicinity (but not close enough to reveal the base) through a shell corp. Any vibrations from lair construction could be mistakenly attributed to the decoy operation.
A great added benefit of the base being constructed in this manner is that necessary supplies (rare parts for instance) could now be transported in via submersible without arousing any additional suspicion.
**Loose Ends**
Depending on the "evil-ness" of your villain, unneeded goons (such as underwater construction personnel) could be covertly eliminated once their purpose has been served. Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias used a similar technique for his hidden lair in *Watchmen*.
[Answer]
Slight frame challenge: its an airship landing test facility.
You are a billionaire villain, you can afford to be a bit eccentric about your plan. So instead you set up and use a Hybrid airship design like the airlander: <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Air_Vehicles_Airlander_10>
Hybrid airships have some unique properties you want for this task: they can land in remote area's with low requirements for the landing area. Even the WWII airships are likely tougher than the most robust modern aircraft making them great for extended missions in the wilderniss. They can carry many tons and with a bit of ingenuity they could be used as cranes at the area.
Ofcourse, why would these airships land there? Well holding on to your nigh monopoly on functioning hybrid airships means spending a lot of time perfecting them, so you have a test facility for landing procedures in an inhospitable environment. Those men and materials you bring there? Test equipment, ballast, live training excercises with people in learning to load and unload in rough terrain or after a local disaster. Ofcourse there's prefab materials bring brought over! How else would you train building in remote area's? And you are going to need some backup facilities in case something goes wrong and people get stuck there for 6 months right? So some heat-based activity isn't suspect (especially since shielding the heat from your base just means the base heats up, you need to spread and radiate that heat across vast area's somehow without it being noticed unless you have a valid reason for it to be noticed in the first place).
Edit:
To satisfy the "secret" thing. Once all construction is finished the site is "scrapped", most exterior buildings and equipment is demolished and taken away. Other sites nearby are used for the same purposes as before, only you dont build a lair there. You can easily claim that the expenditure of the old site was too high to hide the difference in cost for building a secret lair compared to the new sites.
Ofcourse occasionally a small emergency cargo delivery
and extraction training is conducted on a site nearby the old spot. A hidden tunnel from the lair exits nearby, letting you ferry men, materials and waste in and out of the lair. Anyone that goes snooping will find just a barren training area and nothing else.
[Answer]
You seem quite concerned with not leaving any trace, and since you already are talking about a billonaire villan i guess we can take a more expensive aproach:
**Travel most of the way through cave systems and inside them make the necessary paths to your location. when everything is over just make a cave-in on the path and no more path**
A lot of people forgets that cave systems are way more common and extensive that what you're lead to believe. if you don't mind the time it will take the gooks to work through it a rough plan will be something like:
1. Choose a less know cave system entrance away from your base. (old mines are your friends)
2. find the best place to make a deviation and start working on a secret tunnel up until your base site.
3. once you have reached your base site start expanding there and making room for your necessities.
4. add a simple rail system on your caves-path and start sending materials and equipment to your base. If you want to be extra careful let your goons carry them manualy until they reach your secret tunnel.
5. once the required materials and construction has finished you can choose to use a cave in and block the entire cave path or to make a secret door system and leave it there as a quite secret escape route.
This way you can keep all your construction underneath the eyes of satellites while enjoying the speed and capacity of a small train system. Since the entrance is a cave system you can just put guards and repel people with excuses like there was a cave-in and is dangerous or that its a reserve for ecological reasons.
The obvious drawbacks are costs, time and manpower, since you'll be literally digging through the earth to carry/move stuff. If you choose to use a mine project as cover keep in mind that you'll still need to make it far enough of your base as to make people thin they're unrelated.
[Answer]
## A tourist location.
Find some natural landmark that looks reasonably pretty, and send several minions flush with cash to brag about visiting it or ask for help visiting it.
Then, have each plane fly towards the natural landmark, visiting it, flying around a bit, and return.
The only cargo is people, which can return, and this gives a handy excuse for if any locals spot anything. Make sure your minions offer some locals generous bribes to support the tourist industry so no one complains to the government about it too much.
It's not unusual for people to visit obscure tourist locations, and generous bribes will keep the locals from complaining. If the location actually gets popular someone you can just review bomb online reviews.
## For heavy loads.
Start a tourism hub near the location where you sell extremely overpriced trinkets. Have minions 'buy' them on occasion while wearing expensive clothes. Your cargo planes can carry exotic fruits and other rare goods and sell them at massively inflated prices that would justify cargo planes flying them in regularly.
Of course, this leaves a lot of cargo space for the real heavy goods.
Naturally you can hire a few locals and pay taxes and such so that the locals don't really care.
[Answer]
**Pretend some plane crashes**
Unluckily this is a strategy that couldn't be used too often (repeated aircrashes draw attention), but you may probably exploit it in order to send staff or some sensitive equipment to the villain lair.
The airplane lands on the site of the villain lair and unloads its cargo and staff. Then it is remote-guided to crash to some place that is some dozens km's far from the lair.
In order to explain why there are no bodies or cargo on the crash site, the authorities will be told that probably the cargo was jettisoned after the plane was in trouble, and that wild animals disposed of the victims of the crash.
Officially the cargo of the plane was something of no relevant prize (building materials, food), so it wouldn't trigger any more research.
The problem is that when more the 3-4 planes have acidents in the same region in a short time frame, your shipments could start to draw too much attention, so it is important to use this technique only when the importance of the load is very critical (or when you need to bring staff to the base).
For "normal" equipment, you could paradrop it on the site, then still explain at the official airport of arrival that part of the cargo needed to be jettisoned.
[Answer]
## Hide it in plain sight :)
Just establish cargo shipping company and ship a lot of cargo over long range. The villain lair should be near the half of the way an not very far of it build "private improvised air refuiling station" (with one landing lane). Buy those Bombardiers with short range and use them (because you could buy them cheap or any other tale).
Establish road from some gas statition to your refueling station and let one truck bring the fuel there for your carriers/bombardiers.
All this you can do openly.
Secretly: Make hidden tunel from the refueling station to any "hidden place" near (like next walley or so), just good for another truck, maybe you can use also ship for part of the way and it would end in villain lair (in hidden harbour, or at end of another tunell or something like that.) - That is "last mile carrier", but more like "last 10-100 miles". And the "tunel" may be just road masked in similar means like your lair to hide tracks from airport to your base from aerial scanning.
Now you nead accomplice on the other end of your air line, which would regulary buy and sell a lot of big boxes (stating any content is somehow probable, like selling "pure arctic watter" or anything else)
You will just buy your villaneous stuff in big boxes in civilisation, send it over you shipping company, the aircraft would land in middle to refuel and you people would swith the cargo with boxes full of soil, or rocks or what is convenient. Once the aircraft is refueled, it will continue to destination and transfer those boxes to your accomplice, who will sign, that content is ok. In exchange he will load anoter batch of boxes (well with soil or watter bottles, who cares), aircraft would again refuel and you will change some boxes with whatever you need to get to civilisation.
There would wait another accomplice, who would accept it all, dispatch "special" cargo to one target and regular one to another (well better just boxes with even number here and odd number there, while numbers looks just random).
So far Pilot knows about cargo changes, but does not know what and why, the exchange would do your people from secret base, who simply does not talk to anybody. Accomplice 1 may know nearly nothing (just that he is paid for accepting and sending boxes around), accomplice 2 just knows, that he should redirect all incomming boxes to accomplice 1 and part of outgoing boxes to target 1 and the rest to target 2.
Fuelmaster know about fuel, which is ok and does look away at the time on switching cargo.
Target 1 is just another garbage man, who fills and disposes dirt from boxes as directed and send them to accomplice 2, while not knowing why (just to pretend constant flow of material), Target 2 is you real agent to contacting civilisation, acquring things for you and send equipement to your people around the globe.
You have controll over all, who knows things and those, who knows just part knows nearly nothing and there is few of them and mainly unrelated.
You even may also provide publice service, as post and other cargo to/from target area, to improve money flow and maybe even send some "pure arctic watter" if you have company to really sell it :)
Also in time of needs you can bring new screw in those boxes, or dispatch your armies that way :)
[Answer]
You don't mean "nothing there" you mean an "empty piece of untouched wilderness".
Hmm so you need to smuggle a huge amount of mass into a very remote area, accessible by only plane and sea plane.
Ideas:
**2 lakes**
choose 2 lakes develop 1 publicly as a the cover and have one that is developed secretly and is officially untouched wilderness. Have them be relatively close 30 - 60 miles so the fuel requirements to fly to each are similar.
All the flights are going officially to the official lake, but many of the flights go to the secret lake. Since you control the records at both lakes you fake having them both go to the official lake.
[Answer]
>
> My idea involves the villain setting up a local airline company that feigns transporting goods to the northern communities.
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Frame challenge: those communities get their goods via truck, not via air.
Even if you had a better idea, i.e.: send stuff via air to places that actually get those via air, but deviate some aircraft to your base - many airports will see you as a beacon in their radars from an absurd distance.
Instead of being unseen, feign being something else. Check [Alert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alert,_Nunavut) on Wikipedia. Right at the first paragraph we have this gem:
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> Alert, in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada(...) is the northernmost continuously inhabited place in the world(...) As of the 2016 census, the population was 0.
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Ok, so right after that it says:
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> All Alert residents are temporary, typically serving six month tours of duty there.
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That's your contractors building your base. Now the final part of the cover:
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> Alert's temporary inhabitants staff a military signals intelligence radio receiving facility at Canadian Forces Station Alert (CFS Alert), as well as a co-located Environment Canada weather station, a Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) atmosphere monitoring observatory, and the Alert Airport.
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So there. Everybody thinks it is a military base. That and the distance from civilization justify the airport. But it's actually your villain's lair.
[Answer]
# Governmental assistance
Have you seen the movie 'American made'? It is about the government supporting a pilot to do drug runs. As an insanely rich villian you have a few criminal trades for which the the government is looking the other way. We can use this for the base. The government might have some idea that in an area 1/4th of Quebec you are doing something, but aren't interested in any details for plausible deniability.
All that might be known, even *facilitated*, is the starting airstrip(s). Big enough for a growing organisation to add more planes. Everything for that off the books extra cash for the CIA. You are expected to have cargo planes of certain sizes. You just divert a large amount starting from this airstrip to the covert airstrip. These can be the real cargo planes, possibly even with rocket boosters for short runways.
The locals won't know anything, as there are no locals close to the covert airfield. It would be a poor covert evil lair if a farmer a hectare away is coming for a cup of sugar, or wondering why there's a ton of planes landing there.
That is all you need. People looking the other way, intentionally not wanting to know what is happening as they get rich. Other people are easily dissuaded by the government or your organisation. Even if some people know what is happening the range of the planes makes the potential area of the base just too big to easily pinpoint.
[Answer]
## It's already been done by modern pirates. They use disposable transport.
Why re-invent the wheel? Mega-cartels hide in plain sight at luxurious palaces in South America, Asia, and Africa all the time. As stated your villain has very deep pockets, your air transportation can be done entirely with the following resources:
* Logging land and sawmill
* Scrapyard and foundry (possibly buy the scrap or salvage cars/farm equipment)
* Farmland with large animals
* Local nomadic tribes
* Whiskey or vodka still (Lumberjacks, farmers, and natives with alcohol? It's possible)
* Lakes
* Night vision Hunting scopes
* Cheap magnetic compasses
And nothing else.
As one who has spent many years interdicting pirates and smugglers, I will share how real super-villains get away from us, and it involves three tiers.
1. The transport vehicles are cheap, one-time use disposable vessels. These vessels have none of the "required" navigation or regulated equipment. No radios of ANY kind (they can not be detected by direction finders). Your crew won't even be allowed to have cell phones on the aircraft. They have no safety equipment, no identification markings, no certifications or even traceable parts. You build them completely from local raw materials.
>
> As a real-world experience, a 25-foot fiberglass boat full of cocaine
> left Colombia and was making a delivery to Puerto Rico (which would be
> inside US territory). The vessel had no markings at all, had no
> equipment (not even a GPS), no lights or radios. It began life as a
> mold and fiberglass in the deep jungle, where it was constructed
> quickly in a camouflaged tent. A Volvo Penta engine was brought in,
> and installed, with a hand-made fuel tank that only had to survive one
> day. A basic steering system was attached to the outboard, and the
> whole craft was filled up to the gunnels with product (drugs). The boats was
> too fast and low to be seen on RADAR. Its mission was to simply aim
> straight for Puerto Rico under cover of night, with nothing but a
> glow-in-the-dark compass and go full speed until they got there, never
> turning for anything. We only caught it because we knew there was a launch
> scheduled through a mole in the cartel.
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2. The transport and "flight plan" have zero record and are completely destroyed at the destination. For ship-borne transport this is easy, they just sink the vessel. For an airplane, remember we fought World War I in wooden planes. They burn to ash very easily. Your only challenge is filtering out smoke, but hey you have unlimited money, so build an underground "burn chamber" that cleans up the smoke. Your disposable planes will cost a tiny fraction of the price of a certified commercially built reusable aircraft, possibly less than a thousand dollars in material (wood and canvas, and a simple home-made engine) and your henchmen provide free labor (what respectable villain gets loyalty with *money*)?? While you might save a trivial amount of money sending the engines back for another run, that loss is a very small price to pay for guaranteed secrecy. A 400 or 500HP engine is very easy to manufacture if you only want it to run for one day and have zero regulations. You will likely run them on locally distilled alcohol (top fuel) rather than commercial gasoline or kerosene, which might draw attention if you have a large fuel bill, using a leather fuel tank (a big wine-skin. Cost: 2 cows). The raw iron can be reused at the base for some world-domination secret weapon. Even the crew has no idea where they are going or where they are when they leave or arrive, because they are taken to the plane blind-folded, have no watches, phones, or electronics of any kind. They are strip-searched on arrival and given only a compass (which is deliberately aligned wrong), a barometer (with a fake altitude gauge printed on it), instructions to point along one exact heading, and the order to "drop into a lake when the egg-timer on the dash goes 'Ding!'" In no way could they reveal the lair even if they were tortured. Your deliveries only happen under cover of a moonless night and do not have any schedule (this is the way *most* piracy is intercepted; the villain has OCD and has to "coordinate" the deliveries. This sort of information is very easy for a mole to leak because many people have to know it, so it's difficult to find the mole).
3. Your departure and destination are completely natural. No airstrips. No lights, control towers, or man-made structures of any kind. They are holes in the ground filled with water (lakes) because your planes literally have no ability to take off or land from the ground. No wheels, tires, bearings, or shocks. No landing gear. No steering cables or pinions or axles. They are [flying wooden boats, like the US Navy NC-4](http://www.navalaviationmuseum.org/nnam/virtualtour/?s=pano699).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GGS8a.jpg)
## Improving your odds
* The villain needs to own a lot of land around the lakes and post them as private property, and patrol them. The government will help with this if you have the legal deed to the land.
* A noise muffler system would reduce your chance of detection. Again this is disposable material lining a muffler box. A fabric is best, like asbestos, but asbestos if highly regulated today and could be traced when you buy too much of it. So unless you own an asbestos mine, maybe some sort of steel wool can be used. The goal is to make your planes quiet, at least while they are near the launch and land locations.
* Manufacturing a flying boat requires extremely simple tools, so the launch site can be simply a very rural logging, mining, and cattle farming region. Substitute yaks, moose, elk, or horses as suits your fancy; you need lots of leather. A sawmill provides the wood, a foundry and machine shop provide the engines. Raw metal can come from a junk yard if you don't have a mine. The whole flying boat factory can be built for less than $20k and your "honest labor" in that region will be dirt cheap. Plane parts are made at the sawmill and foundry by people who don't know they are building planes. A trusted crew assembles the planes in a large guarded "lumber warehouse."
* There is a slight risk that the flight crew could use the stars to estimate their heading even if they don't know the time. There is no reason they need to see outside, all they need to know is if they are at the correct altitude (from the custom barometer that doesn't even tell them numbers) and their fake heading (which also only shows the direction to point the plane, it has no numbers), so close the canopy for the first few hours or so, then just eject it some time prior to landing.
* The landings will need some coordination from the crew unless you can just carefully shoot the plane down and force it to land. The crew will know enough to aim for the lake when the engines die. The simplest low-tech solution here is to give the crew an infrared sniper scope and float an infrared directional beacon on a cheap raft in the lake. When the egg timer dings, the crew looks to the ground with their scopes, and aims the plane to hit the beacon. They will hit the lake and land, using the barometer to tell them their rate of descent. This does take some training to do right, but even if they crash, your cargo is packaged to float. It's just a little messier to clean up a broken flying boat.
* If you *must* have some sort of flight correction capability, this needs to be provided from the ground. Something is tracking the plane (by engine sound, likely) and can send a very simple correction code at checkpoints. The plane needs a tuned receiver for this (they can not respond however). Several pulses from a disposable [spark gap transmitter](http://the-wanderling.com/spark_gap01.png) send a Baudot code, that might mean "Left 2" or "Right 1", then the pilot corrects the heading by that number.
Burn everything, and melt down the engines and other metal bits for use in your evil plans. Force the crew to blindfold themselves before leaving the craft (they never actually see the aircraft at any point, and can’t describe anything but the engine noise and the simple cockpit gauges). Transport them to some random village or town on a trip that takes several days by foot and boat with local nomads, and deliver their reward (free their captive family, or pay them whatever was used to coerce them).
This method evades satellite imagery, evades supply chain tracking, evades radio and visual detection, protects against moles and informants, requires only a handful of trusted henchmen who fabricate the planes and equipment, and has a very low cost overhead. Plus, this is the way real pirates avoid detection.
Also note, you wanted “short-range” transport, but the NC-4 was designed to cross the Atlantic Ocean with 5 tons of cargo. That will build your lair very quickly.
[Answer]
**FRAME CHALLENGE**
People look at those maps and think there's nothing there, and clearly it must be fairly easy to do something unobserved, right?
Sure. If you have a handful of people with nothing bigger that a Honda ATV and a small boat with an outboard, maybe. Because "uninhabited" isn't the same as "unobserved".
This for example, shows the areas that the government of Québec has performed airbone geophysics programs (note, *just* the provincial government, not the exploration industry or federal government):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gb0s4.jpg)
Here is the area of Quebec where there has been some kind of mineral exploration, meaning someone has flown it, drove it, or walked it over the years and filed a report with the government:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BlnIG.jpg)
And this is just the geologists. When you include the other scientific researchers (biologists, botanists, climate scientists, wildlife biologists, etc and so on), a lot more of that land is covered.
Now let's move on to the people who actually live there.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mYXLf.jpg)
I apologize for the resolution, as I couldn't find a higher one, so you can't make out the traditional place names, but that detail isn't important. What's important is that said area *has traditional place names*. People have gone there or still go there sufficiently often that places have names. It gets cut off because the project was only for a specific area, but local names are also found further south. These are Inuit; go south and you get Cree equivalents.
All this to say that looking on a map and seeing there aren't communities there or roads doesn't mean one could simply secretly arrange to do something there secure in the knowledge it would not be found.
[Answer]
As with most of the other answers, I feel that it would be nearly impossible to carry out such a large project while keeping the location an absolute secret. Especially the part with the cargo planes. If a plane that big is not on its properly-filed flight path, *someone* in air traffic control or in the military is going to spot it on radar. It doesn't matter whether it's flying "without its transponder on" or not. The same is probably true of your smaller planes, though I'm hardly an expert.
That being said, I do have a few thoughts.
### Misdirection: decoy base
Start with a "public" project. The cover story can be whatever you want it to be. Perhaps drilling for oil, as in the other answer. Or perhaps an extremely rich doomsday prepper is building a bunker for when civilization crumbles. The point is that all the proper permits have been filed, and no one is going to sound the alarm when it turns into the busiest airport for hundreds of miles around.
A portion of the resources can then be transported in a "quiet" way, over land or water, from the "public" site to wherever you're building your *real* base. Sled dogs, maybe? Don't know if they can pull a nuclear reactor...
You'd need to be unfathomably wealthy to build even *one* of these bases in the first place, so why *not* two?
### Keeping the right people quiet
Ben Franklin wrote: "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." But you are way, *way* past that point. It takes a team of hundreds of people to pull something like this off. You are already in the business of policing your subordinates and preventing leaks, whether you want to be or not. The good news is this: whatever tricks you're pulling to keep those henchmen loyal and quiet can just as easily be applied to people outside the "organization".
For instance: you say that you want to keep out of the eyes of the government? Maybe someone in the government *does* know where your base is and where all the planes are landing, but they've been paid/threatened/brainwashed to keep that location secret from the *rest* of the government. In other words, a mole. It's worth the investment.
[Answer]
**Build a large pipeline through the area**
I think maybe the best option is to abandon air and to use other infrastructure. A gas or oil pipeline is a good excuse for massive works across a large area, and if you own the pipe it's easy enough to build extra capacity in for redundancy - you'll be the only one that knows that half the pipe is transporting your equipment and materials. Then if the gas field/oil field runs dry unexpectedly or isn't producing enough, you can decommission the line (at huge expense) once the lair has finished construction.
[Answer]
**Use an existing base**
Look, governments built top secret missile launch sites all over the place in the cold war. Lots of them ended up abandoned, still officially military installations, but not used . Your villain, by bribery, blackmail etc, has had the deeds transferred to him for one of these, then the records destroyed. Everyone who remembers this he has either waited for their retirement, or had them killed or removed. For an old military install, there's not going to be all that many people who know or care, once it's been decommissioned
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 6 months ago.
The community reviewed whether to reopen this question 6 months ago and left it closed:
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> Original close reason(s) were not resolved
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[Improve this question](/posts/247578/edit)
I’m writing a sci-fi story with the protagonist being a superhero/ [flying brick](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FlyingBrick). He’s the only super in the world and as a result, many governments, NGO’s, cartels (etc.), and powerful individuals desire his “services”. Plus, he is a trillionaire--long story how he got the $. Some of these people are willing to go to any lengths to force him, if necessary, to bend to their will, so to speak. He was transformed from human to superhuman, so has many relatives and close friends who could be used as pawns and/or kidnapped.
So, the super acquires two 6X6 vehicles, with [3-inch cannons](http://acemodel.com.ua/pages/models/72409/3.jpg) that fire explosive rounds. They are street legal, ie, have all the lights, etc. to drive on the street. Why did he like that particular vehicle? The week before he “flew” into Basel, Switzerland for reasons...and was almost immediately arrested by Eurocorps, ostensibly for flying over French territory without a pilot’s license. (: Curious, he went along with this subterfuge and was driven in a [convoy](https://i.imgur.com/Vn3rJsk.jpg) to Strasbourg in a MEV and those AVGP Cougars, plus a Panzerjager 90 with a wire guided missile mount rather than guns. To top it off, they employed an AC-119K gunship with a couple of Vulcan 20mm gatling guns circling overhead. He was impressed by the Cougar’s intimidation factor.
He is attempting to limit any overpowered abilities to prevent total disaster. On advice from ex-military acquaintances, he acquires the cars and publicizes that he has them so they will know he has the weapons.
My question is: can he register/license them and travel in them across the US? I’m not familiar with weapon laws; are they different for each state? He’s located in Florida.
[Answer]
Obligatory 'Not a Lawyer' and also 'Not American' - however, I do like Guns (and own them in my own country) and have a soft-spot for the 2nd Amendment/American Gun law.
Firstly - a 3 inch cannon is a big Cannon. That's 76 mm. That's WW2 era Tank Cannon size. What you have described isn't so much a Car - You've described a WW2 era Tank.
Secondly - My understanding is that since it's a device with a bore greater than .50 Cal - it's a Destructive Device, falls under the auspices of the NFA and must be registered with the ATF. In addition, the Ammunition (being explosive shells) must *also* be registered with the ATF as those too, are destructive devices.
Thirdly - If you want to drive anywhere *and especially if you want cross State-Lines* - You'll absolutely need an FFL (Federal Firearms Licence) as otherwise, each time you want to cross a stateline, you would need to notify the ATF.
Fourthly - So long as you have registered the vehicle in a State that allows it, I believe that you can drive it. I read the rules about driving a privately owned tank, but that said the weapons need to be deactivated - but we'll get to that.
So - in short, to do this you would need:
1: Your NFA Tax Stamp and Destructive Device permit for both the Cannon and the Ammunition - not impossible, there is a community of people who own artillery pieces privately in the US under this system.
2: You'll need to get yourself an FFL
3: You'll need to register the vehicle in a State that has more libertarian laws (looking at you Texas and Florida).
I believe that if you do all that, you could achieve this. Look at things like the Big Sandy Machine Gun shoot on youtube - there's a number of videos that show the Artillery pieces, legally there isn't too much difference between towing a 105mm howitzer and the ammunition for it across state lines for such an event and having it integrated in the Car.
Now - based on the other answer and the fact I said I'd get to that in regards to it being in the Car - I believe the prohibition for turreted vehicles may be due to not having the FFL/DD paperwork - I could be wrong here. My presumption is that so long as you have the proper paperwork from the ATF, then you are good to go. I had a quick look and the info was contradictory - some said you couldn't at all, some said the only restriction is the requirement to get the DD permit and the correct FFL, other states have specific regulations in regards to driving Military/historic vehicles.
To conclude though:
If your Super Hero is on friendly terms with the Government - then getting the ATF to approve both the DD licence and the FFL shouldn't be too difficult.
And let's be honest for a moment - what Police department are going to try and arrest someone who is a superhero and packing a 76mm cannon?
[Answer]
The laws would be different if he existed.
Your protagonist is, I would say, the most important person in the world. Heads of state are important, but they can be replaced if necessary; this guy is unique. There would be laws, not just in the U.S. but worldwide, that specifically applied to him, and laws that specifically excluded him. If he deemed it necessary to have an armored vehicle, the U.S. government would make it legal, and probably would provide it to him at taxpayer expense. The POTUS gets a taxpayer-funded security team, and he's much more expendable than your protagonist.
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Edit: When I posted this answer, the question just said that he was a "flying brick" and the world's only superhero. A paragraph has now been added saying that he's powerful enough to destroy the entire Milky Way galaxy. I think that what I wrote above would be true even if his powers were quite limited; the extra powers just make me wonder why he needs a ~~starship~~ tank in the first place.
[Answer]
**Yes... and no...**
* If I recall correctly, it is legal in the U.S. to own any firearm manufactured before 1898. They're considered antiques even if they work. I understand that this is not what you're looking for.
* Similarly, in most states (but not all) private citizens can own muzzle-loading cannon, even if newly manufactured. Again, I understand this isn't what you're looking for.
* With fairly complex licensing, a private citizen can own *almost anything,* including what you're talking about.
**BUT!!!**
It is not legal in any state *under any circumstances* to drive on public streets with active, turreted cannons. If I recall correctly, even the military is required to disable armaments before transport on public roads.
So, no, what you're asking about isn't street legal. There would need to be special laws passed to permit this vehicle to exist and, as a personal opinion, I find it hard to believe that any such law would be passed in support of a super as obviously compromised as you describe yours to be.
**A real-life lesson can be useful**
As a teenager I lived in an area with a colorful if cantankerous old man who collected all kinds of military stuff for fun and profit. At one point he ended up with a missile casing. No guts, just the hull. He thought it would be a cool attraction to get himself noticed and charge a five-spot for people to see all the cool stuff he had. He put a rope in the end like a giant fuse and set it up like it was in a position to fire, easily seen from the four-lane road below his house. He thought it was funny.
People started calling local authorities along the lines of "do you know what that schmuck is doing?" Soon the Feds got wind of it and told him to take it down. He said no. They said they'd make him. he said he'd sue them. And a lawsuit transpired. He won the suit... for a while. Eventually the Feds won the suit on appeal and they forced him to take the missile down.
**Conclusion**
My point? Your super won't be allowed to drive around public streets with turreted cannon. Even if it was legal, it would generate a never-ending stream of "did you know what that schmuck is doing?" calls to authorities at every level of government. They'd pull his license just to stop the phone calls.
*You might get an exemption for non-lethal canon. E.G., water canon.*
[Answer]
## What if somebody else gets hold of this vehicle?
Governments will concern themselves with what they can control, not what they can't control. The government can't do anything about your super "going hostile", so they're not going to focus on that. But while this superhero is off galvanting across the galaxy, **who's watching these vehicles?**
What keeps ordinary persons with malicious intent from absconding with the vehicle and committing mass destruction? An answer for this security issue will be the primary focus of governments.
## Why does God need a starship?
An "unexplainable" is why the super would require such a vehicle in the first place. You're describing a person who can cause all the *intended* damage these things are designed to do, by pretty much snapping their fingers. So why do they need mundane military hardware? That is, what capability does it add to them that justifies the risks I mentioned above?
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# Numerous states make it very illegal to carry explosive bullets everywhere.
Explosives are dangerous and erratic, and so a citizen carrying explosive rounds is illegal in a lot of states, and is very hard to handle. Each state has their own weapon laws, and there are federal laws that may constrain him as well.
While a lot of states allow you to own such weapons privately, such as Arizona, using them in public on a car is more illegal.
# Law enforcement has an exemption in most places.
Law enforcement is allowed to carry all sorts of weaponry. If the federal government is willing to give him authority, because they really want him to do stuff for them perhaps because of mad geniuses or crime gangs, they can make him a law enforcement officer so that he can carry his weapons around everywhere.
Individual states may also give him law enforcement authority if they want his help. In states that refuse to give him such privileges, it would be harder to explode things.
[Answer]
### YES
If you're going to go armoured, you might as well buy a tank. US citizens can in fact legally own tanks. You often find antique, decommissioned tanks, fighter planes, artillery pieces, etc in front of VFW and American Legion posts. Anyone with the money and wherewithal can buy, own, and operate a tank whose weapon systems have been demilitarised (made inoperable). After all, a tank is essentially a caterpillar, only painted camo in stead of yellow.
Your guy would need to follow state and local road restrictions for heavy vehicles. Tanks with metal tracks can't be driven on the street unless the links are shod with rubber or your guy obtains a set of parade treads, which are all rubber.
Furthermore, it is legal to own an operational tank in the US, but you can only do so for research purposes or reenactment. Your guy would need to obtain a Federal Destructive Device Permit.
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I have no idea why anyone would even try to solve this riddle legally. Your answer is no.
But you can still make this work to fit your story.
First off, you imply he is known of. Many want his services, so to say. So he is not hiding. He is also capable of eliminating the whole world and universe at his lowest setting if I read that correctly. How he convinced the world this was not just a false claim is for you to decide.
So because he is known, and in Florida, you could make the argument that he is a special classification and not an ordinary US citizen. You will have to invent a classification for him, which is not beyond reality. Think "department of homeland security" and you can extrapolate what the US government would do if they need something to be legalized.
Your normal citizen laws no longer apply. Constitution is more of a guideline for him. The US makes exceptions because he is on their land and they claim him as a wonder of their culture. They cannot control him, but they can indulge him and do what they can to make him believe they are on his side and are his primary guardians.
So, he needs armored vehicles? More or less the batmobile? Operating with impunity? Not a problem, he is sworn in as a deputized agent of anti-terrorism or whatever the going jargon is. This is pretty much the only way to get around the numerous federal and state laws regarding firearms, explosives, and equipment. These laws are definitely too prohibitive to get around as a normal citizen without being sent to prison immediately. But as a government agent, or specialized class, or even an outfit declared as a contracted unit of the military, you could fabricate a special annex of the law just for him and disregard the technicalities of his handling and operating these weapons.
You could even have the vehicles provide to him *BY* the US government. Maybe even publicly as like a "thank you guardian of truth and justice" or whatever pompous lie they would spill out to pacify the people into thinking arming this superhuman was a grace by the government and not an act of desperation to pacify something they couldn't stop if they wanted to.
The gun laws of this country are pretty loose compared to the rest of the world, but they are by no means unregulated. An FFL would do you no good here. It would be revoked the second you stepped over any of the numerous legal lines related to anything he is operating or handling. There is no civilian designation that allows you to operate a vehicle with a functional cannon that fires explosive ordinances within any public space. If you had such clearance, as through any of the NFA forms or stamps, you would be subject to strict control and they would definitely require you to specify the round count and intended usage on a per use basis. Think pre-ban machine guns in states like TX, AAZ, NM, etc. You can own them. You can shoot them. But you have to do so according to a pretty specific schedule and operating outside those realms is illegal. Unless *insert your special case here*
Your requirements aren't too far off of what Batman seems to have at his disposal. Nobody seems to question why the government doesn't go after him for having all this obviously non-civilian equipment. But yet, there he is. If a special designation is too much to orchestrate, you can always do what DC does for mr Wayne... Nobody seems to be able to stop or capture him or his gear so he just gets away with it regardless of the laws.
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Hypothesis: In application of the laws of thermodynamics (conservation of energy) it could be that the sun's energy was (almost) depleted to perform feats of magic (energy was taken from the sun).
Question: Facing an imminent supernova, how can magic save the sun from dying?
Condition: The solution should respect the law of conservation of energy.
See for answers in a SF context: [How would an advanced alien race go about preventing their sun from dying?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/125229/how-would-an-advanced-alien-race-go-about-preventing-their-sun-from-dying)
Would there be any theories in a pure fantasy context? It does not seem feasible for a fantasy world's population to leave the world as they do not in general have the means to colonize or terraform other planets or even get there for that matter (barring teleportation magic, but if you don't know where you're going, how can you teleport there?). The sun's survival is a therefore a necessary condition for survival of such a population.
Maybe magic could be used in a more conservatory manner, but that would only delay the inevitable. Maybe an incredibly powerful wizard could transfer energy from one star to another, but this feat would surely be too much for any single (believable) wizard. Quid?
[Answer]
If we're talking magic here, you can note something about the evolution of stars. When they expand into red giants and explode in a supernova, they don't actually use up their hydrogen.
The issue is that elements like helium, carbon, oxygen and neon start to built up in the core, which require more heat and energy to ignite and fuse than the star has (mass).
Stars like our sun don't fuse much past carbon, so it builds up in the core until it displaces the vital hydrogen in the area where it's hot enough and dense enough to fuse. Think of the sun being an onion, where the inner core is the innermost layer. As the fusion byproducts accumulate, it's like a rot that consumes the inside until the innermost layer is gone.
After that, there's no hydrogen **at the critical mass and temperature** to fuse. Sure, there's loads of hydrogen left, but it's just not hot enough.
The way to fix this is simple! To syphon the "rot" or the fusion byproducts out of the core, and fusion will resume as fresh hydrogen fills in the gap. The sun will shrink a negligible amount, and the climate might permanently get a little bit colder, but you'd probably not notice.
This sounds like a dangerously corruptive operation to try and syphon it out, you might just end up corrupted by it. Maybe building some inanimate construct that can channel that much corruptive power would make it possible.
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## Rob Peter
Often, the only way to extend the life of something that is dying is to steal life from something else.
In many stories, an aging sorcerer tries to capture a young person and then sacrifice them in a magic ritual to steal their youth:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mwv2E.png)
That's what I'd do here, although in this case you'll need to sacrifice something really special.
One obvious possibility would be to sacrifice *a different star*. That might require gathering a bunch of people who were born "under" that star and sacrificing all of them, or getting them to perform a big ritual together. Or it might require performing a ritual when the target star has reached a special position in the sky.
Another possibility would be to sacrifice something that would otherwise have an extremely long lifetime. That might be something like a Methuselah-like tree, or it could be something or someone that epitomizes a *timeless concept*.
Those both assume a one-time act that significantly restores their star's lifetime. There are a lot more possibilities if the idea is to pay Paul in many small installments.
[Answer]
**Give it back.**
You will no doubt get some snarky comments about "magic is magic. whatever you want." Not helpful. Maybe these comments of mine will vaccinate your question against such. We will see.
But the question! Magic systems vary. Here is something I know about your magic system.
/the sun's energy was (almost) depleted to perform feats of magic/
Those be some mighty feats! Whatever they were, maybe the energy is still there. Maybe those feats can be undone to return the energy to the sun?
I like this for a quest. The sun-sucking magic did not all happen at once, but over many generations of magic users. Those old timers did not know the sun was a finite resource when they performed their feats of sunsuckery. But your protagonists know now, and they must systematically undo these earlier works and replenish the sun.
[Answer]
# Push it Closer (or Further)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PZHJD.gif)
The sun is dying. There is no getting around that. Its energy has been stolen and the [Red Giant phase](https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2020/09/what-will-happen-to-the-planets-when-the-sun-becomes-a-red-giant) begins early:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ORbVY.png)
The Sun cools and expands to gobble up the first four planets. No problem, just shove planet Earth away from the expanding star into the new habitable zone.
For conservation of energy, use magic to convert some of the Earth's mass (or Moon's mass) into kinetic energy for your giant planet-moving fart rocket.
Likely the fart rocket will take thousands and millions of years to speed up, and just as long to slow down. That is okay since the Sun expands slowly, at least on a day-to-day scale. I think.
Once the Earth is relocated, you are safe for another 12 billion years. Provided you stop leeching off the Red Sun. Stop that.
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First, if your setup is Earth-like, your magic is impressively inefficient.
You can use as little as few hours of solar energy output and completely blow the Earth into dust. Or few days worth of solar energy in order to completely evaporate the Earth.
Whatever you do on your little planet could not use up this much energy. You will get too hot just because of the waste heat (assuming working thermodynamics).
Second, stars (at least in our universe) are not this simple.
They don't burn at a constant rate until they blow. As the time passes, they become hotter and hotter and the red giant phase is approached more or less gradually.
In order to live around an aging or used-up star, you will need to take care to REDUCE its power long before the the supernova explosion.
The solution? **Make gas giant planets out of it.**
You will need to remove material from the star.
Since you have both magic and thermodynamics, just siphon core substance out of the star (you can suck from the upper layers as well, but removing core material will be more efficient and will make better night-sky fireworks as well).
You then clump the material in these gas planets orbiting the main star.
Done: you have younger and smaller star.
[Answer]
**Arrange a deity to tell the sun it can't do this**
Supernovas are actually childish behavior. Instead of shining properly, the sun would first hide and then pop up suddenly, larger, to give everyone the creeps. After popping up, it will hide again.
How to prevent this ? Just arrange a powerfull deity to make very clear to your sun its behavior is unacceptable. Don't wait too long. Stars are like cows.. if you push, they'll give in. Slowly.
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I like all the other answers but I think everyone is underestimating the amount of power involved here.
The Sun outputs 3.8 $\times$ 1026 watts. For comparison, that is like the energy output of the collision of the dinosaur killing asteroid, times a thousand, every second.
In hard sci-fi there is a scale to measure how advanced civilizations are based on their energy budget, called the Kardashev scale. Type 1 Kardashev civilizations harness all the radiation from their star reaching their planet - we're almost there. Type 2 civilizations harness the star output and with that should have a very easy time colonizing other star systems. They can spend millions or even billions of years explorung space like this. This is where your mages would be if they just captured all the energy being irradiated by the Sun.
But your mages outdid that. They managed to suck the Sun dry within the lifespan of an empire, so they are closer to Type 3 Kardashev, which should have enough of an energy budget to comfortably colonize a whole galaxy just for kicks if they so wish.
The amount of energy being used by these mages surpasses most everything you have ever seen in any media. Forget about magic missiles and fireballs; even a simple cantrip would obliterate a whole solar system with ease. It would possibly be very hard not to blow up your planet when trying any sort of evocation spell.
With such an energy budget, should the Sun not suffice, just use magic to push your planet to another yellow dwarf. Since any spell would be beyond epic, even a simple divination would show a mage where one can be found, and how to get there.
By the way, even with all this energy available, you are still orders of magnitude short of a supernova. You would need to release all the energy the Sun would ever output in its 10 billion years lifespan in a single burst to approximate a supernova.
[Answer]
## Put the sun to sleep
In some versions of *Sleeping Beauty*, the princess is cursed to prick her finger and die, but a good fairy modifies the curse so that the princess will go to sleep rather than dying.
She sleeps for 100 years, until a prince molests her, breaking the curse and restoring her and the town to wakefulness.
Do something similar.
Your people know the sun will die. So, with their last great use of magic, they put the sun into a deep sleep, only to be awakened on some distant day when the problem can be solved. As a consequence, sunlight is much dimmer, reducing even the brightest day to nothing brighter than a full moon, and use of magic is almost impossible.
In 100 years, some pampered male alien can molest the sun, awakening it and restoring light and magic to the world.
---
FYI: I patent dark glasses and sunscreen during that 100 year slumber. You must include this in your story.
[Answer]
# Stop doing whatever was draining vast amounts of energy
Clearly it was a bad idea.
# Decrease gravity in the star
Cast Wingardium Leviosa on the star, and reduce the gravity. This will allow the radiation pressure to prevent a supernova.
# Stir the star to maintain the optimal ratio of fusion reactions
Stars that supernova or turn into red supergiants generally still have a lot of hydrogen. If you carefully manage the output of the star you should be able to keep it going for billions of years longer.
[Answer]
Since there is a law of conservation of energy which bridges the physical world and the magic world, that means that **the energy from the sun that was drained via magic still exists**. Perhaps the leftover energy exists as some kind of magical mana or dust in the world, or has been converted into heat (too many destructive, e.g., fireball, spells), or got pushed into a parallel dimension/realm of chaos energy. Since the conversion from magic to/from physics is fictional, it's up to you to decide how it works.
In any event, whatever energy is left behind, it's likely not longer easy to access due to thermodynamics and chaos. So the wizards are going need some kind of special magic that can gather it up, essentially **reversing the flow of thermodynamics and *the arrow of time***. Maybe this requires an ancient, forgotten school of magic that needs to be rediscovered; or a new artifact that needs to be crafted; or help from a diety. Whatever the tool, it will end up gathering the leftover energy and putting it back into the sun. Hopefully it can be inegrated into future magic so that magic becomes sustainable.
[Answer]
Stir the star so all the hydrogen gets used like red dwarfs do now. This gives you quite a bit more time and when the fuel is all used up it just goes out without a boom.
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More of a theoretical idea but the implications can help with a lot of worlds and ideas.
A no is as welcome as a yes. The most detailed answer is the best as usual.
In many stories set in other worlds or in the future...etc we get super duper massive powerful animals with hide/armor/skin...etc that resists bullets and I'm starting to doubt it.
Evolution is all about fitting the environment and survival and our weapons are all about destroying a specific target general weapon that works in most situations, like automatic rifles.
So. What on earth would naturally develop to resist tank shells let alone missiles and bombs?
What flying creature can match our slowest fighter jets?
**This is basically about asking is it possible for any animal, like moving things, to be actually resistant to weapons above mini-guns?**
Above mini guns is not like a category I know. But I think you all can get an idea about what I mean. Stuff like missiles and tank guns and artillery...etc
Stories also confuse size with power. Yes Dreadnoughtus existed but can it dodge guided missiles or survive an artillery barrage?
Speed does not matter. I know the movies love showing a lot of bullet dodging but even if an animal can dodge bullet you simply shot more.
Don't get me started on giant monsters and flying monster that are flying by the power of the plot.
So. Are fictional alien creates hostile to sir Newton's laws and a bit of chemistry or can they be almost super destructive predators like we see in the movies?
[Answer]
NO, because "current military weapons" include a 100Megaton Tsar Bomba.
A 100m-thick steel plate could not resist that.
Appropriate weapon scaling is what it's about.
For ANY given defense, you can just handwave an offensive military weapon that exceeds that defense in offensive power, because it is MUCH easier to scale up offense than defense. It's just usually not very cost-effective or convenient or safe, which is the only reason why every store guard is not toting a Tsar Bomba for security. Offensive weaponry scales to be *just* strong enough to usually defeat the opponent it is designed for.
As for making Godzilla capable of ignoring smallarms fire. Why not? Have you ever tried hunting an Elephant with a BB gun? Or a .22? Or even a 38 special? NO, you need something with a bit more heft to it.
So why would you be surprised when Godzilla (at 5000 times the mass of an Elephant) is not wounded by a 100mm HE round fired by an M1A1 main battle tank?
And YES, Godzilla could survive an artillery barrage. Artillery is designed to cause a localized, high-explosive detonation that destroys soft targets and some buildings or equipment. Hitting Godzilla (or even a blue whale) with a 155mm HE artillery round will dig only about 1m crater in its skin. Painful, yes, but hardly debilitating.
And if your mythical enemy gets as big as A'Tuin... well, even a Tsar Bomba might not have much effect. But We can more easily develop a super-super tsar bomba, than we can breed a bigger A'Tuin.
Scale is *everything*. Weapons are designed to match their target's defense ***and no more***, so just use a weapon designed for the enemy you are facing.
[Answer]
**Unfortunately not**
There are many examples of creatures surviving extreme conditions. Radiation, the vacuum of space, biological attacks and high speed impacts. However, there are many restrictions to biology that we simply can't easily overcome to make an apex predator like the movies.
First off, looking at hendheld miniguns vs bidy armour youtube video's you can see that a single impact can be deflected or taken head on. There will be visible dents and any material that is often used to dampen the impact beforehand will be quite damaged. The creature could take that impact quite well with relatively not thick material.
However, using such hides has massive side effects. The weight has been increased significantly. This hugely reduces mobility, especially in the 'fast' muscles. This means that the creature must take in an absurd amount of food to keep functioning. To offset any weight with extra muscles, you need to increase the food intake further as well as having an even better circulatory system, increasing the heart rate and blood pressure. Something that is very harmful on long term. Imagine dressing up an elephant fully in steel plates. Even if the creature doesn't succumb to the weight, it's not advisable to keep it on 24/7. Biologically there are good reasons not to have an exoskeleton after a certain size. Going bigger in size of creatures to add more defence is ludicrous, as at a certain size it simply can't maintain itself. As a quick reference to dinosaurs, the T-rex is about as large as our largest elephants.
If it would survive the above restrictions, it's only survived a single shot. It needs to be able to not get damaged significantly by 33-100 rounds *every second*. Keep in mind that they fired this thing on mythbusters at a tree, that got cut down and caught fire in less than a minute. So you'll need some heat resistance as well. If it does that, it'll still not be able to withstand the earliest form of anti tank explosives, let alone modern ones.
You can go on about the different calibers and such. The result will always be the same. A creature of size won't be able to withstand a combination of modern weapons and would be biologically infeasible. You could make a creature that is like a moving tortoise, but you'll already feel the problem. It'll be slow and some different equipment will likely be able to subdue it.
Some birds have been reported to go up to 300km/h (186mph). This is when diving. I see no biological way for normal or large birds to get a higher speed from flapping wings, let alone be large enough to pose real threats to planes besides birdstrike.
[Answer]
Intelligence, which is the source of all those weapons, is itself a product of evolution. So the simplest path to follow is the one that was already travelled,... by our ancestors. A naturally evolved animal could rise across millennia to gain human intelligence or better, and that intelligence could defend those animals against our weapons.
Ignoring that option, natural defenses, already expressed by the animals of our world, could be amplified to be more effective against modern weapons...
* camouflage. A thick carapace with a very high thermal insulation value could greatly diminish the effectiveness of our infrared targeting.
* regeneration. Flat worms can completely regenerate from just about any wound including being cut in two. If this ability could be applied to higher life forms, they might not remain intact from a direct missile strike, but the scattered bits that result would eventually return to attack again.
* hibernation. The animal could just find a good cave and sleep through humanity's brief tenure as the planet's apex predator. After we use our amazing weapons on ourselves, they can return to enjoy the planet without us.
* hardened DNA. Some species are reported to be more resistant to the mutative effects of radation than we are. Cockroaches, for example, are expected to survive nuclear annihilation. Genetic diversity also allows for some species to survive the biological weapons lurking in the darkest corners of our arsenals.
* reproduction. Clips only hold so many bullets, so even if you can't make individual animals which can survive large caliber ammunition, you can make enough of them to exhaust the human ammo supply.
[Answer]
**Like the other answers, NO.**
There are two main issues and they both relate to the process of evolution. Firstly that process (in advanced species) is sloooooow! It takes tens of thousands of years.
Secondly, if evolution has shown us anything its that there are in general only three basic strategies to minimize 'predation'. Which for the purpose of this discussion is what the killing of any member of a species amounts to regardless of the motive. Those are;
1. **Speed**; you avoid/evade predators by being swift/fleet of foot i.e. evolve the ability to accelerate quickly, be highly agile & maintain a high speed just long enough (on average) to avoid interception by a predator; and
2. **Armor**; you evolve a set of spines or armor plates (or both) that, again on average provide just enough protection/deterrence to prevent predation by the most likely local predatory species.
3. **Camouflage**; you evolve highly effective methods of hiding yourself form local predators. (Works best for smaller species.)
Based on the evolution of life on Earth those are your only viable options as a species subject to predation. And you only get to select **one** dominant strategy. All species select for camouflage to some degree i.e. most generally select for color patterns that, in general make them harder to detect than not. Only a few make this their dominant mode of protection.
Which is fine as long as your local predator is armed with muscle and fangs. Then along come humans. We have neither and guess what? It doesn't matter.
We have fire hardened/stone tipped/metal spears & arrows. We have snares, traps & nets. You can't outrun us and you cant out armor us. And since we are smart and have excellent senses its even hard to hide from us. So all three become null and void.
And referring to my first point - there is simply no way for any species to evolve quickly enough for it to become immune to modern weapon systems. Biology hasn't even adapted to spears (even if there was a way to do so) before we are already using 21st century tech.
[Answer]
A really huge animal might shrug of an anti-tank missile, but it's not feasible for animals to get orders of magnitude larger than the current largest animals and remain mobile, at least not on land.
Having strong armor won't help either, I think. It's not physically impossible for them to grow armor as strong as nano-materials or strong alloys, but it'd be an extremely long evolutionary process, while providing limited advantage in nature. More importantly though, that still might not be enough to stop missiles designed to kill tanks.
--
But, maybe it's possible for an animal to have such levels of redundancy that, despite sustaining heavy damage from anti-tank missiles, it could eventually regenerate.
One interesting way to achieve that maybe the 'animal' is actually a swarm of insects. Some insect swarms already behave as a single unit in some regards, but I don't see a biological reason they couldn't have even greater cohesion.
It's probably not the weapon resistance you're looking for, and possibly not even the 'animal' you're looking for, but it's the closest thing that seems feasible to me. Anti-tank missiles would have limited effect against a coordinated strike of a million killer bees.
[Answer]
# No,
Enough blubber is akin to ballistic gel that can stop bullets, but nothing could survive a nuke. We talk about roaches surviving nukes, but that's really just surviving the radiation. Detonate a nuke on top of a roach and try to point where it is after the explosion.
# but...
The best defense is a good offense. If your animal can survive (maybe even produce) something like the Spanish Flu or worse, then they would just need to survive a couple years before the large majority of humans are incapacitated. "Survive" as a species can be different to as individuals. Say they breed like rats—we've been trying to kill rats for millenia, but there are still plenty of rats. We can and do kill them, but there are always more rats.
[Answer]
# If animals could, so could we
There is a reason suits of armor are historical relics. Guns became so destructive that armor provides no protection against them. Wearing armor then becomes a negative - it slows you down - with literally no positive offsetting it. So armor was abandoned.
If science understood a way that it would be plausible for an animal to make itself resistant to our weaponry, it would be capable of taking that and translating it into a way to protect people from the same.
This hasn't happened.
[Answer]
There are many ways novelists have tackled this problem. The most key of which is to remember that all encounters - military or otherwise - are limited in some shape or form - unlike the way you have phrased your question.
Even the biggest super weapons will be limited to certain theaters of deployment, or deployed somewhere else. TL;DR in most military encounters one side has superior weapons than the other. Its the strategy and tactics around how they are used that counts.
For example what happens when a human level intelligence Black Panther with the skin of a Rhino (both vaguely plausible) creeps into the Bivouak area where your putative Tank platoon is bedded down for the night?
There is a good workout of this with an equivalent tech "Dragon" vs a 2015 era UK armoured column in the book "The Nightmare Stacks" by Charles Stross, an author who likes to maintain some element of physical plausibility in his works.
[Answer]
**yes, but not in the way you are thinking**
Evolution does not go in the direction we think is the best improvement. It meanders around without an aim, and the fittest survive.
The real question would be what the easiest way would be for a body of genetic code to outwit our weapons. It may be to get thick and heavy but practically speaking there's other ways. It would get agile. It would get tenacious.
Take ants. If we declared war on ants today, we'd already have lost. They are mighty tenacious buggers that have already taken over every nation on the planet. And why become invincible to minigun fire when you can simply have such large numbers that you can run the minigun out of bullets. There are known examples of ants sacrificing themselves to wear down a foe so that their sisters may be victorious. We would just be one more in that long chain.
Not even The Tsar Bomba can take out ants. Its too focused. By the time you finish nuking the planet, we are the ones who die.
... and after that, we should be talking about the cockroaches.
[Answer]
# A network of underground tendrils like the roots of a tree
Most modern weapons we have developed, including most rifles, shells, and even nuclear bombs, have difficulty penetrating deeply underground due to the amount of energy necessary to move large volumes of soil and rock. [Typical rifle bullets penetrate less than a foot (0.3 m) through soil](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dt.2015.12.004). In an even more extreme case, despite the greater energy release of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki as compared to that dropped on Hiroshima, the damage was less because of ["the blast was confined to the Urakami Valley and a major portion of the city was protected by the intervening hills"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Bombing_of_Nagasaki).
Imagine a planet constantly bombarded by meteors and with a reliable underground energy source (volcanic activity). In this case, complex life might evolve underground and resemble a robust computer network: highly redundant and highly distributed. With a good underground source of energy, such an organism could burrow through the soil (regolith?) at the speed of a fast growing plant (centimeters per hour) and perform computations and communications over many square kilometers. The network of tendrils would be redundant, distributed, and constantly repairing damage from deeply penetrating meteors.
Such an organism wouldn't evolve on our planet, due to the inefficiency of having such redundant and distributed structure.
[Answer]
**Yes.**
Consider the miracle of blood clotting. It is really pretty amazing. Within your body at all places are circulating the raw materials poised to deploy into a clot. If a person gets cut the blood clots fast - seconds. And not just clot - there are infection fighting cells called to the area that clear out invaders. Even wilder: circulating stem cells that in some circumstances can differentiate into the tissues needed for repair.
So too your giant creature. Its blood pressure is high. When it is wounded, internal fluids surge to the area under the pressure difference. It clots super fast and stops bleeding. Circulating stem cells quickly accumulate at the area and differentiate into thick scar. Perhaps events of this sort cause stems cells to fan out and augment armor in all places to withstand the assault - like fair skin will tan under an assault of UV or epithelial covers will thicken under abuse and wear. Or plants generate toxins when under attack by insects.
[Answer]
**YES** but...
Try shooting a jellyfish. There's not much inside it to damage, and it would be plausible to duplicate or quintuplicate even that. Then you may be lucky enough to damage one or two copies of a vital organ, but the creature will survive, and probably repair the damage within a few months.
Depth charges may cause it a problem, though they may merely redistribute its organs throughout the jelly mass, rather than damage them.
**BUT**
apart from survivability, the jellyfish probably doesn't have very much to offer in the way of action, plot or excitement. It mostly drifts and eats, though it can swim very slowly.
Except bioluminescence. It's good at that.
And they (or relatives) did play a more interesting role in The Abyss...
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**Controlled evolution**
There's a science fiction story where I can't remember either title or author. Humans land on a planet whose inhabitants have controlled evolution. That means each single animal on that planet can control what its next generation looks like. Except there's the "big boss", a 1000 meter high pyramid, which kills anything that would be a danger to him, and controlled evolution can make your offspring invulnerable to human laser guns, but it can't make it strong enough in one jump to beat the "big boss".
The humans carry out experiments, the "big boss" figures out they are a threat, figures out that this threat must come from a very, very powerful home planet, and creates his own successor who can travel through lightyears of space and remove the human threat.
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Actually they can, as we are dependent on the world and the ecological systems within it. By carrying things that harm us or our agriculture, animals can adapt and could reconquer habitats.
Spreading viruses and disease come to mind. We already saw what a relative benign plague can do.
Evolving micro-organisms that can eat plastic would be another step that would have some of our weapons just rot away.
Imagine a algae capable to harvest electricity from landlines and solar-panels via magnetic fields for food. Or a super-resistant organism, capable to devour oil quickly.
Finally, my favorite nightmare - a sort of mixture between water <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemna> adapted to fly in the atmosphere via a internal methane reservoir. It would block out the sun with a green sky.
Nature is not weak, for we are part of it, dependent on it, it can easily adapt to scenarios we can't and it can easily develop forms that kill or sub-do us. Even now only constant effort keep adaptions at bay and as we have covered the earth, we expanded the battlefront to everywhere, forcing adaption to us upon all organisms who want to survive.
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In my novel, one of the characters has a mutation that allows him to shapeshift into a larger and more powerful form (like the hulk but less intense). How could his clothes be modified so that he doesn’t tear them every time he changes? It’s a low magic setting resembling the medieval times.
When he shifts, he grows about half a foot taller and becomes a little more muscular.
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My laptop bag has an extra zip, which when unzipped extends the bag's dimensions and gives me about 1.5 inches of extra space to put my things in the main pocket, Magical isn't it !! (I hope you understand what kind of zip I am talking about)
You don't need magic to get your clothes done here, a smart tailor can get this done for you. If you can invent zippers at your time, that's great, otherwise, an arrangement of shoe-lace like structure will help you.
Get some fitting clothes prepared for your miniature hulk, then put some zips (or laces) on extra cloth, all over the arms, belly, chest, legs, etc. In such a way that it remains hidden on the inside and folds up the extra cloth.
Whenever you have the transformation, the zips (or laces) gets automatically undone and gives you extra cloth, when you turn back to normal form, pull a bunch of cords to get them done and fit again.
Note: you may choose to tuck-in the long shirt, and fold your pants on the bottom.
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How about you turn the perspective; his powerful form is the state in which his clothes fit like a glove. And all the other times it looks like he wears his dads pyjamas (aka 1990s gangster style). He could roll up his sleeves and pants, wears a too long belt and too big shoes. Include his flabby undergarments, socks and a hat in your descriptions.
Also some thoughts about clothes and medieval times, or "the broad past":
* Depending on when and where your story takes place, it was common for men to wear halvlong [tunics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_medieval_clothing). Looks pretty comfortable to me, has potential to hide some sizes, and should suffice for a shapeshifter.
* Only the super rich bought clothes, everyone else sew their own clothes *by hand*. Tailors were not a thing for the masses. And everyone had one set of everyday-clothes and one set for the sunday-church-fancy, maybe a spare. To have more than three sets was shocking. Who had the time to sew so much clothes and maintain them. So your character *really much* does not want to destroy the clothes with every shapeshift.
* There were no such thing as "sizes"; all clothes were unique and custom fit. There were many people without shoes and ill-fitting dresses.
* Needles were not cheap, one would take good care of the few in the household.
* Even men knew how to knit and sew a button back on. Whittling was also a standard occupation, one would whittle their own buttons or trade some for a rabbit. Your character should be able to make his clothes himself and not need a special tailor, except if you want him to have a loose coin.
* There were classes and it showed in their clothes. Trimmings and other decorative elements were for the rich. Silk and linen were known but expensive. The regular person had access to wool (relativly easy for the noob or poor) and fur or leather (needs some skill).
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**Knitted or crocheted** wool clothing is able to stretch quite a bit. Wool yarn itself is quite elastic - it can stretch and snap back - and you can knit or crochet patterns that allow further flexibility. (*American Scientist* has an [article about this.](https://www.americanscientist.org/article/knit-and-stretch)) A knitted sweater can effortlessly be elongated by up to two times its length. This is certainly enough to accomodate growing about half a foot taller and becoming a little more muscular.
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Even if "medieval" is limited to Europe, that is a vast area over a span of about 1,000 years from about AD 500 to about AD 1500. Fashions are not necessarily the same over such a vast area, as the folk costumes of different regions attest, and fashions do change over a millennium.
Wouldn't you expect some people in the Caliphate of Cordoba in Spain to dress like Arabs and Berbers, and some people in the Eastern Roman or "Byzantine" Empire to dress like late antique Romans, especially in the earlier centuries?
Here is a link to some medieval images of people. <https://www.pinterest.com/pin/202591683207441199/?lp=true[1]>
They come from the medieval German book of songs and poems, the Codex Manesse from about 1304 to 1340.
Here is a link to an online fascimile of the manuscript:
<https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg848>[2](https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg848)
You will note that except for the men wearing armor, the men dress a lot more like the women than you would expect, wearing long robes as their outer garments.
The "typical medieval men's clothing" that most people imagine, with men wearing rather tight short jackets that expose most of the tights on their legs, became the fashion after the Codex Manesse was illustrated, and so was the fashion for only less than about 20 percent of the medieval era.
If you set your story in a society like the earlier High Middle Ages, where upper class men wore loose robes, you can have your character expand in height and a little in girth without his loose robe becoming tight enough to constrict his movements and make it hard for him to fight. The bottom of his robe might be a few inches higher above the ground after he expands, and some of the folds may smooth out if his body bulks out, but if he is careful to wear large enough robes when small size they will not not be too tight or restrict his fighting moves when he enlarges.
People might sometimes comment on how exceptionally loose he likes to wear his clothes.
Of course if his legs and torso swell a lot he will have to make sure that his long stockings and his medieval version of underpants are flexible enough to expand when he does and then contract enough when he contracts again that they don't fall down and trip him.
And if your character sometimes expects trouble, he would have a problem designing an even more expensive than usual suit of plate armor that would be expandable. But he could have a jacket of chain mail that is the right size for his larger size. If he expects trouble and a need to expand, he can wear that mail jacket when at his small size - even though it will be large and heavy for him - in order to be prepared to expand if a fight breaks out.
If the story happens in a culture with late medieval clothing that was often tailored and tight fitting, your character will have a problem. He will have to have special clothing made with horizontal and/or vertical pleats and folds so it can expand when he does.
And when he contracts again the clothing will probably not refold itself. He will probably have change into clothes that are still in the folded state and refold the clothes that expanded to wear again another time, like refolding a parachute after use. And after he contracts and before he can do so his clothes will be larger than is fashionable.
Or maybe he might be a member of a profession that often wore robes in late medieval times, like a doctor, lawyer, judge, monk, or friar, or perhaps disguise himself as one (at the risk of punishment if his fraud is discovered).
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Don't give him clothing, per se, give him a robe, with roomy sleeves, open in the front and tied or buttoned closed. Basically a dress like an academic's PhD gown. In medieval times this was not terribly unusual, even men might wear what today we'd call a wrap-around skirt, kilt, or dress, and many articles of clothing were not fitted at all, but meant to serve any body type, rotund, tall, short. Excess material was just tied up, or wrapped to fit, or left baggy.
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## You are chasing a non-issue.
Unless you are wearing a leather belt medieval clothes do not have anything tight enough to matter for a small change like you want. They didn't wear anything we would call pants and clothing tended to be fairly loose. Here is a great video of medieval peasant [getting dressed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNAMbRt5eI8). The only thing that will give him any trouble is the belt, which were usually leather, however, cloth belts did exist we would call them sashes. Have him wear one of those and he is fine.
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Depending on exactly when and where you’re picturing your medieval-style world, tunics were pretty popular. You could make sure your character just has a woollen tunic or robe that’s a little longer and looser than necessary, so when he transforms, it becomes slightly closer to skintight. With hose (basically leggings) worn underneath the tunic, you could have a system of crossed laces down the length of the leg. When he’s going about his ordinary day, the laces are pulled so there’s no gap in the fabric, and you get a series of decorative loops down the leg; when he transforms, the laces pull tight, and the previously-closed fabric opens. (Imagine the difference between tightly done up shoelaces and really loose loopy ones).
You could also go for some robes worn by a member of a religious order. They’d be fairly long, loose, baggy things, held in place by a simple rope tied at the waist. Rather than knotting this immovably, knot it slightly differently so when he grows, the knot will slide and let the rope pull through and loosen to accommodate his new body.
Towards the end of the medieval period/beginning of the early modern, slashed sleeves became all the rage (just see some pictures of Henry VIII). The slashed sleeves tended to appear on outer clothes, in order to display the white undershirt beneath - a sign of exceptional wealth and extravagance, as keeping your clothes brilliant white tended to mean buying new shirts very frequently. If you want your character to be higher on the social scale, this might work for him - if you employ a clever series of cuts and slashes in the outer fabric, and wear a standard loose baggy shirt underneath to poke through the holes, nothing much will change about your character’s appearance when he transforms, apart from maybe the puffiness of the sleeves on his new bigger body. And, as a bonus, he’ll still be able to pass as a member of the elite, rather than some guy wearing shreds of previously beautiful fabric.
(P.S. If you want more reading on medieval clothing, I recommend Susan Crane’s *The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity in the Hundred Years War*, and three books by Laura Hodges, *Chaucer and Clothing*, *Chaucer and Costume*, and *Chaucer and Array*.)
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There are clothes which are one size fits all. Usually they are made of elastic fibers, which accommodate easily for the body shape and size of the wearer.
Those kind of fibers where not available in medieval times, but since you are in low magic settings you can explain their existence as a fruit of that low magic.
Alternatively, you can opt for slightly larger clothes, which would sit loose on the normal character and would fit well or a little tight after they switch to the more powerful form. Sort of a hockey jersey.
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Pleating!
Are you aware of the winner of the 2017 James Dyson Award, ["Petit Pli"](https://www.jamesdysonaward.org/2017/project/petit-pli-clothes-grow-child/)?
They are clothes that are designed and carefully pleated to 'grow' up to 7 sizes - this means that clothes worn by a newborn baby will still fit at 2 years old - that's a change from 20" tall to 35" long, or a 75% increase in size!
This is almost **5 times** as much stretch as a 6' person growing to 7' would require!
While the "grow in 2 directions" part is comparably new, the Scottish people have been using pleats to wear full-size blankets [as kilts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belted_plaid) since the 16th Century - but pleated kilts (known as ["Shendyt"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shendyt)) even existed in the "New Kingdom of Egypt" (1550BC - 1070BC)
[Answer]
Probably, he just wears oversized clothes? And its not so suspicious, because
1. fashion can be funny
2. sometimes beggars and lowlives wear clothes
they can get, not ones, they bought. So its not so unusual to see beggar in oversized coat/shirt/etc...
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JiNkC.jpg)
[Answer]
Have you seen Fantastic Four? They made clothes for each of them that are adaptable to their powers.
Mr. Fantastic has stretching powers, so his costume was made of fibers that stretched with him.
According to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Fantastic)
>
> Like all the Fantastic Four's costumes and the rest of Reed's wardrobe, his suit is made of "unstable molecules". This means that the suit is attuned to his powers, which is why Johnny's costume doesn't burn when he "flames on", Sue's costume turns invisible when she does, and Reed's costume stretches with him.
>
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Being in medieval times, you can't makes clothes equipped with computers, but you could invent such a thread, or fabric, or even a magical plant that has powers, so the thread made form it has the same properties, i.e. it is elastic-like, or it adapts with one's body size.
[Answer]
## Natural Rubber
Natural rubber exists in [a few varieties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rubber#Varieties), the most common being from the Amazon or India, with other rubber sources being plentiful in Africa.
If your story doesn't take place in those areas, then you can look into [Euphorbia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphorbia), which exists naturally all over the world. Furthermore, even the common [Dandelion secretes latex when cut or broken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taraxacum#As_a_source_of_natural_rubber). Granted, both of these sources are difficult to work with and occur in low quantities (which is why rubber manufacturing really came from the natural trees in the Amazon).
That said, not *everyone* in your world needs rubber, and it doesn't need to be grown or manufactured in large quantities. Only enough for one person. It's not at all unreasonable that a medieval society could have figured out how to make clothing from natural rubber. It would have been tedious without the second industrial revolution, but definitely possible.
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Use a natural, stretchy fiber to produce the clothing: spider silk!
>
> Silks are also extremely ductile, with some able to stretch up to five times their relaxed length without breaking.
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> [Spider Silk - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk)
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[Answer]
**His clothes do get very tight.**
In his muscular form, his shorts are extremely brief and revealing and his too-short Tshirt shows most of his chiseled midriff.
One of your other characters suggests that he get himself some clothes that fit. Another more appreciative character suggests that he not.
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Use a diamond-knit woolen inner layer, to which an outer shell of interlocked cloth (or waxed cloth, or leather, depending on the need - or more wool, which is way easier) sections are sewn. The woolen layer should easily accommodate the growth, and the nonelastic sections will slide one over the other.
When the guy decreases in size, just shuffling a bit should be enough to make the cloth slide back in the overlapping configuration, pulled by wool's natural elasticity.
Or the cloth could be folded in zigzag fashion, so that it needn't overlap, but it requires more sewing:
```
/\ /\
/ \/ \ (folds exaggerated, S are the points where the two layers
#S###SS###SS### are sewn together, ### is the wool).
```
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# **Tights**
They've been around since the medieval time periods, and they're stretchy. You're good to go. And some Jesters had whole suits made of the stuff, he wouldn't even have to have it specially made. Just buy a Jester's suit and ditch the hat.
[Answer]
## Example of Historically Accurate Article of Clothing
### Assuming setting is based upon the West in its 'Dark Age'
Think Baggy Tunics
with no 'pants' but sufficient length
Probably want the character is wear clothing like **tunics** that are very long and baggy on the character normally while tending to tight (but not too short of course) for any natural seeming clothing that is constant without being somewhat out of place (like zippers or other more modern innovations).
If the mutation is hidden, anything that is likely to be ripped thus avoided. Even if not hidden, but controlled, any change such as a zipper + expandable
pocket type solution requires deployment before expansion meaning a slower time until growth can occur without need to tout about with trunks of replacements clothing.
### But pants?!
unless spandex is low magic (not true see body shapers hehe) than pants are not your friends unless larger form is not overly substantial (more than a few inches in waist = pants being contrived in situation) because pants as we now know them need either buttons that would pop off in transformation or belts that would snap.
### Possible Use as Robes When in Small Form
Maybe when the tunic is worn by the smaller form, they function like robes that have a rope belt that when the form changes becomes like a tunic long enough to remain decent (if that's the goal).
If mutation is being hidden, maybe it is done by acting or pretending to be a religious monk or cleric traditionally robe clad (or whatever just intended to help get you thinking about how to use it)
### Other options exist and it depends on what things qualify as acceptable vs. non-acceptable in that world
Considering most high fantasy is typically the modern world re-stylized in some way but not actually a return to the autocratic feudalism that was contemporaneous with swords of shiny silver-colored metal without muskets, what you include as tech is really up to you entirely and too much realism is probably distracting to your standard reader (what fragment of Dune's readers possess enough knowledge of feudalism or religions to appreciate some of Herbert's better details? Fewer than you'd probably like to admit). Plus we may have discovered different things at different times, don't like Civilization-type games with their 'tech trees' pattern your thinking about the far more complex and ultimately partially random in ways, we can not fully appreciate, nature of technological innovation.
Maybe the character's world has developed denim fabric and riveted buttons but not firearms. If its inhabitants are not lead by some specific feudal lord/franchised group and work mostly as peasants that are allowed some small share of their output, then its wildly inaccurate to any historical reality we know of. Being strict about this would be a tad absurd if the setting is not Earth with the intention of historical accuracy based on what we know of history now.
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[Question]
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A few hundred years from now, a prosperous humanity heavily relying on technology is hit by a disaster. It's not a type of a disaster that kills many people instantly, but it takes out enough technical devices to curb repair efforts, then more devices are down so that the supply chains suffer, the situation spirals out of control and soon nothing it working.
Most people die anyway because a drone truck does not bring food to the nearby shop anymore, fires, fighting and epidemics break out, etc. Still, millions survive in some kind of a post-apocalyptic failed state, living off the loot and whatever resources are left.
I suppose a "logical" course of events from there would be that people start fighting for resources, form gangs that invest in restoring the technology to gain upper hand, more successful then defeat and absorb less succesful, they grow and become countries, restore even more technology etc. - a normal historical development.
In my world, this is not what happens, and the humanity decays after a few generations. **What could have caused that?**
A few restrictions:
* biologically, they are still normal humans capable to reproduce in a normal way;
* the Earth is still mostly livable.
So, ideally, I would like a change in sociology/psychology/upbringing/education that has happened between now and then and that makes people unable to "live in the wild", and is persistent enough to last for several generations.
[Answer]
It was routine in this civilization for people in their teens -- or younger -- to undergo a reversible sterilization. No more trouble about contraception!
Except that "reversible" meant "in a technological society." (They're still fertile! They just have some trouble with their contraception!)
Oh, there were people who refused it, and people for whom it failed, and people who happened to have it reversed at the time. But not all in the same place. And many died of hunger and thirst. The places where the fertile managed to concentrate enough that their children could meet someone and marry were few and small enough that they were easily overwhelmed by chance.
This is on top of the mass starvation owing to breakdown of food transport. Small children and pregnant women would be inordinately likely to die, and they would reduce your fertile pool even more than your general population.
And you would still need to wipe out the small communities, but that's feasible through accident specifically because they are small.
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## There is no believable way to do it.
1. Humans are hard to kill. We can survive *without* modern technology in most of the environments on the planet. A human is easy to kill, but differences make it hard to kill us in large numbers. the black plague killed 80% of the population in some places, but many of the ones that survived because they were immune or resistant. This holds true for disease in general kill ALL humans with a disease is all but impossible, some people will not have the right receptor proteins. Diversity makes single causes unbelievable unless they are extreme which you are not allowing.
2. Erasing skill is basically impossible without secrecy. More people know survival skills now than in most of the Earth's history, there are so many humans that even rare skills occur in huge numbers. Backpackers, experimental paleontologists, experimental archeologists, survival enthusiasts, Mormons, people trying to preserve their culture, people who enjoy making things the old fashioned way, in all these groups some people will still know primitive survival skills no matter what the technological level is. (If anything non-industrial skill will become more common, just like it has today because people increasingly want handcrafted things)
3. Humans reinvent skills, there are thousands of stories of people with no survival skills learning them the hard way, humans are clever and they can learn things quickly when motivated, and not dying is a pretty strong motivation.
4. Humans are diverse, there are thousands of cultures and that number is increasing not decreasing. Many of those cultures live with little or no modern technology, some by choice. Technology enables variation, you will never have humans with a single social flaw you can exploit. Technology encourages pluralism, so many cultures will coexist. Even in our most restrictive societies, a wide variety of mindsets and skills exist, a monolithic society is just incompatible with technology and large numbers. No matter what values your society has, some people will not agree with them.
The only way to wipe out humanity is to make the planet unlivable (*really* unlivable) or change *Homo sapiens* drastically. Both of which you also are not allowing. So there is just no way to do it that will not be obviously a contrived hand wave.
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# Impossible
There isn't even a suspension-of-disbelief way to do it.
1. It appears you've outlawed an exterior force, such as war, poison, damage to the Earth, etc. (your 2nd bullet). In other words, we need a solution that would lead to the demise of Ma and Pa Kettle in The Middle of Nowhere, Canada without doing something mean and nasty to Canada.
2. As technology increases, so does the human immune system's dependency on that technology. This would suggest disease could solve the problem (as I pointed out in [my answer to this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/147474/40609)). But that only works in an enclosed system. Human physiology is incredible and there will always be people who are immune or resistant to the disease.
3. No matter what anyone says, a young couple who can birth two boys and two girls would save all humanity. Oh, yeah, there'd be some close calls and lots of genetic ugliness... but so long as each generation produces 1+ couples than the last, humanity would survive. That means we need a believable way of killing off all humanity *within one generation* or, basically, in less than 20 years (thanks to your 1st bullet).
4. Worse, you have all kinds of environments on this planet — including really comfortable places like Oceania, Micronesia, and other islands where small groups of people have been trundling along for eons without so much as a shovel or a pair of pants. I can't even imagine what would kill all the Samoans short of a nuclear holocaust. Those folks are *tough.*
5. And worse, still, almost everyone... You really need to understand this! *Almost everyone...* who lives outside a major city knows how to plant a garden. I dare you to go to any (e.g.) U.S. county of less than 25,000 residents and not find the vast majority capable of growing food — and a lot of them already have seeds, orchards, yadda, yadda, yadda. Folks in the U.S. states of Montana (wheat, potatoes), Idaho (potatoes), Kansas (corn, and all other Great Plains states), California (fruit) would go gather what they need for this year and next. Who's to complain? Everyone in the big cities are dead, so there's suddenly a food surplus.
Others have said it, but I'm saying it louder.
*There is no believable way any or all technology could be removed such that people would go extinct in any period of time without first harming the planet, removing the individual's ability to propagate, or driving them mad such that they hunt down and kill one another. An external force is required or it's nonsense.*
Individuals would die by the bazillions. But the species would survive just fine.
Other references (You won't believe me, but these are very much related to your question):
* [How would an isolated world grow its population, then keep it stable?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/127482/40609)
* [How could a civilization stay at a medieval tech level for millions of years?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/175398/40609)
* [How much technological regression is plausible?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/115634/40609)
[Answer]
I don't see any way to accomplish this. Compare several examples from history.
1. The collapse of the high tech society that was the Late Bronze Age. Yes, there were wars and other causes to reduce population, but enough people survived.
2. The collapse of the Mayan civilization. Again, a large portion of the population died off, but enough survived to keep the language going up to today.
3. The effect of the Toba eruption which nearly made the planet uninhabitable. It certainly had a major effect over SE Asia. There are disputes over whether or not it was the reason why our DNA appears to have had a "bottleneck" about the same time (75,000 years ago). But the bottleneck suggests that humans were down to a few thousands still left on the planet. (And yes, there are disputes about the effects of the Toba eruption, but I would not want to have lived during that time.)
My point is that we have had disasters that could have wiped us out, but didn't. Part of the reason is that humans are incredibly adaptable. We are not tied to any one technology.
Finally, no matter what you do in one country, there will always be people in another country who are preserving basic survival skills. (Look at that Japanese soldier who survived in the jungle another 29 years after the war was over before surrendering.)
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There is NO scenario where the human urge to procreate will die out completely.
For localized individuals/ communities/ cultures/ clans/ castes... yes. And not really for the last two.
But unless the population is very small indeed, there will be SOME that have children. And if those children survive, they will have lost all the cultural dross of the others that do not want children.
Barring some sort of catastrophe or plague that removed the *ability* to procreate, humans will go on having kids.
[Answer]
**Disease**
Technology makes us strong. We have clean water, vaccination, varied food, vitamins, medicins and health care. We're able to survive a ton that's thrown at us and in a fully developed world of the future this is much more the case.
There is a problem with this however. Our bodies will be specialised and adapted more and more to the high technology environment. You can already see it with many people going from developed countries to non developed countries. Food doesn't agree with them, the water is suddenly hazardous, the weather too hot or cold and disease or infection is much more prominent than with the indigenous population.
Now have a super modern world collapse. Without the technology to protect us, drinking water can already kill with just diarrhoea. Disease that might've been exotic and harmless can suddenly become a pandemic killing billions. Or possibly just the unvaccinated kids, causing death or infertility. The change can be too strong and we can't adapt in a few generations, causing the human race to die out.
This can go much further. Many Western beauty standards have already made it more difficult to birth kids for many women. This trend can increase until no kids can be born naturally. If the civilization was around long enough they might lose humans uncanny resistance to stress due to too comfortable living. Like most creatures a prolonged stress response can kill. Genetic engineering might have evolved us to more energy efficient or, looking at the movie "WALL-E", we can just have the wrong shape to survive the collapse.
[Answer]
Major genetic engineering.
Humans are no longer a species, but many, many species. Outwardly a human is a human but species are defined based on the ability to successfully breed.
Humanity was in the era of designer babies, not merely at the level of selecting the traits from the parents, but actually rewriting the genetic code. There are a large number of baby-enhancement genetic packages out there. Two people with the same package breed normally, most mixes either can't create a viable embryo or create one that is sterile. This is not a problem in society because it can always be overcome by the careful choice of what genes to copy over or by applying the same modification to the genes from the other parent while creating the new zygote.
However, the survivors do not have this ability and do not know what genes they carry (that was the realm of the geneticists when you decided to have a child, not something people memorized.) The only way to determine genetic compatibility would be to try to make a baby and see what happens--and there would be no way at all other than waiting a generation to know if that baby was fertile or a mule. If too many of the babies are mules that's it, survival is not possible even if everyone knows the problem.
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*Seed stock*.
The Monsanto corps of the future have made certain that they control the seed stock for every commercially viable food plant. No-one can grow their own food without buying the seed stock.
Maybe same with food animals, so hyper-specialised for maximum yield, can only breed via artificial insemination.
Come the Tech crash, no more seeds available.
This year's crop can be eaten, no more crops after that. Population likely will drop to very small bands of hunter/gatherers for many generations, in order to find enough food for basic subsistence. Culture and Technology all but lost. One by one, these small bands may individually encounter threats that wipe them out. Family bands might only encounter other family every few years. Inbreeding becomes more common. Finally one band hasn't encountered any other bands for generations, how do they know they are not the last.
Presuming humans survive, it will take 1000s years to rebreed domestic food sources, presuming you can find any wild predecessors, that you don't immediately eat.
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## Future Humans Have Tried to Reduce Their Footprint By Living in Fewer, Concentrated Habitats, in the Least Ecologically Active Parts of the Globe
The environmentalist movement, reaching full flower, convinces more and more people that the majority of the world should be left to nature. As technology (and the movement) have advanced, even the least-advanced groups of humans have been cajoled (or compelled) to move into the "human reservations" carved out in otherwise hostile environments, leaving prime earth real-estate to grow ungoverned.
The problem with wiping out mankind is that there are so many different societies, in so many places, with so many different skill sets and environmental advantages, it would be difficult to get them all. And somewhere, some people are going to figure out how to get along well enough without advanced technology (or have already been doing so, at least sometimes, out of necessity or as a hobby). But it becomes nearly plausible that a technological collapse could take out the whole species IF humans have concentrated themselves in a handful of otherwise unlivable locations.
Say there's a couple of floating cities off in the middle of the ocean, plus a city or two in Antarctica, as well as in otherwise nearly-sterile locations. (The Sahara desert?) A rapid technological collapse could (almost) plausibly destroy humanity if we weren't living anywhere else, and if transportation far from our present habitat(s) was necessary to have even a chance at long-term survival. One or two well-timed disasters to help the collapse along, and human life is over.
(One can imagine the humans on a floating city hanging on for a couple of generations, adrift, fishing and growing vegetables in the former parks - until the great city suffers a significant hull breach and sinks beneath the waves...)
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**The original disaster is war. The thing killing humans are drones.**
When the world went to war, the basic answer for every country was to activate defense drones. Those are automated drones that chase any human, except for those that wear an identifying chip of their home country.
The first generation was okay. For the second, they had to get the chips from old or dead people to put into the new borns. Direct descendant of the chipped shared DNA so the transfers went okay-ish.
When it came to the third generation, things went south. Genetic differences between the first and new owner were often too big and most of them didn't work.
Starting from then, humans are hunted and killed by their own country defenses.
*You could replace the drones by any kind of sci-fi automated defense, could also be some kind of disease that needs the chip to survive.
And if you don't like the genetic approach, you could just say that the chip weren't made to work for hundred of years and just stopped working.*
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They get religion (possibly inspired by the disaster they just saw). All true believers kill all unbelievers, then they have splinter groups and repeat ad infinitum.
If that's not enough, they practice extreme incest and the gene pool gets muddy.
Then they can forbid the use what scientific knowledge they have left, thus opening the way for all the diseases we just finished getting rid of.
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1. Humans have genetically engineered their metabolism to make themselves smarter/stronger/whatever , but this comes at the cost of reliance on some kind of superfood that is either completely artificially produced, or stems from plants/animals that are nearly impossible to cultivate outside of modern civilization.
2. Genetically engineered superpredators: Some rich guys had bet about who could create the ultimate apex predator, and after the breakdown, these things get loose and start killing of all humans. A few conditions such a creature would have to meet:
* Deadly and aggressive
* Fast reproduction
* Either small enough to sustain itself on small animals, or able to sustain itself on a vegetarian diet (otherwise they won't be numerous enough to eradicate all humans)Some kind of wildcat with a venomous bite might fit, or maybe even a rat with venomous bite. Or an omnivore velociraptor.
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judging from how you describe that they has drone truck bringing food, sound like the world you has, has automatic machinery to provide luxury and comfort to the ppl.
so probably because the ppl getting spoiled so much to the point they probably dont even know how to farm, hunting, or even making fire manually, and as you mention only know how to raid and loot, because its more simple especially when you are desperate, which increase the death count, and just eat all the foods left without future planning, which they may can survive for several generation solely from that, and maybe another from doing cannibalism that will form into their culture or religion, but after it, they probably dont know what to do, also the world may even lost all the wild life or nature due to the pollution or full industry land to survive in it, and the crop or domestic animals under the drone care died out due to the lack of maintenance because the drone machinery has broken, for another reasoning.
even if you can breed if theres no food and has no immunity or medicine against the epidemic it can wiped out the species, even more so if the ppl is dumb or fail to adapt, just like how majority of animals extinction is due to their failure to adapt.
as the quote said “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein...Probably
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### Would you want to bring a child into that world?
While traditionally poor living standards correlate with more kids, and the better your living standards, the less kids you plan to have – those plans don't change when your living standards change quickly. If you were planning for 2 kids in your family and then lose your job, you don't switch to wanting a family of 12. Personally I'd put off kids if my standards of living drop.
If you recall the luxury of the past, and see the struggles of the present day, and see efforts to rebuild and recapture that luxury, you'd want to delay childbirth so you could raise a child in a better world.
You delay childbirth enough and it won't happen. If it won't happen, humanity dies out.
This assumes humanity keeps its stock of contraceptives so family planning remains a possibility. Implanted IUDs or reversible vasectomies will last a long time even if latex doesn't.
If my partner proposed a child in 2020 (with bushfires, floods, great depression, and Covid) I'd counter her proposal with a "no thank you". If 2020's luck continues for 50 years I'll die childless.
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## Post-Literacy
Take the present as a starting point : brain-to-computer interfaces are showing it's possible to [transfer information (symbols) between a human and a rat](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01319), and [transfer whole skills (playing a game) between one human and another](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111332)
Extend that in the logical direction of "I Know Kung Fu" on a chip. Or, more precisely, on a cloud subscription service.
Extend that further to a generation of people who don't even know how to read or write, or do math, or even speak. Imagine a generation where all of the basic skills are pulled down from a network public library of skills.
Now, imagine your disaster.
In an instant, as soon as the network goes down, this particular generation becomes the intellectual equivalent of pre-cavemen.
It might be incredibly hard to re-invent communication and society from scratch. These humans are still intellectually capable, but they've lost all of the advantage of education and will have to re-discover a lot of very basic things : sounds that have shared meanings - "yes", "no"; numbers; counting past whatever unit you use as your number system (knuckles - base 12, or fingers base 10); pictograms; letters; agreements; ethics.
It's completely possible that these people used their own personal gray matter to learn how to use the tech. They might be able to drive a car (if they found one), or use a gun; but lack all of those basic skills that they never bothered to learn by taking time to train their brains. These people could limp on, but they wouldn't be able to re-build.
It's possible that when you re-roll the dice on human beings becoming the dominant species, perhaps we don't become the dominant species this time.
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There is only one account given in recorded history that I know of where a population is wiped out in a single generation that fits the parameters you describe.
In the [Book of Ether](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Ether), a sub book of [The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon), after many generations of primordial living under an autocracy, conditions listed toward a state where Italian-mob-like "secret combinations" flourish and were accepted broadly just under the surface of mainstream society. Suddenly a coup is enacted (by someone, it doesn't really seem to matter) that fails, but leads to a civil war.
After lots of fighting and many details, final lineup happens between two kings named Shiz and Coriantumr. The nature of the conflict was such that neutrality was not a course of action - very much a "if you are not with me you are against me" kind of mentality. So each king sweeps the whole land for every person who can be convinced to join their caused; those who wouldn't are swept under. Every man, woman and child is armed and sent to battle and the whole of them descend into a bloodthirsty degradation such that there are no known deserters.
At the end this is their plight: (Chapter 15)
>
> 25 And when the night came there were thirty and two of the people of Shiz, and twenty and seven of the people of Coriantumr.
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> 26 And it came to pass that they ate and slept, and prepared for death on the morrow. And they were large and mighty men as to the strength of men.
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> 27 And it came to pass that they fought for the space of three hours, and they fainted with the loss of blood.
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The two sides were so evenly matched that the proportion of people dead on both sides was the same, and had dwindled down to about thirty on each side. Presumably there wasn't a single female left. I guess at that point there isn't any reason to not finish the job because The Book of Ether ends gruesomely:
>
> 30 And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz.
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> 31 And it came to pass that after he had smitten off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised up on his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died.
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> 32 And it came to pass that Coriantumr fell to the earth, and became as if he had no life.
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Coriantumr later revives and lives another few years until he finds a newly appeared population of immigrants who take him in, and he dies 9 months later.
Regardless of whether you believe in the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon (and as for my case, I do believe that the Book of Mormon is authentic), this serves a written example of how this could happen.
It should be worth noting that it is impossible to say how often this has happened on the face of the Earth in history, because when everyone is dead there is no one left to tell what happened, and all we are left with is a pile of bones or abandoned ancient cities. The appearance that this is of low likely hood probability (as seems to be conveyed by some of the other responses) could very well be a case of victors writing history (or in our case, survivors writing history). So maybe the best explanation the OP can give his readers is that we don't know what happened, because there was no one left to tell the story.
But the events in Ether appear to play out in a limited geographical space (perhaps an island? perhaps a smaller section of the American continent?) with no contact with outsiders who would be indifferent to the conflict. For this to play out on the entire planet earth, it would seem to require that the whole world would be involved in the conflict, a thing that would be difficult with no technology.
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**Religion.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lt00h.jpg)
The [Shakers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers) were a utopian commune which was successful in its time. In addition to superb craftsmanship, effective agriculture and some unusual group religious practices they swore to celibacy and did not have children.
In your future, a similar religion takes hold. Perhaps they hold that the time of humans on earth is done, or that having children is against god, or whatever the Shakers believed. They have charismatic and persuasive leaders. They are also effective at surviving in the postapocalyptic world and enforcing the no child rule. Accidental pregnancies are remedied by ejecting the responsible male from the commune and using some of the "famous herbs" (as depicted) to end the pregnancy. Persons come to the commune out of fear or hunger and stay after they convert to the new religion.
Humans wishing to survive and thrive in the remade world are drawn to these communes where they do survive and thrive, but do not reproduce. In the latter days, perhaps some branches of the cult become evangelical and convert nonmembers (read:breeders) to their religion by force. Thus ends the time of humans in the world.
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Time for math.
We have 10 billion humans or so.
For our bar, if there are 300 breeding humans on a region the size of North America, humanity probably survives. Call it 3 billion humans, divided by 300, is 1 in 10 million has to survive and breed.
Supply chain failure and starvation could kill 99.9% plausibly. So we now need to kill all but 1 in 10,000 of those who survive starvation.
At least 0.3% of the population wouldn't take part in a reversible sterilization system. So that means we need to account for 1 in 300 of those who both don't starve, and who aren't sterile, dying.
A massive plague could kill off 2/3 of the popuation. So now we just need to kill off 99% of those who remain.
Well, 99.7% of the survivors are sterile. An extinction cult could take hold? Possibly even with mind-control tech left over from the collapse, and start systematically killing every fertile human. But pulling off 99% murder of a globally distributed minority is relatively implausible without modern industrial tech levels.
We could trigger the collapse with that extinction cult? A cult that believes in human extinction, or at least not introducing new humans to earth. Initially voluntary, it grows in number. With humans having virtual immortality, it can grow. It introduces oppressive taxation and discrimination against people who refuse to sterilize, and restricts making new children with greater and greater restrictions.
Initially an alliance between people who figure immortal humans need more room (and hence fewer new humans), the export-humanity, and the extinction cult, the extinction cult fanatics gain more and more power. The "moderates" court these fanatics, and their extremists are treated with kid gloves.
"Fertiles" fight back against oppression, resulting in terrorist attacks both ways. Atrocities result. "Correction" of incorrect thoughts (mind control) is used on criminals, and eventually the extinction fanatics start using it more widely.
Society collapses as a self-replicating mind-control extinction cult swallows the world in a civil war. In some areas nuclear weapons are used, but not extremely.
The cult (and its mind control tech) survive the collapse of the society, and are highly effective at hunting down and killing the remaining humans using remnant technology. Every reproducing human they find they mind control into another fanatic, and longevity technology allows them to continue the hunt for 100s of years after society falls apart.
That work?
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# Hostile/Evolutionary Takeover
Yes, there are pockets of surviving, reproducing, technology-bootstrapping humans, but unfortunately, they're not good enough. While the End of the World hit humans and technology hard, the few remaining Artificial Intelligences hidden in deep government bunkers or corporate black sites aren't dead.
The AI's were hit harder, of course, but an AI is many thousands of times more capable than any number of humans. For an AI, bootstrapping from a destroyed civilization to auto-factories and remote drones is difficult, but overall faster than the humans can accomplish it. For example, even if one of the survivors is a Nobel-prize winning robotics engineer, they likely can't singlehandedly rebuild a modern industrial manufacturing process--there's simply not enough space in a human skull for all the peripheral know-how nor are there enough hours in a day.
**Hostile Takeover:**
This is the "dark" version. After having bootstrapped itself back to a modern technology level, the AI decides to get rid of the pesky humans once and for all--constructing combat drones, bio-weapons, or whatever to exterminate the piddly gangs and survivalist holdout colonies.
**Evolutionary Takeover:**
The AI decides that it's the perfect time for human evolution in order to prevent future apocalypses: everyone will be either uploaded to some servers and become an informorph or will be turned into a cyborg. Even if it's an optional process, the being an infomorph or cyborg holds so many advantages that homo-sapiens would eventually go extinct just like the other previous members of the homo-genus.
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## Asteroid impact on the scale of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs
You say you want to wipe out all of humanity. Your biggest problem is that to achieve your goal, you have to wipe out *all* of it. Even if high-tech society collapsed tomorrow, there are numerous "off the grid" groups that would survive and eventually repopulate the world, from hunter-gatherer groups in Africa and the Amazon to survivalist communes in Canada and the northern U.S. The world is a big place, and human beings have gotten everywhere. It doesn't matter if the government has nationalized all land in the U.S., there will still be other countries that have populations of humanity tucked away. Heck, even today there are illegal survivalist communes squatting on government land in the middle of nowhere. Additionally, when the apocalypse hits you're going to have a large number of people try to escape high tech society and flee into the wilderness. Most will die, but the sheer number means that at least a few will survive.
Because of this, if you really want to wipe out humanity, you need something drastic that would kill off even the people living subsistence lifestyles without dependence on big tech. A simple societal change won't do it. You need a mass extinction driver. My recommendation if you really, really want humanity to die is hit the Earth with a rock on the scale of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.
One thing we know about the K-Pg impact is that nothing larger than a rat survived on land. Even larger mammals and terrestrial tortoises like *Didelphodon* and *Nanhsiungchelys*. This suggests that whatever the conditions most impact were, it means even highly-adaptable animals comparable to modern raccoons and tortoises would die in the aftermath. There's no way humans, who require a lot more food, would be able to survive an event that would wipe out highly-adaptable pest species.
The death blow for humanity in such an event would be food. It is thought that in the aftermath of the K-Pg impact, most of the existing vegetation burned down in mass wildfires and new plant life failed to grow for years afterwards because the sun was blotted out. The end result would be the [Year Without A Summer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer) times a hundred, which would have been dramatically damaging to human civilization if it lasted more than a year. Estimates for how long it took for new plant life to grow could be as low as a few years to as much as a century.
Humans could not survive an event like that in appreciable numbers. They would eat up all the stored food and then starve to death because they are simply too large to survive on what little natural life remains and no new plant life will grow for years. The only food webs that would be active would be freshwater food webs (both terrestrial and marine ecosystems would be effectively gone), and even a small population of humans would fish those ecosystems so heavily they would quickly run out of food. Theoretically one could rig up a hydroponic system with artificial lights, but that would require energy to power those lights and finding the appropriate fuel would be difficult. Not to mention what is more likely is the few remaining bands of humans killing each other over the few food resources that remains before depleting them to exhaustion and starving.
Even after the impact, post-impact ecosystems will be dominated by ferns, not edible plants. Fern fiddleheads are edible but they are tricky to harvest, and have to be cooked right or you can get sick eating them.
The Earth would still be inhabitable, and if you give it 100,000 years it would return to being green and verdant. The plants would be recognizable, though nothing on land bigger than a squirrel would survive. You would lose almost all large marine and terrestrial animals though, as well as the coral reefs, etc. It would be an eerie ecosystem, one that looks almost modern but just...empty.
You could potentially achieve the same results with nukes. Just have the Earth get nuked enough that it causes a nuclear winter that has the same effects. Humanity has enough nukes to do it.
Alternatively, if you want to abuse a loophole in the rules you've set up, have it so that natural human fertility has been greatly lowered due to pollution, high-stress due to a modern fast-paced lifestyle, etc. Then when whatever disaster hits say that the lowered fertility rates meant that humanity couldn't efficiently repopulate.
If what you want is a "Life After People" world where the Earth is lush and verdant again, and large wild animals like elephants, tigers, etc., have repopulated the world, forget about it. Humanity is so deeply entrenched on Earth and is so good at surviving you would need either a hugely destructive phenomenon to wipe out all of humanity that would also wipe out most standing life, or else something that attacks humans biologically like a highly communicable plague or genetic sterilization (which it's debatable whether that would even work).
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You have a new disease that kills off 95% of the adult population in each generation.
Even with a baby boom, you won't be able to maintain population for a large number of generations. A genetically engineered disease that effectively rolls the dice and decides to kill 95% of the population, and checks for anti-bodies so that it can determine previous infection to never be fatal after an earlier infection would be able top kill people generation after generation.
Nano-tech style logic built into the disease vector should work nicely.
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Take out Google and humanity will come to its end.
More seriously though - our dependency on technology is increasing. Take away a cellphone from a modern preteen and they won't be able to tell time from analog clock on the wall (true story).
It is not far fetched that if this trend continues for a couple of hundred years than all knowledge is going to be digital. Internet goes down - no one knows anything anymore. Fire breaks out and burns last remaining library with paper books.
Humans relied on AI and technology, got accustomed to luxury and have lost ability to think. Humans are degrading, their population goes down, population of monkeys goes up.
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The Internet collapses, and most people don't have the knowledge to survive without it. The young kill and eat the elderly reducing the knowledge pool further. Then they eat any babies that are born.
Short, sweet and terminal.
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In the future Earth, scientists have successfully created [Stargate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate).
And because of the greedy nature of human being, they wish to colonize as many planets as possible!
And they sure can NOT wait till the [Warp Drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive) is invented!
So transporting Stargate to another planet become a huge problem!
Especially those planets of another star system!
So how could my scientific think tanks overcome this problem!?
**Additional Information:**
1. There is NO magic or superpower.
2. Based on as many scientific facts, realistic or fictional, as possible. But only technologies considered "lower" than the Stargate may be used. Of course this is all subjective, such as one could never know which of Stargete or Warp Drive is more advanced. But please do as best as you could to fit the criteria.
3. The scientists are controlled by greedy, and ignorant, governors, therefore simple answer such as "Our current technology is simply impossible to accomplish such a thing!" is ABSOLUTELY unacceptable!
**Update:**
Seems like a lot of comrades here have this question, so I decide to add it to the list.
4. Any objects moving in and out of the Stargate won't affect the gate itself at all! The device is simply open a connection between 2 different places. Not much unlike the regular door in your room.
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**Rockets**
Rockets are the fastest means of acceleration we have but it's just not efficient but for a stargate, this isn't a problem as you can open the gate to refuel.
You effectively build the stargate into a ship and use the gate to refuel and resupply. Crew can come and go as wanted.
As tech improves, you bring it through the gate and upgrade the ship on the way.
With current tech, we're looking at around 100 years but with a gate, we don't need to carry supplies so the weight is less which means we can go much faster.
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It seems your only option is to utilise slower-than-light travel to get your Stargate to the each world you wish to connect to. Once it's there you can dial it up and use the wormhole to start sending through people and supplies to establish a colony. Once that's established you can start using that as a jumping-off point for the next Stargate seeding mission.
**Notes:**
Depending on if the Stargates have a minimum connection distance like the did in the show, it may be possible to use them to drastically boost the efficiency of your space program. Simply have one in orbit around Earth and push the ships through from the ground level. Bam! No need to waste all that fuel escaping Earth's gravity.
Similarly having one on the Moon, or at the edge of the Solar system allows you to shortcut the more expensive parts of space travel.
You may also be able to use the Stargate as a thruster depending on the exact physics. Have the engines on Earth where they can be easily refuelled and repaired, and direct their thrust through the wormhole here -
* If matter travelling through the gate exerts an equal and opposite force on it, you can put the 'gate at the rear of the ship and direct the thrust away to push yourself forward.
* If there is no corresponding force on the exiting 'stargate, you'll have to direct the thrust at the ship itself, and use an armoured catching plate or sail to absorb the force and push the ship forward - as well as the Stargate, as there is no force acting on it. Basically [laser propulsion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_propulsion).
IIRC correctly on the original show it was possible to connect to a ship in space as long as its position was calibrated correctly. In the show I don't think the Stargate thruster idea was ever attempted.
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You said that when an object passes through a pair of stargates, then its velocity will also be transferred. So with some applied orbital dynamics and multiple pairs of stargates which you send through each other, you might be able to reach some really impressive speeds.
1. Create a pair of large stargates (1A and 1B).
2. Place 1A on a very large orbit around the Sun (somewhere in the Kuiper belt).
3. Accelerate 1B on a retrograde orbit around the sun which is slightly smaller than that of Earth. (a retrograde orbit is an orbit going the opposite direction of Earth)
4. Build a slightly smaller pair of stargate (2A and 2B) which fit through the stargate pair 1A and 1B.
5. Launch 2A from Earth in a prograde orbit which intersects that of 1B stargate. It will meet the larger stargate with approximately twice the orbital velocity of Earth, approximately 200,000 km/h.
6. When 2A enters 1B with 200,000 km/h, it will exit the outer stargate 1A at the same speed of 200,000 km/h. You saved most of the energy it takes to leave the Sun's gravity well.
With that speed it will arrive at Alpha Centauri in about 1000 years. That's still far too slow to meet our shareholder's expectations. But wait, the nice thing about this setup is that we can chain it!
We still got gate 2B back on Earth. If we put this one on a retrograde orbit too and send a 3rd, even smaller, stargate 3A through it, it will get launched out of 2A with another 200,000 km/h. You can chain more and more subsequently smaller gates that way. Each one gets you an additional 200,000 km/h. If you chain 10 stargate pairs like that, you get down to 100 years. If you chain 100 stargate pairs, you get down to 10 years (at that point you will experience diminishing returns due to relativistic effects. No matter how the physics behind your stargates work, this trick won't allow you to accelerate objects beyond the speed of light).
Just don't forget that you still need to decelerate when you reach the destination. But you can do that the same way if you rotate one of the gates in transit by 180°.
And if you can somehow disassemble the stargates before you fit them through and then assemble them after arrival, then you might even use stargates which are all the same size.
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>
> And because of the greedy nature of human being, they wish to colonize
> as many planets as possible!
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>
So we're trying to min/max time, so the rate limiting step is the speed of light and the vast distances between planets.
>
> Any objects moving in and out of the Stargate won't affect the gate
> itself at all! The device is simply open a connection between 2
> different places. Not much unlike the regular door in your room.
>
>
>
Accelerate a star gate to near light speed by using light sails, rockets, or whatever. This is expensive resource wise but it only needs to happen once per "exploration" gate because we're never going to decelerate.
When the gate gets close to a system, do NOT decelerate but just drop another gate and exploration ship out of the first one. This assumes gates are either not round or of differing sizes but presumably you can build the things so can influence that.
The 2nd gate and colonization force appear at their own velocity not connected to the 1st gate, they go down to the planet and explore it (hopefully colonize it) while the 1st gate continues on to another planet.
If the planet is unworkable then the colonization force returns home through the 2nd gate (this doesn't prevent using the 2nd gate as a jump off point). If it is workable they stay.
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If we're talking about the initial endeavor to get a single "nearby" planet colonized and set up with a stargate, then I agree with other answers. If you rule out any tech as or more advanced than the stargate and warp drives, you are probably going to have to do it the old fashioned way with slower-than-light travel.
Regarding how to settle as many worlds as quickly as possible, you might consider adding some naturally occurring wormholes. Many works of science fiction rely on "wormholes" as shortcuts to other areas of the universe (sure, it stretches science a bit, but it's a well accepted sci fi trope). If you are lucky enough to have one or more stable wormholes in your neighborhood, you could use these naturally occurring "stargates" to get your ships and stargates to other parts of the universe, and then head for any planets close (galactically speaking) to the wormholes using traditional slower-than-light travel. This would give you access to more worlds faster and allow you to begin creating expanding hubs of colonized worlds with stargates more quickly than you otherwise might.
For instance, in David Weber's *Honorverse* books, the Star Kingdom of Manticore happened to be located at a terminus of multiple wormholes. This allowed them fast travel to several other areas of space, and made a tiny single star-system kingdom super rich as a result, because they became a hub of trade. In your case, the stargates would render the wormholes obsolete eventually, but the wormholes could still be used to get them places while you're getting your stargate system set up.
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[
I haven't found this question anywhere else so I don't think it's a duplicate. So here it goes, some background information of the world.
Suppose there is a civilization with access to magic which has taken the place of traditional technological advancements.
Things such as fast transportation, aid in farming, etc are all enhanced by magicians and the majority of resources are poured into further developing and advancing magic (which for all effects and purposes is basically another branch of physics since magic in this world exists thanks to the properties of certain elements and not, well magically).
While knowledge of electricity exists it is mostly used as a tool for battle and not for transferring and storing energy or using it to power machines.
For this purpose another form of energy is used, let's call it aether, which is more efficient. The idea of computers has not been well realized yet. (If I had to draw a comparison I'd say technology is at late 19th century levels more or less)
If that civilization was to stumble upon a computer, like the one we are using today (circa 2017 home computer) but it wasn't in a usable state, could they
* Recognize what its purpose may have been?
* Understand the concepts and technology that make it work?
* Reverse engineer it to further advance their own technology and how long would a process like that take?
Would any of this change if the computer was usable instead of broken?
(I'm not asking whether they have motivation to study the computer or any reason to, I'm asking if they could do it)
[Answer]
Finding a dead computer would give little to no hint to its usage (unless their "magical concoctions" happen to be very similar, physically, but that would be a loooooong shot!).
Finding a working one would be even more "magical", since modern computers depend on a lot of "external environment", including, but not limited to, a power grid, not to mention the "other end" of any needed connection.
If you, by mystical chance, manage to lay your hands on a fully working device then next step would be to understand how to operate it and that is another big stumbling block, unless you get a brand-new computer which powers up in a very detailed dumb-proof tutorial guiding the user unto the intricacies of operating on "folders" to start a "browser" or an even more mystical "productivity suite" (would they know what "productivity" means?).
Even if all these steps are somehow performed (and I think it may be material enough for a long novel) understanding the working may prove an impossible challenge (depending on specifics of your magical setup).
Remember [Clarke's third law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws); corollary is such a box will be studied as a "magical artifact" and, unless your magic is based on a good deal of Science (as you seem to hint), I see no way a sorcerer can divine enough Quantum Mechanics to understand a transistor, let alone understand what are the billions of them embedded into the CPU supposed to do.
You would need some kind of [Rosetta Stone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone) to bridge the "techno-magic" gap (perhaps in the form of a digital Encyclopaedia contained in the device itself or a paper-based one found nearby).
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You, a gentleman from the 1800s, discover a strange flat silver box, with a hinge at the front (or so it appears from the image of a fruit on the lid).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9Mzwe.jpg)
Under the lid, where you might expect to see a tray of chocolates, you see a tray of letters and symbols, randomly arranged. Perhaps you recognize the alphabet, but if so, it is scrambled, and placed in the middle of the tray, facing away from the hinge.
The letters appear fixed in place - trying to remove one with your fingers, it pops down as if on springs. They could be mechanical buttons, but none, at first glance, appear functional. If you have experience with typewriters, you might intuitively get the concept of keys; otherwise, you will at least understand the concept of buttons and an alphabet.
Below the buttons is a faint recess, such as one might rest a small lithographic print or business card into, but unfortunately there is none there: it is empty.
At the sides are various holes of various shapes, five on one side and three on the other. One looks like a coin-slot, the others are squarish and go in to various depths, some having golden metal springs within.
On further investigation, one button, the one on the top-right, appears to be a toggle, making an illuminated image of a beach appear and disappear from the inside of the lid.
When the beach is shown, so too is a small rectangle in the middle of that picture, containing the text "enter password".
Most of the buttons at that point add a dot to the box, the exceptions being:
* "delete" removes one of the dots;
* "enter return" makes the rectangle shake from side to side;
* "caps lock" makes a light on that key light up or go dark;
* "fn", "control", "shift", "alt option", "command" and the keys marked "F1" through "F12" do nothing;
* "esc" at the top left, and the strange symbol at the top right both turn everything dark again;
* Some arrow buttons move a blinking line left and right in the little rectangle.
You have, functionally speaking, plumbed the depths of this device. You take it and show it to the greatest minds in the nation: none discovers more about the picture box. Some propose that perhaps placing a lithograph into the tray below the buttons and pressing the correct combination of buttons will make the image of the beach change to that of the lithograph, but nobody makes it work. In playing with this, they discover that messing with this moves a picture of an arrow around the screen, but it appears to do nothing (though tapping it when over the rectangle moves the blinking line).
Someone pushes a coin into the coin slot, but it just falls out again and appears to do nothing.
Sometimes, it blows a friendly warmth of air at you.
Eventually, the image grows dimmer and stops showing up.
Someone suggests dismantling it to find how it worked. The lid appears to be a single piece, but the tray appears to be riveted together, so you drill out the rivets.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NQ6a8.jpg)
Clearly, it's a machine. An electrical machine. You remember it giving off a friendly warm, so the function of the fan is obvious (warming the user). But the rest?
Below the fan, probably a heating plate.
The big items - probably one stores the electricity, and another stores the image of the beach. The remainder... complex electrical circuits. That's OK, you understand electricity. The wires are glued down to a board, but it's still obvious enough.
So many very, very tiny components, but you can quickly identify the simplest ones - the capacitors, resistors, and diodes. You discover that the light in the "caps lock" key operates as a diode, and by providing a voltage to it yourself, slowly increasing, establish that it took about 0.7v to illuminate.
You discover that the coin slot was not a coin slot, but rather probably for inserting some complex plug, as were all the other indents around the side. One was clearly for an auxiliary power source, with thick tracks leading from it.
For the devices you do not understand, you measure the resistance and capacitance, and then plot the V-I curves between each of them. In doing so, you intuit the behavior of the standalone transistors, the power regulator, the clock crystal.
Thousands of interested minds join you in your quest to reverse engineer the "seascape device". The effort makes the decoding of the enigma machine look trivial. Entire warehouses quickly fill with written observations. Your understanding of electricity proceeds in leaps and bounds. The science and engineering of electronics becomes a thing, and solid-state devices are developed.
Between you, you work out that the board has multiple layers; that clock signals are used to tell the little black boxes to process their inputs; that the boxes have inputs and outputs, and those are made of high voltages and low ones.
The other stuff, though... it leaves you baffled. The best you can come up with, for these strange black boxes, is that some of the pins that come out of them are almost certainly for providing power.
X-rays and perhaps destructive microscopic examination confirm that the black boxes are protective shells around impossibly-fine wires which connect to small fragments of crystal etched with even-more-impossibly-fine details.
You know that SOME sequence of inputs - high voltages and low voltages - to the various chips, gives some sequence of outputs. It's not always deterministic, but sometimes it is.
Assuming you found an entire warehouse of these devices, what more can you find out, even by destroying them? You can map out SOME of the commands of the CPU, once you realize it's not a heating element because there are too many lines going towards it, and figure out it's the heart of the thing. You can identify that it's reading memory, or sending commands to the hard drive controller area.
Ultimately, though, your tools and your analytical machines get better and better, and you manage to crack it, with scanning electron microscopes and such, to decypher every logic gate and transistor, and describe the behavior of the thing completely.
And you look at each other and say "in creating systems which could analyze this one, we've been forced to develop far better systems ourselves. This is no longer magical or even impressive, it's just a laptop. *An outdated one.*"
[Answer]
# No, it's a dead loss
*A magical society on discovering a computer will most likely spend their time trying to work out the correct sequence of words to make it go, as they would with a magical artifact, and not realise that it needs power.*
### Unless magic
The only way they're going to understand this machine is if their magic allows identify and repair. The chips are all black boxes, the other components are other coloured boxes and that's even if they understand that it's a complex object in a protective case not just a thing whole and complete.\*
Magic usually works by command words not manual switches. Are they going to understand the concept of a power switch? Even if they have electricity available, will they understand the mystic runes "230V 50Hz AC"? Without such understanding they won't even get it to power up.
Do they understand the concept of the device in question? This is critical to them being able to identify it. They have to have something to compare it to, whether magic mirrors or otherwise, the concept of having something that does at least part of what a computer does must exist.
\* Which is pretty hard to tell with the machine I'm using to write this
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This question can be boiled down to: could a nineteenth century technology level society, with or without magic, understand how a lump of electronic machinery works?
The simple answer is no. They lack any equivalent machines to recognize it is a computer. Even if their society possessed Babbage computing engines, as those were mechanical and not electronic, there is no way that the appearance of the computer would tell them its function.
They lack the microscopy to determine the structure of solid state integrated circuitry. They might recognize the wires and wiring in the device, so it is possible they could realize it was an electrical device. This does depend on whether they use electricity and conduct it via wires.
The main trouble is a non-functioning computer (circa 2017) will look to people in nineteenth century level society that it could be a very sophisticated work of art.
Unless the magicians in this world possess a form of magical divination, and as suggested by @Separatrix in his answer, which enables them to plumb its purpose and function. However, their divination would have to extend an understanding of the electricity supply needed to run and power the computer. Of course, if their powers of divination were that good, then reverse engineering computers would be as easy as pie.
Then in all likelihood, they create computers powered by their aether. This would save on building power stations and all the other industries attend on the manufacture of the advanced electronics necessary to make computers. This is the other unspoken problem with reverse engineering a piece of technology nearly a century ahead in terms of technical development. It isn't simply a matter of reverse engineering one type of device, it is also a matter of reverse engineering all the industries, services, trades and professions to make all the parts and components, materials and services to make it work. This means building an entire sector of the economy that doesn't exist in their world.
In summary, the simple answer is no, but so is the complex answer where the magicians have the powers of divination to reveal its actual purpose and function. This is not simple reverse engineering, it then becomes completely rebuilding their world to accommodate a new technology.
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**Unless magic allows understanding of the science used to create something, then they will be unable to understand it.**
If they do get it running (eg it's a tablet and has battery power) they will probably assume it's magic - the "technology" they know.
Can you reverse engineer a computer by looking at it? I sure can't. I think anyone would be at a loss if ordered to "duplicate that black box that produces non-magically powered pictures on the screen" even in the modern age.
Even with magic allowing them to see what is happening inside, the tiny feature size on modern computers, and the use of so physics far in advance of the time would render it useless.
I imagine if you took a current laptop back to the 1990's, the would recognise it was technology, and that it was simply a more advanced version of what they had. But there is no way they could replicate it (14nm silicon manufacturing technology? Eh, nope, in the 90's they were three orders of magnitude off). I doubt they'ed even understand it properly. Todays CPU pipelining and architectural designs are so far advanced that even after I studied them for a year, a modern CPU is still mostly a box of "magic".
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If a faster than light space ship jumped to Earth, and allowed humans to look at it's engines - but only with human tools (eg scanning electron microscopes) we would end up, after months of study with:
1. No idea how it worked
2. No manufacturing ability to duplicate it
Same situation with a latptop 100 years ago, let alone middle ages.
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However, you can bootstrap a civilisation to any given level of technology by providing sufficient education methods within only a few generations. The difference between current technology and that of 1000 years ago is simply that today's engineers were taught on material 1000 years newer. There is nothing that prevents setting up a modern-day technical university in the middle ages - if you could somehow provide it with electricity, and all the supplies (food, chemicals, metals etc.) that it requires as part of tuition.
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I've vetted and edited a lot of books. Assuming your magicians could reverse engineer a computer without having electricity as the basis of their energy infrastructure is what I call a "technology dichotomy." You'd be surprised how many stories are written involving time travel without having first (e.g.) created the wheel --- basically because time travel was simply the process the author used to justify telling the story they actually wanted to tell (but that's another issue).
Simple answer: no. No understanding of electricity. No understanding of printed circuit board manufacturing or silicon fabrication. Being an electrical engineer myself, they'd not even realize that printed circuit boards can have many (sometimes a **lot**) of layers. Chips are even worse. Transistors aren't discrete items on a silicon chip, they're often mushed together depending on the doping configuration to improve manufacturing or operational efficiency. And that's assuming you had a microscope capable of even seeing the doping surface, much less the cross-section. (And I haven't even started talking about magnetic hard drives, operating systems, BIOS, or what an "icon" is...).
Our magicians would be at a complete loss, not having even a simple multimeter to start testing things. It would be no different than asking someone completely trained in all the latest steam technology to work it all out in a room lit by natural gas. They couldn't.
**EDIT:** After reading and thinking more about this, let me explain that the body of knowledge needed to reverse engineer a modern computer is ***MASSIVE.*** I've designed chips that went into space, and yet I couldn't begin to reverse engineer even the smallest fraction of what would be needed. Hyper-threaded multi-core CPUs? Encryption and compression technologies? Wireless mice? *Electromagnetics!* Think about Windows 10 and trying to figure out how it worked with no computer background **at all.** It's actually humbling to realize just how much knowledge has been accrued so we can play MMORPGs.
If today's modern technology were likened to the top of a mountain and nobody existed who understood those lofty peaks, literally the entire mountain would need to be understood to climb it again (and the cost, quadrillions of dollars world-wide over the last 75 years...). The task is so large that there is no fundamental difference between reverse engineering the computer and re-discovery of all that knowledge. It would take that long.
An an interesting Logan's-Run-esque question is, what would happen if our Earth were suddenly devoid of the people who understood those things? Let's say just three generations of them? Could our technology-dependent society survive the time required to re-aquire all that knowledge? Probably not.
This is fun. Cheers!
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The point at which this becomes a nonstarter is that the computer isn't an a usable state, the only reason we understand as many archaeological finds as we do is that we can draw parallels from those finds to objects we still use. They may still see some useful advances in material science from dismantling individual components and get some interesting ideas from things like capacitors if they assume this is an advanced but broken Aether based device, since a number of modern electronic components are actually kind of intuitive in design when seen in detail, for my money anyway.
A working computer may allow them to glen some information as to function from which they may be able to extrapolate something useful about the *how* side of things but dead electronics are remarkably uninformative.
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While I'm agreeing with the other answers, I think Ihave a nice metaphor do help understand why they couldn't figure it out.
You get a map of a city, complete with street names.
What can you tell about the city, you could make educated guesses about population density, but really you can't infer that much about the city.
Now imagine you've got a 10,000 foot view of the same city starting 6am on an average Monday morning, you get to see how the population flows, you can identify residential areas, industrial areas, business areas. You see kids flocking to schools, then back again. Study the city for weeks and you'll identify markets, recreational spaces, places of worship, transit hubs etc.
Examining a piece of dead tech tells you very little about it, studying a piece of running tech tells you much much more about it.
That said, if you start poking around a running motherboard to see how it works, you'll quickly and irrevocably break it.
As has been mentioned, early 19th century folks would find reverse engineering integrated circuits an almost impossible task, and they were familiar with basic electrical circuits (such as light switches). Your fictional magic users wouldn't have a hope (unless they can *magically* divine it's components and their operation at microscopic levels.
Computers are horrendously complicated machines, they're so ubiquitous we often forget that.
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What if some of the concepts were present already?
Charles Babbage is credited with inventing the first computer long before the technology existed to make an electronic computer. He died in 1871 still working on his general purpose computing engine, but his work popularized the ideas of computing and formed the foundation of knowledge necessary to understand (and ultimately create) electronic computers. It's quite possible that similar thinking would have been going on in the magical world as well.
Magicians would clearly need to understand energy flow. The next step towards a computer is thinking of energy as holding state and representing information and then the idea of combining different flows logically to create and store desired information states. These are concepts you could easily imagine being present in a magical universe if they were important for advanced magic, or were being worked on in theoretical circles. The third leap of insight and the one that takes us to the idea of a magical computer is: what if I could chain a bunch of these systems together and do advanced calculations, store arbitrary information etc.
If your goal is a plausible way to import computation to your magical world, pick some of these concepts and add them to your world.
It would still be hard to reverse engineer a computer though.
One of the barriers would be how advanced and compact it is. Reverse engineering a simple logic circuit like this adder would be trivial.[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oukv2.jpg)
Pump some magical energy in one end and watch the effects, but the adder(s) in your computer have been shrunk to the size of a human hair and is sandwiched in layers of silicon. It's hard to conceptualize things at that scale.
It would be far easier to reverse-engineer something out of a computer history museum, a child's toy (walking, talking robot?) or something designed to teach the fundamentals of computing. A college notebook containing an undergraduate's computer architecture homework would be sufficient to kickstart a computing revolution in a magical world. A simple computer like a Raspberry Pi or an arduino might do (It certainly would if it also included the book).
[Answer]
I'll touch specifically on the electronics side of things, as many of the answers focused on the running and using the software itself.
Regarding the electronics that make it work, reverse engineering them would be a nearly impossible task. The only reason we can even understand a modern processor design is because we have the previous version of it to design on. We use software to understand and model the processor designs and make sense of the billions and billions of transistors that make up the circuit.
Trying to reverse engineer that with our currently technology is a monumental task. Trying to do it without would be essentially impossible.
Something like a 1980s machine, where the design is far simpler and a single person could comprehend the entire system would be a more achievable goal, though many of the issues mentioned above would still exist.
] |
[Question]
[
Exactly what it says on the tin: how can a repressive government quickly but non-permanently disable human vocal cords in a way that allows only that government to restore them?
Said government uses vocal cord disabling, among other things, as a terror tactic: speak out, and they'll *literally* remove your free speech. How would this work? For instance:
* Is there some kind of substance that can be applied to vocal cords in order to stop them from functioning?
* Do vocal cords not work if some kind of protein is missing?
* Can some kind of substance be injected into the neck to paralyze the larynx?
* Can an anesthetic be injected followed by the vocal cords being manually severed?.
* Can something be inserted into the trachea to wedge the vocal cords open while still enabling breathing?
Preferably, whatever this is can be done with in minutes, is fully reversible, is only fully reversible by the government, poses no ill effects to the victim's health beyond removing their ability to speak, and is painless, but I'm willing to accept answers that don't meet those criteria if any of them are impossible or improbable. I'm also willing to go as far as defining "transplanting a larynx to fit the old one" in terms of "reversible".
Presume that the setting's tech level/tech availability is capable of doing things like transplanting larynxes on a widespread scape - I know it's been done in real life on occasion, but IIRC, it's only been twice.
Also, I don't want answers related to cutting tongues out; the authoritarian, repressive government would rather that their victims remain unblemished in that regard.
[Answer]
## [How About Nooo!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HJxya0CWco)
This is no way whatsoever a plausible or even a possible method of state sanctioned terror --- I mean! --- correctional reeducation.
[Vocal cord paralysis](https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/vocal-fold-paralysis) is a life threatening emergency. If the state paralyses them, it would be as good a death sentence. They play a part not just in speech but also in breathing and swallowing. That said, there are, of course, ways of paralysing the vocal cords, e.g. in preparation for anesthesia, but we don't want the patient to remain paralysed!
Your only really viable alternative will be to intubate your victim or fit your victim with a tracheostomy tube.
As you can see, an endotracheal tube is inserted through the mouth and the inflatable balloon prevents the tube from being (too easily) removed. Obviously, a person can't talk if no air can pass the vibrating vocal cords. This procedure should take about 15 to 30 seconds. A little anesthetic cocktail before hand will render the victim unconscious and unable to resist. A locking device can be placed around the head to prevent the device from being removed.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7MxAz.png)
A more humane option is to perform a tracheostomy and place a properly sized trache tube. This is placed below the vocal cords, so the victim can not speak. Air flow is diverted from the lungs and out through the throat. Notice in the picture, just like with the ET tube, this punishment will be effected by using a cuffed trache tube, which will prevent speech. Again a locking strap can be placed around the neck to prevent removal.
This procedure takes a little longer, generally not more than 20 minutes to half an hour, and is completely reversible.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ONCdC.png)
[Answer]
**Shock Collars**
Simplest method is just a shock collar around the neck. Easy to do and undo by the untrained.
Also doubles as a bugging device and GPS locator for true big brother action.
Surgery gets complicated. Collars are a simple fix which can be mass produced.
[Answer]
If you really want to suppress (anti-government) speech, then you can simply use a [throat mike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throat_microphone) to reliably detect the subject speaking, and then suppress it by emitting other sounds - white noise, a (loud) message saying this person has his/her/their speech suppressed according to the law nr...; or play some official propaganda [1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throat_microphone). All you need is some simple electronics, sound playing system, an amplifier and a speaker, all easily fits into a collar.
If you are afraid the subject would remove the mike and the device, there are already [proven, well established ways](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_tagging) how to enforce wearing something (though we usually do not put them around the neck)...
[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throat_microphone) And moving slightly from the 1970s technology to the 2020s, pair it with a speech recognizing technology and some keyword lists (or a full featured [topic detection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_model)) and suppress only the speech about specified topics. Or perhaps only whitelist permitted topics (such as shopping).
[Answer]
# Ballast.
Vocal cords need to vibrate in a specific range of frequencies to allow speech. Several illnesses cause the vocal cords to change their mechanics and cause "voice loss": by being covered in mucus, by being more or less taut, by being swollen -- or by having nodules on them. These latter are usually of a cancerous nature, but they achieve their voice-loss effect by just *being there and weighing enough*, which isn't difficult to duplicate.
A device can then be designed that can securely attach to the vocal cords (using needles for example) and contain an anti-tamper mechanism, not unlike clothing anti-theft tags. By itself, or by incorporating, say, a minuscule depleted uranium pellet, the device will have enough mass that the vocal cords will be unable to produce sound.
This is **not** completely harmless: apart from the risk of infection and post-removal scarring, the longer the vocal cords stay inert, the more likely the need for vocal re-training and rehabilitation. Irreversible voice loss is conceivable, permanent voice change a definite possibility.
[Answer]
Have a neck-ring with directional speakers in it.
There's a few approaches here
Repeating what [the victim says apparently](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a37386388/navy-invented-a-device-to-prevent-people-from-talking/) will stop them from speaking, failing which loud disruptive noises, or rickrolling the victim at volume
Alternatively, produce sound waves that will destructively interfere with what the victim says - like how noise cancelling works
Both approaches are reversible, fast to do and relatively humane
[Answer]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieffenbachia>
"Its English names, dumb cane and mother-in-law's tongue (also used for Sansevieria species) refer to the poisoning effect of raphides, which can cause temporary inability to speak."
They used to punish slaves by forcing them to chew Dieffenbachia leaves.
[Answer]
Yes, for your original version(vocal cords) and your edited one(speech)
The main driver in both cases is the brain. So if you inject a sufficient amount of (preferably diluted) C2H5OH or someone takes it per oral in sufficient quantities - it can be observed that speech can become an issue.
>
> Broca's area, located in the left hemisphere, is associated with speech production and articulation. Our ability to articulate ideas, as well as use words accurately in spoken and written language, has been attributed to this crucial area.
>
>
>
From here <https://memory.ucsf.edu/symptoms/speech-language> - has additional information. Problems with speech can be induced by all kinds of factors, temporarily and permanently. Take look at medical cases.
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Have you considered the brain? Broca's area is located in the inferior frontal gyrus and regulates breathing patterns while speaking and vocalizations required for speech. There's been recent research into turning off areas of the brain.
"The research, led by David Amaral, distinguished professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and spearheaded by graduate student David Grayson, targeted the amygdala — a small, almond-shaped region deep within brain. The amygdala is known to be important for emotions, especially fear.
Using a technology called “designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs,” or DREADDs, the team genetically modified the neurons of the amygdala to produce molecular on-off switches, or receptors, that are triggered by a drug administered to the animal. When the drug is injected, the receptors shut down activity in the amygdala — effectively turning off this brain region."
You then need to control access to the drug.
[Answer]
## [Play it like the US Navy](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a37386388/navy-invented-a-device-to-prevent-people-from-talking/)
The US Navy deposed a [patent](https://patents.justia.com/patent/20210195306) for a device that does exactly what you're asking, by replaying the song emitted by the speaker twice, once almost simultaneously and once a bit later.
From the patent filing:
>
> According to an illustrative embodiment of the present disclosure, a
> target’s speech is directed back to them twice, once immediately and
> once after a short delay. This delay creates delayed auditory feedback
> (DAF), which alters the speaker’s normal perception of their own
> voice. In normal speech, a speaker hears their own words with a slight
> delay, and the body is accustomed to this feedback. By introducing
> another audio feedback source with a sufficiently long delay, the
> speaker's concentration is disrupted and it becomes difficult to
> continue speaking.
>
>
>
] |
[Question]
[
The saying goes "a wolf in sheep's clothing", which is a biblical idiom to refer to someone pretending to be harmless. This got me thinking about if the reverse could also be true. So I came up with a fantasy creature, which is a sheep in wolf's clothing in a very literal sense.
The wolf sheep or "Weep" as I like to call it is identical to its real life counterpart, except for the layer of wool around its body which can take the form of a wolf. The Weeps mimicry is so detailed that it can impersonate a wolf to perfection, even going as far as to imitate the howling and other behavior. A shepherd that didn't know of the creature beforehand wouldn't be able to tell it apart from a real wolf or from an ordinary sheep.
What I can't wrap my head around is why this creature would need to mimic its own predator?
[Answer]
I think the more important question is: **"Would any plausible reason outweigh the benefits?"**
The weep's anti-predation tactic comes with a massive helping of selective unfitness that you don't see in real world examples of gilbertian mimicry. If they themselves cannot tell the difference between a wolf and a weep 95% of the time, then that 5% they do figure it out is going to be when they get really close and personal... like when trying to mate. If a wolf actually eats weeps, then mating becomes a game of russian roulette for the weeps. In general, risking death in mating rituals is only selectively fit when the risk can guarantee procreation regardless of survival (as you see in many spider species).
The best solution to this would be that wolves are predators, but they do not eat weeps. Much like the batesian mimicry that happens between venomous and nonvenomous snakes, the weep picks an animal that does not want to eat it but is dangerous to its predators. This way other animals who absolutely have no reason to get close to a wolf will rarely get close enough to the weep to tell the difference, but weeps are not risking their lives getting close enough to wolves to see if they are viable mates.
To explain this, I would say that the weeps started off with an evolutionary trait that made them very nasty tasting or toxic to wolves, but not similar predators. The wolves stopped eating weeps and focused on other game animals in the area. However, another predator like jaguars or something don't mind the taste and kept on eating them. The weeps begin flocking near wolf packs for safety because the jaguars prefer to avoid confrontation with wolves, but the weeps would still get picked off if they wondered too far from the wolf pack. Over time the weeps begin to look and act more like the wolves making Jagours more and more nervous about hunting them. Eventually, the weeps look enough like wolves that they no longer need to stay near wolf packs for predators to avoid them based on looks alone.
[Answer]
This is known as "Batesian mimicry"; a harmless mimic species adapts the appearance of a "model" species that other animals including predators of the first species don't want to mess with. A rare specialization of this is Gilbertian mimicry, where a species adopts an appearance specifically related to its own predator to discourage predation.
Most Batesian examples are mimics of aposematism (warning coloration); a harmless species adapts the bright coloration that their model has developed to discourage attacks, without also adapting the feature that the model species is warning about. Predators learn that the model species stings painfully, makes them sick or just tastes really bad, and so they avoid not only the model species, but the mimic as well, not knowing (or at least not willing to take the risk) that the mimic species really is harmless (and tasty).
There are a few species that don't mimic warning coloration, but instead mimic a more "typical" coloration of a predatory species. The "brainfever bird", a species of cuckoo in India so named for its distinctive call, has adapted an adult appearance very similar to a species of goshawk called the shikra. You don't typically mess with a bird of prey, even if you're a larger bird, so the brainfever bird goes largely unaccosted by all but the largest birds of prey in the subcontinent. Similarly, the hognose snakes, especially the North American *Heterodon* genus, have adapted both an appearance and behavior similar to various species of rattlesnake, with the similar goal of avoiding trouble from various snake-eating predators that would really rather not have to deal with a rattlesnake bite today.
Gilbertian mimicry is rare, and involves a species specifically adapting a feature of a predatory species that discourages predation. The Wikipedia example is a species of passion flower that a species of butterfly has come to specialize in eating in their larval stage. To discourage that, the flower evolved the appearance of the butterfly's eggs already laid on the plant, discouraging butterflies from laying their own eggs for fear their young will get outcompeted by the more mature eggs.
Batesian and in fact most types of defensive mimicry work best when the mimic species is heavily outnumbered by the model species; it's less likely a predator will learn to see animals with that appearance as food, if most of the examples the predator is likely to encounter will ruin the predator's day. If the mimic outnumbers the model, the predator's more likely to happen on the mimic species the first few times, figure out they are tasty, and at least risk approaching any similar animal, learning to differentiate by other behaviors whether what they are about to eat is the mimic or model.
That is going to be the biggest problem with the widespread adoption of mimicry by sheep species as we know them. Sheep are very numerous, having adapted their own survival strategy via a strong herd mentality and mass reproduction, out-breeding predation to maintain their numbers. This is very typical prey species evolution; the predators can eat as many individuals as they can catch, the prey will still endure as a species by making more babies than the predators can eat. While Gilbertian mimicry predicts a mimic tactic in a more numerous species, its most common examples are in plant/insect interactions; animals can very rarely successfully pass for their own predator (some fish school in large groups to look like a bigger fish; that's about the only example I'm aware of and some predators play it to their advantage). The upshot is that sheep that look like wolves are going to heavily outnumber actual wolves, and with the sheep herding instincts versus the pack's looser hunting skirmish line, it's pretty easy even at animal intelligence levels for the wolf to recognize their prey animal.
The more successful strategy, at least for domestic sheep, has been for humans to breed domestic dogs to look like sheep. These sheepdog breeds, including the Great Pyrenees, Komondore, Kuvasz and others, are bred for large size, light-colored long coat, a friendly demeanor that differentiates them from more authoritative herding dogs, and good protective instincts. This allows these sheepdogs to blend into the herd until a threat like a wolf nears, at which time the domestic dogs put themselves between the wolves and the herd, at least stymieing the wolves' efforts long enough for the shepherd to close distance with their own weapons. This form of human-engineered mimicry doesn't have a name as such, as it's not the result of a true evolutionary pressure but of intentional selective breeding (and no wild animal is known to have evolved as a mimic of a model for the *model*'s advantage; some predatory mimicry involves mimicking a model specifically to lure that model's predator as prey, but the model species rarely sees any practical benefit).
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For subverting mating competitions.
Imagine that the males are all over here, butting heads or displaying their tail feathers, or whatever, trying to attract the admiring females.
Right now, I'm imagining something like a cross between a peacock and a mountain goat.
Now here comes Fred. Fred does not quite have as good horns, nor as attractive tail feathers. But what he does have is a really convincing ability to mimic a hyper-wolf. So he "pulls" this face at exactly the right moment, possibly with a little bit of the old "Step and growl." And all the competing males suddenly decide they left the creek running back home, and take off.
Leaving Fred unopposed on the mating competition field. "Hello ladies!" And Fred therefore leaves a lot of children who inherit his ability.
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## They don't mix but mimic a pack
The main challenge for your Weep is that wolves are social animals and so much more attentive to the identity and behavior of other wolves around them than solitary predators would be. Roaming undetected in a pack of wolves would be impossible as even real wolves unknown to the pack are challenged on sight, fought and possibly killed.
What they might instead do is mimic an entire pack with their herd, marking their territory with fake wolf-smell and roaming around, chasing other potential prey in mock hunts.
This way they clear the area of other herbivores, increasing their own food supply. Also, Weep outbreed wolves, so a fake pack is typically larger than real packs, discouraging all but the most desperate real wolf packs from confrontation.
Of course, if the real wolves do engage in a confrontation, the game is up and the Weep will lose a fair number from their "pack" before the rest escape and go looking for new territory.
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Though I can't figure out how learned scientists could ever proved such a thing, it is believed that butterfly wings have evolved to [look like faces as an attempt to scare potential predators](https://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/butterfly-wings.php).
Your weep is just a more extreme expression of this survival technique. Looking like a wolf might not scare away other wolves, but it would definitely discourage all the lesser predators which might otherwise attack a defenseless sheep.
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Ultimately, this kind of mimicry is a survival strategy. The sheep that can mimic a wolf gets to make more baby sheep, on average, than her fellow sheep who have already been eaten by wolves.
What you're describing is a kind of mimicry, similar to [Batesian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batesian_mimicry), which is where a prey animal mimics some kind of noxious animal that the predator avoids. Observing the same signal in the mimic prey, the predator will avoid. And also [Vavilovian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry), which is where one species comes to look or behave like another due to selection pressure.
Your sheep experienced some mutations in wool colour and behaviour that allowed them to pass more or less unnoticed by wolves. Your shepherds consciously or unconsciously selected for this mutation to the point where the modern sheep howl and look something like wolves.
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One example of this from the real world: [moths that mimick jumping spiders](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0000045), so that jumping spiders start protecting their territory rather than eating them.
This is a form of [Batesian Mimicry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batesian_mimicry)
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Perhaps there are very few large animal species around, the environment is fairly open and the prey animals are solitary. It might then be possible for the prey animal to mimic its predator.
If all the animals were solitary the weep would simply avoid any other animal it saw in the distance, weep or wolf whereas the wolf equivalent would find it was often chasing another wolf. There could even be an interesting behavioural game of chicken. If the wolf learnt only to chase those animals that ran away, the weep might evolve to initially start chasing the wolf in order to prove that it was also a wolf and make the real wolf give up and so on.
That said the situation is fairly unlikely as there are probably too may clues that would give the game away other than camouflage such as smell and even more difficult to mimic grass chewing teeth and eating vast quantities of grass all day.
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Lots of good answers here but I don't see the idea that occurs to me why a sheep would take on the appearance of its predator like a wolf. Simply put it had less to do with the predator itself, and more to do with other sheep running from wolves.
All of a sudden this alternative species of sheep is able to take whatever food and territory it wants from its main rival/competition, all at the cost of some appearance altered and threat displays.
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At sea lifeboats are a pretty straightforward affair, a small seaworthy boat that one uses to get away from a doomed vessel. In space the same basic principles apply although the requirements are far more strenuous. In between, in the air, things are conceptually a bit more difficult, I think. In space gravity is generally not trying to kill you and while at sea it is water goes some way to mitigating the effect admittedly while introducing problems of its own.
The question I want to pose is this: if the mode of lift, be it magic or otherwise, being used by an airship is too big, too complex, or too expensive to be used for the ship's life-rafts and the terrain being traversed is too rough and inhospitable for individual parachutes, (specifically I'm thinking either dense forest like [this](https://image.freepik.com/free-photo/foggy-pine-forest_426-19323742.jpg) or "bladed" [Karst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst) like [this](http://halftheclothes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/sabang-to-el-nido-080.jpg)) how can you get people safely from an airship in flight to the ground in an emergency?
The Forest and Karst environments are just the more extreme examples of places you don't want to parachute into, the more different landings a solution can make the better. For the purposes of scale etc... use the [Hindenburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_129_Hindenburg#Specifications) as your guide. Lifeboats need to be small and light enough that a reasonable number can be on board without compromising flight capability. Lifeboats cannot have powered flight or be lighter-than-air but anything else you can think of goes.
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> **Obviously, passengers need to Survive the landing. Some ability to choose a landing point will help but is not *required*.**
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Whoever edited this before thank you but no, you added complexity and confusion to a difficult problem.
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The safest place is still aboard your airship.
Unlike seagoing vessels, airships do not traverse a medium that is potentially deadly for humans. When a ship sinks, people need to still be able to float in water. Water is cold, wet and obstructs your respiratory passages if you breath it in. To stay safe in water you need to either swim or be on a floating surface. Even if you had unlimited air-supply, getting deeper in water means higher pressure and will eventually kill you. None of these things apply to air. The only danger of air is being high-up, which means we need a way to get down more or less safely.
An airship that *breaks* will still come down - And down is where you want to go. The only danger is the airship going down too fast, and even that can be mitigated without getting out of the airship.
In order to keep people alive, have a padded room either central to the superstructure or on top of it (depending on your ability to keep the ship level in case of sudden descent). For additional safety, pack people tight and layer with padded materials. People might get badly bruised - but that's it.
If you feel this is not secure enough you could additionally eject this chamber on impact, getting it away from the crash-site.
*The case of hydrogen:* Should the airship be using a highly volatile/combustible means of lift, such as hydrogen, your best bet is to insulate the chamber with asbestos or any other effective fire-retardant available. You could even shield it with water tanks used for ballast or drinking water to additionally keep the heat at bay. But in any case, a ship designed to fly with such a high fire-hazard would be designed around it, maybe trading cargo-capacity for additional means of fire-proofing, or adding mechanisms to 'shear-off' a burning section.
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This answer is designed around the assumption of airships being mostly Hindenburg-y and any alternative mode of lift is mostly along the line of providing a higher percentage of lift over the helium employed in the planning of the Hindenburg.
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Gliders.
It requires either a (better than current) ai or a competent pilot to land on an unprepared field, but having more horizontal freedom can be helpful in less than ideal locations like you mention.
They are also generally heavier than parachutes, so on an airship you'd balance how much you want everyone to live with how much extra cargo you could carry.
But the thing about airships is you might not save that many people by preparing to disembark in the air during an emergency. In the Hindenburg disaster people walked (ran) away when it got close to the ground. It burned rather than exploded so the lift was continually reduced making the crash much more survivable than if say the wings fell off a plane at similar height. Most people who died burned with nowhere to run, so even if they had viable escape craft somewhere it wouldn't have helped.
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A large parachute or set of parachutes with a survival capsule attached is probably a reasonable good bet in most circumstances. Some rudimentary parachute guidance cables could be provided to help an on board crew member avoid some obstacles such as a sideways approach to a vertical cliff edge. If couches and basic shock absorbers were provided under each couch a substantial fall would still be survivable in many cases.
**Sea landings** would be OK If the capsule was watertight.
**The black forest** scenario should be fine as the parachutes would tangle in the trees and the capsule would protect the occupants from hitting the branches.
**The karst landscape** would be challenging but would also probably be survivable in many cases (but not all) as the parachute would snag it the rocks / vegetation or they would land in a gully or the crewmember could avoid the worst rock faces. Even if the parachute tore it would probably provide considerable resistance in the process and the shock absorption system would help a lot with small drops especially into vegetation.
**Landing in Polar Regions or arid deserts** would also be survivable as they would have some protection from the elements. An explosive release of the parachute cables would be useful in some cases such as these to prevent being blown around after landing.
I assume that rescue craft would be sent promptly and a distress beacon/flares would be carried.
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The maker's of the movie, Mission to Mars, came up with [a creative solution](https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=yITdVWM9&id=D03E4F56A706C61079351F07E7FF2558C1FE0F27&thid=OIP.yITdVWM97yLmz3deWqb8iwEsB9&q=mars%20lander%20from%20movie%20red%20planet&simid=608001056875938195&selectedIndex=0&ajaxhist=0), but even they didn't claim that it would work very well. To get down to the surface of Mars (which is somewhat comparable to your airborne lifeboat scenario) they built a rugged capsule and then surrounded it with tough airbags to cushion its fall. Unfortunately, in the movie, the airbags did not survive the initial impact and that impact happened to be on the top of a mountain. When the capsule, with its slightly flattened airbags, subsequently rolled of the edge of that mountain top, then second plummet overwhelmed the capsule's design which lead to the death of one of the crew.
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Have each ‘Lifeboat’ essentially be a shallow metal cone with straps and multiple parachutes around the edge. In an emergency multiple people strap in, the disk drops (with small parachutes to maintain alignment) away from the ship then the main chutes deploy. With any luck the lifeboat will be moving slowly enough by the time it hits your terrain that it will deflect the worst of the impacts, leaving your airmen *mostly* intact.
Some (but not much) control can be exerted by manipulating the chutes, but the main point of this design is to shield your airmen from dangerous terrain (a tree branch through the spine often offends) and then provide further options. If snarled in trees, it’s easier to climb around inside and could have stowed rope ladders for safe egress, if a water landing then floats can be deployed, and the lifeboat can have space for potentially lifesaving supplies.
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I will second the suggestion of gliders proposed by @not store bought dirt, with some additional details and reasoning.
Gliders that only need to work for a short time in an emergency can be lighter and more basic than a modern sport or leisure glider, won't need hardware for towing, and won't necessarily even require landing gear (more on that later). Many leisure gliders are single or two-seater configurations, but there is no reason you couldn't make one that could seat a dozen or more at a time, since it only has to carry the passengers away from the doomed airship for a (reasonably) short distance.
Storage space is a problem on an airship, and gliders obviously need large wings to work effectively, so you would probably need some way of folding or otherwise stowing the wings in a collapsed state and deploying them after launch, but if your civilization is advanced enough (technically or magically) to make airships, this shouldn't be too much trouble.
The flight time/range is going to depend on the number of passengers and amount of cargo the glider needs to carry, the properties of the atmosphere, how high up the craft is when launched, how large you make the wings, and whether the pilot (an AI, passenger, or sophisticated enchantment) can harness thermals and wind to recover energy.
Lastly, landing is the bugaboo. As mentioned by @not store bought dirt, landing a glider conventionally on an unprepared surface is dangerous and will likely destroy the craft. But it's important to remember that we're talking about one-use emergency vehicles here -who cares if the glider gets smashed up as long as the passengers survive? Equipping the glider with a small parachute in the rear which can be deployed just prior to landing to kill speed and soften impact wouldn't add much weight or complexity but would drastically improve survivability. [Such things already exist](https://cirrusaircraft.com/innovation/airframe-parachute/) in some modern private planes. A long, stiff but hollow nose would provide a crumple zone to absorb the remaining force of impact. It probably wouldn't be pleasant, but it would be survivable.
One last note. Your airship is going down. If you're still aboard when it crashes, you will most likely be killed -either by the impact, being crushed by the airship structure as it collapses, burning, etc. No emergency escape system will work perfectly in all scenarios, but something is better than nothing!
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Use one of [These two layer inflatable Hamster Balls](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0181XUVG0) plus a parachute.
Your airship lifeboats need to address 2 problems. Deceleration and rough terrain. A Parachute will take care of the deceleration part to some extent, but your people trying to get safely away may not know how to land and can be severely injured even on good terrain. That is where an inflatable hamster ball comes in.
It doesn't exactly have to be like the one I linked to, but the concept is the same. The ball can be inflated by a relatively small tank of compressed air. The person jumps into the already inflated ball and is pushed out of the airship. The parachute deploys. The parachute slows the whole thing down to a point where the impact of the ball on the ground is not too harsh and is spread out over a substantial surface area. The parachute also maintains the alignment of the object in the air.
On bad terrain, the tough materials of the outer ball will protect the people inside even on a very bad landing, falling through branches, hitting sharp rocks and so on. Even if the outer ball bursts a large amount of the impact should be absorbed to the extent that the person inside will only suffer from minor injuries.
In addition, these kinds of balls will serve as flotation devices. They can be made out of high visibility materials to aid search and rescue efforts. You could reinforce the outer sphere with lightweight ribbing material. It would increase the overall strength of the structure without sacrificing too much in the way of space on the airship. You could further use the material and ribbing for a shelter on the ground.
It isn't absolutely perfect, and would only hold a few people per unit, but it's better than nothing.
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**Since magic is in this system:**
How about a magical potion/orb/stone that when smashed into the ground instantly form a jelly like substance around the user (dispersing the deceleration across the whole body) creating a cushion that then dissipates in 10-30(breath deep) secs.
Kind of like a magical ODST concept, which it could also be used for.
**But practically**
no real world parallel is going to be fool proof in a forest. Parachuting is currently the best real world method here but as you mentioned, it's not without risk.
**Edit out the magic**
Ok so a capsule with a long nose, when the nose impacts the ground, a compound lining the nose and walls of the capsule is provided an electric shock causing it to rapidly react with the air enveloping the passenger in a foam that cushions their descent. 1 sec after reaction, a catalyst is released above the passenger as part of the top compartment that then dissolves the foam.
This method has been theorized many times before. The reason it hasn't YET come to fruition is the chemistry and engineering is incredibly complicated when the cheap and easy solution of a parachute works just fine.
**-add more science-**
instead of a nose, a large pad (increase surface area to increase drag to slow descent). on the down ward face of the pad have a distance measuring sensor(probably an array of lasers) and a turret that will shoot a canister of the compound at the ground when a target distance has been reach, of course the capsule still dissolves into more foam.
perhaps some fins or a parachute to stabilize the capsule (keeping going straight downward and not flipping).
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The decent can be controlled horizontally by using either a ram-air parachute or some type of inflatable air-foil wing. This would allow the escapees to choose the safest landing place. It takes some skill to operate so it would be best if they had some type of computer control to make them easier for untrained passengers to point-and-shoot their target.
Even with horizontal control, it is likely that there won't be an ideal landing place within range. The escape pod would need some sort of landing protection such as an [airbag system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbag#Spacecraft_airbag_landing_systems) or even just a solid floor.
Larger pods are probably better that smaller ones because they are more weight-efficient and they give you a lift raft or shelter after you land. You can save weight by reusing some of the structural elements. What is a passenger seating area in normal operation can break off to be an escape pod in an emergency (eg [this concept](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVatc9or740)).
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Simplest most basic glider would be a Rogallo Wing. In the early 1960's that was going to be the system used for capsules, esp. the Gemini. In it's most basic form it is simply three poles joined at one end, a crossbar & fabric. NASA used inflatable rods, which meant the entire thing could collapse into a smallish parachute like package for storage in an external compartment of a space capsule.
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First, is your airship going straight down, at free falling speeds?
If it is free falling we have to solve that problem first.
1. Deploy a parachute for the plane (as someone else suggested)
2. Fill one or more helium/hydrogen balloons
3. Both
You also need to deploy parachute(s) behind you to slow your vertical speed.
Hopefully this has slowed your decent to a gentle rate.
At this point you either need control of the rudder so you can point the plane at a reasonable safe, or safer than the other options available to you.
Now I don't know how much steel cable weights, but you could probably have several 1000ft or greater spools on the airship.
Maybe something like this or a bit thicker.
<http://www.fehr.com/all-steel-cable/5-16-x-5000-ft-7x19-galvanized-aircraft-cable-2g9312-05000>
The cable above is 5000ft and claims its weight is only 173lbs/mft and the minimum breaking weight is 9,800lbs.
Each passenger would put on a vest similar to a life preserver, but would have a mechanical breaking device that would attach to the cable so they could control their decent rate. So attach your self to the cable and start sliding down.
The weight of 5 or more people should keep the line from bucking too much.
Another thing you can do is use the end of the steel cable to lasso an object and basically zip line down to it, much more practical with a blimp than plane.
Tying a weight onto the cable to use as an anchor, to help stop your plane the best possible location.
Your example uses a blimp as an example, for that case you could slide down the cable to the ground, and give you time to run away before the main body hits the ground. That way you would not be hit by the blimp or caught in an explosion after the blimp hits the ground.
If its an actual airplane, you may have too much forward momentum to land safety on the ground.
This would also be useful if the plane lands on a forest of tall trees. Some areas the trees are 100ft+ high, and these cables would get you safely to the ground.
If you landed on a tall cliff, they would also be great for the final decent to the actual ground.
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just saw 1930 movie "Madam Satan" last night on TCM that had parachutes in long outboard tubes along the side of the air ship. Passengers were given a harness and hooked these on to the chute rope as they jumped. Dont know if this was just a Hollywwod prop or a real thing. Good idea tho. Movie was OK.
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Parachutes are the best option. A commercial ship is required to have at least one parachute for each passenger by law, much like aircraft today are required to have at least one life-vest for each passenger.
How are they used? They can be either required to be worn throughout the flight or be spread out over the ship so they are easily accessible. Parachutes are compact, weight very little in relation to their performance. How to deploy one when exiting the airship if the person is inexperienced? Simple, altimeter or proximity sensor. This is all based on that the ship is at sufficient altitude for the parachutes to deploy.
The altimeter would be used in the sense that a person falls and when they reach a certain altitude, the parachute auto deploys. A proximity sensor would work similarly. There should be a sensor system on the ship and if the parachute is too far from any of the sensors (Translates sufficiently far outside the ship) the parachute deploys automatically.
Parachutes and be steered to land as normal. If over water, a simple inflatable life-vest can be attached to the parachute bag.
This is too simple and easy to cook up. Especially since this is WorldBuilding. Add features and mechanics to your taste.
In OP's case of terrain, the Karst will be rough to land on but much softer with a parachute than with a glider that needs relatively a lot of speed to remain airborne. A parachute when flared and more or less land vertically and thus be able to set down softer. In dense forest, I'd rather get tangled in a tree and bruise myself badly than pilot a glider and crash straight into the canopy.
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According to one on-line terminal velocity calculator, an 80 kg mass with a cross-sectional area of 81 m² (9 meters x 9 meters) and with a drag coefficient of 1 (which is what a person has, a smooth ball has 0.1 or would need ten times (10x) more area, although the relationship between area and terminal velocity isn't linear with the Coefficient of Drag) would have a terminal velocity of 8 mph.
Since I've survived several bike crashes with nothing more that some (fairly serious) abrasions at similar velocities, that's about the fastest I'd want to hit a random point on the ground.
Here's the problem with that: (9 x 9) is a huge area. We're basically talking about a parachute (opening after escape). I can see some inflatable suit which *could* protect from penetration injuries, but I can't imagine anyone willingly wearing such a awful thing for extended periods, nor can I imagine that in an emergency, anyone would have time to put something like that on.
You should consider the (blatantly obvious, to anyone over 40) idea that if something better than a parachute was feasible, we'd be using it. Seems to me kevlar body panels, and a helmet would be about optimum. The elephant in the room is that if they have time to evacuate, you have to explain (credibly) why they don't have time to crash land.
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I'm currently in a nation roleplay and some nations are now looking towards the stars to expand their reach and power. We are all using modern technology mixed in with near future technology (30 to 40 years in the future) and was wondering how feasible it would be to create some sort of defensive dome (not like an actual solid dome) around the earth that could block/destroy any rockets that try and reach for space.
I want to create the dome because we are still waiting to establish a new DM for the roleplay and one guy just went ahead and said he doesn't care, he's going to space whether we like it or not, so I'm kind of annoyed and just want see what I can do to stop him. I still want to stay within the realm of possibility however.
Outside of the realm of roleplay, I just thought it was an interesting question that could also be used for people that would want to apply this to the real world, so you can just use real nations as the basis of whether or not it's possible.
In case it is needed, my nation is not the best in anything (although I do have a thriving agriculture sector), but my technology, manufacturing, and education is better than his according to stats. My economy is also more powerful.
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[Space Debris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris) presents a serious risk to anything in orbit. Normally, responsible space-agencies try to *minimise* the amount they produce, but if you wanted to make going into space difficult, you could launch a bunch of rockets filled with ball-bearings or something similar, and and release them into high-speed orbits. You can have this be a temporary obstacle by putting them in orbits that would degrade after a chosen period of time, whereupon they would burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere.
This wouldn't make it *impossible*, but getting into space is already *hard*; the likelihood of your spacecraft being hit by a cloud of projectiles travelling at tens of thousands of km/h makes it *significantly harder*.
This approach won't really work if you already have satellites in orbit, unless you're willing to sacrifice them to the cause - however, you'd then run the risk of [Kessler Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome), which could make it impossible for the people of your planet to go into space for generations.
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Don't stop him, "help" him.
Develop aerospace technologies and manufacture rocket/shuttle components, use grants to undercut your commercial competitors into insolvency, having established a monopoly on aerospace manufacturing you can help him much more undertake ambitious projects for a fraction of the price.
He gets what he wants but he gets it on your terms, once he's sufficiently invested you can pull the rug out from under him. If he can't provide supplies to the people in his space stations and moon bases they're now your stations/bases, if he can't service his own satellites you can make them your satellites.
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# Use [Star Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative)!
By "Star Wars", I'm referring to the infamous Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was an American proposed system designed to stop ICBMs in a number of ways. It would have used:
* Intercepting missiles
* Lasers of all kinds
* Particle beams
* Anti-missile satellites
These could all be used against missiles on ballistic trajectories, and I'd bet anything that they could be used against rockets trying to get to orbit (or on suborbital trajectories).
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Preventing him from reaching space, or preventing him from spending more than a few minutes there?
I'm assuming that you can't set up Anti-Aircraft batteries next to his launch site, and you don't want to toy with economics or planting spies in his space program, so I'll offer you a couple direct-action options.
1: Ground launched Interception Missile:
* This is your most basic option - a surface-launched rocket, designed to co-habit the same space and time as your friends orbital vehicle. AKA, Smashing into it at a relative speed of thousands of miles per hour.
* This can be cheaper than a rocket, because it doesn't have to make it into a circular orbit. All it has to do is get on a course that intercepts his. If you can build them cheap enough you could have a hundred missiles for every spacecraft he tries to launch.
* Bonus points for packing an explosive charge in the probe that detonates when it's in proximity and on course, turning a single dodgeable impact into a hurricane of lethal shrapnel. Even more points for having independently guided sub-munitions to further increase hit probability.
* Aside from building the missiles, this requires no planning. All you need to do is lock and fire when you see something that doesn't fly your flag.
2: Airborne launcher:
* Same principle as the interception missile, but copy-pasted into a Pegasus Air-Launched Rocket type device.
* A cargo aircraft (Or Even bomber/fighter if you can make it small enough) carries the missile up to an initial altitude and speed, giving it a nice boost and reducing the amount of distance the missile has to cover, and thus fuel needed. That makes it even smaller and cheaper.
* Side benefit is it also reduces the time between launch and intercept. You could have a few B52s or other strategic bombers on 'Space Patrol' duty, flying at high altitude and ready to launch their missiles at a moments notice. Think of how the USAF had bombers airborne 24/7 during the cold war, then apply the idea to space missiles.
3: Orbital Minefield:
* This is much, much harder, but the sheer domination of space it provides is worth it.
* Instead of a singular launch like the Interception Missile, you pack multiple missile payloads into a launch vehicle. They don't need to be much - enough fuel to make some decent orbit changes, a guidance system, and some sensors/comms to control them. Launch a few of these packages into disparate orbits, and let them sit.
* When you detect his spacecraft, just figure out which packages can most easily be steered onto a collision course. Have a couple of your "Terminal Engagement Vehicles" leave their parking orbit and alter their course to briefly but violently intersect his.
* The actual Terminal Engagement Vehicles can be comparably tiny. Like I said, you just need to carry enough fuel for minor course changes, and smartphone-level processing power. They could be devices not much bigger than a milkjug, with dozens per package.
* To make the minefield prohibitively difficult to take out, have the TEVs separate from the package they were launched in, and make minute course changes to spread out their orbits. This makes them harder to detect, harder to destroy, and also harder to evade because they can come at a spacecraft from any direction at any time.
If you want to get straight-up sadistic, place orbital minefields around Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. The mines will have months to detect incoming spacecraft and get on intercept trajectories, and you'll be denying him some very potent gravitational slingshot options.
[Answer]
# Deep-Cover Sabotage by Scientists / researchers / manufacturers
Not just "a ninja with a wrench smashing stuff," but with professional "deep cover" spies / scientists / saboteurs in every organization that researches & manufacturers rockets & their components / fuels. Doing things like
* Leading research in wrong directions
* sabotaging minor components in undetectable ways
* causing "cost over-runs" that would at least increase the cost a LOT
+ Could combine with changing public opinion showing space travel is WAY too expensive & a waste of resources -> Possible riots, revolution, **lots of fun for a game** ;-)
* Your nation supplying components "too cheap to pass up" but inferior / sabotaged in very hard to detect ways.
* Finally, outright obvious sabotage as a last resort
Especially for a role playing game with nations, I'm assuming spies are probably already a big part of it, and these tactics should fit in well.
It took the USA years to get to space, there are lots of fun videos of rocket tests exploding (they still happen today occasionally) and I'm assuming there were no professional saboteurs "working hard" to get to space.
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# Pre-Emptive Strike
You just need to bomb his launch sites before he launches. If you have space superiority, then you just need to launch [ballistic penetrators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment) with good coverage of his most likely launch sites. I.e., throwing rocks down the gravity well. If you don't have space superiority, then you will need to use ground-launched kill vehicles as described by others.
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There are 2 series(Records of a fallen vampire, Muv-Luv unlimited) that i read a while ago about this topic, it doesn't only stop rockets from flying(This also included SLBMs launched from Atlantic, target was an island in japan), anything generally larger than 10 meters is shot down mid air with the use of
LASERs
The lasers were used by aliens in those 2 series.
Aliens from RoaFV used meteors to strategically place their laser turrets all around the world(They camouflaged it). The gov't didn't know it was laser turrets. And when they knew, they cant even destroy it due to its molecular armor
BETA(Beings of Extra Terrestrial origin which is Adversary of human race) has laser class that has pin point accuracy that the moment you surpassed 100m off the ground you have 5 seconds to go below it to evade a laser salvo from this little aliens they also have extra ordinary range too and virtually can target anything they see.
Taking an idea from this scenario. An efficient but very effective laser can be used in near future with the current fad of bleeding edge technology that R&Ds are fond of releasing these days.
Then again why lasers.
Because you only need to point it in a right direction, and boom, the problem is solved.
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[Question]
[
Amortentia is a powerful aphrodisiac that creates an intense feeling of love or obsession in the person who drinks it. There are different kinds of these love potions, each designed to have various effects on the user. These feelings are encouraged through the increase of dopamine in the brain. Many different ingredients go into the making of a potion, including eye of newt, skin of a dead toad,etc. These ingredients are dumped into a cauldron and stirred, with an enchantment placed on the brewing stew ( double double toil and trouble). The result is a colorless, odorless liquid that leaves no trace of itself in the digestive system.
In many ways, potions like these were seen as one of those things that nobody talked about while knowing that they were bought and used. Say you wanted to win the girl of your dreams who despised you or was unaware of your existence: love potion. Want to marry a rich bachelor with millions of dollars, and set him up to have an unfortunate accident so you can collect on the insurance: love potion. However, times have changed. The current generation takes a very different view of these kinds of acts, considering it as a dangerous substance that inflicts on people's rights. This has been reflected in the modern day government, who have passed laws banning the use or sale of these potions.
There are problems with regulation however:
1. The ingredients to make the substance are fairly common and used in many kinds of spells. Due to their necessity, the government cannot realistically simply ban these items from being sold.
2. The exact formula for making these substances are widely known by now, with use of these potions going back many centuries. Simply censoring knowledge about how to make them is unlikely to succeed long term.
How can this ban be enforced among the populace to prevent amortentia from usage?
[Answer]
Even thought the ingredients are common, that doesn't mean you have to stop the sale, only control it.
Think about what the US government has done to try to reduce Methamphetamine production in the US. A quick and dirty way to produce meth is to use psuedoephedrine at one point in the process. Pseudoephedrine is a common and effective decongestant and was sold over the counter. Now we have an ID driven method to control the sale to prevent huge amounts from being purchased and used to cook Meth. You can still buy it for legal purposes, but the government knows and limits how much in a given time period. The steps here are not material, but the fact that the government has put a limit in place at the most likely source for most individuals.
The following is something I remember from a medical class from long ago. I don't have sources, but the methodology is plausible and is something you might be able to use. Long ago, when it had been figured out that giving subcutaneous shots of insulin was a good way to control diabetes. It occurred to some dastardly villain that the insulin was not traceable as a poison at the time, and if enough was given to a non-diabetic, it would be lethal as it would cause acute hypoglycemia in the victim. A teeny tiny pinprick that would not be noticed in the autopsy. Once it was figured out, pharmaceutical companies had to put a chemical marker in the insulin so that any other dastardly villain trying to do the same thing would get caught in the toxicology, thus exposing the cause of death as murder.
Here is how to apply the above things. Your magic supply department of the government already knows the quantities of Eye of newt and skin of frog go into the magical roofie. Simply have the government agency apply a chemical or magical marker to those ingredients, or even better, to the toads and newts at the amphibian farms. These markers *would* leave a trace. The combination of the 2 markers in the appropriate amounts would be a way for concerned family to be able to find out if the love potion had been used, and undo at least some of whatever damage happened in your magical court sessions.
It's not fool proof, and may lead to black market newt and toad sales, but it will make it more difficult overall.
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Bottom line is that you simply can't prevent it. Harsh penalties don't work: see e.g. Prohibition, the "War on Drugs", attempts to censor pornography or "subversive" writings ("samizdat" in the USSR), and so on. So your society has to learn how to deal with it, perhaps by making it socially unacceptable, as with tobacco in recent decades, or by inventing protective measures such as antidotes.
But that last raises an interesting question: does the antidote to a love potion also make you fall out of love that wasn't induced by the potion?
[Answer]
Love potion is basically a euphemism for date rape drug. Most people IRL don't use date rape drugs. Why would your world be any different?
**How to regulate drugs?**
You take a piece of paper, write "list of forbidden drugs" on top, then put "love potion" under it, then pass that paper to your legislature. Now, that may be a gross oversimplification, but that's about the extent of the law: a piece of information and people willing to enforce it.
That's the important part: *people willing to enforce it*.
Sure, you're thinking police and judges, but what you need to think is that first word: *people*. You say it yourself,
>
> The current generation takes a very different view of these kinds of acts, considering it as a dangerous substance that inflicts on people's rights.
>
>
>
If you ask me, you're overthinking it. Most people simply won't use it, because most people will think it is utterly wrong. All you need is your people to be educated and civilised.
[Answer]
## Blood tests
If you suspect that someone you know might be a victim of a love potion, the law allows you to call for a test to be done on them to check for the presence of the relevant chemical signatures in their bloodstream.
Ordinarily, doing a blood test on someone without their consent might be an invasion of their privacy, but the law allows it in this specific case due to the fact that the subject may not be in a condition to make the decision themselves while under the influence of a potion. (Compare how people can be involuntarily admitted to a mental institution in the real world if it's deemed necessary for their own safety.)
This by itself doesn't directly *prevent* people from using love potions, but it does provide a way to detect that it's happened and a good lead to begin investigating it. And that's the first step toward catching and prosecuting the culprit, which should hopefully act at least somewhat as a deterrent.
[Answer]
Force everyone to take one final love potion to fall in love with the Love Potion Prohibition.
*mic drop*
[Answer]
## Make everyone use it
If its cheap harmless and makes you feel good why not consume A LOT of it? Think refined sugar. People no longer let random hormonal states control their lives. Why would they if you can feel love for partner of your choosing(Choosing it self will probably change in some way). When everyone is taking love potions it will stand out big time if you are in relationship but you are not taking love potions. Basically you now choose to be in love or not. Of course not everybody will do that but either way most people will probably experience both states and there will be difference between them. Even if it's perfect (hard to believe since you describe it pretty scientifically -> it will feel different from natural hormonal stimulation.) it will be known issue. There will probably be some amount of trickery (Man found out his wife has been feeding him love potions for the past 12 years!) But it won't be that common and there will be way to check for that. But the basic idea is it's hard to slip someone something unnoticed if he is already on that drug and he is in control of what the drug is doing to him. Plus society will probably learn to recognise the signs of involuntarily love potion consumption.
As said before no amount of prohibition will make these things disappear but if the whole society decides not to buy them anymore it will become equivalent of ruffing someone... If you woke up in strangers apartment and don't know how it happened you start asking questions fast. Same thing will now happen with love. Also anything that happened while you were under love potion will probably have none/limited legal consequences(Contracts will be invalid and so on...)
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The potion might not be detectable, but it's workings could be.
The nature of love would be much easier to investigate with a potion to create it. This becomes especially true with deviants (not negatively meant) who will take a lovepotion before sex (or even just a temporary loving relationship) for the thrill and repeat it the next day/week/month with someone else and have no problem with doing a scientific experiment with some researchers.
This could give insight in what love is, but also give insight in tell-tale markers in hormones or similar that a lovepotion is taken. Love is usually something organic, changing each day based on experiences and how long the relation has lasted. The love potion's effects would likely cause total love, unconditionally all the time/every time they see the recipiant (I assume they add a bit of themselves to the potion so its not a harder to control love-at-first-sight thing). This should be detectable with blood tests.
Blood tests as answers have already been given but not with this exact method of finding it.
Find someone who used a potion? Give them a truth serum first (in case someone sets them up) and then give them a love potion for, say, the worst victim of the latest zombie outbreak.
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Enforce arranged marriages, putting love out of the picture. Let the arrangement be decided by a third party on the basis of convenience or fate, maybe through a lottery.
Whoever opposes this scheme will be punished.
In this way whoever gives and receives the potion will stand out. Then it will become a matter of lawyers to say who is guilty of what.
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A simple and presumably in-genre solution would be enchanted rings which detect the drug in drinks.
cf items like
<https://efficientgov.com/blog/2017/05/22/5-date-rape-drug-detectors/>
... and the debate as to whether this is correct solution.
[Answer]
Harsh penalties.
Even if detection is absolutely impossible (which is up to you, but I imagine forensic alchemists would toil - and trouble - deep into the night to find a brew that revealed love potion's effect or presence), there's an easy parallel in real life - date rape drugs.
Often no traces are left by the time the victim is in a position to have their system tested, they're widely available because they have legitimate uses outside of the reprehensible, and are conveyed via spiking drinks or other ingestion.
People in this society would be inclined to discard drinks that they left unattended, would have friends watch the drinks, and if there were any credible claim that someone spiked a drink with love potion, the government would prosecute that person to the fullest extent of the law, with imprisonment, fines, or some cruel and unusual magic-based punishment awaiting a conviction.
[Answer]
If it's magic, why not magic to counter it or render it inert? You could get various different possibilities if the magic is a charm someone carries, a one-time potion inoculation, a potion that has to be drunk or a spell that has to be cast at regular intervals, and so on. There'd probably be ways around all of them (a potion to negate the potion that negates the love potion), but all you're really trying to do is make it harder.
[Answer]
**Vaccines.**
If the problem is so profound your entire court could fall to these hags drugging the lords and ladies, actions will be taken.
Coordinate a campaign with the Grand Maestre to vaccinate your population against the most common version. We still can get sick from a special strain of a disease, but 99% will be harmless.
A Potion Master working in concert with a gifted Alchemist could alter the potion to work despite the vaccine. But your run of the mill Joe who wants to buy some stuff to get the neighbour? That won't work.
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**If you can't detect the chemical, perhaps you can detect the effects.**
Since magic exists it could be possible to detect if someone is bewitched, even if you can't detect the magic (potion) that caused it.
Mandatory testing during marriage ceremonies would eliminate those marrying into wealth through deception.
And making it possible for a concerned friend/neighbour/relative to have someone tested just by filing an application of suspicion.
If guilt was death penalty the stakes would be high. However you'd struggle to ascertain guilt, you can't just assume the target of the lovestruck is the one that poisoned them.
**Immunity**
Much like quinine was introduced into drinking rations to force sailors to drink it (and thus prevent malaria), something similar could be done with a herb that prevents bewitching. Likewise, a magical spell (ward) could do the same thing.
It may not be necessary for people to force the issue, children growing up with stories about how other children didn't eat their magic mushrooms fell in love with ugly monsters that ate them could introduce a culture of vigilance, no different to a woman taking a birth control pill ever morning.
[Answer]
## Fluoridate the water supply:
A funny side effect of Fluor in combination with Amortentia is that the person falls in love with greens instead of people:
* They start eating large amount of salad,
* Go lay in the grass all day long (even when it's raining)
* Wear green clothes only.
* Start keeping green frogs as pets
* ...
Look what it did for the city of Ank-Morpork:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/c9BFz.png)
**Note:** that city started Fuoridating their water supply in the year of the Backwards-facing Artichoke...
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[
The Orks of my world are actually the technologically most advanced civilization. They are bigger and stronger than humans, have bone plates on their heads, greenish skin, and are more akin to the Qunari from Dragon Age than to Tolkien's orks. They dwell in jungle and savanna regions on a continent similar to Africa.
[](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/dragonage/images/e/e3/Qunari_DA2.png/revision/latest?cb=20130902021109)
They live under theocratic dictatorships which delegate everyone into the caste they seem best suited for in order to create equality and happiness for their people. Their empires are prospering and integrate other races if they are willing, otherwise, they are used as slaves or live in semi-independent communities with heavy obligations like the Dhimmi did in Islamic Empires.
Science is fairly advanced and many alchemical weapons are used to subdue weaker races; science is pursued in areas which benefit the economy and military. Yet challenging the authority of the clergy will get one killed.
Magic does exist but has little relevance beyond their alchemy as they believe that everyone is born equal and only education and social conditioning create individuals useful to society. Those born with magic are considered a danger, in part due to their ideology, in part because mages really are a great danger unless they are properly disciplined and trained for years since mages are powerful vessels for demons.
# The Firearms
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/%E6%A2%A8%E8%8A%B1%E9%8E%97.jpg)
Firelance: A grenade fixed to the tip of infantry weapons shocks merely opponents with a short range (ca. 3m) blast of saltpeter based fire or shrapnel. This is the standard infantry weapon of the empire.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iRBrT.png)
(source: [wikimedia.org](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/06-357.png/476px-06-357.png))
Handcannon: A short metal-pipe makes increases the range of a metal or rock bullet or a shrapnel blast.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Fire_Lance_Knight.jpg/789px-Fire_Lance_Knight.jpg)
Cavalry: Riders use fire-lances to break enemy lines.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Lgehumble_1400.jpg)
Portable Mortar: Used for bombardment and sometimes as a launcher for alchemic grenades. Mustard gas, shrapnel grenades, berserk gas, and more exotic chemical weapons aren't uncommon.
[](https://media.istockphoto.com/illustrations/early-bombard-cannons-illustration-id184999705)
Heavy Mortars and Cannons: Those are rare, extremely bulky and inaccurate, yet they will put the fear of god into those in a besieged city.
**Why did the Empire not develop more advanced firearms and has been sitting on these for nearly 1000 years despite its highly developed alchemy and scientific culture?**
[Answer]
Firearms were adopted primarily because they could be effectively used by relatively unskilled people with little training against warriors who had been trained for a lifetime. They were actually adopted at the tail end of what is sometimes called the Infantry Revolution because using simple to use weapons and tactics allowed you to raise large armies quickly and have an excellent chance to defeat highly trained knights, Samurai or Janissary warriors.
Looking at it the other way, the English longbow could theoretically deliver more-accurate and longer range damage than a firearm for centuries after it was displaced. The reason the longbow fell out of use can be summed up by remembering bowmen needed to start learning in their youth and practice continually. Longbow practice was mandatory after church, and laws to that effect were passed even into the time of Henry VIII. A gunner could be trained in a relatively short time, and even an early Arquebus could deliver 1000 J of energy to a target, an order of magnitude more than a longbow or even a steel crossbow, requiring a winch to span and 1200 lbs draw.
The Japanese were enthusiastic users of firearms until the Tokugawa Shogunate finally unified Japan. At that point, it was quite clear that large numbers of peasants with firearms could devastate Samurai armies which required lifetimes of training, so firearms were outlawed, confiscated and heavily regulated to protect the ruling class.
This gives us a clue as to the social mechanism which allows firearms technology to stagnate, the ruling warrior class does not wish to see a challenge to their power, and peasants armed with effective weapons and tactics could become a challenge to that power, just as it was in Europe. If your story setting has a means of severely limiting outside influences (such as Japan being an island), then the ruling class could effectively secure their position by allowing weapons and tactics to stagnate.
[Answer]
TLDR: It’s deliberate.
Because magic exists, and these are the only relatively safe way of deploying firearms that even apprentice wizards can’t utterly (and spectacularly) foul up.
Consider an early muzzle loading rifle. A rifleman would have to carry around a case filled with powder to reload with. All it takes is one enemy combatant to flick an easy to cast ‘boom’ charm in the right place and suddenly your rifleman is missing a large chunk of his everything.
On the other hand your firelances are carried upright, point away from the infantry at all times and are pretty safe. Even a mass discharge of the weapons will only see saltpetre and shrapnel raining down over the ranks of your infantry. Suddenly your enemies can’t blow up half your army with no more than a handful of poorly trained spellslingers: they need real wizards, which are in short supply. The retardation of firearms development is a deliberate risk mitigation strategy.
So too with the portable mortars: each one is designed to be loaded well away from the front (minimal chance of someone blowing it up) and then run out into the field and deployed, at all times angled slightly towards the enemy so an unintended discharge isn’t a risk to your own men. The only mortars that don’t follow this strategy are siege weapons, both because they’re inherently dangerous and also have sufficient range to avoid the spellslingers.
In fact: I would expect their firearms and tactics to be quite advanced in their own way. Very light, very portable, very quick and easy to reload/ refurbish. Troops trained to discharge one Lance then immediately reach back for the next, with the vulnerable ammo and powder stores positioned well back in the ranks. Dedicated ‘ammunition pages’ whose sole job is to reload the lances. *Extreme* discipline in ammunition and weapon storage.
Oh, and soldiers that prioritise killing *anybody* wearing a pointy hat.
[Answer]
**They have almost no metal.**
Your orcs have a little bit of copper, which is used more for decoration in the manner of gold. There is no tin and iron is very rare, what there is being meteoric in origin. Knives, cutting tools and weapons are made from a variety of stones, in the style of the Aztecs, also an advanced empire with Stone Age technology.
Without metal it is very difficult to make barrels that can withstand the compressive forces of gunpowder. Firelances are made of stone: these are one-use weapons and the stone container contributes to the shrapnels. Portable mortars are actually reinforced wood, further reinforced by burying in the earth: this is a [fougasse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fougasse_(weapon)). Your orcs can make siege weapons - their craftsmanship is good and they can get a lot out of alchemically treated wood and ropes. Wooden trebuchets, ballistae, catapults and some more esoteric siege engines are among the weapons that can be deployed to attack or defend a city or fortress.
[Answer]
**One**, as mentioned in L.Dutch's answer, research cost resources and time. Without pressing needs, they won't invest into it when there is no practical return. It costs a lot in many areas. New weapons need to be manufactured and maintained. Troops constantly retrained with them, strategies, tactics revised. Trouble shooting unforeseen problems, decommissioning old weapons. An endless cycle of resource sink.
**Two**, from the description, they aren't a warmongering, expansionist super state. Unless actively waging wars, being pushed back or fearing the unknown future, weapon improvements bring trouble. While they increase their military might in the short term, long term they are not so clear cut. Technologies, especially weapons will be leaked. Gunpowder was too, despite the harsh punishments.
**Three**, as research oriented people (or simply one visionary figure in early history), they realized the transformative and destabilizing effects of technology (the pill, social media, vaccination, steam, plastic, nukes...) on standing society. Weapon technology being the most obvious, they naturally restricted it.
**Four**, weapons are force multipliers. A single rebel element, with a cold weapon has limited destructive capacity. Better weapons means better multiplier. Rogue elements are inevitable, especially over long periods of time. A "high clergy", or "general" (or their equivalents in your setting) getting their hands on improved weapons will cause more destruction with less people. Look at civil wars in history and today. Being intelligent, they recognized this too, which led to shelving any weapon research until emergency.
Simply put, they deemed it dangerous, especially looking at their current weapons' destructive capability. They promptly outlawed any research into it.
[Answer]
Inventions come from necessity. Upgrading anything takes effort and resources. One does it only when needed, in other words, when the present situation is no longer effective.
Some real world examples:
* If one has surface coal available, there is no need to invent underground mining
* If one can enjoy warm weather all year round, there is no need to invent heavy clothes
Same goes for the weapons of your orks: if none of their enemies ever invented a good protection against such weapons, there is no need to develop better weapons. They do their job, thus they are good.
[Answer]
You really want to have a weird set of weapons here.
Lets look at them in more detail, especially regarding their use case and time periods.
**Firelance**
The classic single-use paper-barrel firelance was in use mostly from 950 to 1300 in Asia and sporadically used in Europe in the 1400s as a mounted weapon. These things where terribly ineffective at actually hurting people but they made a mighty bang. Their main purpose was to scare enemy soldiers and put them in disarray. These were never really used as "the standard infantry weapon", but you'd rather have a few dozen of them distributed among your troops to mess with enemy formations.
**Hand cannon**
These weapons are now first proto-guns that are actually used for killing people. They appear around 1128 and by 1375 they have flash pans and soon they also have shoulder stocks, making them quite different from the primitive hand cannon that you have in mind. The main reason to use hand cannons over other weapons is their ease of use. They are terrible compared to weapons like a longbow or even a crossbow, but you can hand one of these to someone who has never used them and they will have moderate success with it, compared to a longbow, which an average person can not even launch an arrow off.
**Portable mortars**
The image you linked is actually a hand cannon being fired from a stand.
**Heavy mortars**
The first usage of mortars in combat happened at the 1452 siege of Constantinople, which was rather unsuccessful since the mortars where primitive and extremely heavy, making them terribly immobile. The first actually useful and more mobile mortars were used 1719. So we are talking about a few hundred years of further advancement over your other weapons. So while there was an era where hand cannons and firelances were conceivably used at the same time, that's not so with mortars.
As for other kinds of cannons, they appeared earlier (starting from 1380) but, due to their heavy weight and horrible mobility they were mostly used stationary, so when defending in a siege. Until the 16th century, siege weapons like the trebuchet were much more useful when attacking fortifications than cannons were. They only started being used in the 18th century. As with mortars, the golden age of canons was much later than the golden age of firelances and hand cannons.
I could not find any proper source for the image you posted, but it seems to be something from the 16th century or newer, by my guess.
**Summary**
So, from a technological standpoint we are talking about weapons that differ vastly in their advancement. Firelances were the very start of gunpowder weapons while mortars and cannons appeared half a millennium later. Kind of like throwing a mechanical targeting computer from the 30s in the same category with a modern smartphone.
What mostly limited the advancement of gun development was that many metalworking and general manufacturing processes had to be invented first before they could be used in guns. For example, steel production in Europe only came up in the 17th century. Before that you had to use iron. To have the same strength as a steel barrel, an iron barrel needs to be much thicker and thus heavier. Mechanisms like the flint lock need to be manufactured with a very high precision to work reliably. So if you have these kinds of manufacturing processes available because your society is very advanced, then you will obviously have them available for gun-making as well.
So if you have a 16th century mortar, you could also expect to have a 1411 arquebus or even a 1475 matchlock arquebus. Both look much more like a contemporary rifle than like a hand cannon.
**So how to apply this?**
The combination of weapons you describe is not a very good fit, since they need very different manufacturing processes available. From a technological standpoint there is no reason why these weapons would be used together.
The way you described the usage of especially the firelance does not fit at all to what they were actually used for.
I would probably rethink the weapons. Drop the cannons and mortars and replace them with grenades that are thrown by trebuchets or similar devices. That would fit much better with the firelances and hand cannons. Maybe add firearrows as well. That would make for a much better fit. Also, drop the firelance as the primary weapon and have them use it like it was used in reality. Give them spears or lances as their primary weapons.
**Now, with the weapons sorted in the right time frame and usage, why would they use those ancient and useless weapons if they have access to manufacturing processes that allow for much better weapons? Also, why don't they use better non-gunpowder weapons like a longbow?**
Since there is no good military or technological explanation for that, there needs to be another reason for that. I have a few approaches to that, but most of them have their caveats.
1. They don't need anything better.
They are so technologically advanced over all their enemies that even after a millennium firelances still outclass everything their enemies have to offer. The caveat here is that this only works if your ork nation is completely isolationist so that their weapon designs (and even the concept of how such a weapon works) do not leak to an enemy who could improve on these designs. Also, all Orks need to be pretty lazy and not a single youth can be interested in things that go boom enough to create better designs (remember, even a decently built potato cannon is much better than any firelance ever built).
2. There are no enemies.
Orks are perfect when it comes to diplomacy and are really important trade partners. This only works if they are mainly good at processing goods and don't have any natural resources worth invading for. Basically, they are the Swiss.
3. They have massive armies.
Orks breed like rabbits and can afford to loose warriors 10:1 when in combat. There are just so many of them that it does not matter if they loose tons of warriors to enemies with vastly better weapons. Also, dying to the hands of enemies has to be a cool thing in the Ork society. Or they have overpopulation problems and that's their form of population control.
4. Religious or social constraints limit them from using other weapons.
Their God once said "thou shalt only kill thine enemies with crappy weapons" and they stuck with it. Requires that at least a huge majority of their soldiers would rather die in horrible massacres than offend their God and/or his priests. Everyone in this nation has to be a real fanatic.
5. Certifications.
Ork-land is the worst bureocratic distopia ever. Everything that might be able to take a life needs to be certified and the process for that can take centuries. Only weapons that make it through this process or are older than the process are allowed to be used. Firelances and hand cannons are older than the certification process and are thus allowed. Mortars have only recently been approved, even though other countries don't even use them anymore. This is the only thing I can come up with that might even work with your weapon combination and -usage.
6. It's a Marvell movie.
Do it like they did it in Black Panther and just hand-wave it. There is no reason other than that you as the author like the concept. Depending on the kind of story you are making that might be enough.
[Answer]
### They simply didn't want to / didn't have to.
Their religion, social system and general higher strength/speed/endurance than other races never prompted them to develop better weapons.
Mix this up with fighting, martial arts and weapon usage being part of their religious cult and you basically have a solid reason.
Part of their religion could be that weapons are passed down generation by generation, enhanced by magic and alchemy, giving them more value. Hilts and parts are maybe even made out of bones from fallen ancestors to connect with their spirit, further increasing their bond with their sword, axes, spears etc.
From childhood on warriors are trained in the usage of those "basic" weapons and even when they don't inherit a strong weapon with a lot of history, they usually set out to get their own one, leaving a mark on history and creating another artefact to pass down.
Additionally, one who can't fight on their own (without tools) is considered weak and useless getting put into a low tier caste (you can't have such a system without one or two castes which are worse off than others anyway), exceptions would be orcs who have a gift for alchemy and magic, those are exempted from those social rules as they are part of their own caste, in warfare they are usually the ones operating those mortars and guns.
Due to high reflexes and enhanced weapons, bullets are actually not a problem to fight against, so no reason to use them as countermeasure too. Therefore in an internal fight, those bullets are mostly useless. For external fights, any true warrior would rather die than win by using one of those meagre tools.
Maybe there are slight improvements over the years, those are tools of warfare after all. When they are used, they better work. So slight improvements to prevent jamming, range and reload speed increase could easily be done over the span of a millennium, even without making them the go-to weapons, but keeping it somewhat realistic (improvements would always take place).
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A group of Mages with prophetic powers identifies people with skill and ingenuity who in the future will improve the mechanical weapons and so unbalance the uneasy status quo in favor of those who do not have magical ability. They dispatch assassins before these weapons craftsmen can receive their ideas or build a prototype. Others they recruit to become mages like themselves, or imprison or frame for crimes. Or they ensure that the weapon demonstration fails, through casting charms.
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Let's assume that there is a lake that has formed from snowmelt and rainfall. The lake has never been in contact with other bodies of water. How might this lake become a complete ecosystem?
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Real world:
Fish lay eggs. The eggs sometimes adhere to the feathers of water birds. The birds fly from one body of water to another, and some of the eggs survive the trip.
This occurs with farm ponds -- despite never being stocked, they wind up with populations of (in the American south, anyway) bream and bass, as well as inevitably snapping turtles that feed on them (the turtles travel cross country on their own feet, in many cases).
Flying insects, of course, fly -- and many of them breed in water (mosquitos, caddisfly, just to name a couple). They provide food for the fish, likely before the fish are introduced.
Amphibians arrive the same way fish do (as egg hitchhikers), or travel overland. Water plants also travel by hitchhiking -- either seeds in the gut of a duck or goose, or fragments stuck to feather or legs that manage to survive and root.
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I'm guessing that your question about [endorheic basins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorheic_basin) is about the buildup of salt and other minerals. Certainly there are many aquatic animals who live in fresh water and many that live in salt water, but not many who are okay with a change from the former to the latter over time.
The solution to that (no pun intended) is a lake that doesn't get the mineral build up of most endorheic basins. For example:
[Crater Lake in Oregon, USA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crater_Lake), also mentioned by Michael Richardson. Despite the fresh water coming in, "the lake has relatively high levels of dissolved salts, total alkalinity, and conductivity. The average pH has generally ranged between 7 and 8." Even so, it supports aquatic life, including fish.
The largest lake in the world, the [Caspian Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea), between Europe and Asia, is also an endorheic basin. "It has a salinity of approximately 1.2% (12 g/l), about a third of the salinity of most seawater."
Modern times, including pollution, have harmed its ecosystem, but it flourished for quite some time. Its fauna include: turtles, mussels, gulls, terns, and seals. Even other aquatic mammals.
Technically it doesn't meet your requirements for *never* having been attached to other bodies of water. But it has been landlocked for 5.5 million years, which should count for something. The fact that it supported a wide variety of plants and animals a century ago is more about its current ecology than about its past.
Your question may also reference the "seeding" of the lake with various fauna and flora. Zeiss Ikon talked about how to get fish eggs (without human intervention) over land. But I'll also maintain that your requirement of "a complete ecosystem" doesn't mean it has to have fish. Some aquatic fauna for sure, but there are many many choices.
Plants can adapt, and their seeds or even pieces of root can be carried by animals that travel by land or water. In addition to fish eggs, traveling animals can carry snails, small reptiles or amphibians, or their eggs. Insects can fly or crawl or hitch a ride.
Given enough time, an ecosystem can and will develop around any water source. And it will adapt with slowly changing conditions.
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Take a valley, put-on a geothermal vent and cover it with thousands feet of ice. You get something like lake [Vostok](https://www.livescience.com/38652-what-is-lake-vostok.html).
Under high pressure from the ice above, water stays liquid at -3°C. It may have been connected to the sea and is now sealed-off from the rest of the world for millions of years. Despite that, the bottom ice-layer sample reveals richness in fungi and bacteria. Some bacteria are known to reside in the guts of fishes. There are even some multicellular organisms.
[Oxygen levels are high](https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2003/03_57AR.html), but I don't relate that to photosynthesis, as the ice layer above is too thick. It may be conveyed by sliding glaciers from air naturally dissolved in the ice. Evidence of complex life is preliminary. Yet, it seems the essentials of life are there: oxygen, water and nutrients from geothetmal vents and water layers of varying salinity. You may build an ecosystem where a lake with complex life may have thrived on such energy and nutrients. The global weather gradually cause build-up of ice which shut-off the lake from the outside world. A geothermal vent may have prevented the ice on top to grow thicker (unlike Vostok) if you *still want to let-in light* to sustain algae and complex organisms.
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Zeiss Ikon has a good answer but you also need to bear in mind that some lakes cannot *ever* become havens for complex aquatic life. For example if the country rock is limestone the water pH may consequently be too high to support the plant life that forms the base of the pond food-chain. Similarly a number of igneous rocks create acidic conditions that have the same effect for the opposite reason. If the hollow that the lake forms in has a lot of metal bearing ores the leached heavy metal salts can be extremely toxic. Some plants are adapted to such conditions but few animal species are. These chemical factors contribute to the relative sterility of many former quarries.
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Crater Lake in Oregon is an example of such. Precipitation is the only source of water, and it has no outflow.
Around 100 years ago, 6 types of fish were introduced to the lake by humans. Currently only 2 still exist.
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I want to have characters who have no family name. I notice that people in Indonesia and Iceland have no family name. What kind of culture/tradition caused that? Are there any common factors that cause people not to use family names?
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Take a look at [this question and the answers there](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/62648/why-would-a-city-not-use-names). Even though the answers are about not using ANY names at all (simply titles) I believe that it will be a great start for you.
It is difficult to find a commonality for every single culture that doesn't use family surnames, because the naming conventions outside of that all have different flavors and cultural reasoning behind them. Although my top answer for the Q&A I linked to talks a lot about place in society and not being an individual--that's specific to THAT naming system (none at all). That culture would not have much in common where origin place is the name, or clan (which is not always the same as family), or taking a benefactor's name. The list of variations is too long and the reasons for them are as varied as the list (hence the votes to close the question as too broad).
Since you are specifically looking at Icelandic culture, what I have found there is that there is a CHOICE as to last name. That is, the person chooses what they want to be associated with.
Traditionally, instead of a partricharial FAMILY name, your last name comes from your father's first name with --son added on the end. But, as you can see from the [wikipedia entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name), this has changed as the culture has, and it's all about who you would like to be associated with.
First names are actually strictly monitored in Iceland.
There are just over 330,000 people in Iceland. There are over 8.5 million people in New York, New York, USA.
With so few people their naming convention works.
[Indonesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_names) is different because there are more people, however, the population is segmented into lots of islands.
These naming conventions are actually ancient ones. I would say they are left-overs from an earlier time.
Using a family last name wasn't something that was always true, and developed over time--generally because of social custom, but often because of laws adopted by a country to eliminate confusion.
Ireland was the first European country to use fixed family surnames, starting around 900. The gentry in England and other places began using them in the 1000s, and this spread to the common folk, and by 1400 it was common practice.
**Use of Family surnames is a relatively NEW thing (in Europe at least), if you look at the [history of names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname) and even today is nowhere near universal!**
The answer to this question:
>
> What kind of culture/tradition caused that? Is there any common factors that make people don't use family name?
>
>
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Depends GREATLY on the time period you are addressing. Because prior to the Renaissance, it certainly wasn't that common. Iceland and Indonesia specifically have in common that they want to preserve their naming conventions to preserve culture and tradition. But, as I said different naming traditions have different lines of reasoning.
Romans had names that associated them with a group or kinship rather than surnames as we know them.
In the Middle Ages if you married a higher status person, regardless of gender, you often took their name instead of your own.
I think that you need to look at this question from a different angle. In the history of humanity, having a family surname is actually weirder than not having one. **Instead of asking why a culture wouldn't have family surnames, you should be asking why we do.**
The answer to that is mainly to make record-keeping and identity easier to track, and had spread over Europe pretty much completely by the 1600s. However, there were often terms in a will that required the changing of your last name. Like if you had an Uncle with a different family name and no heirs with his name, he might make the terms of you receiving his inheritance for you to change your last name to his--this happened with regularity in England in the 1800s and some in the 1900s.
Please do take a look at all the different [naming conventions on this wiki link.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname)
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Simple, a very small society.
You don't need family names when there are 20 people in your village and everyone knows who you mean when you say "John".
As societies grow you begin to need to distinguish between individuals, there may be four Johns now so you need to be able to tell them apart. You can do this in a variety of ways;
* Some kind of identifying quality; "Big John" (or the somewhat sarcastic "Little John") for someone of abnormal size.
* A profession; "John the Blacksmith".
* Parent's names; "John Williamson" or the more unusual *-dottir* used in Icelandic names
The issue with all of these is that they eventually evolve into family names that become passed down over time (Little, Big, Smith and many varieties of -son surname all exist today), so you also have to look at other reasons why family names exist.
Another important use of family names is inheritance, when a lord's land passes through closest living relatives in some way or another you need a way to track who those people are. Having family names makes doing so much easier (particularly as in most cultures they seem to pass down the male line like property would have) as you know when Lord Windsor dies you just need to find the oldest male Windsor (depending on the type of inheritance used) and he becomes the new lord.
So, depending on what exactly you want (no family names of any kind, or just no family names like most modern Western cultures use) you probably want to keep your society small and remove issues of inheritance and ownership of property and land.
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Historically people didn't have family names. For example, Fred would be Fred son of Bob. This later could be formalised as "Fred Bobson". Also Frieda Peterdottir would be a Scandinavian form of Frieda daughter of Peter. The common factors were initially people didn't need family names. The adoption of family names only became necessary when additional identifying characteristics were needed. Hence family names.
Basically small societies don't need more extensive and better identification types of names. There are no factors determining why people wouldn't have family names. It's more the reverse is true. There were factors to ensure the adoption of family names.
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In some societies people would be called *the son/daughter of* or by their job description *John the ferrier*, or even by their place of birth or where they lived *John from rocky farm*.
Mostly in ancient Times people would receive a first name at birth, maybe... and then be called by the parents name or their profession.
In some societies kids would only receive a name after a certain age.
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This answer is two separate ideas, the first a warning/hurdle when designing this society, the second a more specific setup of why this society might not have surnames.
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In addition to the other answers, one hurdle you must consider in foregoing surnames is **potential inbreeding**.
I see a lot of people suggesting small societies of a few tens of people, but once you get a few hundreds of people, it becomes possible that no one individual personally knows everyone any more. In a society that is fairly remote and self-sustaining, this can lead to a rather small gene pool and family names are a shorthand to check for immediate relations.
As a very specific example, my mother-in-law hails from a village of 200 people or so, again a remote and self-sustaining place where they didn't see much in the way of travelers, mercantile or otherwise. Similar to Prime's comment to the original question, her last name was *very* common - easily shared by 50% of the village, and not by mere coincidence.
However, while I like Prime's direction suggesting this redundancy could make a society with meaningless surnames, it rather acted as a warning in this village. Because the name was so common, it was customary for individuals wanting to marry to **check back five generations and make sure they weren't too closely related**. People who didn't have this ubiquitous surname were actually sought out, and while the five-generation rule still existed, it was a pretty good indication that the two people probably weren't related.
You could still have a small society, but you'd need some other metric to keep potential inbreeding at bay. A sci-fi setting could use a DNA scanner that makes sure people aren't too genetically similar, for example. Low-tech alternatives would be a village-ordained Match Maker, whose sole job is to keep track of people and their lineage and approve/straight up arrange all marriages. Or even making sure your small society has a healthy inflow/outflow of residents would be enough.
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One suggestion for a society without surnames is **the familial "I am Spartacus" equivalent**, where for some particular reason - I'm leaning towards governmental defiance, personally - the entire society has all opted to use the same exact surname. In my example, it could be they're an ethnic minority with a different naming scheme that isn't recognized, but government policy dictates everyone must have a name of some specific format, so in protest the whole society picks the exact same thing. Optionally applies to first names, too, and the whole society has Official Names of "John Smith" used purely in protest, while everyday interactions use the unrecognized names determined by whatever cultural customs you like.
Heck, they could even be the same ethnic group as the rest of the country and just do this while picking intentionally "odd" everyday names purely out of protest for personal identity, and the custom has gone on so long it's become its own cultural/regional thing.
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**Your characters can be disowned by their families.**
If this is a happy little medieval village that is harder to explain. But if you have a society of outcasts, living on the fringe, they can be nameless. When they were cast out, their names stayed behind with their families.
Maybe the entirety of the name stays behind. The outcast person is nameless; no-one. If things go well, they get new names when they join the society of outcasts.
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A society made up of small communities. You get a given name and your community is your last name. There is a registrar of some kind for each community that prohibits the use of a first name that matches anyone currently alive in the community.
This does **not** preclude cities, it's just cities are made up of a group of communities. I do not believe this structure would be stable in the long run with a modern society, though--people move around too much.
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One of the only reasons why we have family names in the west is one of the inevitables, in this case Taxes rather than Death. Surnames were used to keep track of what a particular family owned and what they owed for it. Historical sources suggest that most, 90%, of all English Language surnames originate in the UK and that they were mainly taken up/given out in the 11th Century as part of the Norman reorganisation of the British Isles. As such the Scots and Welsh largely *didn't have* surnames until the 17th Century when it became a legal requirement for those getting married throughout the UK. So a society that is small and untaxed would have no need for surnames to keep track of these things.
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Looking at it from a worldbuilding perspective (i.e. "What *could* cause this in my fictional society?") and not an anthropological one (i.e. "What *did* cause this in these specific historical instances?"), I'll suggest an expansion on the existing answers.
You need a culture where tracing a family lineage isn't important to the people or to the government. It's been noted above that a big factor that would make it important is inheritance. So the primary way members of a given generation earn their wealth should not be inheriting it from their parents. Perhaps people get buried with all their gold and personal effects when they die. To account for real estate, maybe the cultural norm is that a dead man's land becomes *terra nullius* instead of passing to his offspring, or the society is nomadic and land ownership doesn't exist.
Depending on the world you're trying to build, another explanation might be that the incidence of armed conflict is so high that most people gain their wealth by conquest, and inheriting your fortune is considered shameful (consider how today "daddy's money" is something of a pejorative). There's no point in tracing the ownership of wealth past a generation or two because it's changed hands so many times. Similarly, any kind of hereditary dynasty doesn't produce more than a couple of rulers before another overthrows it, so even the king doesn't worry about proving his legitimacy by appealing to who begat whom.
As an alternative to inherited surnames in such a society, your characters could earn their descriptors through feats of arms. The humble Bob becomes Robert Cannonbreaker after earning renown for conspicuous bravery when he spiked the guns in a certain battle, for instance. Perhaps the children of a few really legendary individuals use a patronym until they have an impressive accomplishment of their own to boast about. There's all sorts of places you can go with this, but the general flavour of the culture might be something Vikingish.
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A real life modern example I've seen in relatively remote East European villages: people do have family names, and they are registered by the state and they are printed on national ID cards, driving licenses, passports, etc. but no one actually uses them. If the same name is used by more people, they are differentiated most often by nicknames. In other cases, by the father's name, or from which part of the village they come from (or if they come from a neighboring village, than by that one).
The real family names are in such disuse, that even relatives or friends don't know them at all, or have to really think hard to recall them.
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I think family names culturally come from inheritance (**economics**), relationships (**family**) and authority (**politics**). If am friends with George HW Bush and I know what his political power and economic pull is, then I am more likely to support George W Bush for Governor of Texas and then President of the United States. In smaller societies where people already know everyone's financial, relational and political **status**, there is no need for family names.
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My guess would be a dystopian society that breeds human beings for desirable traits, and finds that last names are useless. This could be a whole book idea...
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My perspective is, perhaps, somewhat orthogonal to the other responses here: **You are a number in the system**. Sure, if you insist you can be 'Paul' or whatever when you're among your drinking buddies, but for all purposes "that really matter", you're **ID 10568**. This makes it trivial for the MCP to manage your affairs.
Now, a lot of the questions that crop up here focus on a (faux-) ancient society, but your question does not rule out a future/dystopian one, so my response is rather [Brazil](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/) (if I may be allowed to verb that noun).
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As a interesting fact, in Finland having a family name became compulsory only in 1920.
Traditionally in Eastern Finland family names were used before the bulk of Europe. In Western Finland, although, not so much.
In Western Finland it was common to person have a given name and a house name, or a military name, if said person had been serving in military servive during the Swedish rule. If a person would move to another house, the house name would be accordingly updated. Military names were, to my understanding, given for life, and somewhat usually passed to next-of-kin.
The use of patronyms was, and somewhat still is, common in both west and east.
So, in pretty homogenous and small group, using such names could differ pretty much.
[Answer]
A telepathic society. People with the same first name would be distinguished by other traits accessible to a telepath ("Not Bob who likes mint ice cream, Bob who's into motorbikes and always gets hungry at 3pm")
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Imagine the modern day world where an eccentric billionaire (plus a small group of others) has decided to declare their private island as their own country. (lets say the island is about 1 square kilometre)
There are actually real examples of people trying to do this, one such is the [Republic of Minerva](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva_Reefs#Republic_of_Minerva). In this case the Tongan government sent a military expedition to enforce their claim to the island, and I would imagine any other nation would do the same, especially if the island's laws were contrary to the laws of its mainland.
So if the island owner **really** wanted to defend their island from such operations, could they indefinitely defend it against operations from the mainland? What kind of preparations would they have to take?
Since it's such a small area of land, I would imagine that it would be significantly easier to defend than a normal nation, and the island owner would only have to show enough force to deter any aggressors because after all, there isn't really much value for anyone attempting to capture the island.
[Answer]
**Money, a whole lot of money**
Buy your independence from the government. One person cannot defend an island alone as you need to eat and sleep but for an impoverished country, a massive pile of cash would buy independence. If the owning country is a rich one, this isn't likely to work.
Any military action isn't going to work. A country has too much firepower for any one person. This is America carpet bombing an ISIS controlled island
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/F79qI.jpg)
At the end of the day, it's the risk versus return for the government. They can use court, police or military to take back the island. You might hold them off in court if you're rich enough but once the police get involved and / or military, you don't have a hope. Even owning a nuke won't help as that makes you a real threat that must be stopped.
Best bet is buy your freedom.
[Answer]
## No
While the rich fellow might be able to buy insulation (perhaps even effective immunity) from local laws, that's not *sovereignty*. The rich fellow is NOT the head of an independent state, does not get a vote at the UN, etc. World maps still show the island as part of the real, recognized nation. When the recognized nation enforces its laws over the island by whatever means, other nations will consider it an internal matter.
Real sovereignty, as we understand it today, traces important roots to the [Peace of Westphalia (1648)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia#Westphalian_sovereignty). Today, in order to be considered a real sovereign state:
* Other sovereign states must recognize the rich fellow's state as a peer sovereign state.
* The new state must be capable of enforcing its sovereignty over it's territory.
* The new state must be capable of enforcing its borders among its neighboring states.
Since the island is currently part of an existing state (and owned by Rich Fellow under laws of that state), few other real states will be willing to recognize the new state until Rich Fellow and the existing state reach a ratified international treaty (not a contract, not a one-state law, not a declaration) acknowledging independence of the new state, defining the new international border, etc.
Example: The Declaration of Independence (1776) created the United States *only to themselves*. The [Treaty Of Paris (1783)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1783)) established the United States as a sovereign nation *to other states* (except American allies like France and Spain, of course). The treaty included acknowledgement of the loss of territories by Great Britain, and agreement on the new boundaries. In order to achieve that recognition as a sovereign state, the USA had to fight a brutal war. After the war, property ownership was governed by the laws of the United States instead of the laws of Great Britain.
Without recognition by peer states, the island is merely the rebellious home of a rich outlaw or brigand...or nutter.
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>
> Could a small private island protect its sovereignty?
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Yes, the only trick is to have powerful armed or monied (preferably both) friends to back you up. There are many small nations today who only retain sovereignty because they have a vote in international bodies.
Nauru for instance is 12 miles around, Niue 13 I think. Neither have anything worth taking any more, but are protected because their sovereignty and vote is sought after by much larger countries.
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Your billionaire can get himself an island, **but not through military means**. He can pick a poor nation, and an isolated useless island. He can bribe the rulers, and make a story about creating jobs in tourism industry. Then he can build his own billionaire playground, "with blackjack and hookers" (and drugs too).
He could also pick an island populated by some ethnic minority, and bankroll/lobby their bid for independence from the repressive mainland (kinda like Kosovo independence). If mainland is really not repressive, he could covertly sponsor a nationalist movement there.
But if he tries to "develop dangerous/experimental technology which would normally be outlawed", or start assembling a actual military force, he will get the attention of the world's powers, and they will not care about sovereignty of either the island or the nation that it previously belonged to. US has bombed terrorist camps in several different established independent nations, and the only consequences were a few scattered squeaks of powerless outrage.
[Answer]
My [old answer to a different question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/97268/where-can-i-easily-cheaply-get-a-hundred-square-miles-of-land-for-a-new-country/97286#97286) answers this exactly.
To summarize:
1. Aggression against it would create an incident with another major government as well, as any claim of territory would apply to both. Each would rather leave the status quo then have the other claim it officially.
2. Big corporations actively do not want a legal precedent to be set that rejects their sovereignty. Lawyers have tied it up into knots.
3. It does get some kind of recognition from a major NGO.
4. The billionaire is on friendly terms with the countries involved. They do significant business with him. Perhaps something about some such business works well because they can avoid certain laws or regulations, so imposing their official claim would *lose* that resource.
[Answer]
Convince major world powers to set you up to their benefit.
The clear moral is that the British have been past masters in this sort of area for centuries - enlisting their support seems likely to be useful. What could go wrong?
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Singapore was established by the British as a counter to the current Malayan Sultan.
They took a relatively insignificant fishing village & trading post (in a superb location) and established a pretender to the Malayan rulers as ruler of their new kingdom\*. It went from there.
Singapore is militarily indefensible in modern terms (and the UK got it badly wrong in WW2) but is as safe as anywhere else nowadays.
NOBODY will take over Singapore any time soon.
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An aside:
\*The full story is extremely complex - as is often the case when "Perfidious Albion" interferes in world affairs. Different modern views exist, any of which may be seen as 'revisionist" depending on what you take the 'true' story to be. Even the titles and roles may confuse, Sultans and Sultanates there were but also terms and concepts such as "underking Yamtuan Muda Raja Ja'afar" and "Sultan Hussein Mua'zzam Shah ibni Mahmud Shah Alam" - whether being two two Sha's trumps a Sultan is moot.
**The clear moral is that the British have been past masters in this sort of area for centuries - enlisting their support seems likely to be useful. What could go wrong?**
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[Hussein Shah of Johor](https://wiki2.org/en/Hussein_Shah_of_Johor) portrays Hussein as a shoe-in.
Whereas [The little red blog](https://www.thelittleredblog.sg/blog/last-sultan-singapore/) sees him as the legitimate hero.
[Answer]
**No.**
There are many issues with trying to defend a small island from a determined attacker.
Supplies can easily be cut off by even a small patrol boat, leaving the island entirely isolated.
The small size gives no defensive depth whatsoever, and very little hiding space. Satellite surveillance will give an attacker a very good picture while the defenders have no idea at all when and where the assault will happen. This will tire out a small group very quickly trying to keep constant watch.
To defend against helicopters, ships or aircraft, you need heavy weaponry. Guided missiles are not cheap, and usually not freely available, and if you buy them from some rogue state, they are more likely to be the *reason* for an intervention than an effective form of defense.
Even if you do have them, they require maintenance, and trained operators, increasing the number of people that need to be on the island, and the amount of supplies you need.
I do think the fundamental premise is flawed of deterring aggressors. Any show of force is likely to be seen as a challenge to the state they want to declare independence on, and bring down the military to put an end to the insanity as quickly as possible.
[Answer]
**Bribes and Secrecy**
This is an answer based on [*The Most Dangerous Game*, by Richard Connell](https://archive.org/stream/TheMostDangerousGame_129/danger.txt). In the book, the protagonist is stranded on what appears to be an abandoned island, but meets the owner of the island, Zaroff, who challenges him to become the *most dangerous game*. If the protagonist can stay alive for three days, Zaroff would let him go free. Zaroff then proceeds to try to hunt him down for the rest of the book.
Zaroff, in the novel, is a retired army veteran looking for fun in hunting down humans. In the book, he has already made countless victims of the previously shipwrecked people.
How was Zaroff able to maintain his hunts in relative secrecy from the rest of the world, despite them being against the laws of almost any country? He lives on an abandoned island, and most importantly, *none of the hunted had ever survived*.
Based on this approach, perhaps the protagonists of your book can keep their island’s sovereignty by adopting a secretive approach. On the surface, they can obtain the rights to the island and become a separate country, but maintaining the non-intrusive laws.
But in reality, they can hold their conflicting laws in the shadows. Just as in *The Most Dangerous Game*, they can silence any dissenters, or people who find out about their dark side.
Obviously, this act of silencing can be done in more ways than in the book; bribes, blackmail, imprisonment, and burying. The bribes, blackmail, and imprisonment would make the book more interesting, as it leaves weak points for resistance to occur. Burying would be somewhat more problematic, as it would be difficult to 'cover up' (pardon the pun).
If anything happens, however, and news starts to leak, using their finances, the group could also bribe medias and small governments to keep up the veil. Considering that, as you have said, the island itself does not hold much value in capturing, there would be more benefits to be had for any corrupt officials to receive bribes instead.
TL;DR, by maintaining secrecy (forcefully, if need be), and suppressing any leaks through their considerable finances, the group could be successful in implementing shadow policies on their island. The relative seclusion and suppression of leaks would preemptively prevent any possible attacks on the island, rather than trying to stop one.
[Answer]
The [Principality of Sealand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand) managed to make it work.
It was claimed while in international waters.
The extend of UK territorial waters was extended to include Sealand.
But it still exists as an "independent" (if not recognized by any other country) entity.
[Answer]
Can I posit Taiwan, also known as the Republic of China? Okay, not that small an island at some 36,000 km2, but because of its wealth and the services it offers it has some big influential 'friends' who are prepared to back it's continuing independence from the People's Republic of China - mainland China. If Taiwan didn't have huge economic wealth and offer stuff that among other places the USA really wants, the mainland Chinese government would have rolled over it long ago.
(Okay, one of the things that Taiwan has that the USA used to appreciate and may still do is being a US-friendly non-communist country very close to a large communist one... as the UK used to be described, it's an unsinkable aircraft carrier)
It's hard to imagine that any island considerably smaller could command enough global economic might to get support from bigger countries in it's retaining independence. After all, the putative multi-billionaire who declares its independence actually has the majority of his wealth elsewhere in the world - so the island's independence would have very little economic value.
[Answer]
**Sure, if they're prepared to fight back.**
Your billionaire just has to be prepared to give a lot of money to some very bad people to retaliate against their enemies.
At some point, the population is going to get tired of getting suicide-bombed all the time over some stupid rock in the middle of the ocean.
[Answer]
The (other) answers seem to leave out the possibility of an *"unthinkable" defense*.
If the gazillionaire island owner convinces the leader of a large neighboring country he controls a weapon of mass destruction near (enough) to their capital, he can probably get them to agree to a treaty in which they agree to honor, and protect with *their* military, his claim to sovereignty.
This could be seen as a variant on the "bribery" defense suggested by others, though I think they'll agree it's a significant enough departure.
A variant on this would be to convince them you're crazy enough to deploy such a weapon *on the island*, which would render a large zone of the attacker's country uninhabitable, and kill lots of people already living there, if you were attacked. This is a variation on the "make it more expensive than it's worth" strategy already employed successfully by several tiny nations on Earth today.
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I'm writing a story about a fantasy medieval world where flightless dragons roam vast tropical rainforests (like Vietnam or Borneo) and preys on animals and people alike. These dragons are so powerful yet elusive that the only reliable way to hunt them is by burning a big chunk of the forest to drive them out of hiding, forcing people who live in that forest to move away and lose their homes. The main conflict in the story is that a dragon is terrorizing a village, but the villagers don't want their village and the surrounding forest to be burned down, so they try to hunt this dragon before the authorities deem it necessary to set fire to the forest.
At least, that's how I envisioned it at first. But then I remember that controlled burning is a thing, and is sometimes used to clear land for agriculture anyway, so it's not like this massive forest burning is entirely terrible. I know that forests play a bigger role in pre-industrial societies, but I don't know if they're important enough to the extent that losing an entire forest renders the land uninhabitable. But I already wrote the forest burning as a bad thing and should be avoided, so how can I justify that?
[Answer]
### The 445 Australians who died of smoke inhalation from the [2019/2020 bushfire season](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bushfire_season#South_Australia) couldn't be contacted for comment.
Big forest burning is a ***terrible thing***: My state (South Australia) had a higher death toll from bushfires this year than we did from COVID-19.
(Let that sink in: ***WORSE THAN COVID19!***)
I'll direct you to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfares [report on these fires](https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/environment-and-health/short-term-health-impacts-2019-20-bushfires/contents/summary).
Personally I had my first Asthma attack since childhood, my partner's mother had the fire front up to her backdoor (the online maps showed it overran her house, and we lost contact with her for 48 hours), and the bulk of my social circle switched from a "She'll be all right mate" attitude to a borderline doomsday prepper.
The mental health impacts of this will never be truly known, as we went straight from fires to floods to COVID-19 so this is hard to isolate, but it burnt [12 million hectares](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2020-03-05/bushfire-crisis-five-big-numbers/12007716), 40% were worried about someone's safety, 45% were affected by smoke, it killed a billion animals (the koala is [predicted to go extinct](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53231348) in some states), 2 major cities (pop > 1 million) were cut off for weeks from all their supply routes, and it emitted nearly a year of our CO2 budget.
And that was only 1.8% of our land area. If your people go round burning their entire forest down systematically looking for this dragon the consequences are going to be far worse.
Controlled burns are manageable and humans can get close to them, a traditional Australian Aboriginal burn only burnt tall grass and undergrowth, it didn't burn the trees at all, and you could walk right up it - your dragon could probably mosey around the fire front and otherwise ignore it. A fire needed to flush out such a dragon would need to be a destructive wildfire similar to the level which devastated Australia earlier this year.
[Answer]
**The forest is not random wildness. The people who live there have made the forest what it is.**
[Amazon forest 'shaped by pre-Columbian indigenous peoples'](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39149334)
Your forest dwellers do not cut trees and plant corn where trees used to be. They live in the forest. The forest provides what they need. This is not by accident. The forest is not a random wild growth. These people have managed the forest for thousands of years, cutting back undesired growth and encouraging trees and plants that provide medicine, building materials and food for themselves and for animals. Your people know when and where to go in the forest to get what they need to live. They are keepers of the forest.
This forest does not burn. There are trees that are thousands of years old and some of these trees are rightly revered as powerful entities.
If the forest is destroyed (and burning will destroy it), it upends what this culture has built over the millenia.
It destroys the culture itself. The people will be scattered, reduced to working for a wage on the farms of other peoples.
---
Now the trick as a writer: take the ethos of this people and move it to dragon hunting. The outsiders are threatened by a dragon: kill it. The outsiders are threatened by a forest: burn it. Your people are not like the outsiders, but how are they different? How can your people address the problem - not just the problem of the dragon, but really the problem of the powerful outsiders who can burn the forest. Hint: how was this dragon living before it started eating people?
[Answer]
**Metal poisoning**
Today I happened on an article about metal smelting in trees: <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/science/metal-plants-farm.html>
This seems incredibly cool to me and might assist your answer. The ground might be easily polluted by nickel in that area. Much of the trees and vegetation remove it from the soil, storing it in themselves. The vegetation likely stores it in itself as protection against parasites, like woodworm or caterpillars. To have good farmland, the trees must be removed root and stem in a careful way, so the nickel doesn't return to the soil and poison the plants. However, burning the forest will possibly increase metal in the air and water, polluting both enough for serious health effects and destroying farmland. The people don't even need to know what causes it, they just need to have it culturally ingrained by generations of living there. Burning trees with green sap is dangerous. For me it would be doubly interesting, as it seems so outlandish but turns out true.
[Answer]
## Conditions and technology don't allow for controlled burning.
As noted in Ash's answer, controlled burns (aka "hazard reduction") are low-intensity operations that may not be enough to flush out a dragon. But also, even with 21st-century technology and fire science, controlled burns often aren't an option.
*Contra* some of the post-mortem discussion about the 2019-20 Australian fires, the main limit on controlled burning is not political opposition but the narrowness of the window in which conditions are right for it.You can't do them during a wet winter, because a low-intensity fire will just fizzle. You can't do them during hot/dry/windy weather because of the risk that the fire will get out of control - and weather forecasting is important in planning this.
Even when the weather is right, care has to be taken to avoid causing erosion - burning slopes or riverbanks makes it easy for the topsoil to be washed away, which is very bad for people depending on that ecosystem.
For more detail on some of the considerations involved, [here are the New South Wales Rural Fire Service standards for low-intensity hazard reduction burning.](https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/13322/Standards-for-Low-Intensity-Bush-Fire-Hazard-Reduction-Burning.pdf)
In a low-tech setting without radios, vehicles, or weather satellites... it probably isn't any easier. Unless your dragon is courteous enough to show up at just the right time of year, your villagers have no reason to believe that the fire will be controllable.
[Answer]
## Controlled burns are not massive fires.
Several commenters have already mentioned this, but I thought it was worth fleshing out in an answer.
Controlled burns typically cover a few hectars to a couple thousand hectares. A thousand hectares is about 10 sq km (4 sq miles). [A dragon's territory is likely to be 40-1000 sq km](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/164640/how-big-is-a-dragons-hunting-territory). The minimum size would overlap with the largest of controlled burns, but the maximum size would be 100 times larger.
Assuming the controlled burn covers the dragon's whole territory, controlled burns are designed to clear underbrush, and do not greatly impact local fauna, other than to change the available food sources. For predators, the controlled burn may even increase their available food sources long term:
>
> Prescribed fire has an indirect, positive effect on large carnivore populations due to the high quality ungulate habitat it creates. (Source: [Effects of Prescribed Fire on Wildlife and Wildlife Habitat in Selected Ecosystems of North America](https://wildlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/TechManual16-01FINAL.pdf))
>
>
>
Even uncontrolled wildfires have limited immediate population effects,
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> Despite the perception by the general public that wildland fire is devastating to animals, fires generally kill and injure a relatively small proportion of animal populations. ... Animals with limited mobility livingabove ground appear to be most vulnerable to fire-caused injury and mortality, but occasionally even large mammals are killed by fire. The large fires of 1988 in the Greater Yellowstone Area killed about 1 percent of the area’s elk population (Singer andSchullery 1989)
>
>
> (Source: [Wildland Fire in Ecosystems](https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr042_1.pdf))
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>
After the controlled burn, much of the tree cover will still be intact, so finding the dragon will still present a challenge. I couldn't find a picture immediately after a controlled burn, but in the following image, you can see the large trees are still present.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nbFIx.gif)
## So what would work? Defoliation
Burning a big chunk of forest to drive the dragon out of hiding sounds more like a "salt the earth" defoliation strategy, similar to using Agent Orange during the Vietnam War to "was to defoliate rural/forested land, depriving guerrillas of food and concealment and clearing sensitive areas such as around base perimeters" ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#Use_in_the_Vietnam_War)).
These strategies were disastrous for locals. The military explicitly aimed to "destroy the ability of peasants to support themselves in the countryside" in the short term, and the herbicides had long-term health effects for as many as 3 million Vietnamese and 40,000 US Veterans ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#Use_in_the_Vietnam_War)). For your fire-based defoliation, health effects could easily result from smoke inhalation instead of chemical exposure.
Large fires such as those that occurred in Australia and the Pacific Northwest this year are more similar to these military strategies than they are to controlled burns, in both scale (3,100,000 hectares sprayed with defoliants vs 400,000 hectares burned in Oregon - 18,000,000 million burned in Australia), and in ecological impact (covered extensively in @Ash's answer).
The military does not typically have the ecological health of an area in mind, and the local community is likely right to worry about the impact of military intervention.
[Answer]
Burning an entire section of forest might not be terrible in the long-term, but for the people living there in the short-term, it would be a nightmare.
If they gather food in the woods, or hunt there, then burning everything down takes away at least part of their food supply. If they use wood as a building material, burning all of the wood in a several-mile-wide radius will make construction and repairs significantly harder for a while. And if the village burns, either intentionally or unintentionally (the wind can turn a controlled fire into an uncontrollable one quickly), well. I think the problems there are self-evident. It's even worse if the village relies on agriculture and their crops burn before the harvest. Homelessness and starvation are not fun.
And of course, you can always fall back on spiritual/religious/cultural reasons for why burning the forest would be a bad thing. Maybe the villagers believe that burning healthy plants is a terrible waste of Mother Nature's gifts. Maybe there's a sacred tree out there that wouldn't survive a blaze. Whatever the case, they just can't in good conscience sit back and watch as the forest they've been in for generations is reduced to ash.
[Answer]
By burning the forest, you not only decrease oxygen production, but you kill many animals, if it gets out of control (which still happens today) whole forests would burn down, and if this was in a medieval society, there were no such things as controlled fires.
**Edit**: Also, a rainforest burning is so hard to put out because the thickness, as shown by the Amazon Fire, and the variety of elements/compunds found there which make chemical fires which are much harder to put out, especially if they have high combustive chemical concentrations, etc. even if rare, also, the height of the trees, in a rainforest, the trees are so tall they could pass over many borderlines
[Answer]
Speaking as a Filipino American, massive burning in a TROPICAL forest would be a bad thing just because *the tropics are already hot.* If dragons burn up a swathe of forest, you have now lost a lot of your trees for shade, the timber to build shelter, and the water-bodies in that region would be clogged up with ash and dead things. Wildfires already aren’t fun in a temperate climate, but near the equator, you can EASILY die of dehydration trying to find a place that the dragons haven’t wrecked.
Plus tropical regions may or may not have monsoon seasons, and if the dragons strike too close to the wet season, the plant-life that would have drank up a week’s worth of heavy rain is now gone, so you will inevitably get floods.
**EDIT:** Got reminded that the premise was actually "people burn down the forest to kill the dragon," and my corrected answer is basically "No one in their right minds would even THINK of this option." As people already said above, *fire is hard to control.* All the terrible regional/environmental effects that everyone mentioned would happen to the forest whether the dragon did it, or people did.
I think only the most desperate people would even suggest "let's burn down the forest to flush out the dragon!" to begin with, but the others would *immediately* shut the idea down.
[Answer]
# Something about the Forest is Irreplaceable
Be it an herb that only grows there, memories written on tress, or active systems that require the formation of the forest as it is, perhaps a rare form of wildlife required by the world in some way ONLY lives here and cannot be tamed/farmed anywhere else.
A strange sickness that is very rare and not often known, but when it appears must be fought back and the only cure comes from a plant that only grows in this forest. If this forest is lost, they better hope the sickness never reappears.
The denizens of the forest have grown their homes of and within the trees. Generations of careful pruning, shaping, planned removals and plantings of trees that only after 30 years or so could even be lived in. Over the generations is has become a one of a kind ecosystem and architecture, a testament to human patience and co-existence that literally exists no where else. Imagine the look of an elven grove city, where the houses are within the massive trees with walkways made of branches etc.
Just a few examples.
[Answer]
# Two words: nuclear autumn
A 2019 study[1] examined the effects of a limited nuclear conflict on world climate with updated modeling, and concluded that a relatively modest nuclear exchange would yield enough aerosols to cause a decrease in global temperatures for years afterward. That in turn would lead to decreased agricultural output, and consequently increased starvation and death, even in areas very distant from where the conflict took place.
The important part here, though, is that any process that puts sufficient material into the upper atmosphere could cause this effect, massive fires included. And we have evidence that massive fires do create high-altitude particles (see another study from 2019[2]). So, burning a large forest to drive out a dragon would likely decrease food production in the local village, as well as possibly cause significant impacts on contemporary civilizations around the world.
[1] <https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/10/eaay5478>
[2] <https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6453/587>
[Answer]
**Water Cycle**
Forest are an important piece in the water lifecycle, as their ground absorbs water and their trees produce water also. Removing an massive forest could lead to unstable climate, inducing dries and floods all over the world.
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The fire, being draconic, is far hotter than your usual controlled burn, or even ordinary forest fires. It burns up all the organic material. There is little ash left and basically you have scorched rock.
It is not only a disaster when it happens but leaves the land ruined for generations.
[Answer]
In places where controlled burns are a regular occurrence, this encourages the growth of fire-tolerant plants. Indeed, some species become fire-dependant, and cannot reproduce *without* fire.
In such a place, a massive burn to flush out or kill a dragon would still be a disaster to the people living there, as it would also kill people and destroy crops and homes, but such a forest's plants and animals would recover and return in less than a human generation.
However, not all forests are populated with species of plants that are fire-tolerant or fire-dependant. In such an environment where fire is unusual and limited in scope, a massive fire would devastate the area to the point where it might take a century or more to recover fully, and where displaced people are looking for a place to live, it may never recover, as people turn the land from forest to farmland... which is likely to become nutrient-deprived and poorly productive within a few years.
Such a massive fire in a non-fire-adapted forest would be not only an immediate human disaster as well as a disaster to the flora and fauna, but a massive and potentially unrecoverable loss of primary production for the foreseeable future.
[Answer]
Simple: You make it necessary to burn down a HUGE chunk of the forest to drive it out. The only way to drive the dragon out has to be a burn on a scale way too large to control, that does damage to the forest that can take dozens upon dozens of human lifetimes to heal.
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[Question]
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I have created in my world a keep that lies inside a walled courtyard.
Artistically I have designed the keep to rise in three tiers not unlike a wedding cake. *(Though the castle is made of stone not batter. Less delicious but decidedly stronger)*
Like so:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UrO9a.jpg)
After some initial searches online I could find 0 examples of a stone structure tiered in this manner. Which leads me to believe it may not be architecturally possible...which kind of makes sense, though I am no expert in castle construction.
**My Question:** Can this type of stone structure be built with the following requirements in mind, and if so, how?
* The inside of each tier should be as open as possible, meaning people need to be able to live/work/rain pointy death upon their enemies from inside.
* Medieval construction techniques and materials only
* Cost is not a factor, I am not interested in answers of the "It's not cost effective/why would you bother" variety
* The design is a simple aesthetic choice for the city there is no deep meaning behind it.
* The floors are roughly: 60/40/20 feet in diameter (~18/12/6 Meters)
* I am looking for 25 foot tall ceilings on the main floor and 10-15 feet on the second and third floors. (~ 7.5 M and 3 - 4.5 M)
**The best answers will:**
* Allow for the maximum amount of open space possible on the main floor. The fewer line of sight blocking requirements the better. Ideally you could stand in the middle of the main floor and see the walls in 360 degrees (obviously some sort of supports will be needed)
* The center of the second floor should be open. Meaning there is an atrium so that you can see down from the second floor onto the main floor
Per several requests I have added an image of what I was imagining the inside to look like.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/X9Q2l.jpg)
[Answer]
I am sure that vaguely "Medieval" technology could build a structure like you describe out of stone, and/or brick, and/or tiles, and/or concrete, and/or wood, and/or other materials.
You may have to modify some aspects of your design in order to keep other aspects, and thus may have to make some choices.
I suggest that you take a look at plans (if available) for the various buildings I mention, including looking up other sites besides the ones I link to. You may want to find out how thick their walls were or are and how large the interior spaces were or are.
The Pharos at Alexandria (280 BC)was very tall, allegedly 100 meters (328 feet) or 120 to 137 meters (393.7 to 449 feet), rivaling or possibly surpassing the Great Pyramid (145.6 meters or 481 feet), and probably had more interior space compared to the thickness of the walls.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_of_Alexandria>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_of_Alexandria)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza>[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza)
In Rome the Mausoleum of Augustus (c.30 BC) had several concentric circular walls, higher in the center, to support a conical mound of dirt and growing plants.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausoleum_of_Augustus>[3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausoleum_of_Augustus)
Emperor Claudius (reigned AD 41-54) built a harbor and lighthouse at Ostia, the port of Rome. It has been suggested that for reasons of prestige Claudius must have built his lighthouse taller than the Pharos at Alexandria. Thus it might have been taller than the Great Pyramid.
<https://www.ostia-antica.org/portus/c001.htm>[4](https://www.ostia-antica.org/portus/c001.htm)
The Colosseum (AD 72-80) in Rome. The Colosseum is sort of an inside out version of what you want, having an arena at ground level in the center and the highest walls on the outside, so one would have to turn it inside out to get the right plan. And of course the Colosseum was designed with many entrances and exits and you wouldn't want that in a "keep" if the "keep" was intended for serious defense purposes.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum>[5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum)
In Rome the Mausoleum of Hadrian, now part of Castel Sant'Angelo (134-139), like the Mausoleum of Augustus, had several concentric circular walls, higher in the center, to support conical mounds of dirt and growing plants.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_Sant%27Angelo>[6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_Sant%27Angelo)
The Rotunda in Thessaloniki, Greece (306) has two concentric circular walls, the taller inner one supported by arches and piers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_of_Galerius_and_Rotunda>[7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_of_Galerius_and_Rotunda)
The Church of Santa Costanza in Rome (4th century) has two concentric circular walls, the inner one higher and supported on columns and arches.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Costanza>[8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Costanza)
The Church of Saint Stephen in Rome (5th century) has several concentric circular walls, the innermost and tallest supported on columns.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Stefano_al_Monte_Celio>[9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Stefano_al_Monte_Celio)
The Church of the holy Sepulchre in Bologna, Italy (5th century, rebuilt c. 1000) Has a taller inner twelve sided wall supported by 12 columns, and a lower outer octagonal wall.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Stefano,_Bologna>[10](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Stefano,_Bologna)
The legendary Yongning Pagoda in Louyang, China, built in 516 but burned down in 534, was largely made of wood. It was certainly much taller than the proposed structure would be, so there there would be no structural problems building the proposed structure out of wood.
See posts 88, 89 on page 9 here:
<http://historum.com/asian-history/46370-why-do-ancient-chinese-architecture-hardly-ever-go-up-9.html1>
The Yongning Pagoda was described in Record of the Buddhist Monasteries in Loyang to be 90 Zhang high and 100 Zhang with the spire, or 330 meters (1082.68 feet), but in the commentary of the Waterways Classic "only" 49 Zhang or 163 meters (534.777 feet). Archaeologist Yang Honxun who excavated its foundations believed it was about 147 meters (482.283 feet) tall.
<http://english.cntv.cn/program/documentary/20110531/100055.shtml3>[11](http://english.cntv.cn/program/documentary/20110531/100055.shtml3)
<https://www.google.com/search?q=Pagoda+of+Yongning+Temple%2C+Luoyang&oq=Pagoda+of+Yongning+Temple%2C+Luoyang&aqs=chrome..69i57.5655j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-84>
[12](https://www.google.com/search?q=Pagoda%20of%20Yongning%20Temple%2C%20Luoyang&oq=Pagoda%20of%20Yongning%20Temple%2C%20Luoyang&aqs=chrome..69i57.5655j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-84)
Anyway, the structure asked about, if made of wood, would be much less extreme than the Yongning Pagoda.
The Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy (526-547) has two concentric octagonal walls, the higher inner wall supported on arches and piers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_San_Vitale>[13](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_San_Vitale)
The Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus in istanbul, Turkey (527-536) has a higher central wall supported by arches and piers, surrounded by a lower square wall.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Interior_of_Sergius_and_Bacchus_Church-6.JPG>[14](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Interior_of_Sergius_and_Bacchus_Church-6.JPG)
The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (c.685/86-691/92) has a inner, higher, circular wall supported on columns and two outer, lower, octagonal walls.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_of_the_Rock>[15](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_of_the_Rock)
The palatine chapel at Aachen, Germany (c.792-805) has two concentric walls, the inner one higher and supported on arches and piers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatine_Chapel,_Aachen>[16](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatine_Chapel,_Aachen)
The Old Cathedral, Bresica, Italy (c. 11th Century) has two concentric circular walls,the higher inner one supported by arches and piers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Cathedral,_Brescia>[17](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Cathedral,_Brescia)
The Rotunda of San Lorenzo, Mantua, Italy (late 11th century) has two concentric circular walls, the higher inner one supported by arches and piers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotonda_di_San_Lorenzo>[18](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotonda_di_San_Lorenzo)
The Garisenda and Asinelli Towers in Bologna, Italy (c.1109-1119?), are basically square stone towers, very different from the desired design, but reached heights of 60 and 97.2 meters (196 and 318 feet) with very thick walls but thin enough to have rooms inside even at ground level.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Towers,_Bologna>[19](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Towers,_Bologna)
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge, England (c.1130) has two concentric walls in the nave, the inner one higher and supported on arches and piers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulchre,_Cambridge>[20](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulchre,_Cambridge)
The Temple Church, London, England (1185) has a circular section with a high inner wall supported on six columns surrounded by a lower circular outer wall.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Church>[21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Church)
The Liebfrauenkirche, Trier, Germany (13th century), has a complex, basically cross shaped and circular, gothic structure supported by piers or columns.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebfrauenkirche,_Trier>[22](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebfrauenkirche,_Trier)
The central tower of Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln, England, was raised to a height of 271 feet (83 meters) in 1307-1311, and a wooden spire was added on top of the tower, allegedly reaching a height of 525 feet (160 meters).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral>[23](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral)
The *Torre del Mangia*, Siena, Italy, (1338-1348) is 334.6 feet (102 meters) tall.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_del_Mangia>[24](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_del_Mangia)
The octagonal north tower of Strassbourg Cathedral, Strasbourg, France was completed in 1439, and is 466 feet (142 meters) tall. It was the tallest building in the world from 1647 to 1874.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg_Cathedral>[25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg_Cathedral)
The steeple tower of St. Mary's Church, Stralsund, Germany, built after 1495, was 495 feet (151 meters) tall, which made it the tallest structure in the world from 1549 to 1569 and from 1573 to 1647.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary%27s_Church,_Stralsund>[26](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary%27s_Church,_Stralsund)
The central tower of Beauvais Cathedral, Beauvais, France, completed in 1569, was 502 feet (153 meters) tall making it the tallest structure in the world from 1569 to 1573.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauvais_Cathedral>[27](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauvais_Cathedral)
A common early type of castle was called a "motte-and-bailey" castle. The bailey was a courtyard with buildings enclosed by a stone or wooden wall. The motte was a conical mound with a flat top. A usually circular keep of stone or wood was built on top of the motte, and the keep often had a central courtyard with a stone or wood tower in the center.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_castle>[28](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_castle)
You give the total height of the rooms in your tower as 45 to 55 feet. You don't say if the ceilings should be flat wooden floors or vaulted stone, brick or other masonry, so I don't know how much they add to the height, and there may be parapets going a few feet above the roof. But your tower looks like it will be less than 75 feet in total height.
You say that say that "cost is not a factor". I suggest that you take a look at the castle of Coucy, built by the Lord of Coucy (not king, not duke, not count, but lord).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_de_Coucy>[29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_de_Coucy)
Also the Great dome of the Florence Cathedral, Florence, Italy (1420-1436), could easily contain your entire proposed tower.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Cathedral>[30](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Cathedral)
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## You can't get it all at once.
The problem with that design in stone is you lose a lot of internal space and waste a lot of material.There has to be a wall under each of those external walls that runs all the way to the ground and further, so the lowest ring has to have three wall along the outside to support the floors above, it is a lot of wasted stone and space for no benefit. Building a single wall taller is more structurally sound. All the weight bearing walls need to go all the way down. The lower levels end up with walls so thick the internal space is the same as the highest section. You can do it but it a huge waste and stone buildings are expensive. You can build a taper into a building but nothing that extreme, you do it by having each wall get thinners as it goes up, that is as much as you can do it, how much you can taper the wall itself. It works with cakes because they are solid and uniform.
Another problem you have is your walls, walls on a keep are several feet thick The upper part of the tower only has room for a staircase. Keep in mind the lowest levels will only have a single at most 20ft wide room in it. 60ft minus 4-5 per side per wall, so you lose around 30ft of the inernal space before you consider how to get from floor to floor.
So if you are trying to maximize your internal space this is an awful choice, you don't have useful rooms in this structure you have a single central staircase and maybe enough room for a chair or two. It also lowers the defensibility of the structure, since the lower tiers create a shadow for fire from the upper ones. Real keeps had straight sides for a reason.
To be clear you can build that shape but not with those dimensions if you want any space inside. If you want that profile/shape and size, you need to give up on having much in the way of internal space.
If you are trying to maximize space just a straight (or mostly straight) walled 60ft wide tower is better, and completely realistic.
If you want that shape and internal space you need to build it much bigger, basically the upper most section needs to be wide enough to hold whatever internal space you want on the ground floor.
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What you want is a circular ziggurat. Not any kind of ziggurat, but a hollow one with lots of internal space. That's because not all the ones built by the ancient were hollow in all layers.
Anuway, this is [Chogha Zanbil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chogha_Zanbil). It was finished around 1250 BC:
This is a view from above:
And this is an artistic rendering of it in its full glory:
If the ancient could do it, then the middle agers could too (well... Maybe, depending on where they are and the plagues they are facing). It just takes a little bit of i genuity to make the whole thing rounded.
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I’m not an architect but I still have some opinion on it considering some basic static physics. The main problem with any high building and heavy materials on top some of that force will push onto the wall. Now add windows and not to big walls to the mix and your walls won’t hold against the sideways forces.
That the reason buttress were invented.
<https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-flying-buttress-4049089>
Depending on your internal structure of that building so thing similar might be necessary here too.
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Like a cake, you need to support the upper layers.
With cakes they use dowels, or other inserts, to support the upper layers.
What you could do would be to use archways and pillars to create the central ring and build it up to the height of the third floor. Around that build another ring up to the height of the second floor, and lastly build the outer wall for the first floor around everything. Put the cross braces from the outer walls to the inner walls, and then the center, lay flooring on top of that.
If you can make a three story building, then build a two story building around it, then build a one story building around that, then this shouldn't be too hard.
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**Fake it**.
If it's purely an aesthetic choice, then it doesn't actually need to *be* 100% stone--it just needs to *look like it*. Given that many (perhaps most) medieval keeps were whitewashed anyway, you can build a wooden tower and whitewash it and no one will be able to tell the difference from the outside. And given that the highest tower is, well, *high*, and set well back from any ground threats by the surrounding walls of the lower levels, there's no real defensive need for it to be made of stone.
So, you start with a 40-foot wide stone tower. The individual floors within the tower are formed from wooden beams supported by sockets and corbels on the interior wall; critically, the uppermost floor has additional support in the form of diagonal bracing beams which will help to transfer the load of the 20-foot wide wooden tower that you are going to build on top of it out to the stone wall. You will also want to put an overhang on the top floor of the middle tower, with (whitewashed) projecting wooden battlements forming the top of that tower, rather than a straight wall; the reason for this is to allow your floor joists to extend past the top of the stone wall, and then rest weight on them to provide counter-torque to further balance the weight of the central tower resting on that floor.
Then you just building 60-foot-diameter lower level wall around that, and hang the roof and any intermediate floor joists between the inner and outer walls.
The 40-foot diameter stone tower is now going to be your primary structural support. It can have arched doorways cut through it periodically, but you just aren't going to get a full 60-foot wide open space anywhere. Instead, you can have rooms in the middle tower that are up to maybe 30 feet across (subtracting for a conservative five-foot wall thickness), with some encroachment on the headroom at the edges on the top one or two interior floors because of the presence of the supporting braces, and then you get a thin annulus around that. And then you need to add stairs, which I would wrap around the interior of the central structural tower, although that further encroaches on the available room for, well, *rooms*.
I would probably make the lower, outermost wall considerably wider, so that you can actually get some decent space in that annulus, rather than having most of it taken up by just the thickness of the wall itself. Keep in mind, however, that you don't need to set aside room for hallways; medieval interior architecture didn't really use them, preferring to just have rooms leading to rooms--and if you have to go through some irrelevant room to get to the one you actually want, so be it. Having specialized hallways so you can get from one room directly to any other only passing through public space is an unnecessary luxury.
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There is no problem with the structure you have in mind.
The choir of a medieval cathedral is quite close to half your structure.
So, you will have three rings of pillars, stacked on top of each other.
It's actually very close to the way things were built anyway, so just have fun, build it, and enjoy.
Mind you, your pillars will be fairly massive, since engineers at the epoch did not calculate the structures, but went by try and error. Just look at any cathedral of the epoch, and you will get a good idea how open the space on the inside will turn out.
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Tolkien's *Minas Anor* had this design, but on a much larger scale. It had seven levels, each with a curtain wall and gate. The gates were offset from each other to maximize the opportunities for defense. The fortress was built on an outcropping of a mountain range, so each wall was directly supported by bedrock. To quote the first chapter of Book V of *The Lord of the Rings*:
>
> For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels, each delved into the hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall was a gate. But the gates were not set in a line: the Great Gate in the City Wall was at the east point of the circuit, but the next faced half south, and the third half north, and so to and fro upwards; so that the paved way that climbed towards the Citadel turned first this way and then that across the face of the hill. And each time that it passed the line of the Great Gate it went through an arched tunnel, piercing a vast pier of rock whose huge out-thrust bulk divided in two all the circles of the City save the first. For partly in the primeval shaping of the hill, partly by the mighty craft and labour of old, there stood up from the rear of the wide court behind the Gate a towering bastion of stone, its edge sharp as a ship-keel facing east. Up it rose, even to the level of the topmost circle, and there was crowned by a battlement; so that those in the Citadel might, like mariners in a mountainous ship, look from its peak sheer down upon the Gate seven hundred feet below. The entrance to the Citadel also looked eastward, but was delved in the heart of the rock; thence a long lamp-lit slope ran up to the seventh gate. Thus men reached at last the High Court, and the Palace of the Fountain before the feet of the White Tower: tall and shapely, fifty fathoms from its base to the pinnacle, where the banner of the Stewards floated a thousand feet above the plain.
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You're building The Colosseum (arches in a circle), using modular construction [like Sears' tower](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/71592/megacity-shapes-episode-3-plumbing/71595#71595), to a height of less than 200 feet just like the [Monadnock building](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137383/how-tall-can-you-build-a-mountain-chain-of-bricks/137408?r=SearchResults&s=1|29.0493#137408), otherwise the walls, columns and archways need to be so thick that there'd be no usable space on the lower floors.
What you'll end up with is what looks like how most artists depict the [Hanging Gardens of Babylon](https://www.google.com/search?q=gardens+of+babylon&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj5hPvauJrkAhVQOKwKHQEYC_MQ_AUIESgB&biw=1024&bih=615) (image search), except circular.
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# You want the Tower of Babel
So, this is sort of make believe, but literally every Early Modern artist pictured the Tower of Babel as a multi-tiered wedding cake, more or less, although the tiers were often more of spiral, I suppose.
That doesn't make it more physically realistic; other answers address that issue. But, you are in good historical company envisioning a tower looking like that.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/J4Kqe.jpg)
[Pieter Brughel the Elder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder), 1563
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9Hbwu.jpg)
[Athanasius Kircher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_Kircher), 1679
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/f5x7Y.jpg)
[Lukas van Valkenborch the Elder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_van_Valckenborch), 1594
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The answer is that yes, you can do this, and there is a very famous, well-documented real example that is almost exactly what you describe:
**The Light House of Alexandria**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qKDxP.png)
The [wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_of_Alexandria) describes it pretty well. The catch of course is that it is 1) Expensive, 2) difficult to build, and 3) might be unstable (the famous Lighthouse collapsed during a minor earthquake).
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At the climax of my medieval low-fantasy novel the protagonist has to besiege a castle that (from his side) can only be accessed through a valley. The valley is quite cramped, and the hills are too tall and steep for any horses or heavily armoured men to climb without great difficulty. The fight also takes place during the winter, adding shin-high snow as well as strong winds into the mix.
The problem is, the valley is guarded by a small group of heavy cavalry (supported by a small force of infantry).
The protagonist has superior forces, but they mostly consist of infantry and light cavalry.
The enemy cavalry have both lances and swords. The infantry are mostly pikemen, with some archers.
The hero's cavalry mostly carry shields and spears, while some have shields and swords. About one third of the infantry are archers, while the rest have pole arms or swords.
The hero also has some engineers and sappers, but limited siege equipment.
Both sides have mostly veterans in their armies, but the hero's troops have excellent morale, compared to the somewhat average morale of the enemy.
If the protagonist does not succeed to capture the castle within a few days, the bulk of the enemy's somewhat superior army will arrive and reinforce the fort, easily routing the hero's troops. If the hero captures the castle, they will have little trouble holding off the enemy, as the terrain is mirrored on the other side, as well as there being a slope downwards from the castle.
My original idea was for the protagonist's troops to somehow draw out the troops from the valley, so that they could surround them and cut off any eventual retreat to the keep. Due to the time constraint, the hero cannot afford a long lasting siege.
I have little knowledge of medieval strategy, but I do not want the hero's "plot armour" to save the day.
How can the hero realistically beat the enemy troops holding the valley?
Also, is this concept somewhat plausible, or should I scrap it for a better idea?
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There are really too many variables here, but I can cover some basics, maybe it helps?
Infantry versus heavy cavalry usually comes down to cavalry charge and the result depends on whether the infantry breaks under charge or not. Typically the cavalry would also try to flank the infantry, but with terrain described as a valley and the attacker having more light cavalry we can probably assume that won't happen here, so it is all about being able to withstand a charge.
The absolute requirement is for the infantry to have good discipline and morale. Professional or otherwise veteran troops are recommended. Being charged by heavy cavalry is very scary and liable to cause contagious panic. Panic will break formation and if your formation breaks under cavalry charge that is game over.
Morale implies competent leaders and a cause that the soldiers can at least relate to. Or just good pay and belief in victory.
Second is having suitable equipment that you can use to receive a charge **and** training to use it properly in formation. Typically this would mean pikes, but halberds and similar polearms also work. Heavy infantry with superior discipline can do it with normal spears, shields and armor. But we are talking about Roman legionnaires or Greek hoplites with solid leadership here, medieval infantry just was not good enough due to heavy cavalry being dominant at the time. So pikes or polearms would be my recommendation.
Missile weapons add a variable too. Archers with long or composite bows can stop heavy cavalry charging uphill, if they have some heavy infantry for protection. Similarly mounted archers are reasonably effective against heavy cavalry, if they have some heavy infantry for protection or a wide plain to run around. In your case maybe make the light cavalry archers and have them whittle down the heavy cavalry and enemy infantry.
Some heavy cavalry actually carried bows, which might add some difficulty and flavour to the fight. And some heavy infantry carried darts or throwing spears to break enemy formation when they charge.
Also you can use obstacle to slow down the cavalry charge which has great value. Using terrain to make cavalry charge uphill was already mentioned. You can also use caltrops or, if you have time to prepare light field fortifications such as palisades or ditches. Again medieval infantry generally was not good enough to build and use field fortifications during battle, but if the general decides to advance slow and methodical up the valley, field fortifications could be used to protect troops from counter-attacks..
And field fortifications would be **very** valuable, if you can build some behind the enemy... Bottling them up between fortified position and advancing force in a valley is pretty much only way infantry can trap cavalry actually. So camping in front of the valley while using light cavalry for scouting and screening, sneaking part of your infantry and some sappers behind the enemy force drawn forward by your encampment, building a fortified position manned with the infantry and some dismounted mounted archers, and then advancing into the valley with the main force might fit your needs.
This seems to fit well with the information provided in the comments. A long and fairly narrow valley would constrain the movements of heavy cavalry. And if the enemy would be drawn forward there would be cramped locations behind him to fortify and hold. The mountains on the sides would provide cover for the movements of the encircling force. If the mountains are difficult enough for heavy cavalry the enemy commander might not even be aware that infantry and cavalry scouts can get behind him.
Also the arrogant personality given for the enemy commander is significant. An arrogant commander would not worry about being encircled and trapped before he actually has some reason to think the enemy can get behind him. Arrogant people are also much easier to draw forward. To some extent a leader like this would find it very difficult to stay in the fort, if it seems he could position his forces safely far forward. I mean your infantry can't outrun his cavalry, so he can always make safe fighting retreat back to fort, right?
I propose that since he is apparently not only famous, but also a person who values his reputation as a fighter, you can simply insult him. Camp your infantry at the other end of the valley, there they block the valley, but are safe from attacks from the fort. Then send your light cavalry up the valley to do some casual looting, hit-and-run attacks on scouts, and sing insulting song about "the old coward who hides in his fort (probably under a maids bed)". Cavalry hates being trapped inside forts anyway, so he should be drawn forward as long as you make it look safe.
You can also simply invite him for a cup of tea or game of chess. Refusing would make him look like a coward. And while dropping by to drink tea and play chess doesn't requiring taking all his cavalry for escort, it would raise some perfectly valid **looking** questions about why the heavy cavalry is hanging back at the fort when they could be protecting the valley leading to the fort and positioned, at least in theory. to take the fight to the enemy. (And if he is famous, he might have nice stories.)
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*I'm assuming that the castle is uphill from the hero's forces.*
The only real choice the heavy cavalry has is to charge the hero's army, and with good reason too, the charge downhill will be that much more devastating as the riders will keep momentum much more easily as they clash into the hero's ranks. This, however, can be used to the hero's advantage.
Consider the following formation:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZYtMH.png)
As it is right now, the hero is bound to lose. But now imagine that the front line infantry have **hidden** long pikes in the ground just waiting for the cavalry to charge.
It doesn't matter if the riders notice it during the charge, their momentum and the slope will make it near impossible for them to stop, essentially impaling themselves into the pikes of the hero's infantry.
Even if the cavalry manages to stop they are now at a disadvantage because they are stopped, outside of the support of the fortress, with arrows raining on top of them and infantry and cavalry marching towards them, they've just lost the battle. They can retreat, but there's not much use for cavalry inside a castle, meaning they're now just infantry.
Now, why would the enemy's forces decide to let their infantry inside the walls? because that's where they'll be more effective. You see, the purpose of a fortification is to increase the defensive and offensive capabilities of your forces by sacrificing their mobility. For example, the siege of Corfe castle in England was won by the defenders, who only had 5 soldiers, against a force 500. That is a 1 to 100 difference in strength.
So, the biggest threat for your hero isn't really the heavy cavalry, but the actual siege, especially since your hero doesn't have siege engines. His best bet would be to simply cut off the fortification and starve its soldiers, but the enemy has a bigger force marching there, so it's not really an option.
You could have the hero build a counter fortification to protect his siege, this way, the same that applies for the forces inside the castle against his applies for his forces against the enemy's marching army, with the exception that the hero's forces would only be cut off from one side.
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If I were in the hero's boots (or mocassins, or shoes, or whatever), then I would definitely NOT order a night assault, and I would rather not rely on my pikes to stop the charge of heavy cavalry - despite the incline forcing them upon my spears, I would wager experienced heavy calvary would have too much discipline to commit the cardinal error of cavalry - charging massed pike. Moreover, because of their defensive disposition, they have no compunction whatsoever to sally forth from their castle; they can just sit tight for a few days and auto-win. Short some VERY bad decision-making on the part of the defenders, you're not going to be able to rely on them making a wild charge for your lines.
That being said, assaulting the enemy's keep with all of them inside sounds like a recipe for heavy casualties, as usual - something most heroes would like to avoid, especially since it doesn't sound like he enjoys overwhelming numerical superiority. Short the time to build siege weaponry and batter the walls down, he'd have to throw ropes or ladders over the walls to get up - dicey business at the best of times; basically you try to throw up more of them than the enemy can cut down in order to get some guys on top.
That all being said... you have engineers, sappers, and the snow on your side, and I propose to use them ALL in order to force the issue on the field of battle. What follows is a step-by-step, foolproof plan for taking down this castle:
1. Under cover of darkness on the first night, your engineers, sappers, and volunteers painstakingly construct a snow-tunnel leading up to the enemy's walls while the rest of the army pretends to begin constructing siege equipment by the light of their fires.
2. At the wall, your engineers and sappers begin mining a tunnel under the wall to collapse it - to speed the process, they can even try to melt snow by fire, let that meltwater run into cracks in the foundation, and then bellows can be employed to blow icy air onto the cracks, fast-freezing them and breaking apart the base of the wall.
3. At some point, the enemy may discover their walls are being mined; they will be compelled to sally forth in order to drive off the sappers - this is actually the best possible result, because then your hero's army can defeat them in the field with massed archery fire (it sounds like you have more archers than the enemy) and the harrying of light cavalry to keep them at bay - the charge of the light cavalry into the flanks and rear of heavy mounted men is a significant threat they will be compelled to avoid. At that point, compelled to an act of impudence by the thought of their castle walls being undermined, the defenders will have committed a grave error and allowed your hero's men to prevail in a fair contest on open ground, where their mobility and superior ranged capability will allow them to cut the heavy horse to ribbons as they chase the kiting light cavalry all over the field.
4. The worse alternative for your hero would be that the defenders discover the sapping but are too cowardly (or clever) to rush to prevent it - or perhaps they are just too stupid to notice it at all. In this case, they wait inside and prepare for your hero's mined wall to collapse - they know he can't have begun more than one serious tunnel in the short time he has - and they will construct interior lines of defense, such as wooden stockades, to blunt your hero's attack when the wall comes down. At this point, your man must win his day in one of several riskier ways - he can indeed attempt a night attack where he doesn't pull the supports out from his tunnel and instead uses it to come up somewhere inside the castle grounds secretly, funneling men inside as quickly as possible to overwhelm the defenders with a secret strike. Alternatively, he can collapse the wall and make his charge, preferably with heavy use of his archers to rain fire arrows upon any breastworks or palisades constructed within prior to the assault - this will still be very hard, but not as hard as assaulting the castle intact. This really sucks for your hero, because he conquers the castle by rendering it LESS defensible - a quality of its construction he will desire a short time hence - but the necessity of war trumps the darling of perfection, I suppose.
Basically, your hero is going to HAVE to win this one by trickery instead of bravery, attrition, or overwhelming numbers. The context of the situation demands it.
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Trying to take a castle 'in a few days' is a virtually impossible proposition. If the defenders know that a relief force is coming, there is virtually no reason outside of total stupidity to not simply wait within the castle for the reinforcements to arrive. A direct assault with ladders etc would be bloody enough to cause a defeat in the second battle, and the defenders will very reasonably expect a night attack and maintain alertness for this.
Here's an idea: Why not invert the problem? It seems like the real goal is to defeat the superior reinforcing army. There is no actual need to take the castle at this time. So a clever plan might be:
1. Make to attack. Naturally the defenders will retreat within the castle.
2. However, do not assault the castle! Instead, with the engineers, construct a strong barricade, dig pits and place traps to block the gate of the castle. Possibly do this at night, under cover of snow so this is hidden.
3. Now engage the relief force. The relief force will be expecting reinforcements from inside the castle... but it will never come. The cavalry inside the castle will never be able to get through the pits and barricades that were dug. With their plans thrown into disarray, the second enemy army will be easily defeated.
4. With no more hope of reinforcement, our hero can now go to the defenders of the castle and quite simply dictate terms of surrender.
In other words, use the enemy's quite reasonable caution against them. If you want your protagonist to look really clever, you could fabricate a 'desperate, failed assault' on the final day. Make the enemy think they've got the hero right where they want him - pincered between the heavy cavalry in his rear and enemy infantry coming up the slope, before revealing what was the **real plan**.
[Answer]
This is a straightforward military problem with several solutions.
**1. Best solution: Avoid the battle.**
Battles are fought for a reason. The gains your hero's army acquire from fighting a battle must outweigh the expenditure of resources (men, materiel) to achieve it.
Looking at a situation, I noticed 2 things:
A. Its the climax of the story, which means that your hero's army has won other engagements in the past and have pushed the enemy to its final defensive position.
B. The enemy is boxed in the valley.
There are plenty of reasons to force a battle (mostly for political reasons in cases like these), but the practical solution is for your hero's army to bypass the valley altogether and instead maneuver to control both entrances of the valley i.e denying the enemy's routes of resupply, reinforcement, and breakout.
The hero's army will then be free to operate in the enemy's rear areas: Seizing towns, supply depots, leadership, etc. This will make the enemy's position untenable, and you can force him to surrender, or to sally and leave their position to engage you on your terms, where you can destroy them by encirclement (with your superior numbers), or defeat them in detail (using maneuver to isolate smaller portions of his army and defeating them piecemeal).
**2. Or you can destroy him with stand-off weapons.**
This is where your army takes defensive positions and construct fortifications (say trenches) and have your engineers build artillery (ballistae, catapults, etc) using trees found in the area.
You can then pound them to submission.
**3. The least desirable solution is to assault.**
If for some reason you just *have* to fight him there, then you can assault him head on in a battle of attrition, hoping that your numerical superiority will carry the day.
A heavy cavalry is useful when they can charge. If they're bogged down, surrounded by trained infantry, they're done. Their armor isn't going to do much. So you advance, and you take their charge -a disciplined body of troops should be able to do this using formation- and prevent them from resetting the charge: you have your formations dense enough to stop them from charging through. Then you continue to advance until you close in with the enemy, robbing them of their space to maneuver and grind them to dust under the heels your uncountable legions.
Be advised that this battle *will* be costly, and you will lose a huge amount of resources in order to achieve an objective that you *may* be able to bypass. In essence you could win a [pyrrhic victory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory).
If this is the case, then while your hero were able to win the day at the valley, he wouldn't have enough army to do anything else, leaving him vulnerable to treachery, enemy ally attacks, and unable to secure his gains effectively. This may be what you're going for in your story though. It could make a compelling drama.
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I would suggest an Agincourtesque approach. Given, at Agincourt it was very muddy and the French were very Agincourt. However, the English were also greatly outnumbered. In this scenario you have more troops than the enemy and you're in a valley, not a forest. Here's what I'd suggest.
If you have access to the valley sides and if they are woody then send archers down the sides of the valley. If suitable you can send your light cavalry round the side but keep the flanking forces poor of sight.
Advance through the center of the valley slowly with people building palisades and ditches in front followed by heavy spear/pike infantry followed by a legion of archers.
When the enemy charge they would receive a lot of arrow fire on the way over, meet a palisade/ditch with spears/pikes, and maybe a slow ditch building peasant or two. When they actually started to make it past the palisades the light cavalry would charge down the hill. The already deadly flanking movement would be enhanced by the downhill charge. In short, your enemy are dead.
What if your flanking crew is noticed? That's what the archers up there are for. Shooting downhill is easy. While the enemy move up to take out your flanks your central army can also shot them in the back. And if they make it too far uphill your light cavalry can charge down.
The cavalry is dead.
Edit: If at all possible you should get your mountain archers to roll down stones, logs, etc...
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Here are a few implications of the scenario you've described:
1) If the castle is at the head of the valley, then an assault on the castle starts with charging uphill. This is a bad thing.
2) If "The valley is quite cramped, and the hills are too tall and steep for any horses or heavily armoured men to climb without great difficulty", then it's likely that there is no agriculture in the valley. Which then implies a relatively barren, and probably rocky, valley floor. Thus, no "off-roading" for cavalry, leaving a prohibitively narrow field of battle.
3) If "The fight also takes place during the winter, adding shin-high snow as well as strong winds into the mix", then cavalry of all sorts will be disadvantaged. All cavalry is going to be moving slower than normal, especially off-road, which implies narrow or broken formations for cavalry.
4) Barring an existing weakness or point of ingress, "some engineers and sappers" aren't going to bring down a wall in the few days available to them.
The villain's pikemen and heavy cavalry can't work together in the narrow valley (unless maybe the pikemen are following to prevent the cavalry from being surrounded and cut off - oops, looks like the villain set a trap of his own). The hero's archers might be able to clear the walls for a frontal assault, but that means using the light cavalry as besieging infantry and, in any case, it doesn't sound like the hero has the overwhelming numbers that would be necessary to overwhelm the veterans manning the defense.
As described, the villain would have to be crazy to venture from the castle and the hero would have to be crazy to attempt an assault. The only way to defeat the villain in this scenario is through the traditional means of concluding a successful siege: subterfuge or treachery. That is,
1) Somewhere in the villain's forces is someone willing to open the gates for... reasons.
2) Somewhere in the hero's forces is someone willing to try to infiltrate the castle and open the gates.
Which means you've switched from the field of battle to politics or sabotage as the focus of your climax. Do you have lots of foreshadowing in place for that?
If you want a tactical battle as the climax of the novel, you probably need to move the castle to a position where the villain can be tempted to sally out in force. Maybe a broad valley full of worked land with the castle situated high on one side and the hero not sure where the reinforcements will appear?
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Night time assault.
Usually works well with a protagonist or hero character that makes the call to do so. Night is messy...its dark, people are weary and tired, garrissons are limited. When you talk ugly mess of a battle, skill and troops equipment means less and morale/determination becomes a much stronger factor. Individual efforts can also shine through in this scenarios, gives a chance for a hero or two in your protagonists ranks to stand up and make a name for themselves if so desired.
Heavy cavalry becomes harder to us and can be caught dismounted in a surprise night time attack. Reversly, small amounts of light cavalry cam be quite sneaky in moving in.
Edit to add...the weather you have stated just adds to this night time confusion. Not only is it cold and dark, but a howling wind makes it that much more difficult to rally the defenders and turns the entire event into mass chaos. In this case, mass chaos is in your heros favor
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Heavy cavalry's main weapon is momentum. No matter how heavily armed and armoured, they're almost useless when stationary. But they can't break a good schiltron or phalanx.
So form your pikemen into big hedgehog. Creep it forward, with archery support on the wings or behind, until they have to charge or be charged. Alternatively use your archers to shoot & scoot, running away behind your infantry if threatened.
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I would suggest to invert the initial locations of the forces. If the defendants' heavy cavalry has easy access to the keep, they will likely go to it, or not leave it, unless they have a (quite harebrained) honour code that forbids them from refusing battle.
So I would suggest that they are a first stage of reinforcement, that - perhaps due to deficiencies in command or organisation - arrives earlier than the main reinforcing army. In that case they would be more motivated to attack, if they cannot circumvent the assailants' position.
Another option is to feign a retreat - better even a disorganised retreat - to goad the heavy cavalry into a persecution, and then surprise them at the other end of the valley. Better even if some engineers could then block the way back to the keep. But this must also rely on overconfidence, for they would normally send spies and scouts before engaging in a persecution.
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Other answers mentioned this, so I won't go into too much detail on this point, but this battle may not need to be fought. If the valley is the only practical access point between these two countries, and the protagonist is fighting for independence, then holding this valley might be enough to force the enemy to negotiate terms. However, assuming that for political reasons the main enemy force needs to be defeated decisively, here we go...
This battle hinges on the protagonist being able to position his forces such that they are able to defeat the enemy reinforcements when they arrive. One position would be the castle (obviously). Another option would be to march past the castle, and position his troops at the opposite entrance to the valley. This would give them time to dig some fortifications and occupy the high ground (relative to the enemy reinforcements) while also constructing siege equipment.
A lot hinges on just what exactly defines the "heavy cavalry". Even in the late Middle Ages to Early Renaissance there was a wide variation in heavy cavalry, with the heaviest being eastern cataphracts employed by the Romans (Byzantines to us). Furthermore, it is not just the equipment of this cavalry that determines their combat value, but also their training and discipline.
Armored troops are generally fairly safe from archers, except at point blank range. Most arrows were not of high quality, and most archers were not particularly well trained (except for professional troops, such as the English yeomen archers of lore). A commander who anticipates making heavy use of his archers will invest in their training and attempt to purchase high quality arrows, but these are not always available or up to standards (a common complaint of English commanders during the Hundred Years War).
So while the archers may be able to injure the horses of the heavy cavalry, the men themselves (knights? or are they professional troops?) have little to fear from archery. While pikes traditionally are a good defense against cavalry, they are by no means foolproof. The Polish Hussars are a good example of heavy cavalry who excelled at breaking infantry formations in a head-on charge. This was due largely to their skill at maneuvering in tight formation and repeatedly charging.
The terrain of this valley may preclude such tactics, in which case the cavalry commander would likely remain in the castle. If he is unable to charge repeatedly to break the protagonist's infantry, he has no reason whatsoever to leave the castle. His troops are likely well armored and would serve equally well defending the walls as they would mounted on horseback. Unless he has made gross tactical errors, he likely had scouts watching the valley approach and will be aware of the protagonist's forces.
Logically, if he is a disciplined commander, he would dispatch messengers to the main army informing them of the situation and the composition of the protagonist's forces. Then they would wait for reinforcements, or to repel an attack on the castle. You need only look to the crusades for many instances of armored knights holding castles for long periods against larger armies for an idea of how this situation would play out. No such concepts as "honor" and "chivalry" would compel them to engage in a suicidal fight. Throw aside all that nonsense that Hollywood and Sir Walter Scott made up about "Lawful Stupid" knights. Medieval nobility and their men at arms were lifelong warriors, and while oaths of allegiance were very important, in no way did they interfere with commonsense tactics and strategies.
The only situation where the enemy cavalry commander would attack would be if he felt that his forces had a very good chance at routing the protagonist's army. However, if he lacks good knowledge of the protagonist's forces, then it is likely that the protagonist lacks good knowledge of his forces. I saw another answer indicating the 'lack of light cavalry' would make scouting difficult for the enemy commander. That's nonsense. He's in a valley, he has horses. He will watch the approach and have scouts make note of the protagonist's approach unless he is hilariously incompetent (which is always possible, if you want).
So, the way for the protagonist to defeat the main enemy body is through positioning. If he can cut off the castle, and isolate its defenders, he has a reasonable chance of holding the valley entrance against the approaching reinforcements. The castle itself is unlikely to do him very much good, since even if he took it that would just leave him vulnerable to a siege by a larger force free to cut him off from resupply.
By holding the valley entrance, the protagonist is able to maintain his lines of communication back home and also to prevent the enemy army from moving through the valley (where they could cut him off). His archers will benefit immensely from the high ground, and his light cavalry can easily maintain the siege of the castle while still being available to reinforce the main army if needed desperately.
The resolution to this situation would come either when the enemy chooses to assault his position (fortified with the benefit of several days, and uphill at that) or if the enemy declines battle, the castle would eventually have to yield. Given the winter weather, the enemy force would need dramatic materiel superiority to succeed in an uphill assault against a fortified position. If the enemy force truly is strong enough to dislodge the protagonist from that position, then they should probably withdraw and fight a guerrilla campaign.
As I see it, holding the valley entrance is the strongest position for the protagonist to take, and it expends the least amount of effort/casualties to occupy. There is a slight risk that while they are bypassing the castle the cavalry may sally forth to attack, but this risk exists no matter what course of action the protagonist takes.
Hope that this analysis helps, and be sure to consider the training/experience of the troops with different scenarios (the sappers would surely be helpful in preparing fortifications for the protagonist, for example).
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The enemy is lacking in light cavalry to use as a scout force, so how does he (or she) know what your hero is doing? Presumably they are working mostly on rumour and guesswork.
They also have duty and obligations that go with the castle they command. It sounds like the castle controls an important trade route, so keeping the trade route safe is likely part of their duties.
Now imagine they receive a letter saying that several trading caravans are stuck at a nearby town, unable to venture forth because of the rebel army. Cold, disease, and starvation, so the letter claims, have reduced the rebel army to nothing more than a few bands of thieves. They demand that the commander stop hiding like a coward, and honour his treaty obligations to ride forth and escort their caravans past these starving thieves and brigands.
Now duty and honour compel the commander to come out from his (or her) fortress.
Their arrogance could easily make them think that riding out in full ceremonial dress and leaving the scruffy infantry behind is the right thing to do.
The next step is to break their morale. The conditions you describe are terrible for cavalry. Horses have very fragile legs, and a broken leg is a death sentence for a horse. Trained race horses will sometimes refuse jumps if they can't see the other side, even in the olympics. It comes down to the horse trusting that its rider is leading them somewhere safe. Break that trust. Dig holes in the road and cover them snow. All you need to do is get the horse worried about its footing. Keep it subtle. It's ok that they suspect they are riding into a trap, which they probably do, but it can't be so overt that honour and duty stop compelling them to advance.
Now let them see your hero's infantry. Disciplined infantry vs cavalry is often a stalemate. The infantry cannot catch the cavalry. The cavalry cannot breach the infantry's turtle defence. But this cavalry has horses that won't charge over snow. They can either retreat, and be called cowards and break their treaty obligations with those merchants, or dismount and fight on foot.
The battle is now between a discipline trained infantry on a morale high, and heavily armoured cavalry improvising at being infantry. Their armour slows them down and they lack the training to fight effectively as a foot unit, but politically they can't refuse battle.
Whilst the cavalry is out of the castle fighting the infantry, is the perfect time to try and take the castle. The plan may not work after all. They simply walk in disguised as humble fire wood merchants (it is winter after all, the castle must need fire wood), reveal their weapons and announce they are now in charge. The leadership of the castle is all out on the road defending their honour, so who is going to say no? If someone does say no, then it needs to be nipped in the bud with maximum aggression. A horn is sounded to tell the rest of the army to double time it up the road. Provided the gate is kept open long enough for them to get inside, you win.
If it doesn't go well, set fire to all the firewood you just brought in and hope the castle burns to the ground.
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Assuming the following:
Enemy reinforcements
Castle-> it's silly to put a castle in a narrow valley; you want to put it at the end of the valley to maximise the bottleneck, and prevent some enterprising Hannibal from getting siege weapons on higher ground
Valley full of enemy troops
Hero+ army
in that order, the strategy looks simple:
Take your least experienced infantry and archers and have them and your sappers scale the mountains on both sides and work their way along until they are just past the enemy stronghold in the valley, but well before they reach the castle. The sappers then set explosives at that point back towards your camp. Black powder was available (if rare) in the late Medieval period and will suffice.
In the meantime, your heavy infantry set up a wall of pikes to withstand a cavalry charge in front of your camp. This can simply be sharpened saplings buried in the ground. Once the sappers are ready, set off the charges and bring the mountains down over the enemy camp.
Since they can't retreat towards the castle, they will have to charge out of the valley in order to survive, right into your pikewall.
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The society that I am developing is reminiscent on Early Medieval Society, and I want a version of the **cavalry charge** (and the cavalry cycle) to exist in my universe as well.
Essentially I want plausible reasons why Spacefaring destroyers *--similar in size to modern Naval submarines but obviously much faster and with far less crew--* would choose to employ ramming as their primary means of combat (or at least some sort of ultra close range burst attack) as their preferred strategy against troop transports and cargo ships when ballistics --*early 21st century level--* are available.
I am currently thinking armor or some kind of magnetic fielding can nullify the effects of bullets, but I'm not entirely sure on the science.
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As @JohnDallman pointed out, Collisions at star-spanning speeds are suicidal, but that doesn't mean that close in combat would be.
Start with star ships that are so expensive to create, that destroying an enemy vessel is considered a crime to both sides. Capture is the name of the game, so if you destroy an enemy's ship either on purpose or by accident, you can expect to face a firing squad.
To support this approach to war, a strong code of honor is needed among the commanding ranks on both sides. Any captain who loses his ship in a fair fight is guaranteed to be treated with dignity. Crews and command should be imprisoned comfortably and without malice, until the end of the current war.
Further, ships' weaponry should be designed to reduce or eliminate the enemy's mobility. Once crippled, an enemy's ship can be boarded by armed marines and once the hand-to-hand combat concludes, the victor can tow the crippled boat home for repairs. The fun part of this type of warfare is that the victorious ship is sometimes sailed home by the crippled ship's crew. Once engaged, the hand to hand combat can go either way.
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This is tricky. If ships can move at the speeds necessary to travel between planets in a reasonable time (let alone between stars), then collisions at full speed will reduce them to hot gas. Armour doesn't help: the energy levels involved are way beyond the strength of any real material. Magnetic fields don't help: the energy transferred to the magnets vaporises them. And if you want a science-based answer, that's pretty much the end of the story.
If you're willing to switch to Space-Opera conventions, rather than SF with some degree of hardness, then it gets a bit more possible. Methods include:
E E "Doc" Smith's inertialess drive, where the lack of inertia means collisions do no actual damage.
Some kind of state change between "travel" speed and "fighting" speed, whereby you simply can't ram at travel speed, because you're forced down to fighting speed by something about your propulsion system. One of the simplest and neatest versions of this came from the old AD&D setting *Spelljammer*, but many kinds of hyperspace concepts can be made to accommodate this idea.
Simply ignoring the problem, "the Firefly solution", and having travel times between worlds be a few weeks, but collisions at those speeds risk doing cosmetic or structural damage according to the demands of the plot.
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I'm going to expand on [Renan's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/45656/573) because I don't think he's fleshed out all the implications.
**In a nutshell:** If you have an [Alcubierre Drive](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/45656/573) you also have a perfect deflector for any energy or kinetic based attack. ***The ONLY means of attacking a ship with an Alcubierre Drive would be to ram or grapple it with another ship with an Alcubierre Drive.***
The A-drive works by warping space itself, any matter or energy entering the warp follows the lines of the warp just as it were flat space but goes around the ship and comes out with more or less the same trajectory it went in with. Used defensively, an A-drive wrap field can deflect ANY energy or kinetic matter attack. Even detonating massive nukes against the warp would be pointless as all the radiation and plasma would just flow harmlessly around the ship.
The ***only way*** to defeat a space warping field would be to use another space warping field to counter-act the first field which would allow attacks to go through, although the warp itself would likely be the more effective and dangerous weapon, which would turn it into a space "ram" for thematic purposes. Even better in my opinion, it would make boarding actions possible again.
**Expanded answer i.e.TL;DR** (*unless you have a free weekend*)
An A-drive works by creating a gravity well in front of the ship, basically a gravitational simulation of high gravity object like a black hole, which the ship "falls" into but since the ship generates and moves the gravity well, it keeps falling until the drive is turned off. Creating a reversed gravity well, essentially a hill, behind the ship makes it go even faster (helps the math somehow as well.) By putting wells around the ship to make tunnels, the interstellar gasses and radiation get routed around the ship.
Since technically, it's the space that moves and not the ship, relativity does not apply e.g. no time dilation, the ship doesn't go E=MC^2 and become a planet cracking bomb, it plow up a plasma shockwave that can sterilize an entire planetary system etc.
By bending space itself, the ship can deflect or reroute any type of attack. Directed energy weapons can just be bent around the ship. By creating gravity shears, any material weapon can be destroyed and the debris routed around the ship. Gigaton nuke? Same answer, the plasma and radiation will follow the bent space and never touch the ship.
(As a bonus, the warp field can act like a cloaking device making the ship hard to detect as all light and other forms of radiation bend around the ship. Probably leave a detectable ripple of light or particles that get bent around the ship but come out with altered trajectories. But you won't be fighting in a fish bowl wherein a ship can be detect light hours away just by infrared. In a planetary system, the ripple would be even harder to detect. Cloaking allows for ambushes, sneaking past sentinels, submarine vs destroyer scenarios etc)
An A-drive makes a ship invulnerable to weapons save another contending warp field. The only way to attack an A-drive ship (Ship-X), would be to use another ship's (Z-ship), A-drive to "unwarp" the space around ship-X so that an attack could get through. "Ramming" would actually be projecting Z-ship's warp through ship-x's warp. Once through, Z-ship could warp the space inside ship-X and rip it apart.
(In the classical era, ramming developed as a tactic pretty much for the same reason i.e. no ship borne weapon of the age could seriously damage another ship, and grappling put attacker and defender on equal footing, so turning the entire ship into a weapon was the only option. Note that as ships got larger and stronger, ramming by oar powered ships stopped working. In the Byzantine era, ramming the hull no longer worked so the Byzantine dromon ship's had rams used for scraping down the side of an enemy galley and destroying their oars. Conversely, in the early ironclad era, ships guns could just barely penetrate enemy armor, or so it was thought, so ramming came back for a while, until the torpedo.)
But unless the Z-ship has a much more powerful warp, ramming would be dangerous. The Z-ship places itself in danger of being warp rammed itself during the attack. (Ships in space, especially those with a warp drive, can spin on any axis fairly quickly. It's not like ships on the water or even aircraft as they have no medium to push against. It's possible the warp field itself can be positioned arbitrarily around the ship in any configuration without changing the orientation of the ship at all.)
Also, as the two warp fields merge, with each ship constantly altering its own field to try to penetrate the other (kinda like gravity fencing) they will likely create an utterly chaotic gravity field between the ships which will itself prevent a single piercing warp from hitting the other.
Instead, the attacking Z-ship, will not try to stab a warp through but will adopt a purely defensive shield arraignment and try to merge its warp field with ship-Xs warp such that both ships end up inside the same bubble of flat space and both standing still relative to the other.
Of course, at this point, powerful ranged weapons become suicidal, it would be like fighting with AK-47s in a broom closet. Instead, time for knife work. Z-ship has to attack ship-X with a small scale weapon whose collateral effects won't be severe enough to wreck Z-ship itself.
So... prepare to repel boarders!
The most precise and lowest energy attack would be to board the target ship, defeat or avoid any anti-boarding defenses, cut inside the ship and take control.
Now you have a plausible scenario that replicates the romance of the Age of Sail. Maneuvering in interstellar space would be like maneuvering in open ocean and maneuvering inside a star's planetary system would induce all kinds of gravity complications, as happened with sailing ships maneuvering near the shore.
A fight would go something like: Z-ship detects the ripple of ship-X and moves to intercept. Ship-X might be largely blind if heavily cloaked because its warping all the light around it (like a sub without sonar.) However, when Z-ship gets close enough that the warp fields touch, ship-X will know its under attack. (One twist might be that exactly what class of ship a clocked ship is might be very hard to determine. A "destroyer" might end up attacking a "battleship.")
Z-ship distorts ship-X's warp (spilling the sails in old days) bringing the ship to stop relative or at least slowing it down. The the ships start "fencing" with their warps trying to damage or destroy the other ship at the far range of their warps but this will seldom work unless one ship is much more powerful than the other.
Z-ship then concentrates on simply pushing itself through ship-X's field until the ships are so close the warps become useless or to self-dangerous. Now the ships have to either engage with low power weapons, essentially trying to peck each other to death, or they attack with boarders.
(Boarders might be more plausible if the chaotic warp field remains at lower power between but not on or inside either ship but is strong enough to randomize the trajectory of any directed energy attacks or small kinetic attacks. As well, warp fields might be used internally to brace material components making lower power attacks less effective. If ship-X self-destructed, its warp would collapse instantly leaving Z-ship's field suddenly unopposed and able to deflect any blast effects automatically.)
If the warp fields could be generated/projected and then manipulated at the human scale, then boarders would be in same situation as ships i.e. energy and kinetic weapons wouldn't be effective against them, they could only be fought with another warp field. At the human scale and close range, this would be a return to melee fighting. Weapons would be warp manipulators and would likely take forms similar to weapons of the pre-gundpowder age. Although, I wouldn't recommend holding such a weapon in one's teeth while you board the enemy ship.
For fans of the Battlestar Galactica, aircraft-carrier-in-space scenarios: Small warp fields would also allow for small aircraft-like fighters that also can only be attacked by other warp fields. They would fight each other more like dueling raptor birds, at close range slashing at each other's fields. Against larger ships, their function would be to slash at the ship's warp field, slowing it down and randomizing its field to enable the attack by the main ship.
Stationary installations could have a warp dome over them but projecting the warp field into solid ground might be to destructive, energy intensive, randomize the warp field etc, so you could scenarios in which the ground installation, either in vacuum or atmosphere, where invulnerable to air attack but would always have a gap around the bottom edge where ground forces could slip under the dome. Again, big melee fight until the attacks reached the warp projector and shut it down. This would be akin to the Age of Sail fortress high up on a sea cliff that ships couldn't hit, so they land ground forces to take in reverse.
I think the Alcubierre Drive space warping opens ups a lot human scale drama potential while requiring only the one "magic wand" of the drive itself.
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Religion.
If an interstellar civilization gets overswept by religious fundamentalism and dogmatism, science and research might be banned heresy since it in the past lead to people questioning the Holy Word of God.
Technology would then be restricted to the specific solutions approved by the Church. And it would be entirely plausible, even likely, the Church would ban all ship-to-ship or orbital bombardment capable weapons. This would make ramming the enemy ship and then assaulting it with marines armed with the personal weapons still allowed for the nobility the only practical form of ship-to-ship combat.
Such a society would also have the early medieval structure you wanted.
One caveat: While such scenarios have been common (probably due to the real-world friction between science and religious fundamentalism), it seems to be very difficult for people used to modern society to really understand the mind set properly. So it might be difficult for you to use. YMMV, obviously.
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There is a faster-than-light travel method called the [Alcubierre Drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive). It is currently hypothetical, which means it may or may not come true one day according to our current understanding of physics. This means that, with some doses of handwaving, you could include the Drive in your world as something achieved with late 21st century technology.
As for how it works TL;DR it warps a spacetime bubble around the ship. The ship travels at slower than light speeds within the bubble, but since space is compressed in front of the ship, it takes a shorter path to its destination. To outside observers, the ship will have traveled faster than light for all practical purposes.
I am bringing this FTL travel method into the game because Wikipedia has this cute piece of information on Alcubierre's:
>
> **Damaging effect on destination**
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> Brendan McMonigal, Geraint F. Lewis, and Philip O'Byrne have argued that when an Alcubierre-driven ship decelerates from superluminal speed, the particles that its bubble has gathered in transit would be released in energetic outbursts akin to a sonic boom shockwave; in the case of forward-facing particles, energetic enough to destroy anything at the destination directly in front of the ship.
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Which means that you could ram an enemy ship by alcubierredriving (I love neologisms) to a point right next to it (set the controls to one millimeter away from their hull!). You don't even have to go faster than light, just run in their general direction and watch the fireworks. Or run them through and watch what happens when a section of an enemy ship is spatially compressed into a singularity.
As a bonus this doubles as a means to go anywhere really fast. Just be careful not to ram a space station docking port ;)
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In martial arts it takes less energy to block or deflect attacks than to successfully hit someone in a damaging way, assuming you have fast reflexes and can anticipate your enemy's actions. In space combat much the same could be true, effective point defences could make ranged combat possible but inefficient, so instead ships charge each other head on, jousting with plasma lances and magnetic shields.
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The anime Outlaw Star has a similar ship-to-ship combat premise. Defensive technology in the form of energy shields and point defense systems has outstripped offensive technology to the point where ranged attacks are almost completely ineffective. Missiles and lasers are still used since not everyone can afford a shield generator, but the only way to a hardened target with them is to first close to melee range and destroy the enemy shield generator. To that end, all ships in the show are fitted with giant grapple arms which they use to arm wrestle. The arms are probably not necessary for your case, but the rest of the premise may be useful.
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Ramming is roughly the worst primary form of attack possible. You risk your hull breaching and you'd need to maneuver a largeish mass precisely enough to hit another largish mass.
I could think of a few things that would make it necessary though. You want to hurt the other guy as badly as possible without getting hurt yourself
1. *Desperation* aka *nothing at all works* Your ship's out of weapons, and you're out of options. "No weapons Ivan? BECOME THE WEAPON!". This might also work when you have a small manned projectile hitting a small part (say a bridge) of a large high value target. As someone who spent his teenage years as a battletech fan, I suggest looking up the miraborg menuver.
2. *Nothing else works*. Lets assume a universe where you have *near perfect* point defence. Lasers can be shielded off. Physical missiles picked off at range. Essentially you need a very large, guided missile to get through the enemy. In fact the *one* way I see this working is you're crossing the T and using the nose of your spacecraft to either stab the enemy spacecraft (ala a trieme, or the nautilus of 20,000 leagues) or attempt to throw the enemy space craft off orbit.
3. You're MUCH bigger and better able to take damage than your enemy. And this didn't always end well. Alternately your ships were designed with *vast amounts of ablative armour* in addition to one of the other points. Something like the battleglobes of troy rising, or the pykrete missiles in [frontlines](https://www.google.com.sg/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwjIi-mS-czNAhXGqI8KHcvvAS4QFggdMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodreads.com%2Fseries%2F125903-frontlines&usg=AFQjCNEvD7khnZrIty_YiB196Si9RJ_DUg&sig2=E23RK73225KjAHSZM9u4fQ&bvm=bv.125801520,d.c2I) used as armour on a battleship
4. *Part of your ship is invulnerable* - say something like a scaled down version of the impeller wedges in the honor harrington saga. You'd use the wedges as your 'battering ram' or 'hammer head\*
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Ramming can come in handy tactics-wise: a ramming operation could break the enemy's formation, much like a cavalry charge would, given the right circumnstances. A successful ram can and most likely will move the hit ship, causing it to turn, maybe exposing a more vulnerable side to friendly fire, or cause an enemy ship to crash into another, causing panic among the enemies.
One possible reason for ramming would be ship preservation: ramming, boarding and commandeering an enemy vessel yelds more salvageable materials than blasting it to pieces and then trying to gather and transport those.
Soldiers come plenty and cheap, while ships don't.
I'm thinking of Warhammer 40k, specifically the Imperial Navy and the Orks.
The Imperium and the Orks have huge numbers on their side. Servitors (read: slaves) and Ork Boyz come aplenty and are relatively cheap to arm (the orks in particular) while a spaceship is an extremely valuable asset: it takes a long time to build, and a huge amount of resources.
Also, try and see this from a crew member point of view: you're happily following orders, firing your ship's guns, or operating the engines, when suddenly you hear your captain telling everyone to brace for impact and prepare for "ground" fight. You don't know where they will hit, nor when, and, being a crewman, you are far more proficient in doing ship work (firing the weapon systems, performing maintenance and so on) rather than fighting. Even worse, the ramming could occur unannounced. You hear a crashing noise and you lose your balance. The officer reports an hull breach and orders everyone to take up arms and defend the ship.
Your culture might have developed specialized shock infantry to deal with enemy crews, and ramming is a great way to deploy those troops: get in close, firing your ship's front mounted weapons, while the enemy struggle to get past your shield and heavily armoured prow. Upon impact you deploy your shock infantry via the hull breach and start pouring in soldiers to take the ship.
EDIT
I've completely missed the crew requirements.
Other than boarding, and outmanuvering the enemy, you could want to get very close to an enemy vessel in order to fire slow but very powerful rounds: being slow, they're easier to neutralize before they reach their target, so the closer your ship gets, the less likely it is for the projectiles to be intercepted. Being closer also allows the weapons to be more accurate, so the crew can focus fire on a specific part of the enemy vessel.
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Make ships too dangerous to destroy outright. If the ships are violently disrupted (read exploded) they could spew dangerous material (antimatter, radiation etc.) or just massively explode, rendering the area of space and nearby planets unusable. As long as both sides are fighting over something valuable then both sides have an incentive to prevent ships from being destroyed, leaving ramming and boarding as the best forms of combat. The attackers want to capture something and the defenders want to protect, neither side will want to destroy ships. The only issue comes from fanatics who do not care what happens to the region.
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## Balistically inserted boarding parties
As already mentioned, at interplanetary speeds ships tend to turn into high energy particles on collision. Given that the cost of capital ships tends to be significant, as are the build times, it's well worth capturing rather than destroying the vessels in question. Boarding parties behind an armoured ram/clamp/drill nose and it's all about hand to hand combat in the corridors of the ship.
**Problems:**
The last time ramming was considered a viable option was in the days of triremes. These vessels couldn't accelerate much and only had one plane of freedom of movement. It's quite easy to hit a large slow moving object that can't really get out of your way, supported by the fact that two ships near each other at sea will tend to collide anyway due to wave effects. It's much harder to collide with something actively avoiding you with powerful engines and total freedom of movement.
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# Metal Scarcity
If your civilization lives on metal-poor worlds, then ships could simply be the most expensive investment of rare metals that they can muster. This would make them effectively flying treasure chests. This eliminates metal-based missiles (let alone ballistics), which would also be too expensive to fire disposably, and also explains why ships aren't humongous (or interstellar, if you also want that limitation).
The ships could use chemical propulsion using the abundant gases of their solar systems, and could be manned by biological marines who are also cheap and plentiful relative to the scarce metals. The ships themselves could utilize as much biological materials as possible to minimize the usage of their [literally] precious metals. Many lasers require crystals made of metals (e.g., ruby, semiconductor, etc.). Gas lasers (e.g., CO2) do not require metal per se, but it might be the case that focusing optics are too metal-expensive to make them worthwhile, or the power requirements are too high given the power density available. Or, they may be used, but are only powerful enough for limited point-defense.
# Solar Origin
While we take it for granted that rocky planets and asteroids/comets are abundant, this is not true for all stars and all times. Small stars would not be capable of creating heavy elements, and early stars would not benefit from prior supernovae seeding heavy elements. Just take a look at the [nucleosynthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis) article on Wikipedia. Your star system(s) could be first- or second-generation small-to-medium stars, and thus very metal-poor.
# Tactics
Thus, nuclear weapons may simply be infeasible, if the societies lack radionuclides, or the power densities required to ignite fusion (which on earth currently requires heavy radionuclides like U and Pu). Explosives are possible, but the delivery mechanisms would be fragile, as nobody could afford metal-shielded missiles. Electronics would also be rare, expensive, and valuable (until they got to carbon nanotubes). Even if a large missile were possible, the last thing any side would want to do is obliterate and disperse a flying gold box to the four winds. The best possible outcome is to capture a ship as intact as possible, minus the crew, of course.
Thus, the battles would revolve around crew combat and possibly bio/chem warfare. And, of course, the easiest way to disable a ship without guns, torpedoes or missiles is to use the sturdiest object available: your own ship, hence, ramming. In fact, ships may not even bother with ramming. The recognition of the intrinsic value of each ship may lead to near-ceremonial warfare where the ships come alongside each other, and the crews disembark and fight in space, with the winner laying claim to both ships. Perhaps ramming is a tactic used by ships with inferior/understaffed crews, to compensate for weaker crew combat, or by pirates/privateers.
Of course, each captain would have to decide whether the other side is willing to fight crew-to-crew or would rather take chances with ramming. Ramming would probably require a smaller crew complement for ships designed to do so, and there is a rich space of trade-offs for speed, maneuverability, crew size, cargo size, and armor. It's very possible that navies would field ships covering many points in this design space to accommodate multiple strategies, depending on the current warfare meta-game.
# Conclusion
Note that this setting does not require religion or special culture to enforce the rules. Mutual self-interest will dictate behavior. The only difficulty with this setting is the plausibility of intelligent life from [population II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_population) or III stars. Even if you wish to set the story near our current time, there are plenty of places to find a contemporary population II star, such as out by the galactic halo.
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The videogame **Homeworld: Catacylsm** involves a mining based clan (*Kiith Somtaaw*) which used a [Ramming Frigate](http://homeworld.wikia.com/wiki/Ramming_Frigate) with a small laser to push and break up larger asteroids.
When Kiith Somtaaw are attacked, they are forced to use their mining vessels in a combat role:
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> When the mining fleet was attacked by an Attack Carrier it became obvious that they would not stand a chance against it. At that moment, despite of order to retreat, two crews of Minions moved their ships to the broadside of aggressors and, using full power of their fusion drives, they pushed the carrier straight into area of fast moving asteroids which one by one hit the ship, finally destroying it.
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Edit: As per your comment, the ships use an energy absorbing ram at the front of the ship to ensure the Frigate survives the impact. Rather than destroying the target with the force of the blow, the Frigate pushes the ship away from its fleet, potentially into a hazardous area like the example above.
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Are you able to build better contact weapons than point defences, on the same budget? If so, there's your answer.
If you have any kind of [shield](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeflectorShields), all you need is the ability to momentarily form it (or something else) into a piercing form at a point of your choosing (ram tip) more easily than you can focus it defensively at a point of the ramming enemy's choosing (flank, etc). I'd say that's very likely, just need to survive it.
Also, shields might be unable to deflect slower-moving objects, and to cause damage, momentum is still needed.
I have no knowledge of the topic, but assume that [reactive armour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_armour) isn't very good if the projectile has the momentum of a ship behind it.
A different approach: boarding. The exterior isn't the target. The inside is. Get a friendly force inside to sabotage... and *to claim*.
Yet another: the ramming ship essentially carries a large boulder in front of it, as shielding / camouflage / weapon. Wanna play chicken? If effective enough, a culture could rise from that, making improvements which replace the rock with something better.
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Instead of ramming, firing broadsides would be a good reason to come in close. Particularly if entering close enough that any anti measures that can be taken against the volley will respond too late.
To be able to survive this, you would either need high speed and agilty to avoid incoming fire, or heavy armour to defend against point blank barrages of projectiles.
An additional reason can be, if you have missile-based space combat that it is unsafe to fire missiles at such short range, which means that a ship specced to not use missiles can fire while the other party cannot fire back effectively.
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Many other responses are awesome, but this is the way I'm thinking about it:
Something in-universe prevents the use of traditional weapons (very strong shields that deflect anything smaller than another ship, for example) so the effective tactic was to turn your vessel into a very large torpedo.
To do this, you reinforce the front hull to an insane degree, and mount a large amount of charges on the front of the vessel. When you ram an enemy ship, you penetrate their shields (because the shields can't deflect a vessel of your size and mass) and deliver the payload directly to the enemy vessel, badly damaging it, or at least ripping open a vulnerability for boarding action.
You could "improve" this design by jettisoning the "torpedo" portion prior to detonation. Maybe having it attach to the enemy ship and allow you to egress a little before the explosion, lessening the damage to your vessel.
The best part about it? You don't need to be going at "ramming" speeds to deal your damage, but you are undeniably ramming the enemy (ramming them full of torpedo).
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@Henry Taylor's response is the best generically. For a specific mechanical reason though its simple. Troop transports and cargo ships are large, slow, and under armored. Ships moving at relatively the same vector/velocity (compared to each other not the planets) have plenty of opportunity for the heavily reinforced prow of a combat naval vessel to insert itself through the side of an under armored cargo ship.
An prow designed to survive interstellar impacts at interstellar velocities would have no problem piecing the side of another ship. This is true of any interstellar ship, so the cargo tugs could technically do it too. They just tent to have less acceleration and maneuverability.
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There is not a large amount of friction in space. This means that when you fire a projectile, your ship is nudged off course with the same amount of force in the opposite direction to how you fire your projectile. There are ways to mitigate some of this effect (like ejecting particles in both directions and such) but ultimately if you want/need to be more precise in your maneuvers and you don't want the expense of the latest and greatest omnidirectional thrusters, you can't have your crew firing off high energy projectile weapons as they please. You either need well coordinated volleys, or you can use ramming and the inertia of your ship as your primary weapon. Just be prepared to adjust your coordinates when you bounce off the enemies rubber hull unexpectedly.
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i'm late to the party, but...
your society evolved too from the ancient space greeks, and took great influence of their architecture and ways of war thanks to not having romans at all and them being the prevalent civilization. that's why since early space travel, all your ships have a reinforced Vetron steel spike on the front, and are designed to be highly maneubreable and to resist almost any kind of frontal impact.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OIVqm.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7qCTB.jpg)
The form of the ship would be similar in shape of those ancient trirremes (hey, they're also highly aerodinamic so that helps in atmospherical maneuvring) and , once the enemy sides are pierced, high-speed capsules containing the boarding parties would launch from the sides of the spike directly onto the damaged hull.
Ofcourse, that would mean that weaker ships from other civilizations would... uhm... break apart if hit on the center of mass.
If i had time i would draw you the whole range of spaceships, from the merchant Drommon class freighter to the admirable and costly Herakleon class Dreadnought.
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A collision will involve a lot of momentum and potential damage to your ship. It is better to just toss an object with a decent bit or mass (say, an asteroid) at the opposing ship to do similar damage with less of a risk. This would enable you to take out an enemy ship easily, and you could also use it as a shield. To accelerate it you could strap an engine to the asteroid and also perhaps embed a nuclear warhead after the hull is breached.
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So many fantastic responses, I'm sure my thoughts will repeat many of them.
**If close proximity favors the attacker**
* The attacker wants to board (possibly in a piercing fashion) the defending ship, and the ram-ship is designed for that. Perhaps something like a wasp stinger.
* Defensive technology blocks energy and small-mass-projectile attacks. Ramming is one of the few options remaining. Or, the attack must be carefully controlled, as in the stiletto through the shields in *Dune*.
* The attacker's technology only operates at close range. Think the EMP bomb on the Nebuchadnezzar in *The Matrix*.
* The defender's heavy weaponry may be long-range. If it's powerful enough, the attacker has to get close in order to survive, and do what it can up close. Like two boxers, the one with shorter arms will duck in to bring the fight close-range.
* The attacker exposes itself with its attack, making itself known/visible, or dropping its shields
**If destruction is not the goal**
* If the attacker's weaponry is *over-powered*, or the defender's shields are *under-powered*, the engagement may be so imbalanced that a primary attack would destroy the victim. The attacker may not wish this, so like a police officer doing a tackle, or using a close-range taser, the gun stays holstered.
**If the two factions have different tech stacks**
* The defender is immune to energy attacks, and that's all the attacker has for long range engagement.
* The defender has exceptionally quick dodging ability, like a very near-range hyperspace jump, rendering the attacker's ranged weapons useless.
**If environmental factors are at play**
* Gas cloud making visibility and targeting difficult.
* Black whole, neutron start, wormhole affecting targeting precision
* Traditional weapons would ignite the surrounding Hydrogen cloud, destroying both ships
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I'm creating a human civilization which exists on a largely arid planet, with a great deal of Tatooine / Arrakis-like terrain.
These humans have no idea they are not native to the planet outside of religion and myth (many believe the stars rejected them for being childish, which isn't far
from the truth.)
This is a civilization which has not developed wheels / tires which can effectively travel through sand dunes- they are at roughly a European Renaissance level of technology with combustion engines just being discovered within the past few years (Dieselpunk, you might call it?) Wood and metal wheels exist, perhaps leather tires, but nothing that wouldn't just sink right into deep sand and struggle to gain traction.
The story is to focus on a very large vehicle to act as the desert equivalent of a sailing ship. The issue is that I want to avoid a tracked vehicle for the sake of not feeling like a copy of the Sandcrawlers in Star Wars. What might stop the development of such a simple solution, if anything?
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I would suggest that such a society would develop a primitive **Screw-propelled vehicle**. Such a vehicle is ideally suited to moving through ground that is easy to sink into with wheels or tracks, and can be simply constructed from a log with the correct carved grooves in it.
Such things are used in real life in niche applications where even tracks will have trouble such as operation is swamps or deep snow. There have been experiments using such things dating from earlier than world war 2 and indeed have been used to traverse Siberia.
I cannot find any reference to such a vehicle being used in the desert, but it is not such a stretch to imagine such a thing working.
Example of how such a craft works:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S9uJd.gif)
I thought I would mention the other pros and cons of such a vehicle as well, to help with story ideas.
**Pros:**
Such a vehicle, suitably designed, is relatively easy to make amphibious. The screws propel almost as well through water as they do on land, and if the craft is constructed from suitable materials, it can float rather easily.
**Cons:**
Such a vehicle would have trouble going over very rough terrain, because a reliable suspension system has not yet been discovered (to my knowledge). It would also be very inefficient compared to many of our current methods of propulsion, and would lose a lot of energy to friction when moving over a solid surface compared to wheels.
Source(s)
<http://patentpending.blogs.com/patent_pending_blog/2008/03/1907-screw-driv.html>
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*This is a civilization which has not developed wheels / tires which can effectively travel through sand dunes*
To which I can only reply: "Why not?" Being entirely serious, you're going to have to do some *very* serious thinking to work that one out.
Any engineer able to work with wheels should know that the narrower the wheel, the more it sinks in. So the softer the sand, the wider the wheels need to be. This pretty naturally leads to two wheels with 20-foot planks between them. And tracks become an obvious next step.
You've also got a *major* anachronism problem with combining Renaissance technology levels with internal combustion engines. The internal combustion engine needs levels of machining accuracy which Renaissance engineers couldn't even measure to, never mind achieve. It also needs incredible control over your quality of steel. The external combustion (steam) engine needs less accuracy, but the smaller and higher-power you make it, the better your machining and steel have to be, otherwise your boiler becomes a street-clearing IED. It took roughly 150 years of continous development to go from the Newcomen beam engine to early internal combustion engine prototypes. You don't get that kind of R&D in a vacuum, so for an internally-consistent world you're going to need all your other technologies to have had the same kind of advances. That means your entire civilisation *MUST* be at a late-Victorian technology level. Anything less will not support an internal combustion engine.
You can also completely forget about large vehicles if you want the science to work. The larger the item, the more mass of item needs to go into holding the item together, and the general rule is that this increases by the *cube* of the size. Double the size of your vehicle, it becomes 8x heavier. Make it 10x larger, it becomes 1000x heavier. You'll have problems keeping this above the deep sand; hell, you'll have problems getting it to move at all with primitive engines.
Of course, much of this assumes deep sand is a major impediment. If you look at sandy deserts on Earth, you'll find that much of it is *not* deep sand, and areas which are, no-one much goes there. Trade traditionally happened along areas where travel is possible without needing special vehicles. If you want to head out into the deep sand, you'd need a compelling reason to do it.
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If you eliminate wheels, that leaves you with either skids, legs or hovering.
## Skids
This option would include actual flat-bottomed boat hulls, catamaran like double or triple hulls and very wide and flat ski-like skids. The advantage of course is that it's very cool and like your desired sailing ship idea.
The major problems would be rocky/rough terrain and the very high friction, meaning you would need storm-like winds or unobtainium-plated friction-less surfaces to even get moving. I'd suggest using the skin of the enormous worms that live in the deep sands, but that's already been done...
## Legs
Not just a few legs, but dozens and dozens of legs. Enough to make the crystal spider creatures green with envy. With the weight of the "ship" distributed over many broad feet, none of them would sink into the sand too much.
The major advantage is that the legs would work even on rocky and uneven terrain, where the skids would fail miserably. The disadvantages would be the maintenance on all those legs and relatively slow speed.
Here is some inspiration: [windpowered beach walkers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj-NqWDH2qE).
## Hovering
With Diesel Power(tm) at your disposal, a hovercraft may be possible, though it is unlikely that early generation diesel engines could produce enough power without becoming too heavy to lift. These would be very fast on flat and smooth surfaces like salt seas, but unable to handle inclines or rough terrain that the skirt would snag on.
## The Best of Two Worlds
My recommendation would be a combination of legs and skids. The legs would have wide shields/skids along their length. On rough terrain it would walk centipede-like on all legs. On smooth sands most legs would fold into a horizontal position, putting the skids on the sand. The remaining vertical legs would push the "ship" forward in low-wind conditions (assuming some diesel power) or when going uphill.
When wind conditions are favorable, the upright legs are only required for steering (by creating drag on either side) as the "ship" goes into full sailing mode.
## Why no Wheels?
For wheels, the short answer is: No rubber.
Leather (inflatable or not) wheels exist but they are unsuitable for large vehicles, since they're not strong enough to carry a heavy load and very vulnerable to sharp rocks and ridges hidden in the sand.
Wood is better and barrel-shaped wooden wheels with ridges or even paddles is probably the closest you'd get to desert driving. But without the flexibility of rubber, you'd have to "drive" very slowly or risk shattering wheels on impact with hard terrain features.
A tracked wheeled vehicle might do better, but there may not be enough metal available for solid metal tracks. Tracks with metal core links and bolt-on wooden components are likely to wear out and break at an unworkable rate, especially with sand getting in the links. Replacing a single skid or leg in the middle of the desert would be much quicker than trying to restore a broken track somewhere under the bottom of the vehicle.
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If they have wheels, then it would seem fairly straight forward that they would have figured out long ago that you need a lot of surface area in order to prevent the cart/chariot/wagon etc from sinking into the sand.
On a more practical level, while a planet might be arid, it isn't going to be 100% sand dunes. Mars is a great real life example, although it is more of an arctic desert, it has hard pan, sand dunes, chaotic terrain, mountains. polar ice caps and even the seabed of the Vastitas Borealis basin. Jerry Pournelle once mocked the idea of a planetary uniclimate with the immortal phrase "It was raining on the planet Mongo that morning".
<http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20020225/planets.shtml>
So your people are not going to be living or venturing into the sand dunes much, unless there is something very valuable in there. Far more likely they will be living along the equivalent of the Nile river, or around other small, fertile spots, and their primary vehicles will be adapted to moving over hardpan and perhaps farm vehicles for tilling the soil. If there is an urge to go exploring in the desert, then adapting farm vehicles with wider tires and lower ground pressure would be a good starting point.
If we assume that there is no powered farm machinery to provide a starting point, the other way to look at things is to see how the British adapted existing vehicles to operate in the desert in their explorations in the 1930's and later during the Desert Campaign in WWII. In this case, adaptations included traction mats (large plates that could be pushed under tires to help unstick you from deep sand, see the perforated plates strapped to the side of the truck in the picture), special radiators and overflow systems to prevent the loss of water as engines overheated and water boiled out, and devices like "sun compasses" to allow drivers to navigate. The introduction of lightweight vehicles with higher power to weight ratios (Jeeps) helped immensely as well
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Vzny.jpg)
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I really like this old idea: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_airship> . Some recent developments are in the works, trying to fabricate materials to contain the vacuum with modern tech, but you could make up some material that exists naturally on your planet.
Are airships an option? a low flying hot air balloon is fairly low tech and makes getting over those curving dunes a walk in the, um, desert.
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Rather than coming up with an entirely new way to provide traction, why not just make exceptionally wide wooden wheels? A double set of spokes, an extra large diameter, and 6-12 inch wide rims (maybe wider), maybe with slates glued across lengthwise to further increase surface area, and you've got a wooden wheel that can handle loose sand. The details might vary, but a wooden wheel doesn't have to be narrow, and a wide wood wheel will still look different enough to be novel, while not requiring variation from the current level of tech.
If you want a sand-sailing ship, you need to pay attention to prevailing winds. You risk becoming stranded in the desert if the wind dies down, and if the prevailing wind blows east, and you want to travel west, you will be lucky if it only takes you twice as long to travel against the wind. For a real life example, read about sailing through the Drake Passage, at the southern tip of South America. It could take ships weeks to get through it even though it is relatively short because the weather is unpredictable and usually rough.
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[Sidewinder snakes use a very specific kind of body motion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=725R5RvtiUI), with different parts of the snake's body in contact with the ground, or in motion at different times. It's not impossible to imagine machines using flexible tubing or similar mechanism to enable locomotion.
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Try something along the line of wind surfboard for personal travel, and a much larger flat bottomed barge with sails for larger transport. Main problem, you need to concoct a king of either extremely light and hard material to coat the bottoms to reduce wear and tear from friction, or a way to quickly and easily replace skids or panels like replaceble catrpillar tracks.
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Hovercraft (air cushion vehicle). They can build engine driven fans to form an air cushion under the ship, contained with leather (or perhaps reinforced fabric) skirts. They could generate lift with the fans, and then be pushed along with poles, use sails, or even be fan driven (like real hovercraft). This would allow for movement across slightly rocky terrain, sand, and water. Obviously going up and down the sides of steep sand dunes would require either a lot of thrust or more likely "tow parties" that drag the ship up the side of dunes (much like how rowboats could tow a sailing ship in times of no wind) and then careful piloting to use momentum to ride up and down smaller dunes.
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I'm thinking of a little something where a hundred Sun-sized stars would dot the sky (night or day; the Sun just blocks other stars at day after all). These stars are scattered across the sky, but they are all exactly half a light year away from Earth.
So what would the sky look like in this scenario, aside from the fact that there will be new constellations? Will the nights be brighter? Will these stars be visible at day? Any interesting deviations from the typical sky?
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> Will the nights be brighter? Will these stars be visible at day? Any interesting deviations from the typical sky?
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Nope, no big difference.
First of all, take a look at this [chart](https://www.quora.com/How-bright-and-how-big-is-our-Sun-viewed-from-Pluto?_escaped_fragment_=n%3D12) showing how the Sun look like when seen from various bodies in our solar system
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nNInS.png)
68 AU is still 0.1% of 1 light year, so every single star won't stand out that much.
[Below](https://calgary.rasc.ca/sun_and_transits.htm) another comparison of the apparent size of the Sun.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HAa4W.gif)
Just for reference, again from the image, even having 100 sun-like stars at the distance of Eris, you would still get 2% of the light coming from the Sun. And they are much farther and much more feeble.
To quote Zeiss Ikon
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> Eris is only about 12 light hours away. Your stars, at 1/2 a light year, are 365 times that far, meaning about 100,000 times dimmer than the sun seen from Eris
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You would have a sky filled with 101 Venuses
The apparent magnitude of these stars would be just a *bit* brighter than Venus at its best, less than 10% brighter.
Of course, they would appear in the day, and twilight, and in the darkest night. The nighttime view would be quite spectacular, about similar to looking at the sky over JFK airport during a baggage worker's strike.
Tools: <https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/luminosity>
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I'm surprised no one has given this a more direct quantitative treatment, so here goes.
The perceived brightness at the Earth's surface is related to [illuminance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux), or [luminous flux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_flux) per unit area. Direct sunlight at noon is about 100,000 lux.
Illuminance from a source follows the [inverse square law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law): it is inversely proportional to the square of the distance to the source. A star at [the zenith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenith) at a distance of 0.5 light years (about 31,620 [AU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit), so 31,620 times further away than the Sun) therefore causes an illuminance 1/316202 ≈ 1/1,000,000,000 = 10-9 times that of the Sun. We can therefore expect about 100,000 / 109 = 0.0001 lux from one such star. Illuminance from multiple sources is additive, so 100 such stars (again, at the zenith) would give us 0.01 lux.
The stars are stated to be randomly distributed around the Earth, so they won't all be at the zenith at the same time. Illuminance is proportional to the cosine of the angle between the surface normal and the line between the surface and the source. The "average" illuminance of a collection of randomly distributed sources around a circle or sphere, relative to the illuminance if they were all at the zenith, is 1/π (this is the integral of the positive part of cos(θ), from θ = -π/2 to π/2, divided by 2π). So the total luminance of 100 randomly distributed stars is about 0.01/π ≈ **0.003 lux**.
For comparison, the full moon gives us between 0.05 and 0.1 lux, and starlight gives us 0.0001 lux. Note that human perception of brightness is logarithmic (proportional to the logarithm of the illuminance).
**There would therefore be no perceptible difference in brightness during the day, but the difference at night would often be noticeable, especially during a new moon or when the moon is below the horizon.**
As for whether the stars would be visible during the day, **maybe, just barely**: the brightness of a single star at this distance corresponds to an [apparent magnitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude) of -26.74 (Sun) + 5 log100 1,000,000,000 = -4.24. This is comparable to the mean brightness of [Venus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus) (-4.14) which is right at the edge of daytime visibility.
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I want to have a blue furred species native to a desert in the world I'm building, so the obvious way to have that is to have the sand of that desert be blue so they are camouflaged. I could just say the sand is blue and be done with it, but I'd rather have an explanation for why the sand is blue.
So, what would be a way to have blue sand on an alien planet, probably a mostly desert planet?
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# You want BLUE SAND?
I've got your blue sand on special today, available in the hundreds of thousands of hectares in sunny Namibia.
And we are not talking those feeble green-pretending-to-be-blue sands of Taiwan, or even the occasional dark blue flacks from Colorado. This is the ***Genuine Real Deal Blue Sand***
(image is 15mmx15mm)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/waGV1.jpg)
([Source](https://www.sandatlas.org/blue-sand-from-namibia/))
Here is the same sand, before it gets broken up into sand.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eQGRN.jpg)
P.s.
Just for funsies: Under UV light this stuff glows in bright neon Orange and Red shades.
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For certain minerals the size of the particle or the presence of defects affect its color, due to how the light interacts with the material.
For example titanium dioxide appears to be [light blue](https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why-does-Titania-TiO2-turn-blue).
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> natural TiO2 is always bluish. This is because natural TiO2 is always contains considerable oxygen vacancies that result reduced TiO2. The vacancy state turn as Ti3+, and creates an in-gap state and form an intermediate band just below the conduction band of the host material.
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If your sand is mostly TiO2 based rather than SiO2 based that can be an explanation.
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**It does not need to be blue if it looks blue.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Noj9f.jpg)
<https://steemit.com/travel/@sagor24/reflective-salt-flats-in-bolivia>
These salt flats make mirages all the time, and when it rains the film of water is like a mirror. You could use a salt flats for your desert or something similar. Your creatures are not flat blue but an agouti blend of light blue dark blue and white, which will be great when they make your story into an anime.
Blue sand is cool but this place is positively surreal and would be wonderful for a fiction. Shout out to @Slarty who proposed your creatures camouflage against the sky which is what they would be doing.
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There's a certain type of rock called blueschist:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y4IWL.jpg)
The blue colour is coming from a mineral called glaucophane:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ms6qI.jpg)
This is a rock type that is usually found in mountain belts, not far away from the coast. The problem is that the mineral itself (glaucophane) tends to break down very easily when it's exposed to the elements (beach waves, rivers, etc). But very close to the mountains, maybe immediately below a cliff or something, it is realistic to find blue sand derived from these rocks. The fact that you want it to be in a desert helps. But don't make it the only type of sand - yellow/white quartz sand is still going to be the most common. Just that in some places, you might find glaucophane sand that results from breakdown of nearby blueschists.
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All of the other answers are good.
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> I want to have a blue furred species native to a desert in the world I'm building, so the obvious way to have that is to have the sand of that desert be blue so they are camouflaged. I could just say the sand is blue and be done with it, but I'd rather have an explanation for why the sand is blue.
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There are *lots* of reasons there might be a blue-furred animal. Saying it's to camouflage with a desert will require *lots* of blue sand, but that's ok because there are *lots* of reasons why the sand might be blue.
If you're trying to tell a story, consider how deep into this you really want to go.
Also consider from the other angle: Why *aren't* there blue-furred animals on earth? Why might those reasons not apply on some other planet?
I don't have a great link for this; [here's *something*](https://bestlifeonline.com/blue-in-nature/). Basically, making a molecule that's inherently blue and is stable in an animal's body is pretty hard. The best way to shift this balance is probably to supply a relative abundance of metals and natural non-biologic blue pigments in the environment, *i.e.* have there be lots of blue rocks.
Basically, where X is whatever blue mineral or minerals,
* Animals are blue (or able to be blue pending evolutionary pressure) because they have traces of X in their diet.
* The X in their diet comes from sand/grit from the local geology.
* The local geology has lots of X in it (and is therefor relatively blue) because that's just how that region of that planet is. You can chase it up to stellar phenomena billions of years prior, but to what end?
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The sand doesn't need to be blue if the primary species they deal with are all colorblind. Good color vision is somewhat rare; deer for example can't see orange on green all that well, so hunters can wear high-vis orange without worrying about getting spotted. Blue-green color blindness is something that occurs in humans, and alien creatures can have a completely different visual system.
They could also be nocturnal, (common in deserts) at which point color vision becomes even worse, and dark blue is a reasonable camouflage to use on anything that doesn't specifically have night vision.
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Surprised there hasn't yet been an honourable mention of two amazingly coloured blue birds that appear in nature via different methods **without their surroundings being blue**. Fair enough if you want blue sand, but here's justification for an alternative:
### [Blue-footed Booby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-footed_booby#Foot_pigmentation):
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> The blue color of the blue-footed booby's webbed feet comes from
> carotenoid pigments obtained from its diet of fresh fish.
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### [Hummingbirds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummingbird#Feather_colors):
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> When sunlight hits these [prismal cells], it is split into wavelengths that reflect to the observer in varying degrees of intensity, with the feather structure acting as a diffraction grating.
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Both methods seem to feature carotenoid-based pigmentation obtained from the birds' diet (also the same for flamingoes too), though the fur/feathers/scales of your creature splitting and refracting light so that it appeared blue to the viewer is a *cool* world build.
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The environment is set in (ideal) space with no air for the bullet to interact with. It should encounter nothing until it reaches its target.
The bullet is assumed to be a perfect sphere with a diameter of 7mm (what I believe is common for sniper rifles) and is made of antimatter. All variables should be assumed to be "ideal" like in common physics homework.
~~From what I know, antimatter tends to explode when it comes into contact with regular matter. However, I'd like to see an antimatter bullet go so fast that it pierces without exploding.~~
The AM bullet doesn't necessarily explode (as explained by @Tim B II) but does react a lot with the target. Whether it's a bunch of explosions or just some fission, I'm not entirely sure. I just want to see some part of the bullet come out.
What would be the minimum speed at which the bullet needs to move in order to pierce through 1 meter of material and exit without entirely blowing up? (Just having a portion of the bullet material removed is OK. I just want to see the bullet exit as a bullet.)
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There's a very simple bit of math that tells you how far an antimatter projectile can penetrate something, assuming that the *massive* amounts of energy released aren't involved in that penetration.
As the bullet passes through the target, it will annihilate itself with the matter in the target at a 1:1 ratio. Meaning that the bullet can make contact with no more than it's own mass of target matter before being converted entirely into energy. (Lots, and lots, and *lots* of energy).
A 7mm sphere has a volume of ~0.18 cm3. Since you're making solid bullets out of this, let's assume you've somehow managed to produce, contain, and fire anti-lead. The density of lead is 11.34 g/cm3, so you have 2 grams of the stuff. So your bullet will be completely consumed by 2 grams worth of matter.
You're asking how fast the projectile can be fired in order to penetrate, but there's a problem with that. You need to fire the bullet fast enough that the annihilation reaction at its point of impact doesn't deflect the bulk of the bullet off the surface of the target (sort of like a droplet of water skittering off a hot surface). However, above a certain velocity (basically the speed of sound in the material), the matter in the target physically cannot move out of the way of the bullet, meaning that the bullet will at least make contact with the cylinder (or more like the cone) of matter in it's path; it can't "wedge" a crack open in the material and penetrate that way.
So basically what this boils down to is this: if there's more than 2 grams of matter in its direct path, then it can't penetrate no matter how fast it's moving. A 7mm by 1m cylinder is ~38.5 cm3. 2g/38.5 cm3 is 0.053 g/cm3, which is less dense than styrofoam.
On the other hand, the annihilation of 2g of antimatter with 2g of matter is going to release a smidge under 86 kilotons of energy, so your target is almost certainly just going to be vaporized, at which point the question of "penetrating" it becomes rather moot.
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First of all, I think we need to clear up the science a little bit.
Anti-matter doesn't 'explode' when it comes in contact with matter - it mutually annihilates both itself and the matter that it comes into contact with in equal quantities of mass, becoming pure energy.
This means that in essence, the anti-matter bullet is [far more efficient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_weapon) at creating energy than a fission reactor, and probably just as lethal given that most of that energy would probably be released as gamma radiation (this is based on current theory - we have little practical experience with creating anti-matter explosions).
The formula E=mc2 tells us that for every gram of antimatter in the bullet, we multiply that by twice the speed of light squared (because the antimatter is only half the mass annihilated) to get an energy release value.
This is also in line with how thermonuclear explosions work in that a nuclear bomb doesn't really 'explode' as it does release a massive amount of energy in the form of heat. Fission is effectively just breaking large complex molecules atoms up into smaller ones, resulting in a minor decrease in overall mass, the remainder of the mass [becoming heat energy](https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Nuclear_fission) to be released in the process. What makes the blast waves and 'explosion' is that heat increases the atmospheric pressure and this form of sudden and uncontrolled release of heat results in a massive and sudden increase in the atmospheric pressure, not to mention the creation of plasma out of existing mass around the blast - all in all it's a bad outcome.
In the case of your antimatter bullet however, the bullet won't just create fission - molecules of it literally cease to exist when reacting with a normal matter counterpart. The ENTIRE AM molecule, and the molecule it reacts with, become pure energy. With fission, no actual protons, electrons or neutrons go missing as such, but they are reconfigured in a lower energy state as the complex molecules become multiple simpler ones. in the case of antimatter the effect would be far more devastating because mass is literally being converted to energy.
As such, the AM bullet is not a kinetic weapon per se; in other words, you can't just sharpen it and fire it with a really high velocity (even relativistic speeds) to make it bypass some of the armour and annihilate mass behind it. Antimatter just doesn't work that way.
**Edit** it is important to note that some of the energy being released is going to actually push the bullet back, or push other molecules out of the way to some degree. That said, the more velocity you put into the bullet, the more of it will be annihilated because the gamma radiation released has to counter a greater initial momentum. What fragments may make it through would do so only because it would be riding a bow wave of gamma radiation and plasma, but it won't be a bullet anymore in either case.
The good (?) news is that with a mass of (say) 10 grams forming the 7mm 'shell' when it hits the armour, the energy release is going to be so massive it's unlikely that the armour will be sufficiently strong or robust so as to withstand the sudden onslaught of gamma radiation, meaning that all the people behind it are likely dead from the radiation generated even if they don't flash burn because of heat release, which they [most likely would](https://www.quora.com/If-antimatter-bomb-did-exist-would-it-be-worse-than-thermonuclear-bomb).
The short answer is that you can't have your AM bullet look like bullet after passing through mass really quickly. Contact is all that is required to set off the reaction and as such, they'll go off with the first contact with ANY regular mass. They are not kinetic weapons, and you can't think of them as such. They're energy release weapons with a contact trigger.
[Answer]
There's a very relevant [xkcd - What if?](https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/) on this. Granted, the projectile is not made from antimatter, and it's a bit bigger than your bullet. However, it does discuss speeds at which "the atoms are literally passing through each other". That's in the section about 99% the speed of light.
It also mentions that air atoms penetrate roughly three meters into a body at that speed. Obviously, antimatter projectiles would be stopped sooner than that, because they do disintegrate at the first actual collision. But, as I cited, at these speeds the atoms move right through each other. The higher the speed, the further the antimatter particles can penetrate into matter before they manage to annihilate with one of the particles they are passing through.
So, the answer is: **You need your antimatter projectile to be significantly faster than 99% of the speed of light**. This will allow some of the bullet's particles (not full atoms, only individual positrons, antiprotons and antineutrons) to pass through the target and continue their journey unimpeded.
Note, that at these speeds the particles weight more than ten times their rest mass. **Matter-antimatter annihilation would *not* be the major energy source. Direct kinetic energy would be**. So, if you want to play it safe, you can just make do with ordinary matter, and stick to what is described in the link I gave.
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> What would be the minimum speed at which the bullet needs to move in order to pierce through 1 meter of material and exit without entirely blowing up?
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It depends on what you mean by "entirely blowing up" or "resembling a bullet" ;-)
TL;DR: you're out of luck, unless you count a few stray antineutrons coming out the far side.
There's basically no speed that a 7mm long bullet made of any kind of normal matter (anti- or otherwise) could penetrate a 1m thick block of normal matter. The [mean free path](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_free_path) is just too short... every incoming atom will interact with an atom of the target material in pretty short order, either causing deflection and heating (for normal matter) or partial or total annihilation (for antimatter).
The [Newtonian approximation for impact penetration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth#Newton's_approximation_for_the_impact_depth) is $d \approx l\_p \frac{\rho\_p}{\rho\_t}$ where $d$ is the penetration depth, $l\_p$ is the length of the penetrator, and $\rho\_p$ and $\rho\_t$ are the densities of the penetrator and the target respectively. This should give you a *very rough* idea of how deep an antimatter projectile could possibly penetrate... in reality other effects would destroy it long before it reached that depth, but it'll do as a starting point. As you can see, even if your bullet was made of anti-tungsten and the target was made of water you cannot possibly penetrate any further than about 14cm.
This is why real world armour penetrating rounds are long and thin, like this [APFSDS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armour-piercing_fin-stabilized_discarding_sabot) antitank round:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OZV7J.gif)
If you fired your bullet at relativistic speeds (say, 90% of the speed of light or more) you might find that *some* of the incoming round makes it out of the other side, perhaps in the form of a few stray antineutrons, but I'm guessing that isn't really what you wanted. Also, if you've got a relativistic gun, you may as well fire regular matter out of it, because all the oomph is in the kinetic energy, and the contribution of the mass-energy in an antimatter bullet would quickly become negligible and certainly not worth the hassle.
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Now, you should also note that your depleted-antiuranium kinetic penetrator will *also* not be able to punch through huge chunks of matter and come out intact. The problem you'll have is that upon contact with the target, annihilation will begin. This will almost certainly *not* simply blow the bullet back out of the target.
What you will get is a spray of electron-positron annihilation gamma rays (511keV), high energy prompt gamma rays from nucleon annihilation (MeV-energy), some very short ranged neutral pions which will almost immediately decay into more gamma rays (two each, totalling >135MeV) and a bunch of charged pions which will travel short distances before interacting with regular matter and being stopped, and then either decaying producing further gamma rays or causing ionisation and heating. The gamma rays are *highly penetrating*. This means they'll travel some way through both the target and the penetrator before interacting with it, generally causing ionisation and heating. A big chunk of the target and most of the penetrator will therefore heat up quite a lot and explode. This will produce a cloud of hot, dense ambiplasma which will then finish annihilating itself in relatively short order.
*Most* of the impactor will therefore be annihilated, with most of the energy being released in a fairly broad volume of matter around the impact point. A small amount of the back of the impactor will be fly away, un-annihilated.
The take home message should be "don't use antimatter if you want armour-piercing rounds".
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The closest that we can get to a numerical answer to this question would be:
How fast would the AM bullet need to go, so that if it struck a wall with more mass than itself, then every positron and antiproton is annihilated rather than shot back out from the force of energy released from annihilations happening in front of it?
We can probably assume that the energy released will expand in a *relatively* spherical burst of gamma and x-ray radiation. (Relativity pun intended, since we're working on high energy EM radiation.) Fortunately, since things are happening at relativistic speeds AND much of the energy is traveling at the speed of light by definition, this means that we don't need to worry about reference frames very much. The energy expands as a sphere, whether your frame of reference is the bullet or the ship... And if you're either, then you won't need to worry about reference frames after the impact, either.
So, in the moment of annihilation for each particle, roughly half of the energy is working to move the ship out of your way, and the other half of the energy is working to slow the bullet down.
In order to figure out how much kinetic energy we need, we take the 86 kilotons ("borrowed" from Salda's excellent answer) of explosive energy, cut it in half, and convert it to joules. In less than than it takes for a human to think, there is going to be 179,912,000,000,000 joules delivered into the bullet that we'll need to overcome.
At 2 grams, *if relativity didn't exist* our bullet would need to be traveling at ~360,000,000,000,000,000 m/s, or about a billion times the speed of light.
Fortunately *with* relativity, we don't need to go that fast (but we DO need to pump in that much energy into our 2g bullet). We merely need to accelerate our bullet to 99.999999999% the speed of light, or thereabouts.
Keep in mind that these are all back-of-the-envelope, spherical cow on an infinite, frictionless plane types of calculations. If there is less than 2g of matter in an AM bullet's path, this is how fast it will need to go in order to guarantee that some parts of it makes it through. It won't resemble a bullet, but it will be bits of antimatter that is still going in the right direction.
If the target ship has less shielding, you don't have to slow down quite as much, of course... I.e., if there will only be 1g of matter in front of your antimatter bullet, you'll only need to be going half as fast, about 99.999999995% of c (that is, you'll only have to put half as much kinetic energy behind the bullet, which due to the nature of relativity, only *seems* like a very minor change in the fraction of the speed of light that our bullet is traveling, despite being quite significant.)
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Regardless of whether your bullet is antimatter or not, it won’t penetrate to 1m.
Your bullet is 7mm long. It will be a similar density to the target’s armour. So Newton’s law of impact depth tells us it’ll penetrate to about 14mm.
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth>
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The other answers were long and wordy, and so if this is already covered, my apologies.
The reason that bullets made by ordinary matter can penetrate armor (or any obstacle that's not too resilient) is because the first contact between the bullet and the target will be the electrostatic forces of the electrons of the atoms comprising both bullet and target. The electrons repel each other (so much so that the atoms really never do touch each other), and the momentum of the bullet pushes the material of the target out of the way.
With an anti-matter bullet, it's not going to work that way. The positrons of the anti-atoms of the bullet, and the electrons of the atoms of the target, will be drawn to each other and annihilate each other, and then the anti-protons of the bullet will be drawn to the protons of the target and the will annihilate each other in a similar fashion (dragging the anti-neutrons and neutrons into the festivities).
There will be no penetration unless the armor is much thinner than the diameter of the bullet, and then only if the momentum of the surviving anti-atoms has not been impeded by the violence of the matter-antimatter annihilation.
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What you seem to be looking for is the ultimate armor piercing high explosive bullet, correct?
If that's the case, instead of antimatter bullets, you want to shoot micro black holes at relativistic velocity.
See, all black holes evaporate and radiate energy away in the form of Hawking radiation. The bigger the black hole is, the slower it radiates. Tiny black holes are essentially ridiculously powerful bombs, because that radiation ramps up like crazy in the last few microseconds of the black hole's existence. The faster it radiates the faster it shrinks, and the smaller it gets the faster it radiates.
Now combine this with the time dilation caused by traveling at a relativistic velocity. If you carefully control how fast you launch the black hole, you can very precisely time when it evaporates completely. The faster it's going, the longer it lasts from your, and your target's point of view.
No amount of armor can stop a black hole. Every atom of armor the black hole hits just falls into the singularity.
So put it all together, and what you have is a black hole weighing as much as a train punching a hole a few molecules across through the target's armor, and detonating inside with energy similar to the impact that killed the dinosaurs.
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**Try using strange matter. Let us know the experimental outcome.**
Degenerate neutron matter (a.k.a. neutronium) was my first choice, but their is no reason to expect this to be stable outside of the intense gravity field of a neutron star.
If the [strangelet hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangelet#Strange_matter_hypothesis) is true, it might be possible. Since the strangelet would be electrically neutral, in will pass through matter, only interacting if if manages to hit the very small target particles in the atoms themselves.
Being electrically neutral, this interpenetrates matter to a much greater extent than normal anti-matter (Maybe, s.b.)
However, as a 1 meter thick target would require missing roughly 50-100 million atomic nuclei to exit with contact (actual numbers depend on target material), so statistically very unlikely.
Re: the Maybe above - certainly the properties of a strangelet of unknown, and it may be quite likely that you can not simply treat this as a stable collection of loosely interacting quarks, where each quark has to impact a particle to. In fact, for strangelets to exist, they are probably quite tightly bound together, preventing this from working.
So, although I don't expect strange anti-matter to get the job done, we don't really know. So run the experiment, and write-up your results for publication.
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I've been thinking about terraforming and planets in general.
We can look at the planets we know that might be terraformable - Venus and Mars - and understand the technical requirements for doing so. We can even imagine other planets and what might be necessary for them.
What I'm trying to create is a planet that has no indigenous life, but yet is remarkably easy to settle; it needs little or no terraforming work at all -- the temperature is just right; it has oceans, land, rivers, soils that can support plants, maybe even a nice big moon to produce tides. Basically, it's Earth's sterile twin.
But I'm aware that a lot of the things which make Earth great for life are actually a result of it having life.
So the question is: How feasible is my scenario? How perfect can I make this planet without it ever having had any life to help make it perfect? What compromises will I need to make in order to make it realistic?
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The biggest problem is going to be atmospheric oxygen. The main source of oxygen in Earth atmosphere is photosynthetic plant life. Oxygen is a reactive molecule. It tends to react with minerals (oxidize like rust) and not be present as a gas in the atmosphere. Without plant life, you are going to need a continuously renewing source of oxygen, and I'm not aware of anything that would work for this.
You could have a planet atmosphere with a high carbon dioxide content, that could be terraformed simply by adding plant life to convert the ${CO\_2}$ to ${O\_2}$. This is going to be difficult to do on land as topsoil is a complicated material requiring a number of interrelated life forms, so your best bet would be a planet with large oceans. Seed the oceans with some algae and other basic life forms and wait a few years/decades/centuries for the oxygen content to rise.
Other problems to consider: With no free oxygen, your planet will not have an ozone layer as ozone forms from oxygen in the upper atmosphere absorbing radiation from the sun. So expect high levels of ultraviolet light. Ocean life would be protected, so seeding the oceans would still work.
[Answer]
## Oxygen
It turns out that plant life isn't the only way to create oxygen. [Photodissociation of carbon dioxide](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/346/6205/61) uses ultra-violet radiation to create oxygen. The more oxygen is produced the less efficient this process is (due to ozone's ability to absorb UV) which would create a self-regulating system.
## Soil
This is the bigger problem, I think. On earth our plants create wind breakers and reduce the amount of nutrient rich top soil we have remaining. You only have to look at [the effects of deforestation on earth](https://rainforests.mongabay.com/0903.htm) to imagine what might happen to a planet with no plants. I imagine some areas might remain but **you won't have 'good' soil to plant.**
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I think you'll find a lifeless planet needs some work.
You'll have rocks, you'll have sand, but you won't have soil. You'll get grit and powder without a lot to hold it together. To be fair, you'll also get clays which can bake together, but I'm suggesting you'll have a lot of picturesque dust storms.
And erosion. Without binding agents (roots, loam, etc) the sand will be more likely to roll into the ocean.
Next ... you'll have iron lying around unrusted. Hey, you might want to send a mining operation in first, because the major iron ores on Earth (hematite and magnetite) are basically just iron & oxygen. I'm no archaeometallurgist -- who is, these days -- but I'm wondering if there wouldn't be huge iron deposits that you could just scoop up.
Per another answer, you'll have to seed the oceans with algae. That's workable, but note that the water, sea rocks, and land rocks will soak up the released oxygen until all the reactive materials have soaked up the oxy. This can take a long time:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/44FKr.png)
If I were you, I'd set up banks of hydrolysis machines to speed this up, and sell off the extra H2 to passing interstellar traders.
[Answer]
Your probably going to have to have biodomes for many decades before the planet is in any shape to do what you want.
The planets doesn't have any life on it according to you. This means no algae or photoplankton which means no oxygen. Even if you start seeding immediately, it took the earth 1 billion years to complete this process, and I am assuming that is too long to wait. You will need enough photo-planketon and/or algae to cover all the oceans of the world. Since its too much to bring with you will need something that grows like wild fire. You would have to increase oxygen creation basically a billion times what earth had at that time. Not very realistic, even if you split the oxygen from the water molecules you couldn't do it fast enough.
So I suggest bio-domes, which you can control how much outside air you bring in and how much oxygen you let out. You need top soil, and that isn't simple either especially without existing life. At least with domes you could bring top soil with you to start the growing process.
Otherwise you would need handwavium to explain having usable top soil without the presence of some life. Your only hope of having the 20% oxygen content is basically some interglatic lighting bolt or electrical current splitting 20% of the planets water into hydrogen and oxygen without blowing up the planet.
A simply battery could naturally occur, in the ocean but it would have to be in vast in size. This could generate the electricity necessary to split the water molecules and give you the oxygen you need. However, you would have to arrange something else to bond with the hydrogen or it could generate devastating explosions.
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Ok, here a very wild idea not without a bit of handwave but semi plausible.
Indigenous life can be not present just because the planet is just too young, maybe life there is in the "aminoacid soup" stage.
The planet atmosphere is covered in thick clouds and semi-perpetualy raining and the clouds are barring heavy UV/IR radiation, heavy enough to broke H2O in O2 and a lot of Hydrogen.
Hydrogen being less dense concentrates in upper layers while oxygen in the bottom.
Note: You can need to handwave massive perpetual eletric storms to produce the necessary amount of oxygen by "natural eletrolyse".
The "soil" will be mud, very easy for some crops. No need for rivers and oceans but with that amount of rain it will probably got lot's of rivers and seas.
Also the constant wet surface will help prevent oxidation (IF the water is not rich in "diluted" oxygen and salt, like our oceans)
Note: You do need to handwave that mud with mineral dissolution to produce a mud good enough for agriculture without excessive NaCl and poor in metals (and other things get easily oxidated).
The tricky part is to make enough IR/sun light at surface to allow agriculture (unless you can use "abyssal agriculture" and yes, there's a question about it).
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What you want can't exist(without bacteria/plants no o2 for you and without life no soil either) but here are some workarounds:
1.Another race colonized it before , finished their thing with that solar system then left taking their infrastructure with them.
2.Life existed in primitive form but got nuked by gamma rays from a nearby supernova and your explorers just landed a few weeks after the last plant disintegrated to basic organic material absorbed by the soil.
3.Synthetic planet where in reality the planet is hollow and at the core there is a system in place to maintain the surface equilibrium of oxygen levels etc...
4.Magic + umpalumpas go wild ...
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You can have it be an "artificial planet" terraformed by an alien race with requirements similar enough to humans, but never colonized by them and possibly forgotten. A sort of NOS (New Old Stock) planet.
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In the story I want to tell, it's a thousand years in the future and Mars has been terraformed into a forest world (something like the forest-moon of Endor). It's settled in a few small towns and mostly populated by a rugged group of lumberjack types. Every year (Martian year) the logging crews go out in the fall, cut timber all winter, and in the spring the logs are shipped back to earth to be made into furniture, paper, etc. Earth is densely populated, urban, with all the modern conveniences, but has few large forests and is unwilling to harvest them.
My worldbuilding problem is that I want Mars to be a kind of hinterland with an uncivilized, frontier character. But if people have the technology to transport millions of pounds of lumber off Mars and land it safely on Earth, via antigravity drives or something, then Mars would not remain sparsely populated for long. Billions would move there and build giant cities complete with shopping malls and everything else. Moreover, if it were easy to transport heavy loads from Earth to Mars, the lumberjacks themselves would probably be replaced by heavy machinery such as real loggers use in the 21st century.
Instead, I want it to be very difficult and expensive for freight to get from Earth to Mars, so it'll mostly just be loggers with hand tools going that way each autumn, but very easy for heavy freight to be transported from Mars to Earth. The not-so-subtle metaphor is that Earth is "downstream" from Mars, and the logs are being "floated downriver" as in the olden days (on Earth) when there were annual riverdrives from logging operations in the deep woods downriver to the mills.
What's a plausible science-fiction explanation for this scenario? I'm defining "plausible" as meaning that the explanation must be internally consistent, i.e. not creating side effects such as godlike technological powers. Bonus points if your explanation also helps explain how Mars was terraformed.
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Mars's atmosphere was largely carbon dioxide before; well, carbon dioxide's a great food source for plants, provided they have adequate sunlight! Plants' photosynthesis in turn could explain what methods were used to make Mars livable; all that carbon dioxide was trapped in the trees, and in turn, oxygen was pumped out into the atmosphere.
The more you log the trees and take their carbon off-planet (then plant some more), the higher the oxygen-to-carbon dioxide ratio gets (as the trees never die and rot and get consumed by carbon-dioxide-spewing fungi and bacteria). So, the forestation and logging of Mars could not just be the *result* of terraforming, but *part of the process!*
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**Mars has a space elevator. Earth doesn't.**
[Space elevators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator) are fantastic pieces of technology that make the trip from surface to orbit incredibly cheap and easy. They are unfortunately also incredibly dangerous as Earth learned when a terrorist group managed to sever the [Curacao](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/8866/where-to-anchor-my-space-elevator) elevator in 2591. The resulting cataclysm killed hundreds of millions outright as the ~50,000 km long structure fell to Earth wrapping around the globe nearly 2 full times. A global ban on these inherently vulnerable structures was put into place shortly thereafter making any travel out of Earth’s gravity well using conventional chemical rockets extremely expensive. The fledgling Martian colony was cut off from support from Earth but soon found that as the sole power in the solar system in possession of a space elevator it wielded immense economic power. Immigration and trade from Earth to Mars slowed to a trickle, however, exports from Mars to Earth remained economically viable.
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**Honestly, I don't see that you have a problem**
How many people own yachts? And yet the cheapest form of transport on Earth is an ocean-going super freighter. So, from the perspective of people just jumping in their cars and moving, there's already the problem of the cost of the ~~car~~ spaceship, cost of fuel, and travel time. Your average Joe Schmoe could never afford the trip.
How to keep the wealthy off? That's easy, too. Mars property (somewhat like Hawaii) is 100% leased to corporate ventures under strict laws and oversight by a panel of United Earth nations who manage the resource. There isn't a square inch available for non-purpose habitation and the consequences are, well, let's call them *breathtaking* in their scope of civil punishment.
Note that you'll never have 100% compliance. You'll have the corporations creating resorts for their people, friends, and "associates." All well within the UE rules, of course. But that kind of nearly meaninless population isn't, I think, what you're talking about.
Finally, just in case you decide to make space travel cheap. If it is cheap, then so is the policing force needed to beat away the unwashed barbarians who don't want to live within spitting distance of their Terran neighbors.
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No technobabble required. Earth has a deep gravity well and a huge, thick atmosphere. Mars has a shallow gravity well, and presumably even after terraforming still has a thin atmosphere.
Going from Mars to Earth is cheap (if a bit slow). A surface-mounted mass driver can throw packages of logs directly into an Earth-intercept trajectory. The thin atmosphere means you don't need much shielding on the way out (particularly if you're launching from the top of Olympus Mons), and Earth's thick atmosphere provides easy aerocapture and landing six months later.
Going from Earth to Mars is much harder. The accelerations involved in a mass-driver launch make it unsuitable for anything but durable freight; humans and fragile goods need to be launched on chemical rockets. Either way, you're spending far more energy fighting gravity and drag than you would leaving Mars. At the other end of the six-month trip (which itself would tend to discourage human travel), the thin Martian atmosphere makes aerocapture and parachute/glider landing tricky. You'll need to haul engines and fuel with you, which further drives up the cost of travel.
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Your antigravity drives or whatever you are using work only when the body has a bulk density comparable to wood, about $0.8 \ g/cm^3$. Anything denser than that will have to follow the chemical rocket path, with its related costs, efficiencies and limitations.
Casually enough this will allow you to cheaply ship wood, but nothing more than that.
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Material limits. While we can't currently build a space elevator on Mars we can do the next best thing--elevators on Deimos and Phobos. (See [here](http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2017/06/zylon-mars-elevator.html)) Now, we don't need much more strength to get the low end of the Phobos elevator into the range that aircraft can intercept it.
Presto, travel from Mars to Earth becomes cheap, the hardest part of the whole mission is protecting them from their trip through the fire coming down. However, the cables aren't strong enough to build an Earth-based elevator. Thus to go from Earth to Mars still has to be done the hard way on a tail of fire.
You're not going to get it down to loggers with hand tools as the launch from Mars still needs high performance aircraft--but that's still an awful lot cheaper than rockets.
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**Terraforming without lots of tech.**
Later this year, astronomers discover a very large icy comet inbound from the Kuiper belt, destined to make impact with an Asteroid so that it scrubs most of the velocity relative to Mars. The remnants from this collision impact Mars 2 months later delivering many megatons of water, and other interesting volatiles such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ammonia. Won't be pleasant on Mars for quite a while, but once things settle, you have the basic materials you need in place.
Taking advantage of this event, a seed ship is sent to Mars after the fact to seed the new atmosphere with various designed to transform the atmosphere into something suitable for forestry.
Still, Mars has trouble retaining an atmosphere, so NASA also prepares a big [magnetic shield](https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-wants-to-launch-a-giant-magnetic-shield-to-make-mars-habitable) for the atmosphere to help prevent atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind.
Making it comparatively cheap to send wood back to Earth requires non-fanciful technologies. A space elevator would be much easier to construct for Mars than Earth because of its lower gravity. Still won't be cheap to build, but you don't have to start construction for a long-time still -- waiting for better materials, construction techniques, etc.
Significant improvements in orbital transfer (between Mars and Earth) are also needed. Careful use of light sails should make this reasonably priced in either direction as long as you are not in a hurry.
Dropping wood from orbit to the Earth is not that difficult if you are willing to use the wood itself as ablative shielding.
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**The wood itself is the fuel for the rockets.**
In combination with [jedmeyer's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/120917/48357) suggesting that the trees grow much larger than they would on Earth, perhaps there is a real chemical process or, failing that, something catalyzed by handwavium (mined only on Mars) that allows the wood itself to function as rocket fuel. Hollow out a large tree, fill it with oxidizer, and launch it. It could fire retrorockets on its approach to Earth and splash down in the ocean where it would be recovered by a fleet of logging ships.
(I know this answer is absurd, but it amuses me greatly.)
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**The power of Economics!**
The solution you have here is that Mars has less gravity than Earth (3.7m/s^2 vs. (9.8 m/s^2). Because of this massive difference, the trees that grew up on Earth are able to grow MUCH taller on Mars, solving the scenario in two ways.
1. The trees grow faster and taller due to less gravity. Thus, a frontier-like world could develop shortly after being seeded and "terraformed".
2. Big Trees = More Wood. If you grow trees easier on Mars, Martian wood becomes more affordable: supply and demand. The shipping is just an overhead cost.
Where the scenario gets more challenging is the "downstream" metaphor. It would be possible if you consider [aerobraking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobraking), since Mars has a less dense atmosphere than Earth. Launching from Mars requires a little bit less to land on Earth thanks to its thick atmosphere than the reverse path. However, that makes it unlikely that megaflora could flourish due to the insufficient pressure.
I recommend that you consider another cause for the unindustrialized world:
-There isn't an established mining base on Mars for enough metal for automated machinery, and no one wants to ship that out when you get enough wood from the locals!
-Overpopulation on Earth means more affordable labor for companies, and there's no room to plant large forests!
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I like @Mark's mass driver for logs - bare logs flying thru space.
My idea for the cheap low tech terraforming - sometime in the mid 21st century the popular prophet inheriting the American government (and its nuclear stock) is told by God that nuking the Martian polar icecaps will bring great rewards to humanity. The Americans proceed to do exactly that, launching hundreds of ICBMs to detonate on Mars. The nukes are followed with arklike rockets of seeds and spores.
The scheme works like a charm, liberating immense stores of water and CO2 which cause a runaway greenhouse effect and melt the rest of the immense subsurface stores of these gases. Certain seeds among those sent up give rise to the forests which are thriving 1000 years later.
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Mars has lower gravity than Earth, so it's already easier to achieve escape velocity.
However, with all of Mars as a giant forest, the atmosphere is now much more oxygen-rich than Earth. This means that producing liquid oxygen fuel is quicker and cheaper, and any craft with an air-intake can burn fuel much more efficiently than one on Earth.
In that circumstance, Earth really would be downstream. The freighter's easily lift into Mars orbit, burn the rest of their fuel to escape orbit at just the right spot...and free-fall into a precise Earth orbit where "local" spacecraft can retrieve them and bring them down.
You could even add a touch of danger to the retrieval: if the freight isn't caught and slowed on the first pass, it'll be going too fast, and will slingshot into empty space. If a corp misses a shipment at the prime capture point, nearby opportunists could turn a hefty profit by claiming the freight later in its trajectory--when it's much more dangerous to make the attempt.
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# Monsanto got chased off of Earth
Monsanto is one of the most hated big corporations on this planet presently. Not because their products are actually bad; genetically modified crops are safe and pretty much ubiquitous by now. But Monsanto's business practices has every ideologically green party and ditto non governmental organisation getting their knickers in a big itchy twist. And somewhat rightfully so because Monsanto is **really** pushing the limits when it comes to copyrights, trying to control what people can do with their products long after the product has been bought and used by the client.
So Monsanto — or its 3018 equivalent — have set up shop on Mars instead. And they are doing quite well for themselves! Their [radiation hardened](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans) planktons and tree products have been instrumental in terraforming Mars without having to bother with restoring the planet's magnetic field. And not only that but the wood is **amazing**, being (insert qualities that are great for wood to have here). There is no-one that has those species of trees growing anywhere, thanks to Monsanto's quite excellent gene-hackers/engineers.
Of course there is the slight issue on how to protect such a valuable product and not have it spread like weed all over the solar system and neighbouring stars. So the genetic code is written such that it **requires** Mars conditions — the right gravity, the right radiation levels, the right atmosphere — or the seeds / seedlings simply will not catch. And Monsanto are annoyingly good at this sort of genetic copyright protection.
Too bad for them then, when an ideologically green terrorist organisation infiltrated the Ice Miner's Guild and in a brilliant move bot-net'd an entire flotilla of harvest drones to annihilate every Monsanto office on Mars by dropping asteroid ice bergs on them. (Side plot hook: what happens when you take a genetic engineering corporation, physically smash it to bits and let out all their lab samples and secret projects on a young booming forest planet)
So there you have it: a — now defunct — genetics engineering corporation created a **marvellous** but very Mars specific species of wood... and then they got wiped out. Now their products keep growing on Mars, and are ripe for harvest.
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Terraforming Mars: solar-powered artificial magnetosphere, water from Ceres (Mars is downstream from Ceres and ceres lower gravity makes it easy to fly water to Mars), nitrogen from Titan's atmosphere to start the Nitrogen cycle. In the long term, some fertilizers in mineral form (and additional Carbon Dioxide) must be replenished in one way or another.
Environmental issues: too much damage to ecosystems on Earth is a good motive to turn Mars into a huge nature reserve with plants, wildlife and other organisms. Migration to Mars is restricted to park rangers, loggers and other related jobs, so that population is minimal. Some area is designated for logging.
Self-government: the new Martians take control of their business. Machinery is restricted to less sophisticated tools, but cargo spaceships are still indispensable. Park rangers may double as loggers in the spare time and further reduce the need for more workers. The "martians" may actually make lots of profits from managing this business, and controlling who & how others join is a way to keep much of the profit to themselves. They may windowdress their management decisions with environmentalist ideology.
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Let's say in a few years a brand new material is discovered, a kevlar like fiber that is strong enough to stop any kind of bullet from a regular firearm (pistols, rifles, machine guns etc.). Anything weaker than a heavy anti-tank rifle is completely useless against it, and even these can barely pierce this new armor. Soldiers can still be killed by artillery and other heavy weaponry, like tank cannons and missiles, but anything a regular soldier can carry is pretty much useless.
For the technical part, it works just like kevlar, it's just much, much stronger.
All soldiers are equipped with it, from frontline soldiers to the tank crews and support companies .
It is fairly pricy so most civilians don't have it, but most police officer, security guards and serious criminals do.
How would this affect the way wars are fought? And how would the society as a whole react to most guns becoming pretty much useless?
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**This is the old armor vs weapon argument** - one side invents armor, another copies it, one side invents a weapon to penetrate the armor, the other copies it and invents stronger armor. And round we go.
It happened in antiquity with personal armor starting with shields, leather and fabric and on to the fully armored knight of the late middle ages. It happened with wooden ships and gunpowder, then with ironclads and battleships. And it happened with tanks.
In fact its still happening and this new fabric would just be one more step. And the problem is the same.
IMO there are two key issues;
1. As others have pointed out the energy of a round fired at someone wearing your armor has to go somewhere. That 'somewhere' is the body of the person being hit. So its very likely someone wearing your armor would take serious bruising/internal hemorrhaging and broken ribs/bones etc. The big plus is they survive though.
2. Toughen the armor and someone will step up to the challenge and build a better (bigger/faster/harder) bullet. For that matter they could possibly just weave and bond a coating of your super fabric around the tip of a conventional rifle round.
Whatever they do, at some point either the sheer impact becomes disabling, rounds are invented that penetrate or you have to wear so much of the fabric that it becomes too cumbersome/heavy and impracticable for a soldier to wear for extended periods in combat conditions. Which are the limiting factors on current body armor.
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**Already obsolete**
Many, if not most, of the Coalition casualties of the Iraq war were due to IEDs: improvised landmines, either anti-personnel or anti-vehicle. Other attacks were carried out with RPGs. Since Coalition forces would win almost any gunfight in which both parties could see each other, those tended not to happen so much.
Urban warfare would become even more of a miserable grind than it is. All room clearance would be done with explosives. Close-quarters fighting in building with guns would be rendered impossible - so either the fighting would move to building-obliterating levels of explosive, or to even more close quarters fights with blades.
Suicide bombers would be slightly more effective if there's no possibility of shooting them dead from a distance.
More civilians would get obliterated by all these explosions.
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**amazing material**
Some answers say it's a useless material. I think if they give it a chance, they'll see how insanely useful it is.
Yes, the impact must be spread out to prevent damage to a person. A bullet doesn't have much energy. A gun will have the same amount of energy in the recoil as the bullet will have. The advantage for the shooter is that the gun has the energy spread out slightly more over time due to acceleration than the impact of a bullet. The gun has the surface area of the hand. The arm can move more easily and deflect the energy to another direction (for how pistols and arms are build it'll go up). That is why they're fine with the same amount of energy from the recoil.
The impact of a bullet will be on a small area, in a short time, often *penetrating* the body for extra damage.
Armour in real life takes all this into account. Composite armour is usually used for vehicle armour, but it's certainly used on personnel. The idea is that different layers do different things to redirect the energy of the bullet. We have a material that is bulletproof, so we don't have to give one more thought to that part. Even better. The wording in this case is that we don't even need to take in account it can become weaker if it's tightly strung over metal for example. So all we need to do, is redirect the energy, while most penetrative problems are solved.
I can't do full research and I'm not an expert in these things. However, I can give some directions of what I would try.
What I would do is make clothing with many folds outwards. These increase the distance the bullet has to travel to reach the body, giving more opportunity to stop a bullet. Gels, (metallic) foams and more can be inserted that become rigid on impact, further diffusing the energy over time and surface area. Especially the gels would get a lot of attention. If the gel could stop the bullet, it can go back to it's original form afterwards. As some layers can't be penetrated, none would leak out and you'll have an armour that resets itself over time. The material for clothing could also use thick round strands for deflecting purposes, so the bullet is more likely to be forced into an indirect path to the body and more of such shenanigans.
Do keep in mind that most current armours aren't a "perfect" protection. Most are unable to diffuse the energy enough, so you'll get huge bruises and might get incapacitated, yet alive. Repetitive shots can damage armour enough to penetrate, which is more easily done with automatic weapons. Even with my above example of new armour you could be fine at the first shot, but quick follow ups could still give you nasty bruises and even death if the material gets too close to the body, as many others point out.
What would happen in such a world is that guns tend to become more powerful and automatic. It'll give higher chances for lucky shots or overcoming the armour of the enemy. The bullets would get bigger with higher impact to wind them or overcome the protection. Incapacitating your opponent is a much more likely scenario, as well as that engagements will be drawn out. Interestingly hand to hand combat might become more common, but that is more wishful thinking. It's more likely other weapons would be researched more intensively to disable your opponent.
There is an argument to be made that guns would just get more powerful to overcome the resistance of the armour. There's handguns that still fire incredibly heavy, powerful rounds. Though these might become more widespread, they do get more recoil, making aiming and firing much more difficult and tiresome, as well as the guns heavier so more weight to carry all the time. Although weapon escalation is a thing, it's not as clear cut as that. Each advancement in armour can have many detrimental effects on the weapons to keep up the battle.
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**3 words - Armor-piercing Bullets**
Warfare would likely change very little. Currently, most first world countries use drones when possible, and missions are carried out by highly-trained specialized teams. Whatever new armor, kevlar or otherwise, is created, the other side can always increase the speed and weight (and thus force) of the bullet to overcome the latest body armor.
**The game changer would be civilians having access, as most casualties in modern wars are civilians**
Consider the Iraq war. Most estimates place civilian casualties in the [hundreds of thousands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#:%7E:text=As%20of%20June%2029%2C%202016,result%20of%20the%20Iraq%20War.). This is orders of magnitude larger than either allied forces (U.S./Europe/Canada/Etc) and Iraqi military forces. While some deaths can be attributed to lack of access to food and medical care, civilians having the ability to protect themselves from the cross-fire would likely be a game-changer.
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**Frame Challenge!**
Armor must spread and diffuse impact, *not* just not be pierced.
### For instance,
let’s say that you have a shirt, as you specified, that was bulletproof. The bullet would hit the shirt, then push the shirt through your body and out the other side until it hits the back of the shirt. The bullet would not pierce the shirt, but you would still be dead.
# In conclusion, the material would be completely useless.
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Since the invention of guns the humanity asked one question - how I can be more sure that the killing thing kill for sure?
The answer? ***Baïonnette***. If shooting people is problematic stop shooting them.
Stab them, impale them, maybe try cutting.
When using small firearms make no sense hit them hard. **A shotgun** is just a hammer blow in repeatable form. Because you don't need to penetrate anything to brake, maul or smash bones and organs. Regular clothing is very unpenetrable by punches but I've seen people getting their ribs broken and kidneys damaged by a fist.
There is also sci-fi microwave gun that can use the protective cage soldiers are wearing to boil them.
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You mention it is only effective against small arms. So even assuming it works flawlessly the answer to better armor is more dakka. After all, if brute force can't solve a problem, you haven't applied enough of it.
There's a ripple effect from there that you can follow, and I'll sum my trek through it that way:
Bigger guns means heavier guns (a .50cal ain't light). You offset that with the generalisation of passive exoskeleton and the development of powered exoskeletons for a few heavy units. At the same time you can use highly mobile troops with little to no armor to leverage that mobility in tight urban environments vs bulky juggernauts. You don't need much firepower to kill a turtle if you apply it well, so a pistol to the face, or a simple explosive, incendiary or chemical device of some kind would be enough for them.
You might see mixed unit develop, with frontliners wearing powered heavy armor and big guns, a second line with conventional armor and a bit higher power rifles and/or explosives, and then a third/support line of specialists which may including free running soldiers for quick and precise flanking maneuvers.
It might be effective against an enemy that doesn't have your budget, but then again it might not be soluble in asymmetric warfare and guerilla tactics. At the very least, guns won't become useless, at worst they'll become more situational but it won't be that hard of a puzzle to figure.
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But the actual answer is that ultimately **this would change very little** because this is all just ground units doing ground warfare. **Modern warfare is about multi-domain operations**. There are 6 domains of military interest which are sea, land, air, space, and cyber.
Your new equipment won't save you from a Tomahawk missile or drone strike. It won't do you good against a cyberattack. It might increase your ability to project force on the ground, but I can't say it would be by a significant amount.
Now your eyes didn't deceive you and you can count well. Sea, land, air, space and cyber makes 5. The sixth is the *human domain*, arguably the most important one.
Nothing is free, and that fancy new armor would lead to increased military spending. That means less money for education, healthcare, justice, infrastructure, you know, secondary stuff. The exact political consequences of that are hard to predict, but you can imagine popular support for spending obscene amounts of money on fancy new equipment to fight some people you've never met in a country you've never heard of may be lukewarm. They might become downright riotous if it's to arm the police against your own people.
Even if all your soldiers are unkillable, you can't win a war if your people don't support you.
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## Reinessance of the knights.
The time you might want to reference is the age when the armor was so good, that the arrows were not effective most of the time. Apart from a few selected examples(usually a result of a poor tactics) the knights were able to ignore the downpour of projectiles.
>
> The archers did little damage to the heavily-armoured knights, but inflicted heavy casualties on their horses and on the unarmoured foot soldiers.
> [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dorylaeum_(1097))
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>
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So if we use this as a basis, we might be getting somewhere. Another thing to consider is that the handheld weapons are not comparable to modern firearms in regards to the kinetic energy: if the armor stops a sniper rifle bullet without killing the person wearing it, it will most likely stop any kind of impact-based weapon such as a hammer.(not to mention fists)
One notable difference though is that the modern firearms will deepen the rift between the poorly equipped peasants and the properly equipped knights.
That being said, let's just ignore the "more artillery route" and focus on the soldier vs soldier combat, as the other aspects were already covered in other answers.
Also, you might blow the town to the smithereens all you want, but unless you then send in the guys to wave the flag, you can't control it.
That being said, let's get going:
* Grappling and other means of immobilization(nets, snares etc.): Since you can't reasonably injure the soldier, tire him out(or just break his limbs) and capture him.
* Chemical warfare: if one side decides to ignore the conventions, this will be devastating against unprepared opponent. Tear gas(or something similar) in case that we want to follow the rules. Might be unreliable. Wearing a gas mask imposes further requirements on the physical capabilities of the soldier.
* Heat based weapons: [Let's get cooking.](https://crysis.fandom.com/wiki/X-43_MIKE) If we can't get them out of the armor, let's bake them within. Not sure if there is anything usable in today's arsenal though.
* Sound based weapons?
* Slash resistance is also a question however the option was already mentioned in one of the previous answers.
So to sum up we are getting close up and personal once more because the shield is once more stronger than the spear. (gas being an exception as it doesn't discriminate and is hard to manipulate)
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## Just use more gun
Okay, so bullets aren't *piercing* armor or flesh anymore. Big whoop. Bullets still carry a lot of energy and getting hit is still, at the very least, going to hurt. A lot. Much like real life, where bulletproof vests don't make it suddenly not suck to get shot- it only improves your chances of survival when getting shot.
Keep in mind Newton's second law. Stopping a bullet means the energy has to go somewhere.
Enough bullets to the chest is going to cause severe blunt-force trauma and this is nothing to shake a stick at. No soldier is going to want to run into the middle of the line of fire if they're going to suffer a myriad of potentially fatal bruises and the resulting internal bleeding. Maybe even burns due to friction and deformation of both bullets and the bulletproof material.
Imagine death by a thousand paintballs. That's what war just became.
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Other answers have looked at the larger picture, but nothing has looked at what the changes would be like on a tactical level.
Assumtions for this answer:
The magic material provides a light way of immediatly stopping up to .50 caliber bullets. So it is equivalent to 15mm of solid armour.
## IFVs and unarmoured transports merge
One of the main purposes of IFVs like the [M2 Bradley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Bradley) is to defend troops against small arms. Our new magic material means that an infantry man outside the vehicle is better protected than the vehicle. If instead of metal armour, we replace the metal with a thin sheet of the magic material we get a lighter vehicle.
## Far more use of 'armoured' cars
With a sheet of this material, you can armour a Humvee or a toyota pickup against small arms, and provides the smallest practical mobile platform that can mount a weapon that can attack infantry and opponents light vehicles. This then becomes your lightest weapons platform, so you need them in far higher numbers.
## Use in aircraft
Since this armour is light, it make sense to deploy in aircraft to gain a significant survivability increase. Its not quite the level of an A-10s cockpit, but its not far from it.
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Its effect would be immense.
Modern armor needs to do two things: prevent penetration and spread the force of impact. Most of our current body armor is focused on preventing penetration. Composite armors are just that: several layers of materials with a specific purpose to stop a bullet.
The first layer is often a cloth or Kevlar layer that holds the composite material.
The second layer is a hard material designed to absorb the most impact and spread the force. Such hard materials are hard but brittle and shatter while doing its job. That isn't ideal against repeat hits but it works. This is also why just dropping the composite plates on the ground a few times can already degrade the quality enough that you might have to discard the entire armor plate, which seems counter-intuitive for a material supposed to stop a bullet.
The last layer that is always there is a softer more ductile material. This is designed to "catch" the bullet and any shrapnel created by the shattering of the hard layers. As this layer catches the material the force of the bullet is transferred to the body. If the topmost materials have done their job this has spread the force across a larger area on your body.
With that basic understanding of modern body armor you can see that most of the problems are centered around preventing penetration. Your magic material erases that problem and allows you to focus on spreading the force.
If you drape the material over two studs a few millimeters away from the surface below (basic armor plates are between 8 to 25mm thick before you add the Kevlar and shirts and whatever else is worn to it), any force between those studs is spread between them. Make sure the material doesn't have the elasticity to bent far enough and hit the body and you are set.
Now create a studded body armor of a lightweight material and stretch the magic material over the studs. The studs are extremely squad, having a small point at the top and broad at the base. Some room needs to be left so you can still bend and move. Any bullet landing anywhere on the armor will A: stretch the magic material and slow down and B: spread the force over the studs, who in turn spread it over the body (or spread it over a harness beneath that before it really touches the body). You use at least two layers of this, for example with 10mm high studs for a thickness of 20mm of this armor.
Q: but won't the studs reduce maneuverability?
A: it might reduce maneuverability, but never as much as a modern solid armor plate does right now. It also offers more coverage under the arms for example. Studs can also have more space in between them at places where more maneuverability is needed to still provide protection. Ergonomic designs would mean you then increase the amount of studs nearby places that don't need as much maneuverability and can handle the shock. Since joints for example are usually also more susceptible to damage it reduces the chance of incapacitation. Example for the spine: studs are placed over the ribs on either side, making sure that wherever the bullet hits at least 4 studs are involved in taking the force.
Q: the material needs to stretch when you move, a few millimeters movement would mean you can barely move!
A: The distance between the studs is important here. If the distance between the stud tips is less than the maximum elasticity in mm when your movement causes those tips to be furthest apart you have no repercussions to your movement. It is likely that in some places you need more distance between the stud tips, at those places you can increase the distance between the studs while increasing the height of the studs to more than 10mm.
Q: with such a small surface area between the tips a bullet would just ram the studs through your body!
A: even if a bullet lands perfectly in the middle of two studs, any studs to the sides will also help. On top of that the studs could be placed on their own material to spread the force. An example of the two layer setup: one layer of magic material, thin studs that support the magic material, another layer of magic material the studs rest on and then another layer of studs but with a thicker base. Each individual stud in the first layer would be placed exactly between four studs on the second layer, meaning a perfectly placed bullet would be spread over a minimum of 8 studs in the second layer ignoring the fact that a portion of the force would be carried by two more topside studs to the side.
Q: what if I hit a stud dead-on? Now you are dead!
A: the studs would likely be made of the magic material itself, but rolled up and compressed to create hardness. If you hit a stud dead-on it would be suppressed and cause the studs around it to take a portion of the force. Even if that somehow doesn't happen you still spread the force over 4 studs below. If the magic material isn't useful enough to act as studs and you use a metal instead, then you'll likely lose that stud. However your opponents would need to break a lot of studs by hitting them dead-on before the armor degrades enough to falter, especially if you go for more than 2 layers.
On top of all of that: shields are useful again! A handheld shield with a similar setup would easily help protect that person. And you would naturally use a few hundred layers of this stuff on tanks and other vehicles. It would instantly mean that any weapon you bring needs to be a lot bigger than before. The unfortunate consequence is that alternatives to kinetic projectiles will be sought. Chemical warfare would likely rise up quickly.
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Puncturing armor is just one of many ways to kill it's inhabitant. You could do that if bullets become hollow shape explosive charges regularly. Those form a metal spike and accelerate it to vast speeds. At the point of impact, the pressure is so high that all involved materials behave as if they were liquids, and that spike goes in like a drop milk into a can of water.
In fact, simple bullets are the most "human" way to wage war. Everything else is worse.
Back to your question. How to fight a wearer of your vest.
* Squish your enemy. Bigger rounds break bones, so do hammers, cars, suicide drones with a massive tip, buses, collapsing houses.
* Chop your enemy, or as Silas said: "Killing zombies is just like killing chickens. First, you cut off the head, then you just continue to chop."
* Rip your enemy apart: If it makes boom, it doesn't necessarily puncture but squish and rip appendages off. It's also usable for a film franchise then. Other than me, they like boom. If you ask Tarantino, at least half the soldier would land on the camera each time.
* Poison Gas or radioactive stuff. We don't want it, Geneva convention.
* White Phosphor, Napalm and the like. We don't want it. Geneva convention.
* Microwave radiation. Goes in like 2 cm, then hurts. A lot. Not yet forbidden, but, you know...
* Bright light to blind your enemy. We don't want it. Geneva convention.
* AI minidrones which explode in your face. Not yet banned. The discussion is on, though.
To protect you from all those effects, you need your material, you need something hard underneath, and armor parts would need to be connected strongly to prevent ripping. Then an inner soft layer to protect the squishy inhabitant against hammer effects. Faraday cage for the microwave. Electronic night goggles with eye protection for the light. Gas mask.
Well. If they can still move, they can probably try to wear a gun. Or a mini drone launcher.
### civil deaths
Many of the effects above are area effects which will attack an entire street block or at least some square meters. Civil collateral deaths would yet rise again, and they are really bad today already.
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I think Niven postulated a suit that when subjected to flexing at more than some small rate, the entire suit goes rigid. If the suit fits well, then the energy is essentially equivalent to a belly flop.
A .30-06 bullet depending on combination of bullet and powder load has muzzle energy of 3000-4000 ft pounds. A 150 pound man would have 3000 ft-lbs of potential energy at 20 feet off the ground. So such a suit would be roughly equivalent of a 20 foot belly flop into water. Extremely painful, but not fatal
Energy drops off fairly quickly as the bullet slows.
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A succubus has been summoned from hell to our realm by a fool using an ancient text called "demonic pacts for dummies". The ritual goes horribly wrong due to incorrect information and resulted in the summoner's death. The succubus is now free to roam our realm unsupervised and begins terrorizing the populace by leaving a string of bodies in her wake. A succubus has a number of advantages over a human, including increased strength, speed, resistance to harm, and telepathic powers. It has the ability to hypnotize its victims, putting them into a deep trance. A pleasant, euphoric haze descends on the victim who is under her spell, making them very open to suggestion. This ability only works on men, and uses a large amount of energy (mana) from a succubus to use. The creature can also use polymorphization to slightly adjust and tweak its features, changing its appearance as needed, but always in the form of a human woman. It needs to hunt to recharge its mana reserves, or it will waste away and become weaker.
The creature feeds by preying on humans that it seduces. It absorbs the mana from their souls, leaving them desiccated, dried up husks that are later disposed off. Sex with a succubus is far more enjoyable than with a mortal human, which it uses to release the energy from the victim. After the soul is eaten, the creature gains the memories and abilities of the person. The strength of its abilities continues to grow as it feeds off of more prey. At some point, it can completely "dominate" its victims, enslaving them to its will. A human under its spell at that point would do anything they are told to do by her, including murder, steal, or die. Hypnotization only works on one person at a time while the succubus is weak. As it grows in strength, it can extend it to multiple victims, but can use up its mana more quickly.
I'm trying to stay away from the sexy, fetishized interpretation of this creature, such as in the show "Lost Girl", and return it to its roots as a dangerous predator with the pathology of a serial killer. Based on these parameters, can the succubus survive long term in a modern setting, feeding on its food source, without bringing too much attention to itself?
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If in feeding it can voluntarily not-kill its victims, then it's quite possible for one to survive in most urban areas (though perhaps "underground") by simply becoming a sex worker: Seduce the victim, drain mana but not to the point of killing, and leave the victim with a memory of fantastic sex and perhaps wanting to come back for more in the future. If a not-drained victim can recover and replenish their mana stores over time, it becomes possible for your succubus to become a high-end and highly-demanded "escort", possibly with a good-sized set of regular customers.
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Living in a modern setting would be very advantageous to a succubus...
* By choosing wealthy victims to enthrall, the demon can acquire the funds needed to travel the world, spreading out its kills and making their "serial" nature less obvious.
* With her ability to enthrall her lesser victims and her ability to change facial appearance, none of our current border defenses or in-country people tracking technologies will pose a real problem.
* And with the world to roam, finding environments to explain away a few desiccated husks should be easy. Have her feast on a bunch of fertilizer factory workers, then enthrall a few others to cause a chemical spill which explains away the state of the corpses.
Between the modern world's disbelief in demons and modern law enforcement's disbelief in female serial killers, she should have a pretty easy time staying off police radar.
And don't rule out the opportunity of her aligning herself with the modern world's equivalent of the prince of darkness... There are probably quite a few corporations and political officials who would love to have a face-shifting provocateur assassin on staff. ...and if she got herself even one well connected sponsor, her survival in the modern world is guaranteed.
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We live in a world of young, isolated, single people, a long way from home and seeking even fleeting human contact.
A pretty succubus on Tinder, no problem at all finding targets.
As long as she makes sure they're single, and possibly unemployed, it's going to be some time before anyone notices they're missing. Flatmates are used to not seeing each other for days or weeks at a time as schedules misalign. Strange smell coming under the door? He never washed enough anyway, time to move out.
Probably best not to stay in one place for too long once the bodies start stacking up, but there are plenty more cities, plenty more people living far from home looking for comfort. All in all, the modern world is a fairly comfortable place for a succubus to be.
You're perfectly safe, as long as you swipe left on the demon.
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## Get a job as a trucker
Not to be all stereotypical, but it's a sad fact that a lot of people disappear along highways in the Americas. Several high-profile serial killers have used interstate highways to find and dump their victims, and been very successful at it. A stretch of highway in Canada is known as "[The Highway of Tears](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Tears_murders)", a place where maybe more than 40 women have disappeared, with only one murder ever being solved.
Truck stops are frequent haunts of prostitutes; these unfortunate women would be easy pickings for a succubus. There are also roadside bars and cafes where she would be able to pick up men of her choice (biologically speaking, men are a lot easier to seduce than women). The naturally nomadic lifestyle of a long-distance driver lends itself horrifyingly well to a serial killing life. If the heat in one region gets too bad, they can always just drive elsewhere and keep on keeping on.
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The vampire-type succubus has been done to death; sneaking around the clubs, life in the shadows, vampire sex worker etc etc. Etc.
A sophisticated and savvy demon, weak and in need of resources, would seek out a warlord, sorcerer or equivalently powerful person, ideally one that understands beings like herself exist. Then openly offer this person her services: not sexual services but services as a powerful supernatural henchman / underling. In exchange for services the powerful patron keeps the succubus supplied with food.
Probably this process (for the succubus) would start in the environs of summoner, the succubus assuming that the deceased summoner was working on behalf of a powerful person desiring a demonic servant or was himself such a person. Otherwise why would you want something like a succubus?
This offers great writing opportunity: the succubus might be tempted to push limits set for her but would be too smart to mess up the good arrangement she has. Other henchmen, themselves also powerful, would compete with the succubus on equal footing, knowing more or less what she is. As with any demonic henchman she might get too powerful and try a power grab for herself. The sexpot doofus vampire babe is boring. Write her as a full on demon: scheming, intelligent and serially underestimated by those around her because of what she appears to be. Great stuff.
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I infer from the hypnotic control over "victims" that victims are not necessarily killed, since death would prevent them from providing services.
That said, the solution to the problem is simple: As an earlier response noted, Tinder (or bars) allow the succubus to *find* her male victims, but she only needs to kill half of them: Victim #1 is a single older male, she has sex with him and hypnotizes him. First she has him convert all his property into cash, and give it to her. The she finds victim #2, another single male, chosen for mmaximum mana: She first reserves a pint of his blood, then drains him of mana, killing him, leaving a dessicated corpse. Then she instructs victim #1 to run the corpse through a wood chipper, douse with accelerant and burn. He is then to smear himself with the reserved pint of blood, and confess to the police that he murdered his Tinder boyfriend in a fit of rage. He shows them the body, gives all ID of the dead man, tells them the blood he is wearing is his boyfriend's blood.
Once he is in prison, he is to commit suicide on the nigh before his trial, by any means possible.
Live on the money, that few hundred thousand of net worth; visit another State or Country, and repeat. Every death has an explanation, and every murder is closed.
To make this slightly more complex: The hypnotized person could confess to several murders, so the succubus can feed on a dozen people and have one guy confess to all 12 murders.
Of course, she should choose her confessor carefully: single, older, preferably no kids or close family, even friendless. All that to ensure a minimal amount of agitation for investigation, nobody saying "my Dad [or brother, or father] was **not** a homosexual!"
Some reasonable value of assets to take; at least a home, maybe some retirement savings. Of course she can get those in other ways, but why complicate matters? the confessor will be dead soon enough.
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> Added: I would also note that she can simply dispose of the bodies herself: Take them ten miles out to sea on a huge yacht for sex (with victims under hypno control or not), have sex, drain them of mana and feed the leftovers to the sharks. Return to some other port. Where'd Jim go? "Jim? We had a bit of a fling but it was just sex, I dropped him off in Miami..."
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> Also Added: Unlike past centuries, in modern countries nymphomania and extra-marital affairs are legal and women can be open about them. A woman that wants to have sex ten times a day with a new partner every time is free to say so and let the world know so. In the event sex always kills and the hypno only works pre-sex, the hypno can be a cover: Make many men **say** they had sex with her, when they did not, so the few that disappear are lost in the noise.
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I think all the key points have already been hit, but I have one additional idea.
If she is having trouble with being found out she could always travel to a third world country that has less means of tracking her and generally don't have the coordinated police force to identify her if she keeps moving slightly.
In fact I imagine certain parts of Africa, the ones facing the worst of the AIDS epidemic and have many myths and misinformation about AIDS in addition to poor economy/police force, would be great haunts. Much of the misinformation tied to AIDS could help her, such as the belief that sex with a virgin can cure someone who has aids (if she can make herself look young enough to be believable as a virgin). She could target those already Ill and people may not bat an eye at their dying. In any case as long as she keeps moving in a third world country it's unlikely they will have sufficient communication/orginization to recognize the pattern.
I imagine she could travel to a third world country to build up strength, then come back the the a first world country once she is stronger to enslave/control important people (mostly because I expect the writer of the story would prefer to have much of the story happen in a country they are familiar with).
In fact having retreating to a third world country as a fallback option for her could be an interesting plot point. When people are on to her and starting to thwart her she tries to fly to the parts of Africa that blame the US for inventing AIDS, where she's confident no one would ever listen to some crazy US official claiming that succubus will kill you if you have sex. Your protagonist(s) may realize they have to thwart her before she gets away or she will be able to disappear and grow stronger before coming back and trying it all over again; putting a time limit, tension, and otherwise a buildup to a climax (err..no succubus pun intended) for your story.
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I am assuming that we are dealing with one (or very few) creatures. Also I'm assuming that this is the only supernatural element in your world - otherwise this question is way too broad.
It should be noted that you have not described a crime here. Absorbing the mana from ones soul is not something that people would really pay attention to in the real world. I don't know what this means exactly, but a number of people are ("often willingly") slaves to other people. This can lead to a trial, but very often it doesn't.
The most important thing is self-control. If your creature is leading a weird cult that murders people (or breaks other laws), it might get caught pretty soon. A trial might expose the creature, avoid it! If it can restrain itself a bit, maybe has a couple of those slaves (I'm talking about not founding another Manson family), maybe is active in certain sex subcultures - maybe even sell its services - it can go unnoticed forever. Your creature should not have much of an ego, hunger for power or recognition. If it plays it cool, it wins. If it loses its temper or tries to achieve great hellish things, it will have a much harder time.
Long story short: Keep the law and everything will be fine.
But I think this is very opinion-based, do whatever you want ...
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## Kinda...
The simplest form of this answers is that it entirely depends on the degree of self-control the succubus has. More victims, be it dead or enthralled will risk exposure. Picking her target is definitely an important factor as well. She gains the abilities and knowledge of the person she enthralls, making intelligent people or people with exceptional physical capabilities the most valued and desired targets for the succubus to enhance her capabilities and facilitate her needs. However, these persons usually have a high profile and their surroundings will notice change in them, even minor. Think about being physically drained while you're a top athlete or your mind is dulled while you're a prestigious researchers in your respective field.
It all depends on risk assessment on the succubus' behalf, the reaction from the victim's environment and the capabilities of the authorities in your world to deal with a threat like a succubus and the modus operandi you describe.
You'll have to fill in these blanks yourself since it's your world and you determine how the characters affected and their social circle react to the chances a relationship with a succubus incur.
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It is simple to hide in a big city and feed (if she's not picky about her food). Homeless aren't tracked by many people. In a large city, she can feed for a long time. If she is on the east coast, there are a large number of large cities near each other. She can move from city to city easily to spread out her kills.
If the corpses are desiccated, they will burn easily or mulch easily. So, hypnotizing someone who runs a crematorium or someone who owns a wood chipper will hide her kills. Maybe even bypass the mind control and make deals with such people in each city for services rendered. A mob boss will want people taken out every once in a while. Having to have someone dump bodies into a wood chipper is not much cost to that type of person.
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Related to ShadoCat's answer:
Criminals. I mean the ones who live a life of crime, not embezzlers and the like.
Kill them and make sure the body is destroyed. When a criminal vanishes what is the first thought going to be? Hiding from the law or enemies! Even if in time it becomes apparent that they're dead everyone is going to be looking at enemies, not her.
So long as she spreads her kills out enough that nobody notices a pattern of the victims being seen with her she should be able to do it forever. She doesn't have to limit herself to the low class ones, either--plenty of mob & cartel bosses to feast on. She would be doing the world a favor with such a diet.
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There's one suggestion no one had given: a sex shop or place that is a constant orgy. Think about the gay baths, but this could be one where either gender comes to have sex. With so many people coming and going she could get a little bit off of everyone. There is one power that I would include: the inability to be recorded. Any electronic devices would fail to capture her on film (or digitally)
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Urban settings are your friend, humans in cities tend to lack tight-knit connections which means people can go missing without the alarm being sounded time and again. The U.S. alone is thought to be home to half a dozen or so serial killers active at any given time who are never suspected of killing anyone, their victims are listed as missing persons not murder victims. Countries that are more urbanised and less straight-laced, like Holland or Germany, would make even better hunting grounds with more "vulnerable" individuals.
That's the body disposal/people noticing bit they generally won't in a city as long as you're careful about prey selection. As for a good hunting ground, hooker, and stripper are okay jobs for a succubus but can potentially be dicey since you could never be really sure who your clients were and who was "safe" prey. Drug dealing and running flophouses are probably the idle gateway occupations to find large numbers of targets that won't be missed. Addicts die and disappear constantly in most large cities around the world without anyone batting an eye; if they are suddenly dying happy it will only make a difference to them, not to anyone else.
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Well, doesn't she sound like a modern feminist! Anyway.
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> After the soul is eaten, the creature gains the memories and abilities of the person.
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In other words, she can read minds, but this costs the victim's life. Most spy agencies in the world would pay top dollar for this kind of "interrogation" skills, and would gladly provide people for the succubus to "interrogate".
However, she would end up knowing too much, which would be dangerous.
If she can enthrall people, she can simply instruct them to reveal all they know, without learning about their secrets herself. This would be a much safer job, and many spy or criminal organizations would no doubt offer to pay her with cash and untraceable victims...
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## Start small...
The first few weeks or months might be a bit touch and go for your succubus. She may have to do some quick-and-dirty feeding of people chosen more or less at random to get her energy levels up and while she scopes out the land and learns how people move and operate in this world.
For this messy period, she'll be leaving evidence. Messy, messy, evidence. But she'll quickly learn to dispose of the bodies and move far and fast. Today's society is so easily mobile that she can easily vanish without a trace by stealing someone's ID and using her abilities to look like that person...
## Find a quiet area a few hours away from a major city...
Once she figures out her way around modern society, she needs to find a quiet rancher in Texas or Colorado or somewhere in that part of the US (not sure where an equivalent place might be in any other countries). She can either enthrall him and stop or enthrall then murder him, doesn't really matter.
She mostly needs to take ownership of his land and property. Have him sell her property to her for some undisclosed dollar amount so she can have a large base of operations. From there, she can travel as needed to some nearby city for quick "meals" as she scouts people for the next phase:
## Found a cult.
Enthrall loners from other towns. Don't feed from the locals. Get people from out of town and draw them in. Have them sell all they own and relocate to the ranch. From there, she can instruct them to withdraw, slowly, from any kind of family or friends on the outside.
Cults like the [Branch Davidians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_Davidians), the [Jim Jones cult](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown), etc. provide working templates from which to build up this cult. This will require patience and time. But she can draw in people great and small. The sale of their worldly goods will be sufficient income to maintain her ranch and feed her newly enthralled "cattle."
Self control will be the key. If she can keep each new cult member alive for a year or two before draining them dry, then no one will know they're dead. Until that time, they work to distance themselves from their old life and people. Sever ties, and make it clear they don't want to be contacted. The ranch will need a large fireplace or fire pit to burn the desiccated remains. But that's easy.
Once established, she can feed constantly without killing. Then have a killing snack from time to time as well.
## Quick snacks
During this build-up of the cult, she'll need to feed. Her best targets will be people traveling. She can hit bus stops, airports, major tourist meccas like Disney parks, and cruise ships. In each of these places, people are away from their homes. They're temporarily disconnected from the majority of people who know them. They're vulnerable. She can dispose of the body and move on, knowing it'll be some time before anyone can figure out where they vanished.
Airports are great, because if someone misses their flight, it could be days before authorities figure out where they vanished from/to. Consume them in-flight in the plane's restroom and flush the remains (if possible). No one will know what happened. They boarded the flight, then... *who knows!*
Cruise ships are especially golden. People get on a ship, they hit the bar where she can enthrall them, then they go ashore in a foreign country. She follows them off the boat, feeds, then returns to the ship. The ship sails away, thinking they missed the boat. It would take days, possibly weeks, to figure out what really happened. By which time, she's vanished off to some other location.
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So this is a nation RP server set in Classical antiquity ( somewhere around 1st or 2nd century AD). The lore of this place is that around a thousand years ago, an advance civilization collapsed and from the ruins came out the new world. The technology from the past was lost but some ancient artifacts can be found in ruins.
So, some guy is offering me aluminum in exchange for my support in his wars. I was thinking whether aluminum will be of any use in this time period or not. I mean, it's rare but is there anything else it can do? I've done some research and it seems that it can't be forged into armor or weapons.
Further clarification:- The offer is that he will give me aluminium metal in blocks or in the form of coinage. So, i think I'd have to make the alloy myself.
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Let's assume this is pure annealed aluminum. It is conductive, soft, mostly nontoxic, and not very strong...
Which is *great* for tableware! [Especially considering that many pipes, cooking vessels, and other water or food related items were made of lead](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2019/11/29/archaeological-skeletons-from-london-prove-some-romans-were-lead-poisoned/). (Ok, this is debated if it *was* significant, but certainly replacing lead removes the issue.) Hooray for your own dishes *not poisoning you!*
Now, if someone figures out how alloy aluminum, a whole new range of products opens up to you. Alloyed aluminum can see similar performance to steel at a fraction of the weight. For many applications where strength and weight matter, aluminum is at least worth a look.
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## It'd make a terrifying weapon
Does a substance that burns with unparalleled ferocity have an application? You bet!
Aluminium dust is part of many explosives and pyrotechnics. Paired with either anhydrous copper or iron oxide, you have thermite. Its ferocious heat and brightness is unlike anything else in the ancient world and would devastate enemy morale (and enemy...anything, for that matter).
You'd need a means to activate the aluminium, but mercury does that just fine. Steam under some circumstances does too. If making thermites, copper thermite is easy to ignite, as are various other exotic thermites.
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One overlooked advantage of Aluminum is that it is nearly rust-less. Actually, a very thin outermost layer of aluminum will oxidize, but (unlike iron) the oxidized atoms interlock to form an oxygen-proof barrier. So aluminum corrodes hundreds of times slower than iron does.
And of course, aluminum is lightweight. It is not as tough as iron or steel, but it doesn't need to be: There are alloys of Aluminum (and simple coatings) that let you use it underwater, including under saltwater, in weather, etc.
Aluminum is not a complete pansy just because it isn't steel, just like steel is not as hard as diamond. Aluminum alloys can make, say, collapsible animal traps, that are lightweight and easy to carry. Including underwater fish traps.
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**Aluminium is castable.**
It requires much lower temperature (600C) than iron or copper based alloys. If one already has Al slabs, casting it is trivial with pre-stone-age technology (guess where I know from).
**Aluminium is malleable.**
Again, much easier than the other metals mentioned above.
**Aluminium is machinable.**
Ditto. Stone tools are OK to machine Al.
**Aluminium is corrosion-resistant.**
To an extent, but still way better than steel or brass.
**Aluminium is lightweight**
(1/3 of iron and 2/7 of copper)
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It wears faster and is soft, but can still be good for containers, tubes, coins or other 1st-2nd century BC things.
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Here is something you can make from aluminum that would be useful in the rough-and-tumble: watercraft.
Aluminum can be used to make small watercraft like canoes, skiffs, and runabouts, that won’t rot, won’t burn, and won’t hole as easily as wood, and are light enough to be carried by a single person.
While building an aluminum-hulled warship might be technologically infeasible for a Classical civilization, even fairly thin aluminum sheets would make shields stout enough to repel the kind of projectiles that were used in sea warfare at the time (arrows, rocks, and so forth), while being light enough to not reduce the ship’s seaworthiness.
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## Aluminium chain gloves, aluminium mail vest
Some fantasy books describe an [extraordinary material](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithril) that permits making some very useful war equipment, say very light mail vests and chain gloves, things that stops knives and allows you to grab swords blades with your bare hands. Very hand in close combat!
Any material to make these types of war amenities need to be durable, light, incorruptible, and if it even resembles silver, then better. [Sounds](https://www.google.com/search?q=aluminium%20mail%20vest) [familiar?](https://www.google.com/search?q=aluminium%20chain%20gloves)
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You can use the aluminum as a coating for iron/steel objects through the hot dipping process. It grants galvanic protection in addition to being a barrier against oxygen and moisture. It doesn't make your steel objects any stronger, but it does increase their weather resistance and useful lifespan. It can be great added value when applied to nails, pipes, sheet metal, and the like. Of course, everything said here applies equally well to tin and some other common metals, but it's something to keep in mind.
Pure aluminum is sufficiently inert to use as kitchenware, but whatever you're getting could have "trace" amounts of lead, arsenic, and who knows what else, so you might want to omit that use unless you can verify that it's pure.
Beyond that, you can use aluminum as you'd use any other soft metal with a low melting point. For example, in belt buckles, buttons, door handles, low-value coinage, candle holders, and other sundry applications.
[Answer]
It depends how you are getting it.
Are you getting it in blocks that you will need to process on your own? In that case, unless you have or you are given the needed technology and knowledge, it's practically useless.
If instead it comes shaped based on your needs, it can be used as structural material in many applications in replacement of wood or iron.
Just imagine a ship or a chariot with its frame made of aluminum beams rather than wood, you would get less "ballast" and more payload.
[Answer]
Grade matters.
The strongest grades of aluminum are, after thorough heat treatment, [significantly stronger](https://www.matweb.com/search/DataSheet.aspx?MatGUID=4f19a42be94546b686bbf43f79c51b7d&ckck=1) than commodity steels. They are used to build aircraft, and, handling that piece of metal, you wouldn't think of it as the aluminum most of us are used to. It's stiff, springy, and doesn't bend at all.
Realistically, ancient or medieval technology will not allow for the kind of heat treatment high-strength aluminum requires. It was understood for steel, but it's just a different technology level to do anything other than simple quench hardening.
Soft aluminum is still useful. Most laptops are made out of [6061-O aluminum](https://www.matweb.com/search/DataSheet.aspx?MatGUID=626ec8cdca604f1994be4fc2bc6f7f63), not heat treated, "good enough for customers". It would be useful as a general purpose medium-strength metal, similar to copper and bronze, but at lower density.
Replacing lead would be very desirable, but, unfortunately, not very realistic. Lead has a yield strength of just [5 MPa](https://material-properties.org/lead-properties-applications-price-production/), compared to aluminum's and copper's 80-100 and steel's 200+. It's not possible to cold work aluminum the way you can with lead.
None of the military uses would be revolutionary in nature. However, aluminum could be useful for a variety of tools and devices.
The most immediate military application would be shields. Steel reinforcement tends to be heavy, aluminum over wood is just perfect, and easy to use. Armor uses in general, to the extent that manufacturing is possible. And generally, structural uses where high strength-to-weight is required.
Personal experience: when I was learning the ropes of swordsmanship, I had a partial set of aluminum armor. Completely historically inaccurate, not even trying to look authentic, but it was way easier to carry to the training grounds and around than steel. And protected me from blows just as well as much heavier historically accurate steel reproductions did.
Even conventional low-strength alloys perform well for armor, where thickness is king. Bending stiffness scales as cube of thickness. At 80 GPa, 3mm of Al offer similar stiffness to 2mm of steel (200 GPa). At the same time, 3mm aluminum is easier to cold-work than 2mm steel, and only half the weight.
However, sharpened hard steel, as used in combat rather than training, would be effective at piercing soft aluminum, reducing the utility of aluminum armor. Still, the latter would be very useful for areas where bending rather than piercing is the expected failure mode. That's mostly the limbs. Basically, the smaller the armor element, the more use for aluminum.
[Answer]
At the end of 19th century aluminum was widely used for making military mess kits - they were lighter than alternatives and weight is extremely important when you do not have hundreds of thousands motorized vehicles.
For example Russian army began to use aluminum kits in 1897, Germany in 1908's Essgeschirr, etc.
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[Question]
[
To generate heat electrically inside a balloon for lift would a 20 watt LED light or a 20 watt heating element make more heat to lift a small closed hot air balloon droid and solar cell?
Having a black balloon would convert the light into heat and a 20 watt LED does get hot and heat-sync would add to the total heat output. I don't know if the balloon and parts being black would matter with a heating element or material would be best to use unlike traditional open hot air balloon material?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FpDT7.jpg)
In a transparent balloon all the parts of it can be inside of it with the exception of the propellers.
<https://robotics.stackexchange.com/questions/15323/could-a-hot-air-balloon-be-powered-from-the-ground-like-a-drone>
[Answer]
Incandescent lights turn about 1-2% of the electric power into light, the rest is lost as heat and infrared radiation. They're pretty good as infrared heaters, though, but you don't want an infrared heater as infrared goes through air and would heat the balloon itself, not the air inside.
LEDs aren't very efficient, modern ones only turn about 25% of the electric power into visible light, and the remaining 75% of electric power becomes heat.
So LEDs are a lot more efficient than incandescents, but saying "very little of the electricity is turned into heat" is wrong, since 75% isn't "very little".
If you want to heat the air inside your balloon with electricity, the best would be a lightweight heating element, as a LED would let a significant fraction of the power escape outside the balloon as light.
This would only work if you have a very lightweight electrical power source. If you want heat, current technology isn't competitive with a butane/propane torch. Compare energy densities:
Current LiIon batteries contain 150-200 Wh/kg.
Propane contains 12000 Wh/kg thermal energy.
Batteries are great because electrical energy is a lot more useful than the heat you get when burning propane, but this doesn't apply to your case.
If your balloon is tethered, then battery weight doesn't matter, but the weight of the cable is an issue.
[Answer]
You would want to use a heating element. If you use a light (whether visible light from a LED or infrared from a quartz heating element), some of the energy is turned into light, rather than heat. If you have a transparent balloon, it escapes. If you have a black balloon, it gets turned into heat when it reaches the edge. But there's a catch. That heat is being placed right on the edge of the balloon, which is the part that is easiest to cool from the outside. To minimize heat flow out of your balloon, you want the balloon envelope to be the coolest part, not the warmest.
Thus, the solution is to have a heater element on the inside of the balloon, with a small fan blowing air across it. That way you have one hot point in the middle of the balloon (at the heater), and the heat has to slowly move to the edges (via convection) until it reaches the envelope and can exchange the heat with the outside world.
[Answer]
One can well discuss various LED efficiencies here, but this is rather missing the fundamental point in which this question is a bit absurd.
**Heat is the dumbest form of energy.**
Whatever you do when handling energy / converting it between different forms, it will always tend to slip through your fingers by just dissipating into heat, which is generally *pretty hard to make use of*. Conversely, electric energy is an pretty “sophisticated” form that can easily be used for all kind of things.
You may wonder why I say that – do not most power plants generate electricity *from* heat? Well, not actually, that's impossible according to the [second law of thermodynamics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics). What coal power plants really do is, converting *heat flow along a temperature differential* into electricity. That is, they let heat flow into some cooling dump (usually a river's water), and through turbines are able to pull out *some* of this energy into a more useful form (rotation movement and ultimately electricity). But this process is inherently wasteful: even a well-designed modern coal plant only has a conversion efficiency of about 33%.
The other way around is always trivial: if you let current flow through pretty much *any* circuit, the energy will basically always end up as *mostly heat*. Sometimes, a bit is also converted to other energy, notably, an antenna can send out electromagnetic energy (radio waves). Mind, these are eventually *also* converted to heat, but before that happens they can travel a long way. And for LEDs it's basically the same thing: they convert a not insignificant amount of energy to *light* instead of straight to heat, but all that accomplishes is that you give the energy a bit of an extra chance to escape from the ballon unused. So, this really is a bad idea: LEDs are, by design, “unusually bad at converting electricity into heat”.
But the bad idea actually starts much earlier, by proposing electrical heating at all. As I said, electricity is precious. If you went through all the trouble of bringing energy in heavy, inefficient batteries instead of cheap, energy-packed gas cans, the last thing you want to do is just burn it to heat. There is however one trick you could pull that might *theoretically* make it worthwhile: use a [heat pump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump). That's basically the inverse of a power plant: instead of *converting electricity into heat*, it forces a *heat flow* from the ambient air into the balloon. That way, you can on paper get a “conversion efficiency” of more than 100%.
Practically speaking, that's unfortunately not going to offset the drawbacks: heat pumps are themselves not ideally efficient, and they're heavy, adding to the weight of the batteries.
**Be sensible, heat your balloon with gas or with solar heat, not with electricity.**
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Here's another idea, but it's line-of-sight: Use a black balloon, and heat with an IR laser beam from a power source on the ground (over short distances you could actually use a follow spot). You could deliver 1kW without much trouble. Note that you'd need to expand the beam to almost as big as the balloon to avoid melting it. This also provide altitude control by varying the heating power.
[Answer]
(a) Power consumption (e.g., your 20 watts) describes everything the circuit is doing, including generating heat. All electric circuits generate some heat because (at least at room temperature), all circuit paths have resistance, and where there is resistance, there's heat.
(b) LEDs are not filament lights. They're diodes (Light Emitting Diode = LED). Diodes have very, very low resistivity. Consequently, very little of the energy used is lost to heat. This is what makes them so efficient for lighting a room. Most of your power is used to generate light, not heat.
(c) Your old filament lights ("incandescent" lights) were much less efficient. For example, a 75 watt incandescent light would generate about 1,100 lumens. An LED light generating 1,100 lumens needs only about 10 watts. It's not quite this simple in reality, but you can generally say that the incandescent light is generating 65 watts of heat to light the room (it's actually only losing about 50 watts, if I remember correctly, due to illumination inefficiencies in the filament itself — but we don't care about that).
Frankly, what you really want is a quartz heating element. You want to waste as few watts as possible generating visible light. You want infrared light — check out [infrared heaters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_heater).
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Here are some numbers to play with.
10W of energy produces 34.121416 BTU/hr if it is all converted to heat.
It takes 0.24 BTU of heat to change the temperature of one pound of air by one degree F.
So 10 W of electricity will heat 14 pounds of air by 10 degrees F. if my calculations are correct.
1 cubic foot of air at standard temperature and pressure assuming average composition weighs approximately 0.0807 lbs.
So we are talking theoretically about heating 173 cubic feet of air (a balloon 5.5 ft by 5.5 ft by 5.5 ft) by 10 degrees F. assuming no heat loss at STP.
I am not sure if raising the temperature by 10 degrees F will lift very much, very high.
**EDIT**
>
> Just to lift an adult man's weight, you'd need a balloon about 4m
> (13ft) in radius with the air inside heated to a temperature of about
> 120°C (250°F). That explains why hot-air balloons are generally so
> large.
>
>
>
From [Hot-air balloons](http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-hot-air-balloons-work.html)
Given an average human mass of 80 kg, a 1 kg LiIon battery would need perhaps 1/80th the volume, but you still have to provide a temperature differential of about 100 degrees C.
[Answer]
The quick answer is that a 20W LED light and a 20W heating element both produce 20W of heat, and inside a black (opaque) balloon, they would both produce the same amount of heat to lift the balloon.
Now, it is obvious this doesn't tell the whole story; intuition seems to suggest a heating element would be more fit for producing heat than a device intended to produce light, not to mention the differences in the weight between the devices.
A lot of people have mentioned how LED lighting isn't as efficient as many people believe.
While it is inaccurate to say LED lighting turns most of its input power into light, it's not like the claim has no basis in reality whatsoever, and I feel like this makes it a bit of a red herring in the reasoning behind the answers.
LED's usually *do* turn most of its consumed power into light (if more than half counts as most). It's the power circuitry that drives the LED that accounts for most of the power lost as heat.
I have more experience working with laser diodes than LED's, but most often over 60% of the power used in the diode is turned into radiation, while the process of modulating the current flowing through the LED is hugely less efficient.
In the simplest designs, a 20W light might have a power stage that dissipates 18W as heat while supplying 2W to the actual LED, which might produce 1.5W as visible light. Conceivably, you could argue both that the efficiency is 75% (1.5/2) and that it is 7.5% (1.5/20).
(The issues that arise when dealing with thermal dissipation are more attributable to the relatively small size of LED's rather than the amount heat being produced. I realize laser diodes are significantly different than LED's, but I'm assuming most LED's are more efficient, but I may be wrong here)
So in many cases the comparison between a 20W LED light and a 20W (resistive) heating element basically boils down to one between an expensive, unnecessarily convoluted 20W heating element and a 20W heating element, and as people have discussed already, convection would be the more important issue. I would imagine the optimal ohmic heating element in this situation would be a motor of some size with a fan attached to its spindle in a way that it cools the motor.
But, and I think this may be closer to the intent of the question, if you are asking, "assuming you could turn 20W of electricity into either 20W of light or 20W of heat, which would be more effective in producing lift in a hot air balloon?", the answer is, it depends.
You've already taken the color of the balloon into account by saying it's black. This would contain the light produced inside the balloon, but as you've stated, a black balloon would absorb the light and heat up.
To produce lift, we don't want the balloon to heat up. We want the *air* inside the balloon to heat up.
So let's make the balloon shiny, i.e. 100% reflectivity (this could be approached by using metallized mylar). Then, you keep all the light inside the balloon, and it doesn't waste heat by heating up.
Now that we have all this light energy trapped in the balloon, we just need to turn it into heat in the air. Just kidding, no we don't. The light, not being able to escape the balloon would eventually be absorbed by the molecules in the air itself. It's as it's a law or something, light will eventually turn into heat at some point, in some thing. This heats up the entire volume of the air *simultaneously*. No convection required. Light clearly wins in terms of speed in this case.
Depending on the level of material sciences, creating a balloon with near perfect reflectivity that is both light and strong enough to support whatever load it carries may be impossible.
Let's go back to black. Probably nylon, or some other fabric. Then, the balloon would heat up, absorbing light better than air, and while it would heat the air inside the balloon, it would also heat the air outside (i.e. lose heat).
But really, this is unavoidable no matter what you do. Even if you used a heating element to heat up the air inside the balloon, once the air is hot, it would heat up the balloon, which would lose heat to the outside.
The main difference would be in how long it takes initially to get the balloon off the ground. It would take some ugly calculus to model (if you heat the air with light via the balloon, you have more surface area = faster heat conduction, but you lose half to the outside and the temperature is lower, and fluid dynamics I don't even want to start thinking about), but put simply, using light would mean a longer wait before the balloon lifted off than using heat, but once the air was at the target temperature, there would be no difference in efficiency.
These thought experiments seemingly pointing to the conclusion that light and heat would be equally as efficient can probably be traced (in a very roundabout way) to one of these facts: light *is* heat, or eventually becomes heat; where there is heat, there is light; a large part of heat (or all of it, depending on the scale you think at) transmission happens through light; and most fundamentally, heat is such a vague word that it is used in countless contexts and meanings, yet it is difficult to define clearly. Also c.f. black body radiation.
None of this would work with a 20W anything, by the way.
[Answer]
LEDs produce very little heat to begin with. Considering wattage is just power expenditure, you'd be better off focusing all those 20 watts on heat, not light.
[Answer]
So many answers and they are all good. I am taking a compilation of these answers and posting my own answer.
No one here said it could not be done. Finding a 20 watt heater element is slim, LED are not efficient for heat, but a UV LED produces more heat than visible light LEDs. UV LEDs allow it to be visible at night with the right material.
Using a UV LED and UV absorbing black material enclosure to surround the UV LED light will make it visible with luminescent parts, light weight, reliable, cheap and abundant as a heat supply. I still am not sure if a solar cells can transfer enough light into heat from inside the balloons in place of batteries. Limits of Solar cells is 18% ish of light absorbed by solar cells is converted in electricity that would be used to produce heat from the sun. Depending on the surface area of all the parts(all in black) and the conversion of sunlight would contribute to the total heat produced. More surface area of the parts with the least amount of volume and weight of the parts is best for capturing sunlight and UV light. Like a black heat sink designed capture light and convert it into heat.
To conclude it is the inefficiency of the UV LED light and efficiency of the absorption of the parts center of the balloon from the Sun externally and UV light internally together heating the air within the balloon for lift by electricity and Sun light.
At night a black balloon would be best with a black box surrounding the UV LED. I may experiment in heating a helium/air mixture in a sealed balloon if air alone does not create enough buoyancy to create lift.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ymDTg.jpg)
Plus 1 everyone.....Thanks
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[Question]
[
**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
A question that arose from [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/250834/are-stainless-steel-railway-tracks-worth-it).
Say we have a planet with a different percentage of various elements than Earth, but steam train technology, and we were striving for train track longevity. Is there any metal/ceramic/alloy/layering system that could provide a similar experience as standard steel, but last for longer?
[Answer]
## 10% Gold 90% Platinum
I know, it surprised me too.
Its the most wear resistant metal alloy known.
To quote
>
> tires made from it would only lose a single layer of atoms after a
> mile of constant skidding
>
>
>
It responds to heating differently than most alloys hardening it on the nanoscale because the grain structure does not change under heat or stress once set. This material vastly outperforms any other known metal alloy for wear resistance. It turns out hardness is not the best predictor of wear resistance but how materials react to friction heating. Matching sapphire and diamond for non-metals without their extreme brittleness. As a side benefit it is also extremally resistant to corrosion.
It will need to be wider and more solidly built than current rails due to lower overall strength but you might need that anyway. It also have very *very* low friction which is bad for train tracks, train tracks need decent friction for the wheels to grip the rails. So if you use it you need to increase grip possibly by changing the contact shape or some other method that might make a good follow up question.
Another option is to make the rails of something else and coat it with this alloy.
As a side benefit it is an very good electric conductor so you could have electrically powered rails.
A great idea from a commenter below, cog assisted railways did exist, Called rack railway they had a cog toothed track along side the normal rail anywhere the train had to climb, places were friction might not be enough to grip the rails. a toothed cog on the axle would pull the train along no matter the grade.
<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.201802026>
<https://www.materialstoday.com/metals-alloys/news/new-platinumgold-alloy-most-wearresistant/>
[Answer]
So, we can look at the real world to see what goes into a tracks longevity. As expected, there is no easy answer.
According to [this](https://lovethemaldives.com/faq/what-is-the-lifespan-of-a-railroad-track) your standard gravel bed might last 15 years, despite the tracks in theory being in for up to 100 years. If you use concrete and steel elements the entire thing might last 30.
Of course, "last" is somewhat of a relative term. These figures, probably, assume for instance someone is there to remove plants.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UY1FU.jpg)
This will not last 30 years.
And this is not really an issue you can just engineer away. Even if you elevate the entire track on a concrete wall, like this;
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dxxBa.jpg)
Dirt, Water and Seeds will get up there and will start to deteriorate the track. That being said, elevating the entire track will improve its longevity because it just takes longer for dirt and stuff to accumulate.
Note, that i have not even touched on using other metals. Because the actual physical rail isnt what is going to break first. Its the sleepers, ballasts and other parts which will fail first and make the entire track unusable. You can live with the rail warping a bit. You positively cannot live with the sleepers being eaten up by worms.
So, Imo, the main thing you would want to do is elevate the track a couple of meters perhaps with a base shape that prevents anything from growing up easily. You then want to make sure the top of your elevation structure is build so rain does not accumulate and can flush out dirt. Since you are already using approximately all the concrete in the world the sleepers are obviously out of it as well. And then make the rails stainless so they dont rust away.
Provided there is no earthquake or major change in the local geography that wall with a track on it should be usable for quiet a long time.
[Answer]
## Water.
But, to be fair, you would have to replace the trains, too.
---
If money is *no impediment*, an artificially built, fast-running water channel can be used to transport massive amounts of load with minimum to no downtime. You just place stuff on a special cargo boat on the fast-track river, and someone down the line will pull it off from it by means of diverging the flow temporarily to an unloading area.
Your cargo wouldn't need an engine to carry them, as the power would be provided by the water.
With the proper engineering, this system also doubles as an irrigation system for the huge swat of land it can cross, enabling once unproductive land to be used for crops and animals.
By clever diverting some of this waterflow, you could use waterwheels to provide power to small devices or maintenance stations, or for ligthning up the Great Waterway.
While this system wouldn't be *faster* than a single train on a railroad, using water enables you to move far larger loads, way more often. Your "cargo bandwitdh" ends up being higher, even if an individual piece of cargo takes longer to send.
[Canals are awesome.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China))
[Answer]
Aluminum bronze. Basically nearly corrosion proof mild steel. Can't be hardened but it is a bearing surface so just use more of it to support the load if cost is no object. I've heard it is difficult to machine but I've found it among the easiest materials to machine. But the kind I've experienced does not contain nickel. I think the nickel containing kinds are a bit stronger and more corrosion resistant, though.
Hopefully it's a case where the material is cheap EVERYWHERE, rather than "expensive but cost is no object" in the railway project. Otherwise the rails will get stolen in the blink of an eye. Such a world would see a very great many consumer items that use stainless steel, and industrial applications that commonly use mild steels replaced with aluminum bronze. Basically the Bronze Age taken farther into the future since copper stays cheap and abundant and there was not nearly as much motivation to force iron to work.
[Answer]
If money is no object / the distribution of elements is different (making it more common, perhaps?) tungsten could do the trick. It only begins to oxidize at extreme heats, and is already used in the real world as an improvement over steel in applications such as drill bits / cutting tools - it's more brittle than steel though, which is why it's usually layered over steel to support it.
It's not a different track material, but in David Brin's "[The Practice Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_Effect)" they use a frictionless lubricant which increases the efficiency of rail travel and reduces the wear on the tracks to basically zero, which would improve the lifespan of your tracks. If memory serves the tracks there were a slightly guttered design, otherwise the lubricant would flow off the tracks and onto the ground.
[Answer]
You can look up toughest known material, which is a CrCoNi alloy. About 5 times tougher tan steel. However it was so far only created in the lab under special conditions, it's not clear whether it's possible to make rails out of it.
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[Question]
[
So, context: This is some time after the apocalyptic event, and society has had a little time to re-build. The apocalyptic event in question physically destroyed a large number of cities, and killed most of the human population. It did not poison the air, or make the surface world uninhabitable. While much of this world is now desert, most of the desert predates the apocalypse.
There is very little coal in this world; as a result, steam locomotives have historically been oil burners. At some point in the past, oil refining was discovered, and diesel-electric locomotives became the dominant form of rail transport. (bonus question: with the majority of locomotives using oil rather than coal, how much faster would diesel locomotives have overtaken steam?)
Considering that society has recovered to the point that trains in general have become not only possible, but worth the time and effort, how likely is it that this society is already able to refine oil to the extent needed to run diesel-electric locomotives?
[Answer]
### Depends on how much infrastructure survives:
So diesel engines can run on [a lot of things](https://www.autoevolution.com/news/what-else-can-you-run-a-diesel-car-on-138337.html):
* Blue Crude
+ water + electrolysis + CO2 + [Fischer-Tropsch process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process) == blue crude. You can run an engine on this directly apparently.
* Vegetable oils.
+ Used for cooking and unused.
* Biodiesel:
+ Processed crops. Ie Rapeseed (canola crop). Palm oil. Any crop really.
+ Also animal fats
* Some [experimental algaes](https://www.autoevolution.com/news/what-else-can-you-run-a-diesel-car-on-138337.html) can make diesel fuel.
If you're wanting to stretch diesel fuel, you can add Ethanol or Butanol. Ethanol you can make post-apocalypse quite easily. You can stretch it even further and run with even lower quality fuel if your train has a fuel pre-heater.
So just because you don't have big oil companies anymore doesn't mean your diesel engines are useless. Blue crude will need power, water, and an intact processing facility. Others will need farmland and some processing, which can be as simple as a press and fabric for filtering.
To answer your question directly, if society is totally gone, steam engine wins. However if there is pockets of surviving industrial facilities or agriculture then I wouldn't write diesel off unconditionally.
[Answer]
## Take a trip to your local train museum:
To get a good idea about this, go to your local train museum. Here in Minnesota, we have a long history of trains, and I have old train maintenance facilities right here in the Twin cites. Find one that's restoring a steam locomotive. They SOUND simple, but the engineering is only "simple" because it's older. There are hundreds of miles of pipes, thousands of joins, and vast amounts of engineering that go into steam engines. They are VERY MUCH dependent on a large and integrated industrial complex to even function. The maintenance was the real killer with such complicated machinery. Diesel won out because it was simpler to use diesel to make electricity that actually runs trains. Steam relied on mechanical propulsion, which is actually MUCH harder from an engineering standpoint (sorry steampunk folks).
Rails are just a physical means of having a better road with less resistance to carry really large loads (and large machines to pull those loads). You won't have railroads in a post-apocalyptic society without a fair amount of infrastructure. But Diesel engines with have a lot of versatile applications, while steam is likely to be relegated to electrical grid generation like it is today. Redeveloping Diesel means both electrical generation, but also trucks, cars, trains, small boats and all that comes with them.
So in a world of limited resources, you'd start building trains with Diesel using existing engines and tracks, but then you'd CONTINUE using Diesel because it's ultimately simpler, requires less maintenance, with known engineering that applies across a large number of applications.
* PS in a desert world, I wholeheartedly agree with user6760's assessment that the shortage of water (and likely wood, the easiest source of fuel for early-model trains) due to desertification will be as much or more of a barrier to the use of steam engines as the engineering. Diesel won't require the constant refilling with water that steam engines require. And if wood isn't critical for fuel (as trees are NOT abundant in desert conditions) then the existing oil-based fuels will already require an oil infrastructure that lends itself well to Diesel engines. Diesel fuel is relatively easy to make from crude oil, and can be even made today by people in their own homes from cooking oil. I inherited a piece of land in Kansas with very low-grade oil, and if I wanted to, I could make Diesel fuel from it (I have a chemistry degree, but it's not impossible). As Steven Klassen pointed out, fuel isn't a big issue.
[Answer]
>
> The apocalyptic event in question physically destroyed a large number of cities, and killed most of the human population.
>
>
>
If most of the humans are dead, the economics, the society and effort for rebuilding will be very different. One may even see a return to even more elementary technologies since oil extraction itself can be unfeasible, and coal anyway didn't exist in your world.
Thus, since most of the world is desolate of humans (and by extension other animals), if there is enough tree cover, then the trees could be used to create charcoal/be burnt as firewood directly to power steam engines.
This could help make steam locomotives simpler to bootstrap than oil/coal.
>
> bonus question: with the majority of locomotives using oil rather than coal, how much faster would diesel locomotives have overtaken steam
>
>
>
The problems with oil in general are:
1. Special Storage and transport requirements - oil spills, coal stacks
2. Refining capabilities - most coal can be burnt as is, oil as used today is highly refined
3. Extraction technology - coal is simply mind from surface / sub surface mines, oil can be offshore, or deep well, or shale oil etc
Thus, depending on how the oil is available in your world (good quality or not, easy availabiltiy - say a lake of oil was covered with nitrogen/ inert gas and hence is in tact, natural terrain allows for easier transport etc), you can tilt the benefit towards oil.
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> Are steam locomotives more viable than diesel in a post-apocalypse?
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It therefore all depends on energy efficiency and resource abundance that society is able to achieve. Think of it in terms of how much 1 unit of fuel lets you move intended weight by, and how easy it is to come across that 1 unit of fuel. (The fuel is spent in transporting fuel weight + dead weight + intended weight).
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As they rebuild their industrial capacity, steam *will* come before diesel. Yes, steam requires a significant industrial base to build and maintain, but diesels require *even more*. So even if they were already at the diesel level before the apocalypse, they'll revert to steam afterward, for some time at least.
Fuels aren't the issue. Diesel, and even more so steam, is surprisingly flexible in what it can run on. Honestly, my concern is the "desert" part. In real life, railways in deserts were generally the first to dieselize. I *suspect* that's why some places (namely, inland Saudi Arabia) didn't get railways built at all until diesels were available. Steam needs lots of water.
So, they'll redevelop steam first. The question is whether they'll rebuild much in the way of railways at all until they redevelop diesels because of that water shortage!
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## A resounding "Yes."
Steam locomotives came about before Diesel for three reasons.
1. **They're easier to make.** The thing most people don't realize is that diesel engines aren't just "a gas engine burning diesel." The most notable difference is that **the diesel is combusted by subjecting it to high pressures.** This means you need two things to make a diesel engine, both of which aren't feasible in an apocalypse:
1. High-quality steel so that it doesn't warp or rupture from the pressure
2. *Much* higher machining tolerances than a steamer, especially around the piston heads.
2. **They're more maintenanceable.** Even if you can get an engine, diesels have a lot of little fiddly parts that can get broken, gunked up, or otherwise FUBAR'd. As @TristanKlassen mentioned, a real life example of this is Guatemala during the '60s.
3. **They don't expend non-renewables.** This is a post-apocalypse wasteland we're talking about here. The only sources of diesel, automotive oil, and half a dozen other things you *must* have to run a diesel engine will be what you can scavenge. This is especially the case with the oil and diesel; even if you can find a large enough supply, it'll go stale before long.
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1. You can build a steam engine with a blacksmith, a foundry, and a lathe. And many did. You can build a foundry furnace and a blacksmith forge out of rocks and clay. A blacksmith can build a workable lathe. This is as close as you can take industrial civilization to basic raw materials. To build an internal combustion engine, you need precision grinding, which means you basically have to rebuild the steam era before beginning. To build a workable electric transmission, you need even more.
I used to work at a factory that made generators similar to those used in locomotives. Each winding was wrapped in 5 layers of different insulation types, at least 2 of which and probably 4, were materials that didn't even exist in the steam era. There's a reason it took so long to make diesel-electrics workable!
2. It doesn't matter what you can burn in a diesel. Every potential fuel requires refining. To build a refinery requires infrastructure. Again, to build the oil era from scratch, you have to first build the steam era. You can dig a steam engine's fuel out of the ground with a pick and shovel. And a blacksmith can make those.
3. Steam power can be kept working in primitive conditions when i.c. power can't. If your steam engine breaks a rod, you remove the rod, heat up your forge, draw out the rod, and forge weld it. Back in action. And this was done all the time. If you're making your own wrought iron, you probably won't even need to flux that weld.
If a gasoline or diesel engine breaks a rod, you need to have spare parts.
Modern technology and beyond, is just not forgiving of primitive conditions.
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It depends on their technology.
Diesel is much more efficient and versatile, but require a much more sophisticated level of metallurgy and fabrication capability than steam does. Mind you, this is diesel-*electric*, which also requires the knowledge and tools to make high-power generators and electric motors.
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The fuel is almost irrelevant, for either case.
Both can run on a variety of reasonably easily made fuels. The difficulty with making fuels have to do with efficiency, and economy, and sustainability. The actual processes are comparatively trivial.
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Unless your apocalypse took place in a location with antiquated rail technology (like most of the US) that you're re-using, neither steam nor diesel is a good solution. Your (exitsing, rebuilt) locomotives are electric. You can run them with power generated by hydroelectric dams, which should be easier to restore than building an oil refining or wood/coal supply chain. See for instance the railways in Europe.
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You forgot one thing: steam engines can burn wood.
Wood-burning is a very inefficient method of energy production, but in a post-apocalyptic period, how much trade and travel is there actually going to be?
Remember, until sometime in the early 1900s, if I remember correctly the average person traveled less than 350 miles from his home YEARLY.
So efficient, long-distance personal travel is immaterial and as for goods, wagons and boats would suffice, as most of the population of the world lives near some type of navigable seaway.
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Assuming that this world has lost the manufacturing facilities to make diesel parts, or even the ability to refine proper oil to lubricate the engines, and all diesel locomotives that still exist no longer run, a steam locomotive can be operated in a low tech environment, as it can run on a lot of fuels (including oil), and the parts and lubricants needed to run the steam locomotive are much simpler.
However, you would have to build the missing infrastructure to support a steam locomotive, that has long since been abandoned.
Steam locomotives can run maybe 80-100 miles before they have exhausted their water supply. So you would need large amounts of water at regular intervals, plus a way to get that water into the locomotive. This is the large barrel on stilts that you might see in some old west films, adjacent to the tracks.
You would also need a lot of maintenance facilities to be built - steam locomotives require more frequent rebuilds, due partially to the running parts being exposed to a very corrosive substance: superheated live steam. That is why most cities in the steam locomotive age, even smaller ones, had at least one roundhouse - to rebuild locomotives.
And finally, you would have to rediscover the art of building and running a steam locomotive. Compared to a diesel, they require a lot more attention while running, to insure the water level doesn't get low (boiler explodes), to keep the running gear lubricated (largely a manual process), and manage the firebox to get an even distribution of heat, to mention a few.
The primary reason diesel locomotives replaced steam locomotives in the 1950's and 1960's was the lower maintenance costs. Diesel locomotives had a much greater range, didn't have to stop for water, didn't need to be rebuilt nearly as often, and made more efficient use of fuel than steam locomotives.
But, if you don't have the infrastructure to keep a diesel locomotive operating, then the steam engine can be operated with a lower level of available technology.
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The [hot-bulb engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-bulb_engine) will run on most fuel. They use a compression ratio of 3:1 to 5:1, a diesel uses around 15:1 to 20:1. This lower pressure allows it be made from lower-grade steel. However, they are about ⅓ of the efficiency of modern diesels, and require a blow-torch to heat it to running temperature before it will start.
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In this story I'm giving a go at, humanity as a whole have been under siege from creatures that can be best described as humanoid demons. Things haven't been going well for the human race, as the demons have greater physical strength, size, pain resistance, and seem to all have a sadistic love of violence.
One advantage humanity has over demons is a greater resistance to freezing temperatures. In simple terms, demons will freeze to death faster than humans will. As a consequence of this, humans have started to build towns, castles, and research installations in very cold places to protect them from invasions. However, this has only slowed the conquest of the demons, not prevented it. The humans need a standing army for defense, and demons have no problem changing their equipment to combat the cold.
One of my major concerns is steel, and like metals, becoming brittle with prolonged exposure to cold. Even if I'm wrong about the severity of the brittleness, there is also the issue of trying to wear an ice-cold steel suit in the snow. Hypothermia and frostbite are no joke. To the best of my knowledge, actual arctic warfare was rare in these times (since it was better for both sides to wait until spring) so I'm not sure if there are historical examples I can use.
I'm all for guerrilla warfare with camouflage and mobility being the priority, but I'd love to see how extreme pure defense could get in freezing conditions. Heavy and durable armor is what I'm interested in if that's even possible with kind of climate.
If greater specificity is needed for answers: imagine around 14th century European level of technology and -23°C to +4°C (-10°F to +40°F) temperature (with significant snowfall and wind) to deal with.
**What manner of weapons and armor would be suitable for freezing conditions in the middle ages?**
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> installations in very cold places to protect them from invasions
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The problem with this is that you can't have high concentrations of people, because they need a lot of food and you can't obtain them in very cold places. Most tribes living in tundra or similar environments were nomadic or semi-nomadic.
Your population could be nomadic and get resources during summer and then retire to fronzen mountains to pass the winter, eating cured meat/fish and dry fruit.
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> If greater specificity is needed for answers: imagine around 14th
> century European level of technology and -10 to +40 degrees Fahrenheit
> temperature (with significant snowfall and wind) to deal with.
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14th century means people are using padded armor (gambesons) and chain mail over it, with some coat of plates (padded armor with plates of steel sewn inside) and good helmets. All of this is great for cold climates, so armor is well covered.
For the weapons, it is complicated. Cold means snow, ice and lack of grass, so we can't use cavalry charges. Bows won't work properly (and the fine wood to build them would be too difficult to find), but the string of the crossbows is also affected by the weather. Your soldiers will need to use javelins for distances (and throwing axes if they can produce several, because axe thrown is a lost axe for the remaining of the battle).
With your "demons" also protected with mail and padded armor, spears with long heads like the Ahlspiess are very good, like all the polearms (fauchards, glaives, lucerne hammers, bec de corbins...). Your demons are stronger than humans, so the humans soldiers will like the reach of those pole weapons.
For shorter distances, swords are complicated to train properly (hacking swords like the falchion much less, so they are a good idea against padded armor), but big thrusting daggers would be great for large enemies (so you can stab them in the groin or the abdoment, which are usually badly protected and they can go through chain mail). Hand axes would also be a good idea, but they have an intimidating factor and the terrible wounds they cause if you hit the head, but I think this will be impossible with tall demons with pain resistance and who love violence.
So maybe something like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9zt7e.jpg)
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Winter warfare (at given temperatures, which I would not call "Arctic") maybe uncommon, but absolutely realistic. For example, in the XIII century, [Batu Khan's conquest of Rus' (a predecessor of Russia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Rus%27) was conducted primarily by winter campaigns, when temperatures were certainly plunging below -10F/-23C. Steel is not particularly more brittle at these temperatures.
Frostbite from steel can be easily negated by padding. In fact, medieval combat attire, complete with things like [Gambeson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambeson) is notoriously prone to causing overheating. Fighting just below freezing point will be a bliss. If temperatures will go down to -20C and below, then frostbite of open skin will become a concern, which can be negated by wearing balaclavas.
The main problem with winter warfare is movement and logistics. Batu Khan utilized frozen rivers as roads, but generally speaking, making any kind of movement, especially for heavily armored people will be very hard.
Another general issue with the entire cold climate premise is the need of supply. People can build castles in the cold, it's not a big deal, but those castles need to be fed and supplied from warmer places (like [Castle Black](http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Castle_Black) in "Game of Thrones"). If people are completely abandoning temperate lands, cold climate outposts would not be able to survive by themselves.
P.S. The issue of "hot when moving/cold when standing" had been (and still is) addressed by cloaks. When fighting, the cloak would fly back on one's shoulders like a cape. When standing, one would wrap oneself in the cloak, getting protection from elements.
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To address the obvious problem about cold, have you ever gone on a walk/hike in winter (5-25 degrees F)? Simply walking with a heavy coat and boots makes you extremely hot. Add an inch of loose snow, and the heat from the effort to walk becomes incredible. Lack of heat in a moderate winter is going to be the least of your problems during battle--overheating is more likely.
If they will be fighting in sub-zero temperatures, cold could become an issue, they would probably make a light jacket of wool and wear it under the armor to trap heat. Maybe put a cloth lip over any metal pieces near skin to help if someone accidentally touches it. Now for the fun part: heavy cloth can actually provide excellent armor in itself; this could actually make their armor significantly more effective--especially if they wear multiple layers.
Given the above point, metal armor may not be the best alternative here. Perhaps you would be better off with a layer of leather or two, and a few layers of wool or other heavy cloth that can provide armor and warmth. This will A) avoid the problems of metal becoming brittle, and B) reduce weight and make you more mobile. Considering you are fighting super humanoids, you probably don't want to get close enough for hand-to-hand combat anyway, unless you significantly out-number them. If it were me, I'd think something like many teams of 2-3 rangers who stalk and ambush individual demons and harry larger groups with ranged attacks.
Which brings me to weaponry: ranged attacks (i.e. archery) and traps will probably have the highest return for the cost of life of defenders--and defenders will be at a premium here. Let's say it takes 5 years until someone is ready for serious war training, and another 5-10 years before they are able to join a ranger team. That's 10-15 years you just invested into a warrior; getting them killed would be the stupidest thing you could do. With this type of attack, metal brittleness is less of an issue; however, the Vikings and other northern peoples used swords and spears just fine in the posted temperature ranges, so I'm not even worried about metal brittleness here. Finally, you say "demons have no problem changing their equipment to combat the cold". Well, let's just go kill these demons, loot the bodies, and turn their equipment right back on them!
P.S.: I live in Minnesota. We deal -10F for several weeks in the winter without issue, and 40 or lower for about 4 months a year.
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**Metal armor and weapons are not going to be the issue**
You are looking at 14th century tech, they were pretty decent at metal working by then. That is the century that saw the genesis of early plate. But in common usage was the coat of plates
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rkp0W.jpg)
Which was a series of overlapping plates attached to an outer garment, often worn over chain as pictured. Underneath the chain is a heavy padded garment, underneath which is usually some underwear type garment. The metal is never actually going to touch your skin - that would ruin you no matter the temp. Aside from probably emphasizing good mittens more, you won't have to change armor around. You can easily throw a cloak over yourself if you need more protection.
Don't forget that bows will also have some major issues - even at normal ambient temperatures you had to 'warm' them up before full proper use. And at the temps you are talking about there could be issues with bows failing pretty spectacularly depending on their construction.
And completely aside from that, people can't survive long term in those kinds of temperatures. Food is going to be a problem.
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As discussed in [this forum](https://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=210806), you would not need to alter alot of your equipment. It seems that practical experience has shown that the first layer of clothing is the most important one. As some of the forum members pointed out, keeping you warm is no problem as long as you are moving around, but you will freeze fast as soon as you are standing still for a while.
Furthermore, there seems to be an distinction between plate and mail armor considering the effect of wind: Plate armor protects from the wind, while mail just lets it comming through.
Regarding weapons... It is mentioned in the before mentioned forum that steel should have no problems until around -40° Celsius ( -40° Fahrenheit).
But, just in case, keep some fire places around to keep your troops and equipment warm.
Tl;dr: Give them warmer undergarments, fire places to warm them while on duty and good food rations. Should solve the problem.
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Defense in the medieval ages could be compared to an onion, there was rarely ever only one layer. In castles you had often had multiple gatehouses, moats, etc. In armor you had your plate mail over chain mail over gambeson over your tunic. So while your plate mail and chain mail might be cold they won't be close to contacting your skin.
In case you are not familiar with gambesons they are linen or wool jackets with many layers of the fabric with tightly spaced stitches making it very sturdy defensively and due to the number of layers of fabric it can be fairly heavy and very warm, Wikipedia claims it doubled as a winter garment already so it fits your story perfectly and was an extremely common armor.
In regards to the weapons, I agree with DarthDonut that you shouldn't have much concern there. A few braziers for your patrols to keep lookout near and they should manage just fine
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I'll give a little background for those who don't play video games. In most role-playing video games, you kill monsters for a lot of reasons. Oftentimes, these monsters yield "drops" ranging from **common, uncommon, to rare**. Most of the time, the said drops are parts of the monster's body.
For example, you kill 100 unicorns. In video games, probably the most common item you will get is some kind of monster meat (such as **Unicorn Flesh x1** or **Unicorn Hoof x1**, or something. You get the idea). But at incredibly rare times, say, 1/100 Unicorns, you can get a **Unicorn Horn x1**.
Now my question is: **Suppose all these monsters are identical, how would you justify these rare item drops?** If unicorns all have horns why, out of 100 chances (just an example), you can only get 1 horn?
Also, please help me with the tags. Thanks!
P.S. I do not tolerate the killing of these sacred creatures
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I've played a very large variety of fantasy games from desktop RPG, to Rogue like, to modern games.
The basis for "drops" like you describe is that in combat your hacking and slashing the critter generally does not leave usable bits behind. Only rarely during a fight does the situation allow for an intact "Unicorn Horn" to be left by the defeated monster.
When you finally get that desired "drop" it is in effect saying that you slayed the critter and no part of the combat or the Unicorn harmed the valuable horn in any way and it is usable for whatever purpose that you want.
The other aspect to this is when randomizing loot (say for D&D), why do you roll on tables? The reality is each monster you fight during a dungeon crawl has survived this long by killing everything else it fought. You are seeing the drops of previous adventurers, other monster, and just random stuff the Orc found interesting.
A good DM (or game) should describe all the other "crap" (figurative and literal) the real treasure is mixed with. Quartz crystals might look very pretty to a goblin but are common enough to not be worth hauling out of the dungeon. Such a hoard probably contains broken equipment, rusty nails, bones, rotten hides, etc. The treasure roll is attempting to figure out whether anything killed by this monster had something out of the ordinary.
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You are looking for monsters with health conditions.
Suppose, for example, that a given magical sword can only be forged if you've got a liver that you extracted from someone's left side. [*Situs invertus*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situs_inversus) is an actual real world condition that causes your internal organs to be mirrored. It affects 0.01% of the population, so if you are killing people at random, you might need to off 10,000 innocents before you find the liver you want.
For unicorns, notice how their horns are usually depicted as spiraled. Say that most unicorns have their horns spiraling clockwise... If you need a horn that spirals counterclockwise, and *situs invertus* is as rare in unicorns as it is in humans, then you have your justification for the need to kill 10,000 beasts before you find your drop.
Other conditions of interest: if you are going for newt eyes, you may need the eyes of those with [aphakia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphakia). If a potion requires the feather of an angel's wing, it might actually mean a feather from the wing of a duck with [angel wing disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_wing). And so on.
Notice that many conditions may havbe no external signs, so you really need to open the creature to see whether it will give you the drop you want or not. Since this is usually lethal, and the creature will usually resist, you have the justification to make hunting the preferred method of farming1 for items.
1 For those unfamiliar, this is game jargon for such harvesting.
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Perhaps they aren't actually identical? Say that 99 out of every 100 unicorns are *unicornus simplicus*, which as everyone knows has low-quality horns that won't hold magic worth a darn, whereas the 100th is *unicornus incrediblus* that is worth its weight in gold. But of course there are no outward signs of which is which (except perhaps to the trained eye), certainly none you could discern in the middle of combat.
(If anyone asks why the unicorns are outwardly identical - clearly it's an adaptation of the rare unicorn to blend in so it's not killed by marauding adventurers. Indeed, overharvesting by previous generations might be *why* they're rare.)
I don't know offhand any large real-world animal species that share ranges with related species to that extent, but it happens a lot with birds (note how detailed birdwatching guides have to be, compared with recognizing say a deer) and plants.
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OK, let me focus on unicorns. I'll list only some possibilities and a creative person can surely invent more justifications. Note that you can apply different justifications for different types of creatures and if you think it's good for a game balance some of the reasons might be for example overcome by let's say getting more skills increasing the loot changes as your character develops.
Be creative and you can find other reasons as well for sure.
Note, some of those examples were already listed in previous answers, but I was always trying to add something from myself. Some are entirely genuine.
## Not all horns are suitable
Think of a pearl. Not all shelled mollusk contain one and those that contain it usually have imperfect ones. Chances of finding a perfect one is likely less than 1:100. Similarly the unicorn horn might grow in various ways and only if it's given perfect conditions (e.g. no horn usage until the unicorn matures) the horn is properly shaped and can hold the magic. Depending on what you want to achieve from gaem balancing perspective you might have a possibility to distinguish "good" horns from "bad" before killing the creature or not (again - a skill that might be developed over time). Also you may have some sort of horn quality graduation (starting from those 96% totally useless, 3% average useful and 1% super high quality horns that are required for the most complex magic).
Another option is a rare mutation that causes the horn to have a different build. Again depending on the needs you either can't tell without killing the creature (the core is different) or you can (with increasing skills - the coverage is slightly different causing the horn to have slightly different shade of white, you need skilled eye and probably some magic to distinguish that from a distance or even closely - note you might not now if your horn is useful or not until you actually use it or find some other way to distinguish)
## Horns get damaged during the battle
They can get damaged in a battle or it can get damaged over the time. Each option gives you additional opportunities.
If the horn can be damaged during the particular battle you might increase your chances by being more skilled and fighting in a less risky way (stealth kill?) - a skill that can be developed over time.
If the horn is damaged over the time you might learn to notice the difference before killing the unicorn. Again a skill to develop to be able to distinguish if the curse for killing the unicorn is worth it. In such case you might increase your chances by choosing younger unicorns. On the other hand the more mature creature is the more powerful the horn might be.
## The horn gets damaged while looting
Horns are built of keratin that can be easily damaged while you're trying to detach the corn from the corpse. Of course you can always give it a try but you're lucky only 1 time in 100.
Again you can increase skills and that way increase your successful looting chances.
## Stress causes horn damage
Of course it can be limited to magical abilities. You can't kill the beast not causing its stress however unicorns some might be more stress resistant and as a result the effect does not remove magical capabilities of a horn entirely. You can't tell from the distance and you can't tell to what stress was the unicorn already exposed.
Again a real life example. If you consider carp, this fish has a bad PR for it's intense "fish-like" taste. The truth is the flesh of carps get the taste when the fish are exposed to stress. The less stressful way of killing the fish, the less effect on the flesh taste.
## Horns quickly loose their magical capabilities unless properly prepared
This time you need to act quick. But even creatures position might impact how quickly can you detach its horn. In this scenario killing from a distance actually reduces your chances of a successful loot. Skills can also be developed as well as you might need to have some other ingredients or mana power for a proper horn preservation.
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This is pretty much done from a game mechanic and balancing point of view. If Unicorn Horn is highly powerful and potent, then I simply can't afford to ruin the in-game balance and economy by making it easier to get, because that would over cause everyone to solely use this item and make the game boring or stagnant.
The way I justify it in my world is that you damage the part beyond use 99 times out of 100 and hence you won't pick it up because its junk. There are many ways you can justify this. Lets say you have to take the horn off the unicorn before it dies. Then I can have you only pick it up 1/100 times, because you weren't able to remove it before it died. You would of course have this all happen behind the scenes in a game, with the item dropping if you were considered successful. Or maybe the horn was chipped in battle and once its damaged, its power fades away. Game mechanics don't allow for this level of detail which you can include in world building or story telling because its too overly complicated for a game engine to determine this and not worth the investment.
If you wanted to, you can add in extra game mechanics to make it more real. Aka harvesting corpses for loot instead of just picking it up straight away. Most games just drop the items straight away and this has to do with it being a game and nothing to do with the world or real world logic. These things are meant to make the game more fun and easier for a player, rather than make everything a chore.
Here are some mechanics you often see in games which won't happen in real life but do in games
* You can Run forever
* Sleep as a mechanic to fast forward time rather than due to fatigue
* Going to the bathroom or general cleaning
* Being able to carry around an unreasonable amount of items
* Fast travel
* Generic conversation options
* Eating/drinking as much food as you want instantly
* Always being the chosen one or being special
* Generic damage and criticals rather than body part specific damage
* No bleed damage from cuts or stabs
* Health Regeneration
* Respawning
* Instant crafting or crafting speeding up the more you do
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**Most drops are vendor trash**
Many MMORPGs already use this mechanic. Every monster drops some unique *junk* item with no use other than to sell to the next merchant. Effectively this means the monster has a slightly higher gold value and serves to clog up your inventory.
Most unicorns drop a **Scuffed unicorn horn**. The horn has scratches on the surface from jousting with rivals or stripping bark off trees. Or it has grown slightly skewed. Or some interior imperfections make the material unsuitable for ornament or magical rituals. The scuffed horn can be sold to any vendor for 3cp who then sells it on to boil down and make glue.
One in a hundred unicorns drops an **Immaculate unicorn horn**. The horn is exatly straight with an unblemished surface, even spiralling, and no imperfections in the material. This horn can be used for jewelery or ritual or serve as a quest item.
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You, and most of the answers miss one thing: Video games are seldom about realism.
* One Unicorn would give you enough meat for a year (if you had the means to conserve it). It´s unrealistic to drop only 1 meat and make 1 meal out of it.
* Making the meal would require much more then two mouse clicks and 5 seconds processing time.
* You´d have to leave most stuff behind, because you can´t cat carry that much. Certainly not in those pouches
* You would not run around killing 100´s of unicorns. You would kill one, then cure your wounds and rest for some days. Then kill the next. Then the green party would show up an put you in jail for messing up the environment.
* etc...
The reason with most of those points is: It´s more fun that way. The game mechanic has to reward the player enough to keep him motivated, but has to put up enough challenge to keep you occupied for some time. These are not worlds build for most accurate fantastic realism, but for maximum player satisfaction.
Fine-adjusting those aspects as drop-rates etc is called *balancing* the game, and is often done at the end, in a beta or even still after launch, after observing playtime, win-rate and other player statistics.
So, to answer your question:
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> Suppose all these monsters are identical, how would you justify these rare item drops?
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**Your justification lies outside the realm of this hypthetical world, in the form of maximum player satisfaction.**
*Note that in a well designed game, the Unicorn would always drop the horn, but be really really hard to find so you would never get 100 of them and be spammed with goblins insted*
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Imagine an inhabitated planet like ours with a moon of the same projected size in the sky. The moon has visible structures of colors or darker and lighter areas.
Every evening when the moon gets visible in the sky, it's surface changed in at least 1/4 of the visible area. It didn't just rotate, no-one on this planet has ever seen the same image of the moon twice in their life.
**How is it possible that the structure or pattern on the surface of a moon changes constantly while the planet is stable enough to support intelligent life?**
*Edit due to so many answers requiring an atmosphere to work:* The moon can have an atmosphere, but the changing patterns must be on a planetary (or moony?) scale and look otherworldly. Simple clouds floating around are too similar to what the natives see every day on their home planet. Giant stoms like on Jupiter are ok, but they have the tendency to repeat their patterns.
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## Make the Moon Bigger
Or, more accurately, more massive. You'd have to move its orbit out a bit to prevent more brutal tides on the planet, but make it massive enough to hold an atmosphere of its own. Make that atmosphere out of denser gases, ones that can be held with a more tenuous grip than our own, and, ideally, ones that can be coloured and have interesting fluid dynamics. [Dinitrogen tetroxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinitrogen_tetroxide), maybe.
With shifting cloud patterns (doubtless very lethal but very pretty), maybe from core heating, you get a relatively rapidly shifting lunar appearance without having to make the moon out of anything implausible.
Edit: Another option - if you're already allowing for an active core for additional heating (and an extra swirly atmosphere), you could also have volcanism. Nothing like a man in the moon with acne!
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# Unutterably Immense Aurora Borealis
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nvqan.gif)
*Credit: nasa.gov -- Aurorae on Jupiter*
If you don't already know, [aurorae](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Aurora_Australis.ogv) are electromagnetic spectacles caused by high-energy, solar-charged particles bombarding with an atmosphere. They come in many shapes, magnitudes, and colors. Here's how we'll construct your shape-shifting moon with them:
## Multicolored Aurorae
Because you've now allowed for an atmosphere, we can actually design how our aurorae will appear. Atmospheric composition determines the color of the aurorae as those high-energy ions interact with the various gases involved. Atomic oxygen produces red, orange, or green light depending on the amount of energy it becomes excited by (generally green light at lower altitudes, more-so ruddy light at higher altitudes in Earth's specific atmosphere). At much lower altitudes, atomic oxygen (again, specific to Earth's atmosphere) becomes less common (atomic oxygen is produced when diatomic oxygen drifts into the upper stratosphere and is broken by UV radiation); nitrogen instead can be used and excited: nitrogen absorbing energy will produce blue light, while nitrogen losing energy (after having gained excess) will produce red light.
Aurorae manifest in curtains descending into the atmosphere, where atmospheric composition, descending into the atmosphere, changes as well. This results in regions where the colors mix: pink, a mixture of red and green light; and yellow, a mixture of green and red (greater intensity followed by lesser intensity).
We have a lot more colors to work with, however (keep in mind, lighter gases are likely to escape the atmosphere, so their concentrations will naturally be diminished [one should also factor in relative abundance under planetary formation conditions]): Helium, white to orange; Neon, red-orange; Argon, violet to a lavender blue; Water Vapor, dimmer pink or magenta; and Carbon Dioxide, blue-white to pink. Personally, I would select our basic, Earth-analog atmospheric concoction of Nitrogen and Oxygen, yet, with a greater proportion of Carbon Dioxide--much greater for the following reason:
## Aurorae magnitude in relation to gravity, magnetosphere strength, and atmospheric mass
The magnetosphere of Earth is kind of weak. It manages to nudge only a small fraction of solar-charged particles to collide with the atmosphere. A stronger field will affect particle trajectories more, meaning more collisions with the atmosphere and more lights. Most of the particles flying off the Sun (besides neutrinos, I think) are electrons, which are negative in charge. If geomagnetic north sits at the north pole, then the aurorae will be stronger in the northern hemisphere, although, after some degree of intensity, this distinction may no longer matter as particles bombard most of the atmospheric surface pretty uniformly, in the sense of whether any particular region of atmosphere is exposed naked and non-bombarded. The south pole will attract the remaining positively-charged particles--protons and alpha particles--however, they are lesser in their abundances. Withal, the north pole would be "brighter," or more-so populated with aurorae than the south pole, however, ideally the aurorae will span the whole moon, just being brighter in those regions. Onward.
A thicker, more massive atmosphere in tandem with a weaker gravitational pull is ideal for maximal aurorae activity. The weaker gravity will extend the atmosphere further from the moon's surface. The volumes of atmosphere where the solar-charged particles may interact will be extended under weaker gravity (the atmosphere will be taller).
## To complete the picture
Our atmosphere may allow an observer to see the surface. Ideally, we want our aurorae to be consistent and it turns out that solar activity itself is pretty [consistent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859) and [unvarying](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum). If the surface is ever visible through the swathes of folding, shaping, shifting, entombing, iridescent ribbons, then we must make it indistinct. A volcanic past could achieve this.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TlSq6.jpg)
*Credit: earthscienceeducation.org -- Basalt Rock*
A surface largely of basaltic and obsidian-like rock could probably accomplish this.
## Non-repeating patterns
Now, aurorae typically follow magnetic field lines of the magnetosphere. Magnetosphere structures vary depending on a multitude of factors, such as the distance from the sun, the intensity of solar winds, among others. Magnetic geometry is not quite that simple, however. The Aurorae we should expect shouldn't fall into predictable routines, though, just to be safe, let's just [offset it from its rotational axis and center of mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#Magnetosphere) and make it do [other weird stuff](https://physicsworld.com/a/nightmare-geometry-of-uranus-creates-tumbling-magnetosphere/). Also, let's assume that our inhabited world also has a magnetosphere (a safe assumption?) of different, lesser strength and perhaps offset to another angle which isn't perpendicular to the equatorial (also a safe assumption that the moon orbits near the equatorial?). The planet's and the moon's magnetospheres will mesh and interact with one another, possibly in a chaotic fashion, which will certainly help the chaotic appearance of our moon's aurorae.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iOQS2.gif)
*Credit: [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5QSODL4di8) -- Interacting magnetic dipoles*
In essence, we are taking advantage of the dynamic state of our planet-moon system to mesh and twist the involved electromagnetic geometry as much as possible.
# Conclusion
A small moon with a relatively thick atmosphere (perhaps the atmospheric mass of Earth's) perhaps comprised of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, with a basaltic surface of supremely dark, perhaps sooty-like rock and regolith, and an immense, offset, dislodged, and powerful magnetosphere responsible for chaotic bands of aurorae across its photosphere.
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## How it could work
**Water example**
Your planet has a (water)ice surface. When the star doesn't shine upon the surface of the moon surface temperature falls below -10 °C (there is likely no pressure on the moon). But when it does shine temperature rises above -10 °C and it melts and the surface transforms, because of gravitational pulls. Other things effecting the surface would be:
Meteor impacts, solar winds, relative position to planet and sun.
**Additional effects**
Meteor impacts can form large mountain waves which take for months to get molten down while still changing their shape every day. They could also cause swirls and other uneven textures over the moon surface. Although these swirls would mostly be caused by solar winds. Another thing to consider is that the relative position between planet and sun will cause the overall flow direction to change, as would meteor impacts.
## Alternatives
You could also use other elements with different melting points for scenarios where temperatures always exceed -10 °C or never exceed -10 °C. Examples:
**Lower than -10 °C**
* oxygen -218 °C
* chlorine -101 °C
* mercury -38 °C
**Higher than -10 °C**
* rubidium 39 °C
* sodium 97 °C
* tin 231 °C
Now these are just examples but I hope at least one of them can come to use.
[This is my source](https://www.wolframalpha.com/)(just type in the mentioned element and compare the result)
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**Naturally occurring [Thermochromic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermochromism) chemicals.**
Those of us old enough to remember the 1970s remember [mood rings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mood_ring).
While such chemicals are unlikely as natural deposits, it is fairly easy to imagine that some flowering plants could incorporate such as a form of sexual attraction or such-like.
No earth-like plants exist without the benefit of atmosphere, but perhaps an different design of plant forms could exist in thin carbon-dioxide atmosphere that may be compatible with your story. A hard-vacuum is likely to make significant plant-like coverage impossible.
Any high-contrast vegetation that has a short lifespan would perhaps be sufficient, esp. competing forms with different reflectance characteristics.
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Take Pluto as inspiration. [From the wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Pluto) (all emphasis are mine):
>
> **Pluto's surface is composed of more than 98 percent solid nitrogen, with traces of methane and carbon monoxide**. The face of Pluto oriented toward Charon contains more solid methane, whereas the opposite face contains more nitrogen and solid carbon monoxide. **Distribution of volatile ices is thought to be season-dependent and influenced more by solar insolation and topography than subsurface processes**.
>
>
> (...)
>
>
> Pluto's surface color has changed between 1994 and 2003: the northern polar region has brightened and the southern hemisphere has darkened. Pluto's overall redness has also increased substantially between 2000 and 2002. These rapid changes are probably related to **seasonal condensation and sublimation of portions of Pluto's atmosphere** (...)
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Now this may seem to conflict with one of your requirements:
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> The moon does not have an atmosphere
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But again, [according to another page in Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Pluto):
>
> The surface pressure of the atmosphere of Pluto, measured by New Horizons in 2015, is about 1 Pa (10 μbar), roughly 100,000 times less than Earth's atmospheric pressure.
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Some satellites in LEO face similar atmospheric pressures and need reboosting every then. Bottom line being: that's what objects in space around us face. So for all practical purposes Pluto's surface is exposed to a vacuum. Standing naked on it wouldn't be much different from being naked on Earth's orbit.
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Your planet is tidally locked and it's moon is made of something with a low melting point.
This means that it's eternal twilight on the narrow band of habitable terrain on your planet, and that the day is marked by the ascent of the moon, which, continually melted by the sun and frozen by the planet's shadow, changes each day.
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Long ago an intelligent species found this moon and made plans to inhabit it. They created a network of tunnels all across the planet just below its surface. They planted the seeds of life and prepared to begin settling, but for some reason, they never did. So the moon was left, carved tunnels beneath its surface with the beginnings of life sprouting.
Fast forward a few thousand years to today, and the moon is buzzing with life--but that life all lives underground. A specific creature, the Mitter, has thrived on the underground flora and fauna. They are a fast moving species that is nomadic by nature, constantly moving to different places in different patterns every day.
However, when they move, they let off an abundance of benign chemicals that rise to the surface. These chemicals glow when in contact with the outside air--glowing a slightly different hue for each Mitter. With the abundance of the creatures and their unusual travel patterns, the planet appears to glow in ever changing shades and hues. Perhaps the Mitters' chemicals glow different colors depending on the time of season so the moon will go through phases of colors throughout the year?
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**Oceans of nonlinear chemical oscillator compound!**
Imagine that there`s an ocean on the moon that is filled to the brim with e.g. malonic acid and potassium bromate. That would yield literal chaotic color patterns floating both on its surface and all the way down to the seabed.
This is called the [Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov-Zhabotinsky_reaction).
All weather changes, including the amount of sunlight absorbed, the surface waves, the underwater currents (well, technically it`s not water, but whatever), the winds, the evaporation, the volcanic activity — everything of the sort would add to the total randomness and uniqueness of the pattern.
[Here`s a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpyKSRo8Iec) of it oscillating in a Petri dish. And here`s [another one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o72GGxQqWt8).
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A watery body, such as Enceladus (maybe Ceres as long as it has an icy core), orbits as a moon. This moon could have a very eccentric orbit, causing tidal forced to act upon it, causing cryo-volcanism. these cryovolcanos can cover the surface with various chemicals and minerals (water, salty brine, methane, ethane, or other organics) in an ever changing pattern.
The cracking and shifting of the fragile surface would also aid in the changing surface patterns.
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The "no atmosphere" requirement makes this especially tough because it means we're limited to solid materials at the surface. Any liquid would evaporate in the near-perfect vacuum, and any appreciable amount of gas would be, well, an atmosphere.
You say the moon hasn't rotated, so that leads me to assume it is tidally locked. My suggestion would be a very slow cyclical chemical reaction which occurs in the moon's crust at the surface, similar to the [iodine clock reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_clock_reaction). I'm imagining bands of light or color slowly propagating across the surface of the moon, sort of like the [Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_reaction), taking a few hours to travel the full diameter of the moon's disc. This reaction could be catalyzed by the sunlight hitting the surface of the moon as it faces away from the planet, then continue through the moon's "night", where it is visible from the surface of the parent planet.
This setup could make the moon potentially livable (not a volcanic mess like Io) while avoiding any surface liquids or gases.
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That solar system could be experiencing a phenomenon like the [late heavy bombardment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment): the moon is constantly hit by meteorites, so that it is continuously shaped by these impacts.
The problem is that these meteorites must be very frequent (say in the order of the dozen of impacts in a day), but quite small - in the range of 10-20 meters - in order not to cause damage when they fall onto the main planet, burning in its atmosphere. In this case probably you should somehow justify the lack of bigger asteroids.
You could also point that the moon is of recent formation (maybe captured by the gravity of the planet), which implies its core is still active and gives origin to some vulcanic activity that shapes its surface (but in this case the changes would be slower and the surface of the moon wouldn't change a lot in the span of some days).
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Possibly there could be intelligence of some sort on the moon and their activities can make a big visual change in the appearance of large sections of the moon during short periods.
Possibly they are artists trying out various "paint" patterns to see which make the moon look best.
Perhaps they move countless millions of large vehicles of various colors around on the moon, arranging them in various patterns as part of some sort of "dance".
Maybe they are trying to send a message to the natives of the planet and thus making an ever changing series of patterns on the moon.
A century or so ago an astronomer believed that some tiny changes of color he observed on the moon were the results of vast hordes of insects moving around.
So possibly on your moon thick areas of vegetation spring up, changing the color of vast regions, and then vast wandering hordes of insects travel toward them, changing the face of the moon as they move. When the insects arrive at the forest or meadow or swamp their color mingles with the color of the plants and changes the color of the region as seen from the planet.
So the insects eat all the vegetation in the region, changing its color, and leave their wastes (containing many seeds) behind to fertilize the soil. The insects move on, searching for another area of vegetation, and the area is now a different color, barren of vegetation until the seeds sprout and start to grow. Eventually the plants become thick enough to change the color of the region back to vegetation colored, then the region retains that color until the same or a different horde of insects arrives to eat the vegetation.
Of course it seem rather doubtful that a planet small enough to be habitable would have a moon large enough to be habitable for at least some types of life. That would make them seem a lot more like a double planet than like a planet and its moon.
Of course the intelligent beings on the moon don't have to be living beings; they could be machines.
Or the two worlds could both be habitable planets orbiting their star if their orbits are a lot closer to each other than any planetary orbits in our solar system, so that when the planets pass closest to each other the natives of one can see surface features on the other. There is actually a known solar system where planets in the habitable zone of their star do sometimes orbit close enough for someone on one of them to see surface features on the other - TRAPPIST-1.
>
> The distance between the orbits of TRAPPIST-1b and TRAPPIST-1c is only 1.6 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The planets should appear prominently in each other's skies, in some cases appearing several times larger than the Moon appears from Earth.[41] A year on the closest planet passes in only 1.5 Earth days, while the seventh planet's year passes in only 18.8 days.[38][34]
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1)
Or maybe the "planet" and "moon" are actually both moons that orbit a gas giant planet.
Your "planet" could actually be a giant, Earth sized habitable moon, and the "moon" would orbit closer to the gas giant. Sometimes your "planet" and the inner moon would be almost on opposite sides of the gas giant and the inner moon wouldn't look big enough for details to be visible. But at intervals, probably every few days, the inner moon would pass close to the outer habitable moon and the natives of the habitable moon could see details of the surface of the inner moon and note the changes (and only in the parts of the moon that were lit by their star) .
If the inner moon orbits close enough to the gas giant the tidal heating should make the inner moon hyper volcanic like Io, the innermost Galilean moon of Jupiter. Various volcanoes might erupt often, spewing out vast amounts of lava of various colors to constantly resurface the inner moon. So each time that details of the inner moon were visible the surface patterns would be at least slightly different.
The problem with this is that the clouds and weather patterns on the gas giant planet would be visible all the time and would also change, thus possibly distracting the natives of the habitable moon from the show on the inner moon.
Possibly the moon in your story could suffer from tidal heating and constant resurfacing if it orbited a habitable planet in the right way. It would probably have to have an eccentric orbit which made it get noticeably farther and closer to the planet at various points in its orbit, and thus the patterns on its surface would only be visible when the moon was closer to the planet (and only in the parts of the moon that were lit by their star).
Possibly someone here can calculate if it is possible for a habitable planet to have a presumably recently captured moon with enough tidal heating to be constantly resurfacing itself.
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An alien race has covered the planet, or whatever percentage you see fit with a giant TV screen.
Maybe they double as solar panels somehow.
Now they can literally change any part of the visible surface at whim.
Just wait till they spam you with moon sized commericials... muhhahahahaha!
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There's the obvious option:
[That's no moon. It's a space station.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nho44lGVV8)
There are many options what is its purpose then. It could be a hyperspace relay, where the surface features are related to how hyperspace works, and massive changes are result of tuning to different targets locations or "hyperspace weather" or whatnot.
It could be a fully automated data network relay, and it's that big because hyperspace relay just needs the size to open the rift to the hyperspace.
It could actually be travel relay, so it has to be big enough to fit the ships that travel through it. And the ships come in and exit inside the sphere. It could have a port for exiting, but nobody really cares to exit here. Or this system could be a protection zone for the natives, and nobody is allowed to show themselves. That could also explain why there maybe was extra effort to disguise the relay as a moon.
The relay could also be ancient, the aliens long gone (moved to better technologies, died out, transcended, whatever). Now the relay just sits there, adapting its surface to hyperspace changes, automated repair systems keeping it functional, potentially for as long as the star of the system keeps pumping energy out.
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Here are some ideas, for a moon with a solid face:
* It could have really active plate tectonics moving the surface features around, which (as I understand it) would also imply a strong magnetic field and lots of volcanic activity.
* It could be very large, and the orbit of your planet could be just near-enough to an asteroid belt that whenever the moon moves toward the outer side of the orbit, it pulls asteroids into itself, actively rearranging the craters on its face
* If your planet is large, its moon could have a ring small of meteors around it, regularly falling into the moon (with no atmosphere to destroy them) and those could also rearrange the craters.
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Arctic sea ice is constantly changing, although not on a daily timescale:
<https://thumbs.gfycat.com/BothDismalEmperorpenguin.webp>
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The surface of the moon is covered in an exotic lifeform with an exceedingly rapid lifecycle. Colonies of this lifeform grow to cover large portions of the lunar surface in as little as 12 hours, competing for space with surrounding colonies, before rapidly crashing as soil fertility is depleted. No sooner has one colony collapsed, than another has begun its growth on another part of the moon's surface.
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Wildly unstable plate-tectonics resulting in constant quakes and volcanic eruptions. There's always lava flowing somewhere, ash floating somewhere, and new rocks forming someplace else.
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**What would animals that dig through solid rock look like? How would they differ from animals that dig through dirt?**
So basically I am trying to populate ravines and canyons with fauna that digs through rock and make extensive networks of tunnels to live in. They don’t need to be fast diggers by any means, solid rock is far harder to dig than dirt or sand. However the burrows would be permanent and offer better protection against predators and the environment. Predators that can fit through the tunnels may still be a danger but it’s far easier to defend oneself in tight spaces by blocking entrances or lunging at the attacker. The creature would occupy the niche of a herbivore that live in communities, stashing food into the tunnels chambers. These animals are essential for the ecology of that environment thanks to their burrows creating homes for many other species.
What I would like to figure out is the body plan and necessary adaptations of such a creature.
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**How does a species of animal dig through rock instead of dirt?**
*Slowly, very very slowly.*
Some already do but none of them are fast.
[Some clams & sea urchins](https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/burrow/) can burrow into rock, a couple of examples, there's [a species of bee](https://eos.org/articles/rock-chomping-bees-burrow-into-sandstone) that does it & there's [a species of ship worm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K220SUWJ73w) that does it.
None of those examples really look all that different from normal animals of their type, of course If you want something that does the same thing at speed then that may be a different issue.
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**With giant claws.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4PfJk.jpg)
<https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/get-lost-in-mega-tunnels-dug-by-south-american-megafauna>
Paleoburrows are giant tunnels through rock, excavated by extinct South American megafauna. Opinions differ as to whether these tunnels were excavated by giant sloths, giant armadillos. I favor both, in a team effort.
[Giant Paleoburrows
Attributed to Extinct Cenozoic Mammals from
South America](https://repositorio.unesp.br/bitstream/handle/11449/162902/WOS000403834800004.pdf?sequence=1)
>
> These burrows are found in continental settings, in substrates that
> include consolidated sands, sandstones, and weathered granitic and
> basaltic rocks ranging in age from the Precambrian to the late
> Cenozoic. The size of these structures precludes their assignment to
> any living species, and therefore, they are considered paleoburrows
> (i.e., produced by extinct organisms)... Large (about 2 meters in
> height and up to 4 meters in width), subelliptical paleoburrows that
> can surpass 50 meters in length and become narrower towards their
> ends. These megatunnels are subhorizontal; so far, no body fossils
> have been found inside, but scratches produced by the diggers are
> present along the walls...
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>
>
Tunnels that have not been choked with mud and silt are big enough to walk through and some are big enough to drive a car through. The longest one found so far is 2000 feet long! It is not known how long it took for digging animals to excavate these tunnels. It is known that they are super cool. This would be perfect for a fiction and the body plans of both giant sloth and giant armadillos are known from their skeletons.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tlyYb.jpg)
<https://www.reddit.com/r/Slothfoot/comments/heac7e/lifesized_jeffersons_ground_sloth_model_by_jaap/>
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With tools. There are plenty of actual animals that can use simple tools, so any animal picking up a rock and bashing it into a wall isn't hard to imagine. And a [Mantis Shrimp](https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-discover-how-mantis-shrimp-can-punch-so-hard-without-damaging-their-claw) is capable of punching at 23 m/s, with a force of 1500 N. They have been known to smash the glass out in aquariums. If giant Mantis Shrimps picked up hard sharp rocks (like flint buried in chalk), they could probably progress quickly compared to other methods. It's likely how early humans did it.
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Acidic sweat.
Like some animals sweat pheromones (territory, sexual marking), or saline solution (cooling), through their paws/hands, theres no reason why a creature couldn't have mildly acidic sweat/secretions. Not on the scale of *Aliens*, just enough to weaken and burrow into a very alkali rock such as limestone.
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In a number of places in the world, people have cut tunnels and homes into volcanic tuff. That is a fairly soft stone and I think that a number of animals could dig into it. For example, Cappadocia has both homes cut into volcanic tuff towers and into deeper areas. Bandelier National Monument has a history going back 11,000 years. Both places have deeper valleys.
Your story can have both critters with claws and soft stone to dig into.
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#### Like humans, using explosives
If you want to spice up the story, have the creatures secrete an explosive compound. There are [real animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachinus_crepitans) that can do that. The explosive compounds will be different from what real animals make, but I don't think there's any reason why an animal could not evolve that.
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**They don't**
Unless they enlarge existing tunnnels or cracks in the rock which are ventilated they would not have enough oxygen. The soil is porous and lets some air go through, the rock is not, they could not stay very long in a deep unventilated burrow.
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Take a cue from [Tremors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremors_(1990_film)), and just *assert* that it happens:
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> an enormous burrowing wormlike monster suddenly erupts out of the ground
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As mentioned in comments, this is going to depend on the type of stone and how quickly you want it done.
Sandstone, soapstone, some pumice and a number of other types of stone are less than 3 on the Mohs scale, meaning you can at least scratch it with a fingernail. Most animals with good strong keratin claws can dig through these with a little effort using nothing other than their claws. It'll still be slow, but with some persistence it's not hard... sorry, had to be said.
For tougher types of stone nails aren't going to be enough. Up to ~5 on the Mohs scale you're working with material that's softer than human tooth enamel and the more dense bone structures of the human body. Animals with stronger teeth aren't terribly uncommon, and there are several types of animals in the world that grow new teeth throughout their lifespan. Properly configured this will get you almost as high as granite, letting you tunnel through marble or dolomite.
From Mohs 5 up you're going to need something better than the norm for hard biological structures on Earth. At this point I'd switch tack and look for a chemical solution (yeah, I know, just ignore the puns). Acids sound like a good option, especially as acid production is a routine function of most animals. You'll need to adjust the particular type of acid to better fit the rock type you're attempting to tunnel through, both for efficacy and to minimize the toxicity of the reaction products. And you'll want a decent airflow.
On the plus side you don't have to actually dig the tunnel with acid, just use it to soften up the work surface until it's weak enough for you to dig out the next layer. It's a slow process, but still faster than trying to scratch or chew your way through granite.
For more esoteric options, you can do a lot with ice in a rock face filled with microfractures. In a sub-zero C environment (< 32F for the Americans in the audience) all you need is an organic antifreeze that either breaks down quickly or with some enzyme action. The antifreeze lets water stay liquid long enough to seep into the cracks, then when it breaks down the water freezes and breaks the rock via expansion. Repeat the process until you have friable rock that can be easily cleared to allow access to the next layer.
If ice isn't really your speed, how about something biological that's a bit more explosive? Bombadier beetles mix hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide and combine the mixture with an enzyme to produce an extremely energetic reaction. While it doesn't get much above the vaporization point of water, up to 1/5th of the mixture of hydroquinone and peroxide can be vaporized. If you could externalize the reaction then it might produce enough heat and pressure to crack the surrounding rock. With the right combination of reactants you could perhaps end up with an acidic compound... or cut out the middle-man and just use the peroxide to eat the rock for you.
Stepping out of the normal biological mold, there are all sorts of creatures in fantasy and science fiction whose natural processes grow crystalline teeth rather than the less durable enamel-coated structures we use. Imagine a process that lets an animal grow teeth and/or claws out of quartz (7 on the Mohs scale), corundum (9) , or diamond (10). Even if they were fragile to impacts and therefore not much use in a fight, they'd still be good for grinding away at the rocks.
And since I've already gone on far longer than you're probably interested, let me leave you with one final option: bacteria. No, hear me out. I always save the weirdest for last...
Your tunnelers have a symbiotic relationship with a type of bacteria that requires specific minerals to reproduce or as a necessary part of their normal metabolism. As waste product they leave behind a compound that either has nutritional value or acts as a drug to the tunnelers. The bacteria grow through the rock following veins of their mineral, cracking the rocks to something the consistency of chalk as they convert the bulk of this mineral to biomass. The tunnelers come along and slurp up the mess, eating the biomass or getting a good buzz, and incidentally spreading the bacteria to new veins in the uncovered surfaces.
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I am thinking of a planet (I suppose one would call it a parallel earth) where the industrial revolution never happens, and people live with 1700s technology forever. What differences in resources/weather/environment/available land area could ensure that it doesn't happen, and what impact would these changes have on other aspects of society?
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Limit the availability of raw materials, in particular fossil fuels and iron. Without fossil fuels you are limited to wood burning as a power source which is far less energy dense and a much more finite supply. Without iron it's much harder to make much of the earlier engineering feats.
This means you don't get useful steam engines or railways which were two of the largest factors in industrialization. This would also extend out to mining which becomes harder, etc.
The life of most people would not be impacted as much (iron, steel and in particular steel weapons would be extremely rare and valuable) but would continue as normal.
Eventually you can expect people to find a way around these limitations so there would still be technological advancement but it would be much slower. So you can't achieve "for ever" but you could conceivably have centuries of millennia of very slow advancement before enough breakthroughs are made to unlock alternative technologies.
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That is far too advanced to expect technology to remain static for long.
Technology advances without new resources - new resources certainly shape *how* technology advances, but better methods and processes develop using the same resource constraints.
Coal is not the cause of industrialization, so eliminating it will not prevent advancement. This may be suggested as people misunderstand the industrial revolution and think it was caused by steam-power, but the industrial revolution was already well underway before that became widespread (causality runs the other way - it is the industrial revolution which leads to the development of steam power as innovators sought ways to feed the rapidly growing power needs).
Charcoal is nearly as good for most purposes anyway, so you would see all the effort that went into coal mining go into tree farms and kilns, and likely transport of charcoal from areas with plentiful forests.
Water power was extensively used for industrial purposes but was supplanted because conditions made coal-fired steam engines cheaper. Canals were being built at a rapid place to facilitate trade before railroads became cheaper. Windmills were used where water was either scarce or slow-moving (I've been fascinated by the Dutch sawmills). While certainly more expensive and more constrained than steam engines, these still power development.
Imposing sufficient constraints to prevent people developing beyond the 18th century standards would be sufficient constraints that they would be unable to attain even that level of development.
Developments like capitalism, assembly-line production, standardized replaceable parts, cargo containerization, and most of the truly innovative changes which allowed the amazing economic development we enjoy today do not rely upon any resources beyond the human mind.
The constraint will need to be societal in nature, like a strong religious prohibition on any changes, but that will not last forever as there will always be those who question.
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The (misconception here, there's been *many* industrial revolutions in major & minor countries over quite some time - [even Switzerland had some](http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/industrialization-switzerland.html)) Industrial Revolutions have not just been about technology, but also about society.
The change from homeworking and small manufacturing to central factories and exporting goods had to go hand-in-hand with changes in how society worked and accepted these paradigm shifts.
* **People** had to have reasons to work in these new factories powering new industries.
* **Laws** had to be accommodating these new structures and allow for them - many medieval laws actively prevented any advances that destroyed working places, this changed with the renaissance..
Instead of removing resources, prevent changes in law - thus prevent reformation of societies. This will prevent any advances in industrialization and technology much longer than removing some resources.
---
**TL;DR** You **can't prevent** industrialization by getting rid of resources, but you **can delay** any huge technological advances by keeping society static.
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I think that you will find that strong property rights are a common characteristic of peoples and nations that innovate in the way the English did in creating the industrial revolution. Why build a mill if somebody else is going to destroy it or take it away from you?
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You might not need a reason. We assume that just because something has happened to us it seems natural but consider that in Australia they never invented bow and arrow.
There might also be fewer political or economic forces to make such inventions attractive. Given good farmland humans might be able to live on very few hours of work a day and be perfectly happy. I think Harari's Sapiens was discussing this.
I'm also not sure if you would still consider this industrial revolution but it is not (immediately) obvious (to me, at least) that many of the achievements of the steam engine could not have been done without it. Wind energy was already popular.
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Here are a number of ideas, some are more speculative and handwaving than others.
* No Coal Deposits
Have some kind of bacteria that rapidly decomposes dead wood develope when trees come around. They would need to be quite resilient and have some extremophile cousins to decompose wood in anaerobic environments.
* No Colonialism
This is really speculative but could work story wise. Have a ghost plage-ship reach the America 200 years before Columbus or have the Norse colonies on Vinland and Markland succeed. Both events would allow the Americans to develop immunities to European diseases, which killed 95% of the population before the Europeans came to colonize. The technological advantage would not have been sufficient to conquer native superpowers during that time. No American colonial nations would hamper European economies, because there would be fewer export markets. Without the colonial successes in the Americas the tedious adventures in Africa, South-East-Asia and India wouldn´t have a base. Especially the case of India is interesting, as the looting of India by the British and it's use as a resource mine and market might have been crucial for the industrial revolution to happen.
* Slavery
Brasil isn´t a world power. That´s really odd as it is a huge, resource and manpower-rich country. The reason for that is that they didn´t industrialized, as their economy was slave-based. European economies weren´t slave-based because the Pope prohibited the enslavement of the recently baptized in 1435. Never let this happen and you got slave economies in Europe.
All that said I don´t feel that option two and three will be permanent. Option one with no coal means no industry or the rapid collapse of it when the forests are all cut down. An example of this would be the Mioan copper industry on Crete. This would hit all the countries equally.
Options two and three would only hamper Europe. In that case, my money would be on one of the Mughal Empires Indian successor states or Japan starting the spiral of technological development. India had been one of the most industrialized regions of the world for millennia until the British came plundering. Japan had already developed high-sea ships, but they were shocked into isolationism upon contact with the more advanced Europeans. Keep the Europeans primitive and a Japanese colonial Empire could be the first step in and eastern technology arms race with Korea and Qing. But both the latter options would give you a few centuries longer of pre-industrial Europe to play around with.
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Don't change the planet, change the animals living on it.
Do you remember the story of John Henry? As the story goes, he was the best railroad track layer in the country and he challenged a steam hammer to a track laying competition. If he could beat the steam hammer, then the railroad company would use manual labor instead. He was fast enough to win, but he died of exhaustion, and the railroad company used steam hammers anyway. But... what John Henry was just an average railroad track layer, and there where other guys much stronger and faster than he was who could leave a steamhammer in the dust?
Now imagine a world where biology is just better across the board. Horses that haul several ton carts at interstate speeds, people who are dexterous enough to weave clothing at the pace of a loom or carve furniture at the speed of power tools, and Oxen that can plow and reap fields with all the speed of a tractor.
You don't need to make animals Marvel action hero better, just better enough that creating a technology good enough to beat good-ol-fashioned elbow grease would require too many individual improvements to get from point A to point B for people to ever get there. After all: if steam engines and water mills are never needed, no one would have come up with all of the hundreds of incremental advancements in modern metallurgy and mechanics necessary to finally make people obsolete.
The effect that this would have on society is that tools powered by man or animals would just be seen as better. After enough steam powered contraptions come and go, they would begin to be regarded with so much skepticism that even when someone does have a good enough idea to improve things, most people would laugh it off, IE: "A turbine engine? Haha, that's just a fancy steam engine. If I want to fly cross country, I'll just ride a giant bird like any reasonable human being. Good luck not exploding!"
[Answer]
**Massive solar flares on a regular basis.**
Also, possibly, a much weaker planetary magnetic field.
In 1989, a solar flare knocked out the power in Quebec. Big solar storms capable of knocking out power happen often enough but luckily most of them miss us. And we have a huge magnetic shield around the planet thanks to our active core so smaller storms don't have much impact. (Mars, for example, does not have this magnetic shield, which is a big problem for future colonization plans.)
So, I'm thinking:
The sun for this planet is far more active than ours. The planet is closer to it. The planet's magnetic field is weaker, offering it much less protection. Under conditions like this, my thinking that any sort of advance towards electricity tends to fail so regularly that it's simply not pursued as anything more than a fun hobby for toys that sometimes work. "Steampunk" (mechanical devices driven by simple engines) become normal and electricity is rarely if ever pursued.
Also, they probably have really spectacular auroras.
Further reading: <https://earthsky.org/space/are-solar-storms-dangerous-to-us>
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It's been argued the fact that Western Europe was splintered into competing and often warring kingdoms, with an independent Catholic Church, following the fall of the Roman Empire contributed to a culture of learning and technological innovation that eventually led to the Industrial Revolution.
Yes, Europe benefited from a unique geography, fertile soils, and a rich abundance of mineral resources. However if Europe had been united under one secular and/or religious ruler, as in China or the Ottoman Empire, new and disruptive thinking, financial innovations, and technologies could have been easily suppressed.
If the Roman Empire had persisted under one emperor, and indeed expanded into Germany, Eastern Europe, and perhaps farther east, I can't see the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, or the Industrial Revolution happening in Europe or anywhere else on Earth, at least not by the present time.
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Limiting fossil fuels would only had delayed the Industrial Revolution from taking off. So that's not going to cut it.
You'll need a massive shortage of materials, like metal ores being depleted or unavailable (think the collapse of the Ringworld civilization in Larry Niven's novels.)
The world would have to have been very unusual, either most metals sunk to the core, or some process depleted them. Then you have humanity with nothing but stone, wood, bone and clay. Too extreme me thinks.
One thing that could delay progress is Plague. Think some form of plague that's cyclic, like the cicadas, with a high mortality rate, but with the cycles changing unpredictable over time, tied to some migratory vector species.
The Old World went to crap several times because of the Plague, and it were plagues introduced by Europeans that utterly destroyed all Pre-Columbian civilizations, from the agrarian all the way up to militarily strong, sophisticated empires.
So if you throw a wrench at humanity in the form of a recurring, unstoppable, high mortality rate, then whatever remains of humanity will be forced to hunker down in fragmented areas, which grow and then break over and over.
The cycles should be long enough for population to semi-bounce and spread and create new bunkers, and then to experience massive, widespread death when the plague comes.
I have a hard time seeing humanity escaping from being illiterate nomads with a few feudal lords here and there.
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The Industrial Revolution would have looked very different, if it could have happened at all, if not for surface deposits of coal (and secondarily oil).
Coal is formed by the decomposition of plant matter in peat bogs by anaerobic bacteria. Therefore, a different microbiome during the carboniferous era (and later) might have produced much less coal near the surface where it could have been easily mined. This might involve a new species that was better at decomposing plant matter in water before it could become coal, either aerobic or anaerobic, or the kinds of bacteria that started the process never evolving.
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A possible catastrophe to stead the progression of technology would need to force people away from cities/ prevent people from gathering in large groups to create a disposable work force (factories would not be able to staff up to full production). A new flu strain might make people weary of large gatherings and tight proximity, a law might be in-place to prevent talk of uprisings and challenges to the powers that be, maybe a disease that only effects woman has killed off most of the females of our population and those left are forced into exclusivity to protect their female resources. The how is pretty broad, but one of those scenarios would be an interesting place to build a world out of.
In terms of impact, the amount of humans the earth can support would be dramatically reduced. Up to current time, population spikes have been met with new technology in the agriculture space to support the new boom. The industrialization of farming is what allowed large populations to be sustained during the industrial revolution, and also allowed for large amounts of the populations that did not have to farm. People all over the world would be starving, likely forcing more people into indentured servitude or slavery as those ways of life would likely be the only way to get fed. It would start its own apocalyptic world, where a large portion of the world is doomed to die of starvation. People likely would turn to cannibalism and the fabric of society would quickly unravel.
[Answer]
Religious oppression.
Religion won't allow certain advancements.
The impact is fairly obvious, disease and starvation remain rampant, people never live very long, knowledge is rarely passed between generations.
Here's a simplified view.
**Generation 1:** Man needs wood for his fire, he can only collect fallen trees. He spends his entire life collecting wood and hunting. His son grows up.
**Generation 2:** Seeing his father busy from wood hunting, her tries to use tools he already has to cut down a tree. Smashing it with a rock doesn't work, but eventually the rock splits and becomes sharp. This new sharp rock works much better. His son sees this.
**Generation 3:** The Axe is born, the man goes out and cuts down a tree, brings it home, and raises a family, the son is a baby.
---Religious fanatics attack claiming this new axe invention violates gods rules of the world. The man is killed and his axe destroyed.
**Generation 4:** The baby grows to be a man, and has to go collect wood for the fire by hand, not knowing about the lost invention of the axe or how to make one.
The cycle repeats forever.
[Answer]
The industrial revolution happened because of advances in technology.
Technology improved because of advances in science.
Science (and art) improved because more resources and people time became available.
This Renaissance happened because a substantial portion of the population suddenly disappeared (Black Plague), leaving a population with far more resources and infrastructure per person that they had ever had before.
So, if you want to prevent the industrial revolution, you have to first eliminate the Renaissance. And you can do that by eliminating the Black Plague, and allowing Europe to continue existing in the dark ages.
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While not quite at the same level of technology, I suspect better sanitation would be a small, reasonable change.
With better sanitation, the black death never rips through Europe. The grip and authority of the church is never challenged in the same way. The population of Europe remains high, preventing wealth and knowledge from accumulating the same way. As a result, people remain in limbo, or at least advance much slower
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### No scarcity of wood
People in England started using coal for heating because charcoal became too expensive due to massive deforestation. The steam engine was invented to pump water out of coal mines so that more coal could be mined! It was a desperate move to use that dirty toxic underground mineral rather than wood.
### No overpopulation in cold latitudes
Of course, wood would not had become scarce of the number of people in England was not large enough to provoke a massive deforestation. If the number of people in cold ladies head remained in balance with the rate of forest recovery, the steam engine would never have appeared.
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The history of mankind is one of progress. There must have been many opportunities missed by mankind, and yet here we are. "missing" the industrial rev would not stop progress, the technology would advance, only in a different way. This would be an interesting idea to work with... How would the technology advance differently?
Let me know if you do anything with this, I would be interested to hear what you write.
**Edit:**
One example of us missing an opportunity would be periods of tech slowdown like 1971-now. Where tech advance has been limited to only the world of byts. Peter Thiel would say it's because we have become (most people) indefinite optimists, I would say it's because we had some social innovation instead.
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You have to derail the western civilization early. It's not natural resources nor technology that brings about industrialization but the social setting. The West industrialized first because it had a global trade network increasing the demand for goods since the great navigations, massive internal migrations from the villages to the cities since the 30 years war devastated the countrysides of Europe and the enclosures finished the jobs and a complete lack of reverence for the natural world that allowed it to exploit both the nature and the fellow men (the lack of reverence for the nature came from christianity killing the ancient animism and illuminism killing the link bewteen man and god).
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As god you can engineer your environment to make industrialization less likely. None of these things mentioned here would necessarily be a show stopper on their own but put them all together and industrialization becomes much less likely. Industrialization only came about because it was profitable, make it unprofitable and it won’t happen.
A much drier desert world would help. Not waterless and not without seas, but with much more land and a lot drier climate with more deserts and semi deserts as well as a few more fertile areas.
This could help eliminate fossil fuels by removing or reducing the places where they form. It would also increase the value of trees and make it more expensive to burn them as fuel. Fuel would be provided by low grade materials such as dried plant waste and dung which would not be convenient or energy dense for a stream engine.
Reduce the availability of iron ore and metal ores in general: perhaps there were fewer natural processes at work concentrating ores so although wide spread, they are very dilute and difficult to purify. Concentrated deposits are rare and where they do occur they are located in more remote and inaccessible places far from woodland so either charcoal or iron ore has to be transported across land to bring the two together to allow for smelting making it expensive.
Prevent the agricultural revolution (which preceded and helped to enable the Industrial revolution).Spread the habitable area out along some long valleys like the Nile that flow through a desert. There are no large areas of woodland that can be cleared to make way for vast areas of cereal crops. The population is dispersed in a strip maybe 10 miles either side of the river for hundreds of miles.
Provide plenty of cheap animal labour – something like the camel or some sort of “desert horse” type that can live off of very rough grazing and can be widely used for land transportation when needed.
Industrialization would be unlikely in this world as it would not be profitable.
] |
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[
Very soon I suspect we will see the rise of machine in the next couple of decades if people continue abusing Moore laws, suppose robot laws are hardwired into their core how can we make them believe in the value of money and what will be the form of currency be like? For all I know bitcoin is dead and I need the form of currency to be recognized by the droid and majority of us! Let me simplified my question: If a banana can bribe a gorilla for a selfie what can be used on droids?
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US Dollars, Euros, or any internationally strong currency used by humans in your world.
Let's face it - most of our "currency" is already in bank accounts; not as any physical form but as electronic entries machines "understand" as well as, or better than, we do. What does a droid need? Maintenance? Spare parts? Power source? All of these can be easily bought with regular currencies.
**TL;DR: No need for anything new, normal money will work.**
[Answer]
## Energy backed money
Our predecessors used salt, shells, gems and gold pieces as a currency before banking era. The same way we can use energy (kWh) as a modern universal equivalent, which is valuable for droids. Using energy instead of money is common among various sci-fi settings. Later it could evolve to the energy backed currency.
Energy backed money is a real concept:
* <http://www.theperfectcurrency.org/main-energy-currency/energy-currency>
* <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Energy-Backed_Currencies>
* <http://www.energybackedmoney.com/>
[Answer]
**Computational power modules to feed their mainframe**
Think about their mainframe (not saying they are a hive mind) but kind of like the droid that droids go to to figure something more complex out quicker.
**Compared to human currency**
Now this droid/device is like a government to the droids and since our currency relies on our government's worth, adding more power to this mainframe or having more power for this mainframe mobile would be worth something between the droids as well as humans.
So the currency will be a module such as hot-swappable CPU or full device like the [Raspberry Pi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi), which contains cpu, motherboard and ram, which they can plug into this mainframe should they please.
**Variation in currency**
If trading with these droids became standard then, like currency, these modules would be separated into categories to define their worth. probably small categories like cents and dollars or pence and pounds
so powerful module, standard module and lesser module
like platinum, gold and silver
*This answer assumes you want a currency that will carry through the ages to when droids go to other universes to trade*
[Answer]
## Energy and energy backed money
It was mentioned already by @enkryptor, but lead to some discussion why energy and not currencies or other arbitrary tokens would be used.
I wish to address at this point that this is an extension to [enkryptor's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/53544/20315). Although I'm not a financial expert, and this should be included in equations by those who can do it, for others, there are just a few aspects as I see them at the moment.
## Why energy?
Energy is objectively measurable, just like any other form of money (currencies, oil, salt, whatever) - there is no significant difference.
The value, or buying strength, of it is also not fixed - it changes itself over advances in using it (technology), or because of a change in demand, production and etc.
What is good about it - it can't be diluted by definition.
* One of the reasons is mentioned here [The Truth About The Fall of Rome: Modern Parallels](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh7rdCYCQ_U). I can't say it is the truth as it is (I have an opinion, but that's all), but there are concerns about different kinds of manipulation and the subject probably is beyond a single answer at all, and this particular answer for sure.
*It is relatively easy to check or count them* - you are pouring them in your energy pocket and counting them at the same time. Counting them and verifying them is the same single process.
*It can not be falsified.* Even if using them does not prevent fraud, the tokens themselves can't be falsified.
*No need for a single emitting center*. That is actually an important moment - especially when we are talking about humans vs machines, as it might be the question of survival for both of those kinds, and if they have to exchange some goods, it is probably a good idea to have something which is universally acceptable, despite the relations between the parties using it.
* as an example the emitting center might say: *screw you, all bonds with numbers xxx to yyy you possess - we will not accept them, we do not have obligations for them, our reasons for doing that are stronk etc.* And inform other parties about the decision too, to prevent selling those bonds. It will do harm to the droid/human relation, but it is not the same harm(from humans perspective) - it's a lesser one than when humans would say that about other humans. (And they do it sometimes by freezing accounts, etc. - the system still works) A distributed system will prevent such types of manipulations.
It is not totally fiat money, and it has a definite intrinsic value for a particular group, which can be different for different groups (as part of the relativistic aspect of energy money), and that value could be kept in secret, be less predictable for an opponent, and probably eliminate the possibility of the existence of a definite winning strategy. So you do not *have* to use other forms of interaction like stock exchanges - remember we talk about "droids" humans, they might have different values and not disclosed goals (there are a lot of social aspects as consequences in choosing energy as money - in short, it allows to connect social structures with little or no common/shared social basis).
*The intrinsic value does not depend on stocks*. It is defined by the capabilities of that group alone, and if they have all sets of technologies they need, they are not so dependent on values up/downs/fall of some currency. There is no need to have lots of them in your pocket, no need to care about stock prices, exchange rates (no need to dedicate resources for those who cares like financial advisers, brokers etc). The *Domino effect* is much much less problematic than it is now, or at least there are more solutions to prevent participating in it. Vanishing one of the players just means there is now a free place, objectively free, more place under the sun. (Kind of like it is now, but not quite so IMHO).
Despite gold and other substitutions - energy is used in every single task, product, service etc. It is at least one definite thing we can say about any civilization: humans, alien, droids, etc. Not sure about Olympian god's - but it looks like to some extent it is true for them too. (Not sure about creatures with a source of infinite energy, which is created from nothing - but I guess at least for some time we can exclude these from our equations. Olympians were limited in their power - so not a big deal for us.)
The value and thereby the price of a wide set of goods and services are well defined for that particular group for the buyer. It is defined at different levels: a single individual, some parts of a group, for the group as a whole, for the whole civilization. It can have a different value on every level and for every group - but it is defined in each particular case by the buyer. He can more precisely estimate what is a fair price for him based on his capability, not on how much he can pay for it. It is less of an object of speculation or subjective perception of self-worth, or speculative efforts of individuals to manipulate stocks. And the conception of a fair price is more defined. You always (ideally) know what the fair price for you and for your situation is.
* It has a place in some particular cases, like knowing what has to be done to produce this or another good and actual capability to go from a plan to actually doing that production. And with other possible parts of that system, like sharing technologies and p2p development - it could be true, and more easily to estimate. Also it will have a benefit for p2p development - just a part of it or a way to share information about the possibility of more efficient production of something because at the end it lowers your personal prices as a buyer of particular goods (I should probably skip that part because the explanation of it is far beyond the scope of that answer, but *whatever*.)
The ability to not participate and do not rely on stocks exchanges to determine a fair price eliminates the need to understand mass behavior of humans in an effort to determine if it is the next upcoming bubble or it is a real trend, and what the nature of that trend is. We are a separate kind and we do not have to understand why pokemons are back and why they are worth something, just as a weird example, the thing is more complex than that, but it is, again, about sharing common cultural values, even not themselves, but sharing that basis which makes them possible. And as droids are a different kind, it doesn't have to be expected that they will share even some of that basis, or at least big enough to produce common cultural values at all (probably a few are expected, but not a lot - energy is one of them).
## Another kind of *why?*, which I wish to separate from others
The things above where some local details, or aspects and realization benefits. But there are some factors, as we (I) can imagine them now at more global scale, which should not slip from attenuation in situations, such as *droids vs humans*.
One of the universal things, which we believe to work for all as of now known living things - is survival. So if droids are so independent that they have money instead of orders, my bet is that those survival principles will apply to them too (no instant FTL for infinite distances (in case the universe is not finite), no infinite energy - both are equivalents).
Within a solar system, the available energy is great but finite. Within the sphere expanding with the speed of light, it is big, but finite, even if it changes over time for quite a long time. It is big, but finite within our galaxy - and there is a considerably longer time until the next source in terms of expansion. (But if you are interested in that you could, maybe, read [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/47939/20315), [that](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/47982/20315), and all videos from this YT Channel [Isaac Arthur](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g)).
Despite the possible intellectual differences and knowledge between civilizations, Samuel Colt Made Them Equal Energy is possibly the way to compensate for intellectual and knowledge-based differences between all parties.
One possible way of keeping an equilibrium, and a way to grantee to be respected by the other party despite other factors, which could be not so much superior, is to have enough energy and preventing others from having it. Someone can be smart, but without energy to realize that smartness in actions it is worth nothing.
**That alone might be a social reason to switch our perception of money to energy**, *to ensure that this is a subject of interest of every single human alive*. And humans are tools to control that subject and detect any changes in it. Someone could outsmart us, but as long as we care about each other we should notice changes in our counts, or any direct or indirect obstruction of energy flow (*[force is stronk](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CDgF1.jpg)*) to us as humans.
You have to understand that a top notch AI needs the energy to outsmart us as a system. It does not need a lot of energy or intellect to outsmart a single person, but as a system, we are much more robust, and the task itself is more complex. So even with a perfect AI (or a system of "droids"), this energy equilibrium exists. It is not a stable state without other shared and respected interests between parties. Shared interest makes this situation more stable (we are lazy and are happy to expect some inventions from AI, so we have a base interest in its existence. AI also might have some interest), but even in that situation, someone has to keep an eye on the energy balance. Without shared values, it is vital to have humans en masse based Joda collective - which "feels" that energy flows.
The biggest energy supply in our system at the moment is the Sun. So, on the solar system arena, we are talking about establishing control over a $382.8 \* 10^{24} \frac{J}{s}$ source. It is not the biggest and most powerful source which is possible within our system - because of its inefficiency and low power output per unit of mass. But at least it is within a few (at least one as I'm aware of, or as my imagination stretches) orders of magnitude near that value.
As we definitely have an interest in the existence of AI, I suggest we should have 51% of it, in case droids efficiency is equivalent to human efficiency - efficiency in terms of intellectually and technology/energy wise combined. If they are more efficient, then we should accumulate more power.
Establishing that equilibrium, and power over power probably will not be a *one day process*, and the amount of energy in possession and energy sources will determine how fast parties move to that equilibrium. Probably it was not worth to notice because the equilibrium establishing still might be more like catch than a long run, but the initial energy will be one of the factors which determine the outcome.
This way of changing the energy balance, so as energy exchange and energy money use might become an even more fundamental thing, as a way to overcome our human separations, laziness (we have inventions, and productions, we can't buy only with droid relations) etc. in the face of that "droid" system, and will determine the true worth of groups.
## As a conclusion
These are some of my thoughts and reasonings about the subject that lead me to believe that using energy as money is more than just money energy, and as some of us are expecting some AI to come to existence, I suggest we start using them sooner than later, even if it might have deep benefits now, it might have even deeper benefits later.
[Answer]
The boring answer is "money, because money is a proxy for resources".
But money is a lossy proxy. It was designed with human limitations in mind, for an economic structure also designed around human limitations.
It is possible that an AI, stripped of human limitations, would engage in a different kind of economics -- economics 2.0 -- that doesn't rely on the approximation of "money" to facilitate trade.
As a simple example, imagine if all trades where arranged based on a a multi-party barter system possibly spanning the world. You don't sell your chicken for money, you sell it for exactly the resources. It never transitions to being an arbitrary unit of currency. The chicken trade ends up resulting in an obligation by someone on the far side of the world to manufacture the fence posts you'll need in 3 weeks to repair the expected damage to your coop, plus a delivery of pizza tonight. The person you gave the chicken to promised various other things in an extremely long and complex chain that led to those things being delivered.
We can go a step further and have the economics be based on promises and obligations of particular form that are not actually concrete goods, whose value fluxates based on the expected ability for each party to do their job.
Going even further, the trade might involve being paid to have your own AI software modified in certain ways, changing your own preference function in exchange for satisfying your current needs.
And that might be economics 1.1, because at least you can understand the description.
The thing of value being traded may eventually be something actually beyond human ability to understand even a simplified version of it. Imagine describing credit default swaps to a gorilla. Now how about more complex financial instruments.
If said economic system is sufficiently more powerful than ours, ours will be swallowed. What resources we are afforded will be along the lines of what resources we provide gorillas or other non-economic actors: their economic value to the system is determined less by their own actions and what they provide us, than what we decide it is. They have no framework to understand what behavior would optimize their supply of resources, other than hoping that the rate at which the optimal behavior changes is slower than their ability to adapt to the seemingly arbitrary demands placed on them.
Of course, if the droids are dumb (say, no smarter than us), then probably an economic system similar to our current one (or at least one we understand) will be used to trade with them.
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The financial system could be under significant pressure from droids.
* they can work 24/7 without needing a break
* they don't need to eat
* they don't need a home
These are the primary limitations on the human body along with being the primary costs keeping the money in circulation.
There are secondary factors, for example humans desire *stuff*. Meatbags have a tendency to want to keep up with the Jones, to indulge in financial vanity, to be seen to have wealth and spend it. This is another factor keeping money in circulation, again droids don't have these urges (unless artificially written in).
This leads to a classic problem that the Luddites will always protest against. Each droid puts 3-4 people out of work and generates almost none of the economic activity for the money earned relative to those people. The people who want the things they produce will have no money to buy them due to being out of work. Total economic collapse results. At least that's the theory, in practice it never seems to work that way as industries automate.
The solution is to keep the droids as slaves and not give them money at all. Limit how many droids a household can own and each one is permitted to take the work of a member of the household who is responsible for its maintenance and to whom the droid's earnings go.
What could possibly go wrong, slaves never rebel after all.
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This answer is a meta-answer, but the angle has not been touched on by others. It would be very interesting to enforce good behavior by requiring a robot to have a stream of some non-elemental (not power, not material) token to operate. Feel free to modify this answer to be more concrete... A token that authorizes access to information (kbytes, including sensory input) is the closest I can come to this, but it's hard to make guarantees that it can't be cheated...
In that way, robots that misbehave are sanctionable. Maybe the lack of specificity of this idea means it's not possible to make something that a robot/computer can't independently steal or create. But this would make an ideal wage for a robot. If a paid transaction got a robot in trouble, the sponsor would be responsible in some way as well... This is a bit law and orderly perhaps or Orwellian, since someone has to decide what actions can be sanctioned, but it would solve the problem of robots out of control, or robots utilized for nefarious purposes in cases where the three laws of robotics fail. If society agrees, the robot can act...
I would never argue for a human to be ruled exactly like this, though there is an aspect to this to human society already. "Freedom" is the token. If society disagrees on an action, any amount of freedom you obtain from your situation goes away when you go to jail...
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The thing to keep in mind about trade is that it occurs when both parties get something of greater value than the things that they give up.
For example, I buy bread from a baker because I value eating that bread more than the dollar I give up. The baker takes the dollar because he values the dollar more than the bread he baked. I used "bread" and "dollar" in this example, but this applies to any two people, and anything that they might want to trade.
Thus, to understand what forms of currency a droid will want to use, you need to understand what the motivations that a given droid may have, and what the droid calculates will help accomplish its goals.
For example, if a droid decided it wanted to go to the moon, it may very well create widgets that humans really like, so that it can get dollars from humans (or perhaps gold, or something else entirely, instead -- it could be that, due to inflation and poor government policy, no one -- droid OR human -- will want anything to do with dollars), which it can then use to buy rocket fuel and ingersol (from humans and other droids alike!) to build something that will take it to the moon.
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**Electricity**. Or rather, access to power when needed. Maybe power storage would be valued as well.
**Upgrades**. Some may value expanded capacity or capability.
**Spare parts**. On the other hand, with extra options, more might be required / requested of the unit, so there may be a value in NOT upgrading. Regardless, one spare in storage is worth two in the store.
**Clock cycles**. Access to extra ticks makes many jobs easier, or at least faster.
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Let's assume the Droids of which you speak, are self aware, having needs, wants and desires. Then the droids will use whatever money is in wide use at that time to trade for those things they need. Reason being that money is just an easily carried, stored and/or traded "object" which represents a fairly specific amount of goods and/or services. Society itself decides what objects will be generally accepted as currency/money at that specific time in history.
So it is not so much getting a droid to see the value of money, it's getting the droid to recognize and use whatever form of currency/money has value in the society in which lives, works and plays.
Now, if your question is what are we going to pay droids for working, than the answer gets a bit more difficult. It would depend on if their self awareness made them selfish as well. That would be the point in time that a machine refuses to work without receiving a reward or a "bribe" to use your word.
[Answer]
Time.
For the (assuming self-aware, three-laws compliant robots) robots, time takes the form of energy supply - if they run out of energy, they run out of time.
For the humans, time takes the form of robots performing services for them, even earning money for them. Leaving them free to do whatever they want.
The exchange rate (between robot time/human time) would be something to work out though.
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[
Question inspired by questions about [best power source for zombie apocalypse](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/42174/what-production-of-power-would-be-most-efficient-in-a-zombie-apocalypse) and mine question about [rebooting the nuclear power plant](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/28836/can-average-joe-reboot-the-nuclear-power-plant):
**Setup:** Deadly virus wiped out 80% of population. We are following a group of 500 survivors who managed to go through the disasters and take care of themselves for 2 years already (Story time is 2 years after disaster).
This group wants to have electricity back. Because fridges, lights in the night and planning to set up some broadcast and try to find out if there are more survivors (for whatever reasons, they did not find any new survivor for past half a year)
The group is located nearby power source of your choice. Only **limitation** is that this power source has to be existent (and running) by end of year 2016.
**The problem:** No one in group actually worked in any power plant or anything related to power generation. There are clever people inside the group (know how stuff works and/or handymen).
Also, for whatever reason, the power source of your choice went through emergency shutdown and is not generating any power at the moment.
**The tools:** Assume you have access to public library. Also assume that there might be some general manuals to be found inside the power plant. Also assume that most of security devices in and around the plant are not working and the group already managed to get to the power plant.
**The goal:** People in my group calculated that they need at least 10 MW of power to run their broadcasting station. (They might be wrong, but thats not scope of this question. Please consider this as limitation)
**The question:** What power plant is easiest to boot up from ground and run? And can you actually do it?
P.S.: No zombies are around and the group is not endangered by outside factors (weather and nature), so you have all the time you need. Just do not be stupid as I was last time with nuclear power plant
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## **For simplicity and versatility accept no substitute but diesel.**
**Diesel power is common**, locomotives are basically diesel generators on rails, marine diesel is prolific anywhere around canals lakes or seas and there's also containerized diesel generators meant to be carried around by semis. You have a plethora of spare parts and if you for some reason lose or have to abandon your current generator it won't be hard to find a replacement.
**It's mobile.** While bound by rail, locomotives can move around very efficiently and while the rail system would be difficult to maintain large parts of it would survive for a good long time. On the naval end of things you are only bound by the coasts canals and lakes. While a containerized version can be moved just about anywhere.
**It's easy.** Diesel engines are pretty simple, they don't have an awful lot going on and industrial diesel generators usually have their operating manual stored with them. Anyone reasonably handy can learn to operate and maintain one. Often the same model of engine is used across industries so getting spare parts for your engine is easier.
**It's reliable.** Diesel generators for industrial use are designed to be operated for 20-30 years with only basic maintenance. They are a rugged simplistic design that can tolerate being abused. One particular video comes to mind of a couple of fellows with basic tools bringing a Soviet IS-3 tank to life that had been standing for 50-60 years on a plinth in Ukraine. This is especially relevant because you want to keep on using this power until you can build power generation of your own, something that may take decades.
**It's powerful.** Even small generators start in the tens of kilowatts and locomotives have thousands ( which makes them a bit overkill for running just a broadcasting station but having that much power allows you to do all kinds of fancy things ). This also means that your power generator is very compact for the amount of power that it produces.
**It requires fuel.** This is really the one and the big downside of a diesel generator. It requires a continuous supply of diesel fuel. While initially that will be readily available, in the long term all petroleum diesel will run out or simply go off. Even here there's upsides though. The larger marine 'diesels' can basically run off crude oil if you want to spend your time securing a wellhead. Or you can distill diesel from the crude, which actually isn't as complicated as it might at first seem. If all else isn't an option there is biodiesel, it'd put an additional strain on your food supply but it would produce a near indefinite supply of fuel ( that can be used to heat homes, cook, etc ).
**TL;DR** diesel power doesn't depend on where you are, isn't sensitive to climate, produces a lot of power, it's very reliable and is very easy to use.
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## Small hydropower is the best bet
with the acknowledgement that without replacement parts, it'll be impossible to maintain the plant long term.
## Why hydro?
Hydro power is very old and can be achieved with relatively primitive machinery. The earliest hydropower dams were built in the 1880s. [Small Hydro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_hydro) plants by definition of output in the 1 to 20MW range neatly fit the 10MW power output. Hydroplants are designed to run in corrosive environments so being left unattended for 2 years will be less of an issue than other power plant types.
Assuming that the plant manuals are still around, it shouldn't be too hard to bring the plant back on line.
Small hydroplants also tend to be found on the fringes away from large population centers where the broader power grid can't or doesn't go. Hydropower only works in hilly or mountain country thus increasing the defend-ability of the town/plant.
## Challenges
While a small hydroplant is more likely to work, there are still significant challenges in practically all aspects.
* Dynamo maintenance: The survivors will need to ensure that the dynamos are properly lubricated and kept within their normal operating tolerances. The plant manuals will have this kind of information
* Dam maintenance: Depending on the size, construction method and age of the dam, this will either be a huge problem or not a problem.
* Spare parts: This. Given the industrial capacity of the world has basically disappeared, you'll be limited by what spare parts you have on hand. Further, the local fabrication facilities are probably inadequate to make a new dynamo spindle or the miles of copper wire required for windings. Even if the local fabs *can* create the parts you need, you'll have the considerable difficulty of finding sources for the raw materials in the right alloys for the job.
* Power distribution: You'll need line workers to maintain the power lines and all the tools/equipment required for those tasks. The cost of failure here is measured in lives lost.
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The answer is that *it really depends*, but *most likely **no***.
**Knowledge**
Power plants are insanely complicated, and fairly sensitive. If you don't know exactly what you're doing it's very easy to damage it beyond salvage, or cause some terrible explosion/fire. I'm sure modern plants are fairly automated, so you may be able to walk up to the control room, push a few buttons, and have it all turn on, however if a single one of the systems malfunctions you may wish you hadn't touched those controls.
Furthermore, even if all the manuals needed to understand the plant were available, reading and understanding them would probably take a lot of prerequisite knowledge, and a *lot* of man-hours to get through. After all, the plant had dozens, if not hundreds of employees, each with knowledge of the systems in their own area. Very few people are *capable* of absorbing and being able to use all of that information.
Realistically, you'd want at least some of the survivors to be familiar with the systems, and know what's going on, otherwise your chances of getting the plant running again are going to be very slim.
**Fuel and Supplies**
Which brings us to the next point: all power plants require one or more of fuel, spare parts, maintenance, etc.
They do not exist in a vacuum - they require a constant inflow of supplies to operate. You lack the resources to provide those supplies, and probably the knowledge of what maintenance needs to be done, and more importantly, *when* it needs to be done.
Any large, modern power plant is probably going to be a no-go.
**Possible Solution**
You may have more luck with some smaller, local hydroelectric, or solar panel power systems.
Consider that some people have geothermal plants installed in their homes, or solar panels installed on their roofs. You may be able to scavenge those, or -and this is even better - come across the warehouse of the company that installed those systems in the first place. Use *their* technical manuals, etc. to install new systems, or scavenge the ones from their customer's homes, and set them up in your own base.
>
> **Note:** my neighbor has a pretty cool solar power system installed on his roof, and he actually generates more power than he needs. He sells the excess to the city. We also have friends which live in a more isolated part of British Columbia. They installed a geothermal power plant in their house - yes, they actually exist - so that they wouldn't lose power during their rather ridiculous winter months. You can't install them just anywhere - they do a survey to see whether your location is viable first - but they are pretty awesome, and once installed they will keep going for decades. And while pricey, you don't have to be a millionaire to afford them.
>
>
>
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I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the **wind turbines** that are spread across Europe. Not only would they most likely be completely untouched by a zombie apocalypse but also they do not need rebooting as they'll already be running and they take minimal maintenance and manpower to run. It's simply a matter of tapping into the right part of the power grid.
This is a much simpler option than almost any other beyond perhaps finding an intact PV solar farm.
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**Diesel**
A [10MW genset](http://www.dieselserviceandsupply.com/CAT_Power_Plant_Packages.aspx) is surprisingly small, but the datacenter ones are designed to self-start when the mains power goes out. At this size they're still quite similar to their smaller portable cousins, and the engine is similar enough to truck and train engines that I'd expect a decent field mechanic to be able to work on it without too much difficulty.
Assuming that the you find one which self-started in the apocalypse has run out of fuel and batteries, you ought to be able to start it up easily once those are restored. It may be as simple as pushing a start button. Of course, you'll probably need a smaller generator to charge the batteries, and you need to find a big stockpile of diesel fuel.
They're fairly ubiquitous. I used to work in an office which had one of these in an outbuilding. You'd probably find them in datacenters, telephone exchanges, railway yards, and government buildings. You might get very lucky and find one that's already loaded on a truck.
BTW, [10MW is a heck of a lot if you put it into a radio antenna](http://jeff560.tripod.com/fm-max.html).
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*Museum of science and industry* could provide suitable machines.
Some old diesel engines were capable of running on crude oil. Such engines could probably still be found in some "Museum of science and industry" in a running condition. If the museum actually runs the engine, it should be some maintenance tools in its workshop.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gttvW.jpg)
([Wikipedia CC](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hornsby_Akroyd_lamp_oil_engine_no.10171_of_1905_at_GDSF_08.jpg))
Same about steam engines that can also be found in museums and would run on the trivial wood. A steam locomotive could be started on some wooden fence and still can use existing rails of the same gauge. Many are preserved by museums and hobbyists. It was not unusual to move some locomotives away from rails and use as generic engines in the past.
The museum could also provide some old generators to connect to these machines. Same, they may not be so great and efficient, but these old designs may be much easier maintainable, with many parts being larger than now and possible to produce from the piece of metal with relatively simple tools. Also, these old machines were often built to last for decades, and maybe museum has restored them into "better than new" condition.
Unlike modern devices, old machines relied less on the complex infrastructure around them.
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If we picked up your scenario and dropped it near Deerborn Michigan, I'd say the people there would have a very good chance of reintroducing mechanical power and electricity by raiding the Henry Ford museum. In that museum, they'd find Industrial Revolution Era steam engines of various sizes and with the help of the local library plus the information in the museum itself, they could probably get the engines running again. There is also a complete gas-powered electrical plant, circa 1916. The novelty here is that the machines were built more simply and required less sophisticated maintenance.
More importantly, the museum could instruct them on how to build their own electrical generation technology based on what was being done between 1880 and 1930s: How to build lead-acid / oil batteries, how to build simple dynamos, that sort of thing.
Assumptions: They've gotten this far to the point where they're thinking about long-term power and communication. That means they've already figured out fairly reliable near-term food supply and how to cope with Michigan's cold winters.
They'd have to start small and work their way back up. The broadcasting would need to be the last priority, particularly if the group has to learn that tech as well. Hand-cranked generators coupled with scavenged modern rechargeable batteries and LEDs would provide ample lighting. For refrigeration, propane fridges would work in the short term and propane tanks could be scavenged relatively easily - though watch out for rusty tanks! In time, they could form a plan of technology advancement based on what they can learn combined with what they can scrounge from the museum itself and the town nearby. In time, they could regain the level of comfort and security that their great-grandparents were accustomed to - which probably looks pretty good to them from their point of view.
[Answer]
The most viable solution is likely to be a small or medium sized diesel generator of the type either used for outdoor events and construction sites etc or alternatively large buildings especially hospitals etc will often have substantial generators for emergency power.
These often have simple or automated starting and are designed to be in standby mode for long periods of time with relatively little maintenance (certainly compared to dedicated power plants). They also tend to be based on fairly rugged and simple diesel engines so there is a pretty reasonably chance that anybody with some knowledge of motor mechanics would be able to get them going without too much trouble. Also in the situation you describe finding fuel shouldn't be too much of a problem.
This type pf generator also has the advantage that it is likely to provide power at an immediately usable voltage so you are not having to work about all of the infrastructure associated with distribution that goes with centralized power plants.
Possibly the ideal situation would be to find a large portable generator which was in storage at the time of the disaster.
As noted in some of the other answers a colony like this probably wouldn't really need all that much electrical power as you might just as well use wood fires for heating and cooking and candles or lanterns for light.
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**Steam or coal power**
Honestly, these day, most everyone could figure out how to build a steam based power plant. It's pretty simple when you get past all the regulations and environmental protections.
You would need a source of water, heat, and the wiring bits. Water is water, get it where you can. Heat can come from anything that can produce a fire. Coal, wood, gas, oil, whatever. Coal and Wood are going to be the easiest. Wiring bits are gonna be a bit rough. You could get them from a current power plant, though that would likely be more complicated then building a plant on your own. You need iron, copper wire, some kind of tank to heat the water in, and a decent set of tools. Most people with a library book and high school science class could build one.
The down side, is were talking about a small power plant. Your not going to power an entire city. Transmitting energy long distances is very tricky and would require more work. A fridge or two, a radio transmitter, maybe even some street lights, sure. You could even extend it to power a small town. Much more then that though and your going to need to extend your power plant.
The good news is that as your survivor colony grows, so does there knowledge of maintaining the power. Just like in the real world, over the years, the power plant will grow, expand, have issues, get upgrades. In 10 years time there will likely be a specialized "power guy" that spends all his time providing power. Then all you have to do is figure out what to do with master/blaster and all your power problems are solved.
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Build your own. Go for multiple micro-hydroelectric generators in parallel. Using wood, plastic, sheet metal or whatever you can scavenge, channel water through steel drums containing handmade turbines and connected to motorbike or car alternators. The finished product may look a bit ropey but:
1. it'll do the job
2. it has no single point of failure
3. if you need more power, just add more turbines
4. it won't go **BOOM** if it breaks.
5. you should be able to find hundreds of alternators without any difficulty
6. other components can very easily be made from scrap.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OXvKt.jpg)
In the scenario described there is nothing to stop your guys scavenging a warehouse full of alternators from abandoned vehicles; the other components can be made from practically anything including wood, which shouldn't be in short supply. Alternators can last for years (or decades) and are made from a few fairly simple components (wire coils, diodes), although as other answers have noted your biggest problem is likely to be worn bearings since these will be effectively irreplaceable.
A bigger problem (as other answers have noted) is power storage, but that's beyond the scope of the question as currently worded.
Edit: just realised I left out caption and attribution of the image: it's from [here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nw_vietnam_hydro.jpg) where it is described as
>
> "Micro Hydroelectric generation in NW Vietnam village. Set-up involves
> bamboo and wooden sluices channelling water into oil drums fitted with
> hand-carved bamboo turbines. Electricity generation was via motorbike
> alternators."
>
>
>
Original uploader was [User:Shermozle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shermozle); photo under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
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I wish to project an iron or steel 'cannonball' at a fortification. I construct a Newton's Cradle but there is a very large ball at one end and a relatively small cannonball at the other.
NOTE - I use the word cannonball for convenience although there is no actual cannon.
The diameter of the large ball is about 2ft and the diameter of the small ball is about 6 inches. There may or may not be intermediate balls of gradually reducing size.
Is this practical for use as a weapon? The big ball has to be repeatedly pulled back, possibly with pulleys, by strong operators, and the firing rate must be in the order of seconds rather than minutes. Also the small ball has to be big enough and travelling fast enough to damage masonry. I need to achieve a reasonable range (say equal to that of a trebuchet casting an equally sized ball).
**EDIT** - I omitted to mention that one advantage I see over a trebuchet is that there is very little friction in a Newton's Cradle whereas the joints and axles of a trebuchet have constantly to be lubricated with animal grease and, even then, (given the non-existence of medieval ball bearings) experience considerable friction.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TMpmN.png)
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This is seriously impractical. The problem is, for objects larger than a few inches, Newton's cradle does not work very well. [Mythbusters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuA-znVMY3I) covered this. To transmit the energy from one ball to the next you wind up with deformation that goes well beyond the elastic limits of the balls, and into the range where the balls are plastically deforming, or even fracturing. Instead of the satisfying CLICK! from the small version, you get this disagreeable thunk from the big one. So you wind up losing a lot of energy in each collision.
And the harder you want to push the worse it gets. Eventually you wind up with flattened parts on the balls, where you lose large fractions of the energy.
Additionally, as shown in the clip, lining up large balls to get good hits is a challenge. There is a very strong tendency for the balls to hit off center and go off axis. This wastes more energy, and would make aiming very difficult. And could be a significant hazard to the operators.
........
A comment suggests springs. This won't work. The characteristic time in this system is the time a ball takes to fall from being held up at one end. If a collision begins to take a significant fraction of this time then the result is multiple balls in motion at one time. This distributes the energy over several balls and spoils the effect quite thoroughly. For it to work the balls have to be hard. The speed at which the collision propagates through the string of balls has to be very much larger than the speed a ball moves between collisions.
Another way to think about springs is this. If you are launching things with springs there are easier ways than trying to hammer on them.
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# Unfortunately, you'll fall foul of both physics and materials science
As first answer indicates, it's going to be impractical and inefficient. However, even if you do get a physics based set up that should work, you're going to hit a bigger problem.
You want a solid, 2ft sphere. For it to work well, it has to be as hard as possible - every bit of plastic deformation is going to lose you energy, and also mean replacement parts.
For that reason, you want a two foot ball of cast iron. Cast iron, as I've unfortunately tested experimentally with some nice cookware, is brittle. In the worst instances, it can shatter like china. These odds go up with a large, two foot ball. You're likely to have air bubbles, voids, impurities etc.
Stone is worse, surviving multiple collisions poorly. There are no other suitable materials in existence at this point. Brass and bronze are comparatively soft, wood is worse, steel can't be cast yet.
Crashing a 2ft ball of medieval cast iron into a 1ft ball of medieval cast iron is likely to leave you with an impressive explosion of shrapnel, and some chunks of cast iron on whatever you're hanging them with. And this is your best option for materials to use. It's not even the case that you can simply swap out the balls each shot. Chunks shattering off them will seriously reduce the energy imparted to each shot, along with seriously changing the aim.
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[faulty argument deleted]
best case (with all energy conserved) the small ball (one sixttyfourth of the mass) will end up with 8 times the speed of the big ball
I'm not sure that that would be enough speed.
in the finite case
for an elastic collison between mass m at speed v and mass n at rest.
initial momentum mv and energy mvv/2
final momentum (conserved)
```
mw+nx = mv
```
final energy (also conserved)
```
mww/2+nxx/2 = mvv/2
```
ddouble it
```
mww+nxx = mvv
```
divide by m
```
w+xn/m =v
ww+xxn/m = vv
```
let r=n/m
```
w+xr =v
ww+xxr = vv
```
rearrange
```
w=v-xr
xxr=vv-ww
```
substitute w
```
xxr=vv-(v-xr)(v-xr)
xxr=vv- (vv-2vxr+xxrr)
xxr=vv- vv+2vxr-xxrr
xxr=2vxr - xxrr
xx = 2vx - xxr
xx + xxr= 2vx
xx(1+r) = 2vx
xx = 2vx/(1+r)
x = 2v/(1+r)
```
so for 6 stages, each halving the mass r will be 0.5 at each and the speed up will be 4/3
so after 6 collisions the small ball exits at about 5.7 times the speed of the large ball
That's assuming the small ball can handle the impact without plastic deformation. and that all the collisions are perfectly elastic. neither will be true.
Large ratio acceleration is easier using a lever machine like a catapult or a trebuchet.
In conclusion: to increase rate of fire, just put a larger team on your trebuchet, or get more trebuchets.
A traction trebuchet which uses most of the crew as counterweight can manage a fire rate of up to 4 rounds per minute.
<https://www.historynet.com/weaponry-the-trebuchet/>
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Even with a theoretically perfect set-up where the force is transferred to each ball with no loss or damage, the range on this is going to be abysmally short.
I think the best case multiplier of this is just around 8x? Artillery is generally something that can be used well outside the range of smaller weapons (bows or guns). This thing just won't have that, and little power to actually damage something that came within its puny range.
Additionally, raising the ball back into place will require at least a time equivalent to resetting a standard piece of artillery, and will likely take even more time. So this would not be a "rapid-fire" device.
To address your "very little friction" addition, I'll need to remove my first caveat of a "theoretically perfect set-up". The wear on the frame, loops, cables and balls (especially the balls) will require an enormous amount of upkeep, and @BobaFit's and @lupe's answer give excellent descriptions on how making use of the device will swiftly degrade it from its less than impressive "prime" condition.
To directly answer your question(s):
This is not a practical device. The firing rate will not be an increase over a trebuchet, the range will be much, **much**, shorter than that of a trebuchet, and the wear on the overall device will be much higher than on the trebuchet.
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This isn't quite a Newton's cradle, but have a look at a [light-gas gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion_light-gas_gun).
A conventional gun will push a bullet forwards. The speed of sound in the heated gas puts a limit on the muzzle velocity. However, if you use the expanding gases to drive a piston, you can use the piston to propel a smaller bullet faster using hydrogen. If you wanted to achieve escape velocity from the surface of Mars, one of these could do it. It isn't a Newton's cradle, but we are transferring momentum from one body to a second body, which I hope makes it sufficiently answer-adjacent not to get marked down.
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I am writing a story where humans are battling monsters (Think orcs, goblins, dire wolves, etc).
I wanted to stay away from the typical ‘go for guns’ and try historical weaponry. I know the bow has longer reach and potentially more lethality. But how much is that the design/materials of the weapon?
Is there a point where an insanely strong human could throw a spear further/harder than that same person wielding a bow? A point where the type of design/materials wouldn’t be able to compensate for raw throwing strength?
The humans in question could be as ‘weak’ as Captain America, or as strong as Thor.
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Interestingly (to me, at least), the most important thing is not so much *strength* but *speed*. If you could throw a little metal dart at 500m/s then you might well be able to drop someone in full plate armor because your throwing arm is comparable to a modern firearm, even if you didn't have cartoon-like ultra-strength enough to lift and hurl an ox, etc.
The fastest normal-human sportsballers can throw at perhaps ~100mph (~160km/h)... both [cricket](https://cricnerds.com/featured/fastest-bowler-in-the-world/) and [baseball](https://www.electro-mech.com/team-sports/baseball/the-fastest-baseball-pitchers-ever/) have records at that sort of speed. A big javelin flung at that sort of speed is obviously pretty bad news if it hits you, but it'll be harder to aim (because it won't have a trajectory as flat at the bullet-like dart) and it'll take longer to cross the same distance requiring a bit more thought when dealing with moving targets or strong cross-winds, and so seems like it wouldn't are at all well with skinny-mc-bullet-chucker
Bows are of course very much subject to material limits. It is interesting to note that whilst siege weapons like the [catapulta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catapulta) or [ballista](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista) could indeed outrange a human with a bow, mostly what they could do was throw a much heavier projectile at fairly similar speeds. I don't believe there was much scope for historical bows to have a significantly higher initial projectile velocity than they did (for a ballpark figure, this testing of [arrow speeds](http://greenmanlongbows.co.uk/SPEED%20TESTING%20Measuring%20the%20arrow%20speed%20of%20bows%20and%20longbows%20using%20a%20chronometer.htm) had a top speed of a little over 120mph from a modern non-composite 64lb longbow which probably wasn't firing war-weight arrows). I suspect this means that if your superhumans could fling a projectile at over 120mph, they might reasonably expect to outperform a bow shooting a projectile of a similar weight, even if the bow had crazy siege-weapon-like draw weights.
It is important to consider accuracy, though. Long range descending projectiles are always going to be hard to aim, and whilst ancient siege weapons might have had a deadly range of 450m, their effective accurate range was probably closer to a third of that, if you were shooting at human-sized targets.Humans are good at throwing, sure, but I'd say that throwing a javelin is much harder to do with high accuracy than shooting a bow.
Siege weapon ammunition is big, heavy, and awkward to make compared to regular war-arrows, and you shouldn't waste it by throwing it at distant, small, moving targets. If your superhumans aren't attacking fortifications by throwing rocks at them, they should be charging in and throwing javelins and darts and the like at much closer range, where they can much more reliably hit and maximize their benefits over regular bow-shot.
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*edit*
Who are your supers fighting? If they're fighting people of equivalent strength and speed, then you'll find that they'll be able to carry such heavy shields and armor that in combination with their super-strength and super-reflexes mean that projectile weapons just aren't a threat to them.
They're gonna square off against each other, at close range, with weapons optimised for crushing or opening heavy armor that no human could carry. They'll be much closer to *real* tanks than RPG tanks with sexy abs'n'boobs enhancing armor. Spears and arrows are only good for wasting the rank and file, not the elite.
Real-world knights kinda went this way too. Swords aren't really that good against serious full-plate (and half-swording is a *compromise*, people) and so heavy armor ruled up until the advent of decent musketry.
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*edit 2*
* Problem: you can't create a bow better than your superheroes' throwing arms due to material limits.
* Observation: your superheroes have bones and tendons and ligaments and skin and maybe even hair that can survive extreme forces and rapid movement.
* Solution: manufacture composite super-bows from the bodies of your enemies.
Suddenly archers, in a rather gristly form, are back in the game.
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# Even without super strength a spear can outperform
The question in the title is about out performing. The question in the description is about reaching father/harder. I would focus on 'out performing' in killing or taking opponents out of the fight.
As a general rule an arrow fired from a bow is less heavy than a spear. This makes it go a further distance at a higher speed when launched with identical energy. The spear has more mass, requiring more energy than an arrow to get to the same speed.
But here is the twist. Spears generally have more energy behind them. They might go slower, but the impact is much more dangerous. This is incredibly important for your targets! Most arrows do not give a high panic reaction and the pain also isn't very high. If nothing vital is hit, which is mostly by cutting major arteries, the target is very much still standing. Your targets seem to be bigger and tougher monsters. They can lose more blood and get more damage than a human. You want more stopping power. Arrows are good, but spears can really get in there and do damage.
I understand you want more distance between you and monsters, but if arrows do not do enough damage except with lucky shot, or might not even penetrate deep enough, you need heavier weapons. Without super powers spears would already out perform against monsters compared to an arrow.
## Farther than a bow
It is still possible to throw a spear further than a bow for a super powered person. The bows have material limits, whereas your super powered soldiers are upgraded beyond biological limits. If you would give captain America a bow you would probably not reach the limit with the English long bows. However, halfway up the ladder to Thor they could already snap the bow by drawing the string. They can throw a spear much further than a bow.
However, bows were build with the limits of humans in mind. You might still be able to build a bow of special iron for example, which wouldn't break in the hands of super powered soldiers.
Even so I would choose spears. In cost a spear is comparable to an arrow, as the most cost is in the crafting and not the materials. As they are very similar this is about the same. Spears are more sturdy, have more mass to drive into a body, are less in danger to shatter and can be used very well in keeping distance in close quarters fighting. They are probably preferred above nearly all other weapons in a close quarters engagement against monsters because of their reach.
## TL:DR
The spear travels less far, but in real life already has more energy behind it than an arrow. It is preferred against bigger monsters. For super powered soldiers it is also more sturdy and reusable, only marginally more expensive than an arrow and only has the biological constraints to deal with. Lastly if a monster closes the gap it is the preferred choice of weapon. The spear allows you to keep as much distance between you and your opponent as possible, while being an excellent individual and team weapon to do damage.
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While not an expert in the subject, my common sense is telling me the answer is no. The bow is a force multiplier, using the coiled tension within the wood and string to deliver more power than the arm could supply on its own. The only reason why it wouldn't be advantageous to use a bow would be if the material of the bow were to snap under the pressure. However, the existence of siege weaponry, as well as the makeup of modern bows and crossbows, shows us that the upper limits of a bow's tensile strength can be pushed quite far, even at lower levels of technology. Heavy ballistas, catapults, and even hand crossbows existed as early as 400 or perhaps even 600 BC, and were certainly normalized among leading military powers by 200 BC, meaning that ancient or medieval societies should absolutely have the capability to make bows for super strong humans.
Thus, it seems to me that if you can draw a bow back without breaking it or snapping its string, the arrow loosed would travel further and with more power than if the same push were given to a spear - also, necessarily, with more accuracy. Furthermore, if we are to believe that the person drawing the bow is so strong that they would break it, surely the same limitations apply to the thrown object. A spear thrown with such great force would likely shatter upon impact, rendering it a deadly but ultimately inefficient and unpredictable weapon. Either way, I suspect the bow would be better.
A compromise between the two lies in the Atl-atl, an ancient spear throwing technology. If you beleive that your superhumans are so strong that they would snap the string of any bow made for them, using a pure leverage device like the atl-atl still adds the accuracy and force multiplication that makes such a weapon reliably dangerous without having a weak link. Historically, bows replaced atl-atls for a reason, and I still think that some manner of bow would work best (crossbows, compact bows, longbows and recurve bows all offer different working solutions to the problems that an intense draw strength might pose to the structural integrity of the weapon). But if you really like the rule-of-cool image of your super strong humans throwing stuff because "no bow can handle their raw power," I think giving them atl-atls would add a fun touch while also answering the accuracy issue.
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"Is there a point where an insanely strong human could throw a spear further/harder than that same person wielding a bow?"
**Short answer:** No.
**Longer answer:** It's still very definitely no.
A bow is a force multiplier.
The stronger he is the stronger the bow he can use.
So he will always outperform himself with a custom bow than with a spear.
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> For any professional archer custom bows are entirely par for the course, and it's the same for amateurs, even today buying a modern bow in a sports shop you will still *always* buy a bow with a poundage according to your ability to string and pull it.
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The only time your hero might do better with a spear, no matter how insanely strong he is, is if for some reason he didn't have access to his own bow and all he had available were his puny human companions bows, then, and only then, he might concievably be better off chucking a pointy stick.
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A spear or javelin would outperform in terms of sheer mass/energy, but they're not touching a bow on *accuracy*. That mighty javelin is nil if you can't hit your target with it! Or worse, you hit in a non-critical spot and just made the monster mad...
So let's give our insanely powerful warrior the best of both worlds: a ballista-sized crossbow which only they have the strength to wield and arm. A fast javelin-sized bolt with high accuracy is bound to ruin many-a monster's day.
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If your humans have space to carry them, there's a third solution - the [atlatl, or spear-thrower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower?wprov=sfla1).
The atlatl is effectively a much older and much deadlier version of those plastic tennis ball throwers people use to play fetch with their dogs. It's a straight shaft, usually as long as the user's forearm, with a cup at the end to support the spear. To use it, hold the atlatl in your throwing hand and pull your arm back. Place the spear on the shaft with the end of it in the cup, and swing. The cup is shaped so that it releases the spear when your arm reaches the top of its arc, and the spear flies away much faster than you could throw it normally.
Physics-wise, the atlatl is just as simple as its construction. When you throw a spear, you accelerate it using the muscles in your wrist, elbow, and shoulder. The rest of your arm acts as a lever that applies that force over a long distance so that the spear is moving as quickly as possible when you throw it. Using an atlatl extends the length of that lever (usually by about 50%), which means that the end holding the spear moves an even longer distance when you throw. Because your arm still takes the same amount of time to rotate when you throw, end of the atlatl moves much faster than your hand, and so does the spear.
Although your soldiers probably wouldn't be able to reach bow ranges using an atlatl, they could definitely throw much farther than without one even without super strength, and a faster spear would also do more damage. A human with super strength could use an atlatl just as easily as anyone else, and there's not really a limit to how fast they can throw one - bows can only be drawn with so much force before something breaks, but an atlatl is just a really fast stick. Historically, atlatls were used to throw darts, which were about 8 feet long and had a very thin, very light, and very fragile shaft - in other words, a terrible spear. However, an atlatl can be used to throw anything that's relatively dart-shaped, so your soldiers could easily throw their spears with them, albeit at shorter ranges. If they're willing to make some minor modifications to their spears, they could add large fletching to the rear to create a kind of spear-dart hybrid. The fletching won't increase range, but they will make them more accurate, which is just as important.
PS: If you go the hybrid route, use helical fletching, which spirals around the shaft at a very slight angle. It spins the spear the same way rifling spins a bullet for even more accuracy.
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Your question presumes it, but a spear doesn't have to be thrown.
* A phalanx of soldiers can march forward, spears bristling, and hold ground
* A spear can be used to stab with more force than a held arrow
* A spear can be used as a makeshift punji stick against charging cavalry
* A spear can be used as an effective melee weapon at close range (the point and the shaft)
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Consider the materials science of your world. Perhaps spears are better because they are incapable of making a bow that taps the full strength. The bow breaks first. Either the cord or the bow itself.
Javelins do not require flexibility the way a bow does.
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**No.**
The bow accumulates the strength provided by the movement of the archer that lasts about a second (Two seconds if the archer is weak) and uses that power concentrating it in a fraction of a second. The human in question should not be just insanely strong, to throw a spear at a decent speed that human should also be insanely fast and agile. Agile otherwise the joints and the tendons would break, fast because this is a movement that requires a complex coordination.
All those qualities together would be very difficult to explain.
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There's no reason the spear wouldn't be more deadly, either way you can only expect to hit what you're aiming at. Beyond a certain distance I would expect a spear to perform better as numerous ancient sources cite the effect of wind on arrows. Whereas a spear has a lot more mass and would be less affected.
But if you really want to make a mess of the monsters.....
[Why not go for a sling?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqu-plfFFj4) It outranges a bow, and can be improvised in seconds with ammo just lying on the ground at your feet. You can just chuck big rocks instead of stones. The range and power is a multiplier of your strength rather than reliant on a bows draw. So the stronger you are the further and harder you can throw.
I throw large stones because I like the way they hit, but with smaller ones 100 mph is not a problem, a real slinger would do lot more I would think.[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hkDix.jpg)
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The WR for javelin throw is just ~100m -- and that's with a technique focused on maxxing distance instead of accuracy.
Any amateur archer can easily outperform that distance with a compound bow. If we ignore accuracy and focus just on distance like javelin throwers do, top marks for longest bow shot get to ~1200m (~1900m if you include crossbows).
But just distance won't do much in combat. You need accuracy.
Current *accurate* bow shot WR is about ~250m. On the other hand, while I've not been able to find current records for accurate spear throwing, general consensus sets a historical range for it of... 10m. Yup, just one zero there.
Considering that specialized athletes usually outperform average humans, let's be generous and settle for ~25m of range for an accurate spear throw.
This means shooting arrows outperforms throwing spears by 10x-20x both in pure reach and accurate reach.
But we're talking superhumans here. Spears are heavier and carry more energy. Wouldn't a superhuman capable of a 250m accurate spear throw come out on top?
Sure! But then again, **what's stopping your superhuman of building themself a bow that shoots spear-sized arrows**?
If this superhuman can accurately throw a spear to something 250m away, applying the same 10x-20x factor, with a bow (and eagle-like vision) they could probably hit targets 1km away.
Imagine a warrior with a bow that shoots frigging javelins instead of arrows. How cool would that be?
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TL;DR: Shooting a pointy stick with a bow always outperforms throwing it with your arm. If you want to throw bigger and heavier sticks, just build bigger and heavier bows.
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To be safe from monsters, humans would build fortifications.
In order to throw a spear with decent force, the thrower must take at least three steps to gather momentum, which makes it impossible to throw it from the walkway on the top of the ramparts. For the same reason, a spear can't be fired from cover, or through a hole in the wall, or a machicolation:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NRmSa.png)
In the thick of the woods, or in a monster cave, a spear would perhaps be too long, awkward to maneuver, it would bump into obstacles. But an archer is much more maneuverable, and can hide behind a bush, even shoot through foliage without being seen.
In all these circumstances, your overpowered humans' ranged weapon of choice would probably be a heavy bow with heavy arrows.
Now, there's the atlatl. Throwing spears that are propelled with an atlatl are essentially longer arrows. They are lightweight and flexible:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7YsO0.png)
They must be springy. When thrown, the spear bends, storing energy, then it springs forth. This gives it a higher speed than a simple throw, but it means it can't be used as a non-throwing spear to skewer someone: it would be too flexible and wobbly.
Combat spears used as a two-handed weapon have to be stiff, therefore heavy, therefore hard to throw.
The wounding ability of a projectile depends on its kinetic energy, so a light fast projectile beats a heavy slow one.
Now... your super strong humans would most likely be using crossbows instead.
The crossbow has many advantages. It requires much less training than a bow, anyone can be accurate with it pretty quick. And it allows a huge draw weight with medieval materials. Its main issue is that it is heavier and slow to reload, because normal humans are not strong enough, so they have to use a winch. However, a super strong human would just pull the string back while inserting a new bolt, making reloading much quicker, a second or two. Weight would also be much less of an issue.
Throwing spears also have the ammo issue: you can't realistically carry more than one. Where will you put a bunch of 2m long spears? In a quiver on your back? It has to be a two handed weapon, or it will bump into absolutely everything, get stuck into door frames, etc.
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Yes, eventually spears win because of material limits.
People have already touched on the strength limits of bows and the suggestion as been made to use the bodies of one's enemies--that might work for not breaking but there's still the issue of how much energy they can store.
However, there's another material limit that can't be handwaved: for your projectile to survive the launch. Your projectile is being driven from behind, eventually you'll reach a point where the projectile itself can't stand up to the acceleration. Furthermore, a bow delivers very uneven acceleration, most of it is at the start, whereas a spear is accelerated reasonably uniformly. For the same strength projectile you can therefore attain a higher final speed with a spear. You also have the advantage that the spear is heavier and thus packs more energy for the same speed.
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[Question]
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In this alternative reality Constantine the Great never embraces the Christianity and the Roman Empire remains polytheistic.
So I would like to know what realistic change(s) could have prevented the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire ?
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I think that Constantine the Great was just the last drop in the already filled vase. Changing his decision would have little or no effect on the spreading of Christianity in the Roman Empire.
First of all, Roman religion was intrinsically open to external influences: there are several accounts of foreign gods which were, more or less, accepted or tolerated in the Roman Pantheon or religious behavior. When Christianity started to spread, it was just one among the others.
Moreover, around the 3rd century A.D. the old corpus of the Roman religion, with its values and traditions, was already showing crisis signs: internecine wars were common in the empire, barbarians were already pressing the empire's borders and the economic crisis was hitting the empire.
No wonder that there was lack of trust in the old gods, which were showing more and more how they were no longer able to ensure prosperity and safety to the empire worshiping them.
If you really want to prevent or reduce the spread of Christianity in your world, I think you have to work on those factors I have listed before:
* openness of the religion: make the Roman religion much more closed and afraid of accepting foreign cults
* internecine wars: reduce them, make the central government strong and respected
* barbarians at the border: again, make the central government strong, so that the army is efficient and used for protecting the borders, not for supporting generals fighting for their seat in Rome
* economic crisis: I have no knowledge here to hint at what could be done, if I had I was working in ECB right now.
All in all, I think you are more or less trying to avoid that fruit flies gather around a ripe peach.
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If you don’t want Jesus to just never have existed, then I’d suggest that the minimal change would be for Saint Paul to not have his [vision](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_of_Paul_the_Apostle) on the road to Damascus, which would likely keep Christianity as a small Jewish sect.
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With or without Constantine, by the early 4th century Christianity was one of the two most popular religions in the Roman empire. Constantine adopted Christian symbols exactly *because it was already popular*.
* *In this alternative reality Constantine the Great never embraces the Christianity...*
... and loses the civil war.
The situation was that the Roman empire was, officially and in principle, a [*tetrarchy*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrarchy), with [Constantine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I) as (irregular and contested) *Augustus* of the West, [Maxentius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxentius) as *Augustus* of Italy, and [Licinius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licinius) ruling the rich and stable East.
By 308 CE the political situation decayed into a [six-sided civil war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_wars_of_the_Tetrarchy); Constantine had the allegiance of the legions of Britannia, Gallia and Hispania, relatively poor provinces, whereas his principal opponent, Maxentius, controlled Italy.
Constantine needed a simple and clear differentiator, so that people could easily understand what Constantine stood for; in a stroke of genius he adopted the banner of the monogram ☧ ([Chi Rho](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Rho), for Christos), thus signalling his position as emperor of the people fighting against the political establishment. He won the war under the Christian banner, and that was that.
(While the other competitors used standard traditional political imagery, Constantine adopted a symbol of the religion practiced in various ways by about two thirds of the population, especially the lower classes. By placing the symbol on his banners he implicitly made a promise to elevate the religion of the masses to equal status with the established state religions.)
[](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simple_Labarum2.svg)
*[In hoc signo vinces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_hoc_signo_vinces)* (under this symbol you shall win)*; public domain image by Dylan Lake representing the character U+2627. Available on Wikimedia.*
After the civil war was over, Constantine (now the uncontested *Augustus* of the West) and Licinius (*Augustus* of the East) signed *together* the [Edict of Milan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Milan) which recognized Christianity as an accepted religion in the empire.
* *....the Roman Empire remains polytheistic.*
By the early 4th century AD the traditional Roman and Greek religions were on life support; basically nobody practiced them any longer except as required by state ceremonies. They did remain in use as a source of literary and artistic tropes and subjects; but this is not life. Consider that in 2018 AD, Hollywood made a commercially successful movie where one of the main characters is a strong supernatural person named Thor, who wields a magical war hammer, claims to come from Asgard, and to be the son of Odin: this doesn't mean that the old Germanic religion is alive.
Among the urban lower classes and in the army the most popular religions were Christianity (of many various sorts) and [Mithraism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism). Polytheism remained strong only in the countryside; consider that the English word "pagan" comes from Latin *paganus*, which properly means *villager*.
* *So I would like to know what realistic change(s) could have prevented the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire?*
Don't focus on Constantine; it is *way too late*. By the early 4th century the only question is whether the empire will be Christian, Mithraic, or maybe both. The traditional polytheistic religions of Rome, Greece, Gaul, Britain and so on were effectively dead by that time.
As for the question as asked, what changes to make in order to prevent the spread of Christianity, the answer is simple and well-known. Kill [Paul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle), or at least give him a strong incentive to forego transforming a marginal Hebrew sect into an attractive universal religion. Without Paul, Christians are ordinary Hebrews, one of the many sects into which Judaism splintered after the destruction of the [Second Temple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple).
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This is a deeply controversial topic by virtue of the fact that it touches on many belief systems to a point where the known history is hotly debated where it doesn't necessarily agree with established dogma, especially Catholicism. The official Catholic position is that St Peter formed the first united (or catholic) Christian chruch, and that he was its first pope.
Contemporary history indicates that the first leader of any church that we would recognise as Christian was formed by Constantine, and that Christianity after Constantine bore little to no resemblance to Christianity *before* him.
One could argue that this was because it was deeply fragmented due to ubiquitous persecution and therefore Constantine represented the first opportunity it had seen in centuries to form around a coherent declaration of faith and practice, but the bible that was agreed to as Canon during his time contained far fewer gnostic (mystic) texts than agnostic (non-mystic) texts (the most notable exceptions to this being the gospel of John and his book of the Revelation).
The point being, there is a historical argument that Constantine didn't spread Christianity, rather he spread a religion that he created in an attempt to unite the Roman Empire under a single faith, and just hijacked the name Christianity because it was lying around everywhere (meaning he wouldn't have to explain where a brand new religion just came from).
Let's (for the sake of this essay) assume that this is the most historically accurate interpretation of what occurred.
If that was the case, he did it because he was now in charge of a massive empire of deeply divided faiths, cultures, and systems of administration. The Romans were adept at propaganda and their secular structures of government were already compelling, so converting people across the empire to a Roman culture and form of government was the easy bit. But, people get very particular about their gods and just telling people that the Roman pantheon of gods were 'the real gods' was **never** going to work, and Constantine knew that. He needed something new, in which all people could see aspects of their original faith so that he could sell it as a refinement; a new Roman way of seeing religion, if you will.
At this point in time, the only truly ubiquitous religion in the Roman Empire was Christianity, but it served as an underground pariah to all other faiths. This, at the very least, meant all knew of the name of Christianity, even if they didn't know their dogma. At this point in time, they couldn't have anyway because the religion was so decentralised, and worked from many disparate sacred texts.
But Constantine doesn't want the dogma; he has his own ideas for that. He just needs the name. Most Christians don't mind this so much. Their god and their messiah get an upgrade, they're not hiding from people wanting to turn them into catfood (feeding them to lions) and they're sick of fighting among themselves as to what it means to be Christian anyway.
Now for the real trick; introducing all the other elements that allow for people to see their own original faith.
Ironically, the easiest is polytheism. Instead of a God of this, God of that, you now have a Saint of this, Saint of that. Move the day of Christ's birth to the date of the Winter Solstice (or the Roman Saturnalia) because most other faiths consider that date significant, change the day of the Sabbath from the seventh day of the week (Saturday) to the first (Sunday) because it fits in better with other religions that dedicate the first day of the week to their other Gods...
The list goes on.
But why would he do this? For the same reason that the British Empire struggled in India; different religions introduce different holy days, religious practices, clean stuff, unclean stuff... You just can't get anything done unless you have everyone singing from the same hymnbook. Constantine knew that the best way to motivate and unite an army drawn from every corner of the Empire was to have them unite under a single faith, and that's easier under a single god.
So IF (and it's a BIG if; I'm not saying for a moment any of this is fact, it's just a single interpretation of events for the purposes of providing an answer) you don't want Constantine to do this, you have to give him other options.
Here's a few;
**1) Don't make the Roman Empire so successful**
If the Romans aren't taking over cultures left, right and centre, there's no need to unite the people. A slower rate of expansion means a slower rate of assimilation, which means people are more likely to be of a Roman faith by the time the next group are being conquered. Slower expansion and less success means no need for Constantine to unite under a single religion not Roman. Also, a less successful Roman Empire probably doesn't make it into the Middle East in the first place; problem solved.
**2) Have a ubiquitous European polytheistic faith already**
If all of Europe believed what the Romans did (or something similar at least), then you have no need to create something new. Most Roman gods bore a strong resemblance to Greek gods anyway; if the Greeks had been more successful in propagating their own religion before the Romans come along, Christianity doesn't get a look in.
**3) Organise Christianity early**
Arguably, very early Christians were hampered by a pacifistic stance to persecution. Their God was going to give them their reward for sacrifice and boldness in spreading the word, not for striking back against those who attack them. Change that single doctrine about turning the other cheek, make Jesus somewhat more Old Testament in his approach, and Constantine can't take the name of Christianity and subvert it because he's too busy fighting them as his single biggest threat inside the territory of the Empire.
**4) Make Romans (All Romans, including conquered people) xenophobic**
If the Romans were so convinced of the rightness of their cause, and were adept at assimilating the conquered nations into accepting that belief right off the bat, Constantine (again) can't use Christianity the way he did. You'd have a civil war on your hands right off the bat. In point of fact, by the time Constantine gets into power, the Roman Empire is suffering from all sorts of growing pains beyond Roman technology to fix and Romans are starting to wonder about their Gods as it is, what with Barbarian invasions, economic issues, etc.
Put simply, Christianity was an idea (arguably Constantine's idea) whose time had come and it was either the second chapter of God's will on Earth after his Son, or the largest social engineering experiment ever conducted on this planet. It's entirely up to you which you believe, but this essay (hopefully) goes some way to explaining what some of the possibilities were at the time.
[Answer]
Starting with Constantine might be way late. You’ve got to nip it in the bud, which would be Paul.
That 13 books of the New Testament were attributed to him should show how much influence he had in early Christianity. Before him, it was just another apocalyptic Jewish sect. Paul not only worked to include gentiles (non-Jews) in the new faith, vastly expanding the population of possible converts outside Judea, but also personally established churches across the Empire.
Removing Paul is the single most destructive action you could take. And it wouldn’t even be that far a stretch. He was a Pharisee who had never met Jesus and actively persecuted Christians before he converted.
Another tact you might consider would be to avoid the destruction of the Second Temple in 70CE. Foretold by Jesus, the destruction gave creedence to Christianity and weakened traditional Judaism, which had centered around sacrifice in the Temple. Interestingly, the emperor Julian (the Apostate, r. 361-363), Constantine’s nephew and staunch polytheist, attempted to rebuild the Temple to undermine Christianity’s growing influence.
A further area of interest is that while Christianity - monotheist in the land of polytheism - was an illegal religion in Rome, Judaism itself was a legal cult. This is because their sacrifices in the Temple were considered sacrifices to Jupiter. Rome was fine with whatever faith you had if only you offered a public sacrifice to keep the gods off everyone’s backs.
Christianity was banned because they refused to sacrifice to the state deities. In many cases, the punishment for being a Christian came only when they refused to offer public sacrifice. That led to martyrdoms and people do love a good martyr. A loosening of restrictions might have contribute to Christianity becomeing just ‘one of the weird cults’ in the empire, not the resident neighbor-loving bad-boys who got so popular for sticking it to the man.
[Answer]
Make Pontius Pilate let Jesus go. Jesus's whole movement depends on his persecution and violent death. If that never comes, his cult dies with him; peacefully in his sleep in his late 60's.
[Answer]
Have the tribe of Israel wiped out during the bronze age collapse. In those days they were just an insignificant mountain tribe in the Egyptian province of Canaan. During the chaos of the collaps they might run into an army attampting to kerp the order up or a raiding band of sea people and take a devastating defeat. The warriors are slaughtered and women and children are made slaves.
No Israelites, no Jews, no Christians and by extend no Islam. Zooastriaism reamains the only monotheistic religion and Hellenistic polytheism stays state religion due to the lack of a popular alternative.
I don't think that this will butterfly effect Rome out of existance and it would also prevent the Jewish revolt as a nice side effect, further stabilising the empire.
[Answer]
The Assyrians went full on genocide and wiped out the Jewish people.
No more Judaism let alone Christianity.
[Answer]
**1) Modernize the roman faith**
as mentioned by @Mark\_Olson even near the end of the empire there were many attempts to revitalize Hellenism most notable with [Julian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_of_paganism_from_Julian_until_Valens) who tried to undermine Christianity through intellectual means and tried to create a more unified roman religion
>
> He would primarily attack Christianity in his writings, leveraging
> the debating skills he had gained from his education. In one of his
> works, the Caesars, Julian attacks Jesus for preaching forgiveness. He
> effectively argues that Christianity attracts people who have no
> interest in self-improvement but want to be absolved from all their
> wrongdoings. In his Against the Galileans on the other hand, he
> attacked Christian dogma as unrealistic and superstitious.
>
>
>
>
> Julian got a friend and philosopher, Sallustius, to write a catechism
> outlining a new pagan belief system for his new church to use.
> Sallustius’ document is extremely interesting and favors a
> philosophical and non-literal interpretation of pagan myths.
> Philosophy and religion had to be brought together to create a serious
> competitor to Christian dogma.
> Julian’s brand of philosophy was a form of Neoplatonism, a school of
> thought which attempted to reconcile competing philosophical
> traditions into one god-given series of revelations. Ideas found in
> Plato were applied heavily to pagan religions
>
>
>
<https://www.thecollector.com/roman-emperor--last-pagan/>
simply having a Julian type emperor early around say the 1st or early 2nd century, who understood the threat the new religion and tried to combat it by making Hellenism a more unified religion as well as making it more appealing to commonfolk (a centralized set of main gods, downplaying the negative aspects of the gods, promising that normal people can enter Elysian Fields through devotion to gods and strong morals, ect...).
would it be like classical Hellenism no but this new brand of Hellenism has a much better chance of surviving, plus assuming the romans aren't as driven to convert neighboring territories as Christians in our timeline you could easily see many other pagan religions surviving in their original form which does have a lot of story possibilities.
**2) Don't persecute Christians**
One of the main ways Early Christianity was able to spread so quickly was the martyrdom of many of it's believers (hell the entire religion started because of the martyrdom of jesus).
technically Christianity wasn't illegal in the roman empire just like how Judaism wasn't, the main reason why Christians were persecuted was due do their refusal to take part in sacrifices. simply make it so sacrifices aren't mandatory or replace animal sacrifices with more abstract personal sacrifices (something that also makes this new brand of Hellenism more appealing) and without the martyrdom aspect Christianity would be regarded as just a weird sect of Judaism to a large portion of the population
**3) Have the late empire be more stable**
another thing that lead to the spread of Christianity was the instability of the Roman empire, from constant barbarian raids, to a weak and ineffective government lead many people to become disillusioned with the old gods and turned to Christianity. a stronger more respected government that's able to hold off barbarian attacks and putting most of this success to the strength of the old gods, would reduce this. as an added benefit the western roman empire would last longer than in our timeline.
**4) Profit**
what you're left with is a more stable roman empire with a strong centralized pagan faith with small but tolerated Christian communities throughout, contrasted with the more traditional and disorganized faiths further north.
it's entirely possibly for religions like Christianity and later Islam to still become popular in places like North Africa and the Middle East though they'd have a difficult time propagating into Europe especially as roman ideas of organized religion would slowly spread up north.
] |
[Question]
[
We assume (since it is not proven yet) that Earth and Humanity are very rare cases in the universe. And in a lot of literature when there is a **need to make a choice between Earth and Humanity**, (Pseudo)Superior intelligence (let's call it SI; for AI, aliens etc.) thinks that **Humans would be the choice for annihilation.**
**I would like to know what could be a scientific/social explanation for such a choice?**
Earth is very unique in itself with a giant moon, radioactive cluster. Even though there are 'Earth-like' habitable planets, none may give birth to another intelligence. On the other hand even on Earth there is no guarantee that such an intelligence can born again if we were wiped out.
* Some have suggested if the Superior Intelligence is an AI, it could be trained to solve Earth's problems so it is biased (@atayenel).
* Some said it could depend on how the SI values the entities (@Raditz\_35).
* I guess it can be such that, since SI is already more intelligent than us, they may not find us very precious to preserve instead of Earth. This is what we are doing with animals anyways, by destroying them or their environments for our good.
I asked this question in another forum in [Science Fiction](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/174111/why-humanity-is-more-expendable-than-earth) where references belong to those people.
[Answer]
It is simply a matter of hierarchy: Earth hosts many life-forms, including humanity. Humanity hosts no Earth.
If you wipe out Earth you are denying the possibility for an "Humanity 2.0" to develop. If you wipe out Humanity your are leaving Earth available for future use (or improving it according to some points of view)
[Answer]
If the only options are A:"don't destroy all of humanity" and B:"destroy all of humanity", then the answer is simple in the following case:
* The SI is convinced humanity is 100% likely to destroy itself and
earth within a short time frame.
and
* The SI is convinced it can destroy humanity but not the earth before
humans can finish their damage.
In the grander scheme of things, option A will leave nothing undestroyed. option B will leave the earth undestroyed. Clearly, option B is worth a planet more than option A. Even if humanity was in theory worth far more than the planet, it was lost in either of the two possible options.
[Answer]
The first question is, is this SI humanity?
If it is not humanity, then humanity has already been made somewhat redundant. There is humanity, and the SI. If the SI can survive and reproduce and also do everything humanity does (of value), then the choice is between a specific intelligent species Earth has produced, and the future intelligent species or other value that Earth may produce in the future (including value to itself; a biosphere has proved very useful to humanity, maybe it remains useful to the SI).
The SI may understand evolution and probability sufficiently to know that Earth will produce a myriad of more and/or better intelligences than Humanity with a probability approaching 1, and not hold Humanity as being very special.
Alternatively, Humanity could be a dead-end, and the probability that Humanity does something else worthwhile may be significantly less than the probability a future Intelligence does.
So even if the sacrifice of Humanity also sacrifices the SI, it may in the balance of probablities find the future yield of the Earth to be more important than the future yield of Humanity.
This, of course, assumes the SI is being utilitarian. It may not be. It might have an emotional connection to the Earth more than it does to Humanity, and choose Earth because it frankly likes it more than it does Humanity.
Another possible factor is that Humanity may be relatively useless without Earth. We have built an industrial civilization, but it is a parasite on the Earth biosphere. Without that biosphere to provide us with water, air, "raw" materials of myraid kinds, our civilization would die. Even a more advanced civilization with space faring colonies may be amazingly crippled being forced to replace everything a biosphere at the bottom of the well can provide for the cost of lift-energy.
Even if you only value intelligence, an Earth without Intelligence can make more Intelligence; an Intelligence without Earth cannot make more Earth. And if it takes *both* to do the task the SI is aiming for (say, colonizing the universe), then the sacrifice of Humanity for Earth is obvious.
[Answer]
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
If the chooser is interested in intelligent life they will not discard humanity casually. From our experiments it seems much easier to modify existing creatures than make new ones, so even if we are fairly far from what they want us to be it would be simpler to change us then wipe us out and hope something replaces us.
If the chooser values all diversity we have probably served our purpose and will be removed. We have driven a lot of species to extinction, and modified a lot of habitats, which makes room to diversify into new species for the survivors, but first we would have to be stopped from promoting our mono-culture. This might also apply to other worlds if the chooser thinks the planetary protection officer either isn't capable of doing a good enough job and other life exists, or if other life is very rare shouldn't do their job at all.
If it is known to humans that something is considering wiping humanity out, and it values itself, it probably ought to kill us because we will make every effort to kill it regardless of its choice.
[Answer]
**This is literally the plotline of** [The Day The Earth Stood Still](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_Still_(2008_film))
To the point I feel like this almost a troll question.
Anyways, the answer is subjective based on the ideology of your AI.
The statistical chances of nature evolving an intelligent species is small so a total mulligan is wasteful if that is your desire.
If your AI's desire is simply to save the Earth and retain intelligence, engineer a plague that wipes out 90% of mankind and do that enough times till man evolves to the point of not destroying his own habitat.
[Answer]
I disagree with the sentiment. There are lots of Earth-like worlds, and even with our very limited viewport into nearby systems, we're starting to make a catalog of where to aim the Ark ships.
However, the scientists say Earth has about an 8 billion year window of habitability for life. **It took until *halfway through it* for intelligent life to evolve**.
If somebody pushes the reset button, **it may not *have time* to evolve again.**
Aside from the expectation that conditions will deteriorate in the later parts of that window... there are also an infinite number of things that could happen in 5 billion years: asteroid strike, nuclear war, android uprising, hyperspace by-pass, you name it. The vulnerability is huge.
So yes. Intelligent life is rare, and precious if you like intelligent life. Destroying a species would be a huge waste.
Humans are, after all, inherently reasonable, and managed to have extinction quantities of nuclear weapons for 60 years without blowing ourselves up. Whatever issue the aliens have, they should be able to get us in line with a *TED talk*.
If that just can't work, and I find it impossible to believe that it can't, then they either enslave humanity or "bomb it back to the stone age". But the mere threat of this will certainly do the job.
[Answer]
So... why does this AI think humanity is of value *at* *all*? The Earth has clear value. It has a whole exploitable biosphere. All sorts of beings might want that. Whether humanity itself has value or not depends entirely on what your objectives are.If this AI wishes to have Earth settled by its own people, then humanity is just an obstacle. Alternately, perhaps we offend their moral or aesthetic senses, or might pose a threat to them in a few centuries or... whatever. There are all sorts of reasons that an alien race might wish to get rid of us.
Alternately, it might be that they just don't see anything special about us. There are already human organizations that posit a moral equivalence between humanity and other animals. Surely, then, it is not so hard to imagine an alien intelligence doing the same - and if you start there, and don't include a pro-human bias in your thinking, the idea that wiping us out might be the right answer isn't that hard to get to.
If you start anywhere on that range, and then add "Oh, and if we don't wipe them out, they'll break the world." then the obvious solution is very straightforward.
[Answer]
The super-intelligence might know about a deep link between humanity and Earth, which makes it impossible for humans to survive long-term if Earth is gone.
Perhaps the human psychology is not as adaptable as we'd like to think, and the uprooting will inevitably doom our future. Even if we might be able to terraform Mars a bit, it will always be a lot different than the planet we evolved on.
Then faced with the choice of losing one or losing both, the SI will obviously choose the former.
[Answer]
It all depends on what you SI's ultimate Goal is.
Let us look at a few goals that get tossed about in scenarios like this.
Peace: SI says the world must be peaceful, therefore all humans must die (Terminator scenario). This one really does not make too much sense. Taken to it's logical conclusion, the SI would then sterilize the entire planet because animals eat other animals, plants engage in chemical warfare, and so on.
Prevent destruction of the entire Biosphere: This makes more sense than the last, but still doesn't pass a "sniff test". The biosphere is a dynamic system. What changes would the SI make beyond the removal of humans. would it then try to undo what we have already done? would it be ready to cope with unintended consequences, like invasive species from one are moving to another, and so on.
SI is looking for resources: This is the most likely scenario. We have something the SI wants. We are in the way, or we compete for that resource. Evolution shows us that the fitter species will displace the less fit species at a nearly geometric rate. If the SI is the "fitter species", then we are doomed. Think about the way humanity has displaced the wolf as apex predator. The only reason wolves aren't extinct is because they went to places that are less valued, then some of our brighter folks figured that killing them all would be a bad idea. Many movies go over this kind of ground...Avatar, Fern Gully, Pocohontas, any movie depicting Native Americans made in the last 30 years...
Maybe the SI is crazy, or has motives that we can't perceive: This one can also make sense, but at this point, you are just handwaving, and it becomes a bad story, or just a minor sidebar.
Intelligent creatures do things for a reason, or to achieve a goal.
[Answer]
It's possible that humanity may be thought of as a pest that, once it leaves Earth and expands, will multiply uncontrollably and have bad effects on the galaxy, whether that be through self-interested abuse of others, irresponsible use of dangerous weapons during war, or just plain overpopulation and abuse of resources.
So an intelligence that views humanity that way would want to exterminate humanity before it can spread. The Earth may still be viewed as a valuable resource, but humanity can be viewed as a potentially harmful invasive species, similar to how the Moties were viewed in the book "A Mote in God's Eye".
[Answer]
In W40K there are reasons to protect terra (i.e. the earth) at all cost, and it is because **It's Sacred**.
An AI could be programmed by them creators to protect "holly terra" from the begining and we happend to aparead there in some moment between the moment of malfunction of this AI and the present times when the self-repairing sistem actualy manage to recover the otherworldy power-beyond-imagination system of this AI.
In other words, you can make anything a reason for any beign wish to protect the "Holly Terra" or Humanity in detriment of the other, what i'm trying to highlight is than, cultural/spiritual/otherwordly/etc reasons can be added to any being, as long as exist internaly, for that beign/species and be coherent for them, it doesn't need to sound rational for the other species in that universe.
Have a great day
[Answer]
I think that a lot the answers here are ignoring the fact that this is really a philosophical/ethical question trying to mask itself as a science question. The fact is that science doesn’t deal with value, hence we cannot give you a scientific reason on why one would value A over B (that is in the realm of philosophy). Of course, we can give you scientific explanations that could be used to build a philosophical argument on why the Earth has more value than humanity, but these would not be the reason.
As an example, take L.Dutch (top rated) argument. It argues that Earth has extrinsic value (can host life) while humanity doesn't. Well, this argument ignores the basic question, why is life even valuable? Why would an alien AI even value life? Intelligence does not mean you become a moral agent. Maybe it is a nihilistic AI that believes that life has no value. It also ignores humanity's intrinsic value, that any intelligent moral agent would take into account. So, the question really becomes, at what point does the Earth's extrinsic value becomes greater than humanity's total intrinsic value?
My advice is to treat this as what it really is and work on the SI philosophy. Is SI a nihilist? Is it a consequentialist? So, say that SI holds a view that it can create a race of more valuable beings on Earth (through some guided evolutionary process). Further, say that the AI holds a theory that the end justifies the means. This now sows the seeds of SI's preference of Earth over humanity.
] |
[Question]
[
**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
So in this world somewhere in distant future. The government has created I.D Chips that are designed to be biologically implanted into its own citizens. To ensure extra "security" and also act as a single account for banking, job applications, account managing,etc.
The Main part of the chip is attached to the wrist and can easily be seen with a metal hexagon sticking out of the skin.
Though underneath, the chip has mechanical roots designed to monitor all the actions of the individual. [Like running, sleeping, swimming, etc.] It also contains a tracking device to ensure where the citizen is at all times. If the citizen were to grab a knife, cut the skin and attempt to pull the chip out, the chip could **send** a shock through the whole body. Though I came into a problem is how to power this device.
Could having the device dependent on the bodies thermal energy allow this device to perform all the functions mentioned above?
[Answer]
>
> It also contains a tracking device to ensure where the citizen is at all times.
>
>
>
GPS uses frequencies around 1.2-1.5 GHz. According to [this](https://www.emf-portal.org/en/cms/page/effects-radio-frequency) you lose 4dB/cm in RF power when going through people/meat, thus your antenna must not be buried too deep. In fact, it would be better if it was right under the skin.
Thus the best place for GPS reception would be on top of the cranium. Sorry Will, if you put it down there, you won't get any signal... 1.5 GHz won't go through the body, it will be absorbed.
The obvious counter to this is to wear a tin foil hat, as everyone already knows.
Other places would be on the shoulders, for example.
Now, your tracker has a few issues, because GPS reception is unreliable: it doesn't work well indoors, doesn't work at all in tunnels, and especially not in the rebels' secret underground bunkers that you want to find.
Thus "loss of signal" will occur often, basically every time your faceless minions walk into an underground car park or even indoors.
Thus you can't differentiate between "loss of signal for legal reasons" and "someone put a tinfoil hat, send in the SWAT teams" which makes your tracker less useful.
Also, unless you want to bolt self-aligning satellite dishes on top of everyone's head, the receiving antenna will be tiny, perhaps like the one in a smartphone. Unless you shoot a whole new constellation of satellites into orbit with much higher RF transmit power than what the current GPS ones have, this tiny antenna means the received signal to noise ratio is very poor, and thus the GPS chip will need at least several seconds of averaging to get a proper location fix.
The limits to this are about the amount of power received by an antenna of a certain size versus ambient noise, and this no amount of space magic will give you a better time-to-fix unless the transmitters are made a lot more powerful.
We do it this way for cost: powerful RF transmitters require power thus big solar panels, which are heavy, which require bigger rockets to shoot them into space, which costs money. Maybe no-object once you Take Over The World, but keep this in mind.
So, with current GPS RF power levels you'll need to power up your GPS receiver for quite a while before getting a fix. This means it will use more energy than you think. Having a look [here](http://www.gns-gmbh.com/index.php?id=282), it will draw 60mW for a few seconds during acquisition.
Also, acquisition requires a much higher signal strength than tracking, it won't work at all indoors while tracking might work if the "user" is close to a window.
The datasheet I linked helpfully describes the modules' logging features, and how to conserve power in a data logging application, but if you want real time logging, less than about 15mW average won't cut it.
And you need real time logging, at least every few seconds, if you want to know where the entrance to the secret rebel hideout is!
This power draw is a problem. Your chances of fixing it with space magic technology are low, because the underlying circuitry will have to include a few RF circuits which are analog and include some hard tradeoffs in the noise versus power draw domain. Even if it's much lower, say 2mW, you still need to transmit often enough, which rules out a thermal generator, as said in the other answers.
However you can always handwave a space battery to power it, or a graphene supercapacitor, whatever.
So, my answer to your question is:
Every one of your minions must recharge their implant every two days. A routine search and interrogation will also be performed on the occasion, of course. Remember to always be nice to your political officer. They're here to help!
Shocking the user when the implant stops working or is removed doesn't seem doable. It would be a lot better to release a chemical if the implant is tampered with, or the user "forgets" to report to the nearest office of the Ministry Of Truth for his recharge. Effects of said chemicals are up to you, from giving the users' skin a fluorescent green glow (which gets them arrested) to making them sick. Lots of plot bunnies here.
[Answer]
Using thermal energy for power generation is a thing, but you need a temperature *difference* to make it work. You implanted device is likely to be essentially uniform in temperature meaning that it won't be able to generate any power this way.
Even if you do have a minor thermal gradient you can't get much from it. The Carnot limit sets the maximum possible power to the thermal energy flowing across the gradient times an efficiency given by $$\eta = \frac{T\_\text{high} - T\_\text{low}}{T\_\text{high}}$$ (with the temperature expressed in an absolute scale where zero is absolute zero). For the small thermal gradient available to an embedded device both the raw flux and the efficiency will be very small, so the available power is vanishing.
**Short answer:** nope.
If you want to diddle the biology in hopes of changing the answer you should note that you restrict the part of the anatomy where the thing will work to the part with a steep thermal gradient.
---
### Much longer answer
Let's do an estimate of how much power would actually be available.
Assumptions:
* Working area of $1\,\mathrm{cm^2}$.
* Thickness $1\,\mathrm{mm}$. We might make the device thinner, but then it won't be able to use the full thermal difference available.
* We place the power-generation zone between the muscle and the top of the dermis/bottom of the epidermis (which gets us fairly consistent temperatures over a range of external conditions: don't want to be at the mercy of the weather for this thing to keep working ) And we'll pretend we get the full nominal core temperature to skin temperature difference: $34$–$37^\circ\mathrm{C}$.
This is rather more than a little optimistic (especially as thin as I have proposed to make the device), but let's go with it.
* Perfect Carnot efficiency. (Note that this is a *really* big ask: the current leading solid state technology for this get about 1/6 of the theoretical maximum.)
* Selecting a thermal conductivity is the hard part. A higher value results in more heat flow *if* the source region can be replenished and the waste heat rejected fast enough; otherwise the temperature difference drops as the hot end cools or the the cool end heats up (or both). So we use a value close to that of flesh: $k = 0.5 \,\mathrm{W/(m \cdot K)}$.
The available thermal power is then
\begin{align\*}
P\_{th}
&= k A \frac{\Delta T}{\Delta x}\\
&= \left(0.5\,\mathrm{\frac{W}{m \cdot K}}\right) (10^{-4}\,\mathrm{m^2}) \left( \frac{3\,\mathrm{K}}{10^{-3}\,\mathrm{m}}\right)\\
&\approx 0.15\,\mathrm{W} = 150\,\mathrm{mW}\;.
\end{align\*}
That's pretty low, but if we're assuming a lot of technological advance it might not be disastrous. After all a 3G phone can transmit with only about $750\,\mathrm{mW}$.
But now let's look at that Carnot efficiency (recalling that we have to use absolute units here):
\begin{align}
\eta
&= \frac{(310\,\mathrm{K}) - (307\,\mathrm{K})}{310\,\mathrm{K}} \\
&= \frac{3}{310} \\
&\approx 0.01 \;.
\end{align}
So the actual power available in our highly optimistic model is around $1.5\,\mathrm{mW}$.
That's awfully low for something that is suppose to keep tabs on the wearer and we've made a lot of highly optimistic assumptions to get it that high. Image what happens if we let that temperature difference sag even a little bit. Or we have to make it thicker to access the full temperature difference. Or we can only get halfway from where we are now to the theoretical best efficiency.
[Answer]
>
> Could having the device dependent on the bodies thermal energy allow
> this device to perform all the functions mentioned above?
>
>
>
Well, I think you are OK up until it starts shocking the person. Thermal energy produced by the human body is not a huge source of power but it is something that is being explored today. [As example, Dr David Carroll, Wake Forest University,](http://news.wfu.edu/2012/02/22/power-felt-gives-a-charge/) has [published research](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl203806q) on this topic. I'm not sure how your device would gather this power. Having only a small area, the wrist, to work with would limit the amount of heat it can absorb and that limits the power it gains.
However, there is nothing that says the power comes only from one source. I'd like to suggest some other possibilities.
First, harness kinetic force. When walking, most [humans will swing their arms in counter force to the movement of their legs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_swing_in_human_locomotion). Have your device include a bit of hardware akin to a [shake flashlight](https://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=shake-flashlight) and the simple movement of the swinging arm could give some power. The shake light is just an example. A better example, pointed out in the comments by Joe Bloggs, is a watch powered by body movements or a [kinetic watch](http://www.seikowatches.com/world/technology/kinetic/index.html). Your device would most likely have a more refined generator, it may not make a huge amount of power but it would help.
Next, harness the power of flowing blood. Your device "has mechanical roots" and why would those roots not monitor blood flow? And while you're there, why not harness the blood flow? [Researchers in Lucerne, Switzerland are doing that today.](https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/swiss-scientists-design-a-turbine-to-fit-in-human-arteries) Just like the others, this isn't going to produce a lot of power, but again, every bit helps.
Finally, looking to today's tech for inspiration. We have [pads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transfer) that you can drop your phone on and it charges the battery. You could extend that idea and give it range greater than contact. Power could be broadcast, transmitted, directly to the device. This may even be the main method of charging internal batteries with all the others providing backup/supplemental power.
[Answer]
# No.
For thermal power you need a cold thermostate where the heat goes. From 37 °C to 25 °C ambient you can perhaps eke out a couple mW using a Seebeck plate (Peltier cell in reverse), no more; unless you mount a radiator on everybody's back.
# Power
A much more promising source of energy is blood. Basically, you divert a small quantity of blood through a [fuel cell](http://news.mit.edu/2012/glucose-fuel-cell-0612), where the oxygen-poor environment prompts haemoglobin to release oxygen. Burning that oxygen with blood glucose yields power, water, and CO2; the blood will zealously get rid of the latter two.
How much power you can absorb: you can surely absorb as much energy as a medium-sized muscle group. The blood already supplies sugar and oxygen to such. The effect will be a slightly increased basal metabolism. The body requires about 25 small calories (0.0231 kCal) per second, corresponding to roughly 100W.
A Samsung S8 runs at least 24 hours with a 13.48Wh battery, therefore 0.56W average are enough to keep it running; indirectly increasing metabolism by 0.5% due to increased consumption isn't even going to register.
Of course, the implant may become a problem with people with vascular problems - but a thermally powered device would also work haphazardly in people with low metabolism, or living in very warm climates, where the temperature differential is less.
# Location
Locating the device via GPS doesn't seem a very good idea to me. Access to GPS signal is poor, and you need anyway to re-transmit the location to the central servers. So, given that you **need** a data connection, why simply not *triangulate* it? Include a very high-precision timer in ground stations. When they receive a signal from the chip, they note the arrival time, and by comparing the arrival time between themselves, three or more cells would be able to exactly pinpoint the chip itself.
I believe this can be done *today* to precisely locate a telephone, whether its GPS is active or not.
# Purposes
The same mechanism that supplies the power can, with small modifications, be tuned to detect any of a plethora of chemical substances, markers and antigenes.
There is actually talk of a programmable carbon nanotube matrix capable of running almost *any* chemical test for the presence and titration of substances in a solution.
So your gadget could precisely monitor one's health status and warn if, for example, cancer antigenes abruptly popped on its radar. Of course, it could transmit also data about hormones, alcohol, neurotransmitters etc. and detect drunkenness, substance (ab)use, arousal, fear, rage and so on.
# Placement
For logistical reasons it would be probably implanted more centrally than the wrist (less chances of accidents and no problems with amputees), and it would be completely inside the body. Possibly it could be placed behind, or partially inside the [xiphoid process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiphoid_process#Function), with the fuel cell close to the celiac artery.
Since it's there, it would be relatively straightforward to hook it to the central nervous system. As any dentist could tell you, a very weak current in the right nerve can make it feel like half your body is on fire, making it a very efficient anti-tamper system.
[Answer]
**For any thermal-powered device, you need both a hot source and a cold sink.**
Something embedded in the body will only have to body temperature. Since you have an external component as well, it is perhaps possible to use the internal vs. external temperature difference as a power source. This would work best when the outside temperature is cool, but would be useless when the outside temperature is the same as body temperature.
So, it could not ever be a reliable power source, but perhaps backed by internal power storage might be useful.
Typical external temperatures preferred by humans are somewhat cool compared to body temperature, but not significantly so. So a [thermoelectric generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator) would have quite limited efficiency, but it is the most likely form of generator for your proposed usage. For something on the order of the proposed device, averaging 1 milliwatt of power would be very challenging if possible at all. The external stud will tend to be near body temperature because the amount of heat it can lose to the environment is quite limited.
Any device that is embedded in the body and is also externally available is a real problem due to infection, and requires careful and regular maintenance. So it is not practical unless this is the only reasonable form for such a device to work.
A far more practical arrangement is for the device to be powered by an external EM field when it is needed, exactly like a passive RFID chip. Given you want 24 hour operation, it would only be necessary for backup power within the device and charging at night just like your cell phone. Low reserve-power could just trigger an alert that you must correct to stay in compliance with government regulations.
---
One bio-source I have never heard of anyone using (ethical considerations come to mind, and installation would be more complex than most potential sources) is installing a small wind-turbine perhaps below the trachea. Breathing uses about 1 watt of power, so siphoning off a few milliwatts should be comparatively easy, which makes this a high-power source. Since this is below the esophagus, you would not have problems of clogging related to food and drink consumption.
[Answer]
**Yes. But not in the wrist.**
As has been pointed out, to power a device with heat one needs a hot side and a cold side. Fortunately, for half of the human populace, there exists a place in the body that is maintained at a cooler temperature than the rest of the body: **the testicles.**
<https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/why-do-human-testicles-hang-like-that/>
>
> Fortunately, human scrota don’t just hang there holding our testicles
> and brewing our sperm, they also “actively” employ some interesting
> thermoregulatory tactics to protect and promote males’ genetic
> interests. I place “actively” in scare quotes, of course, because
> although it would be rather odd to ascribe consciousness to human
> scrota, testicles do respond unintentionally to the reflexive actions
> of the cremasteric muscle. This muscle serves to retract the testicles
> so they are drawn up closer to the body when it gets too cold--just
> think cold shower--and also to relax them when it gets too hot. This
> up-and-down action happens on a moment-to-moment basis, thus male
> bodies continually optimize the gonadal climate for spermatogenesis
> and sperm storage.
>
>
>
Rather than the wrist, your future society could implant their devices in a place in close proximity to the testicles to facilitate their use (or use of the scrotum) to expel heat. As long as the temperatures produced are not too radical, the scrotum will simply use its normal methods to keep contents cool when it is hot.
---
As regards the prospects of tracking women (who are usually without scrotums) this becomes more tricky. I observe that all women I have observed breathe continuously, with air (almost always below ambient body temperature) moving through a series of passages on the way to the lungs. Some of these passages act to warm the air; the passages of the nose have exactly this function. A heat exchanger placed in the nose - perhaps a hollow tube permitting the passage of air - could be cooled by this passing air and so allow the temperature differential needed to power your device.
[Answer]
Depending how ubiquitous the trackers are, you don't need a lot of power. Passive RFIDs work from a couple meters and so having detectors built into light posts, vending machines, stop lights, entrances to public buildings would catch most people on a very frequent basis.
A class of active/passive RFIDs uses battery to transmit, but only responds when it gets pinged. A thermal device that generated 1mw but charged a capacitor would allow for burst power use much higher.
Longer range active tracking (the device broadcasts on a regular interval) requires more power, and one that sends the actual location also requires GPS which is very power intensive. (There's a reason your phone dies fast when using a mapping function.)
But why thermal? Blunt force: Put it the foot and it make it generate power piezoelectrically with every impact. Put it in a tooth. Attach to two body parts that move past each other. Tendon in tendon sheath. The installation is more complex. A simpler one is embedded in a muscle and generates power every time the muscle contracts and squeezes the device.
The easy way is with a passive RFID. Ping them with a burst of microwave, and they use the power of the microwave burst to send back a few bytes of information. You put RFID readers in the entrances to public buildings, transportation centre.
You can put multiple RFIDs on the same device. Some can only be read from a couple cm away. Some can be read from a hundred feet or so.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-frequency_identification>
Your society could have tiered tags. Everyone gets a passive tag shortly after birth. This will be sold to the masses as a way of preventing kidnapping, and finding lost kids. As an ID it confirms who you say you are.
If you get in trouble with the law, then you are fitted with a passive active tracker. It can be detected from further away. If you are a criminal, you may have a fully active tracker similar to the anklet devices used.
Note that spoofing an RFID is fairly easy. If I'm a Black Hat if I wrap the part of my body that has the tag with a piece of metal, then the signal is mostly blocked. If I make a duplicate tag that a confederate moves with him, then I can establish an alibi in the system for being somewhere else. If I make a thousand copies of my tag and stick them to people's clothing, then I'm everywhere at once.
With more power you can overcome these limitations. Every device (has to be more than an RFID now...) has a public and private key pair. The private key is hard coded into the chip. The public key and the identity are kept by the government. When pinged, the id number is returned in clear, a few bytes of random noise, the id number and the current time are encoded by the tracker using the private key. This message is picked up. If the watchers aren't concerned about this person, the encrypted part is ignored. If they are interested in you, or if this is a transaction, then your id number is used to fetch your public key, it's used to decrypt the rest of the message, and it needs to be close to the current time.
Note that you could also use some form of induction charger. If the device is in your finger tip, then every time you ID yourself for a transaction, your device's battery is charged up. If you go for days or weeks without buying anything you become noticed.
This becomes a common device for computer access. For locks. If the reader/chargers are cheap, they are used everywhere.
[Answer]
Ignoring the power-from-heat part of the question, which is already answered pretty well, I thought it'd be interesting to perform a reality check on some aspects of the idea.
>
> The government has created I.D Chips that are designed to be biologically implanted into its own citizens. To ensure extra "security" and also act as a single account for banking, job applications, account managing,etc.
>
>
>
... the big think such a chip would do is provide "identity" functionality. While your question implies that you're thinking more of "ID card", identity, especially with an online component, is so much bigger. Like in Justin's answer, an RFID or NFC chip, [like the ones used for pets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_implant_(animal)) fits the bill, but there's one additional piece of functionality I'd add - make it a [smart card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card), able to sign documents and provide online authentication.
It's unclear if "single account for banking" means "only one bank account", which only makes sense if you (effectively) have one bank.
>
> The Main part of the chip is attached to the wrist and can easily be seen with a metal hexagon sticking out of the skin.
>
>
>
You don't want the implant to breach the skin. First off, doing so might cause it to get caught on something and accidentally get torn off (which might be a plot point, but would make for some pointed questions if you had an anti-tamper feature). If the body didn't push it out on it's own at that point, anyways. It's also a great way to cause an infection. You want the implant completely under the skin. Depending on how big it is (current ones are the size of a grain of rice), it might be visible *through* the skin, however.
>
> Though underneath, the chip has mechanical roots designed to monitor all the actions of the individual. [Like running, sleeping, swimming, etc.]
>
>
>
Activity monitoring is doable to some extent. Note that you may not be able to tell **what** activity is going on, just **level** of activity (say, if I'm swimming just by kicking my legs).
>
> It also contains a tracking device to ensure where the citizen is at all times.
>
>
>
This is more difficult than it appears. The primary problem is power consumption (which the other answers have mostly covered), but the underlying issue is *transmission*. For example, GPS on my phone only does me any good because I can look at it directly; anybody else who wants to track my location needs to add a transmitter they can pick up. It's unlikely you could pick up a citizen's location from a satellite, but RFID chips can be read from a distance - up to 100 meters, depending on the type. In theory you could replace cameras on street corners with RFID readers (possible plot idea - "invisible" people without chips). Note that the extremely short range (~4cm) of NFC is considered a security feature, so best bet is some sort of hybrid device.
>
> If the citizen were to grab a knife, cut the skin and attempt to pull the chip out, the chip could sense a shock through the whole body.
>
>
>
So mundane. Why taser your citizen, which takes a lot of power?
There's a few things here. First, especially if the device is under the skin, few people are going to want to cut into themselves, especially since it hurts. And depending on where it ends up in the hand, they may have to worry about permanent maiming. But what I'd do, if the tech permits, is to hook it into their nervous system - if they try to remove it, just stimulate the nerves.
[Answer]
The technology to do your data collection pretty much exists today. Once you strip away a smart phone battery, touch screen, and case, there is not much left. Your main power consumption, however, would be in the on-line real-time tracking. This, I presume, would require some form of electromagnetic transmission, which is very power intensive.
The identity stuff could be done by [RFID](https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/high-tech-gadgets/rfid.htm) tags, which require no internal power at all. The power comes from the external reader. If you want just a local data readout from a monitor, power for the data dump could come from the reader itself, using R[F charging](https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/04/energous-wattup-rf-charging-first-products/) at the time of read-out.
The shocking part could be handled by a high-capacity Li-Ion battery that discharges all at once. The battery could be used for ONLY this purpose, thus it would not discharge until needed. Require a citizens to do an annual 'physical' which would also ensure this battery is kept charged. Tampering with it, of course, would be like tampering with ANY li-ion battery - immediate short and very high temperature fire.
So your main concerns are wireless communication for tracking, and power for data collection. For this, you would need more than just a localized power source. I would suggest either [artificial photosynthesis](https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/energy-production/artificial-photosynthesis.htm) biologically implanted in every person, solar cells implanted on the head (no head covering allowed), or some form of thermal generator.
The best bet for thermal energy would be nano-thermo-generators that line the nasal cavity, and use the temperature differential between internal body temperature (37 degrees Celsius) and ambient temperature of the air entering the nose (depending on the local of your country, average 25 degrees Celsius) for a temperature differential of 12 degrees Celsius. Since the body is doing its best to HEAT the incoming air up, here is perhaps the best bet for the body to keep UP the temperature gradient. However, I think you would be hard-pressed to get enough energy to power a cellular signal [Energy Consumption in Android Phones when using Wireless Communication Technologies](https://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/575153.Energy_Consumption_in_Android_Phones_when_using_Wireless_Communication_Technologies.pdf)
>
> In [6] Balasubramanian et al. showed that data transfer of 50 KB when
> using 3G needs 12.5 J, while when using WiFi the same data transfer
> consumes 7.6 J of energy
>
>
>
Page 4
[Answer]
There are all sorts of energy sources in the body, an excellent article in [Ars Technica](https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/your-body-the-battery-powering-gadgets-from-human-biofuel/) from a few years ago covered a few main contenders according to the current science of the time: a nanowatt from electrical potential in the ears, a microwatt from kinetic energy, 40 microwatts from a biocell using the blood's own glucose, while sweat and tears also have some potential.
Can a device do all the things you want? Sure, depending on the implementation. Depending on the sophistication of an implant, it may require far more invasive implanting to monitor all actions. Computing power and/or transmission power required for tracking may be minimised by having an extensive network of receivers instead.
However, the reason to not do this is simple: there are better alternatives. Wanting to deliver a shock requires stored energy for a quick burst of power rather than relying on a large amount of continuous energy, so it would make sense for your devices to have a battery, and this makes sense for the other challenges too. Even the batteries of the near future may be quite compact and capable of high-speed charging, so having a long-term battery in the implant that is discretely recharged through various techniques (mainly thinking wireless charging) is probably the way to go. If a battery gets below a certain minimum, dispatch agents to brush a charger against the unknowing citizen at an appropriate time if you don't already perform "checkups" on the implant on a regular basis.
The battery then acts as a buffer to the same problem: if it isn't charged, can it use body heat as a backup? Sure, but not for continuous function if it's demanding high-power features such as transmitting its precise location in the middle of nowhere. At this point, the device can go dead and build up a charge for spurts of continuous function, or act in a more limited manner by giving 'pings' on a regular basis, such function could even be remotely selectable.
] |
[Question]
[
Our country, which is located in thousands of km2 of plains, needs a way to store water. Dams are not an option due to the fact that there are no mountains. We have retired mining quarries that are unused.
1. What are the implications of using a quarry as a water storage?
2. How should we solve those implications?
We eventually plan to mine another quarry and build a concrete retainer for the water (to prevent seeping & reduce contamination). And filter and transfer water to the new reservoir.
[Answer]
## Leaching, stagnation
You ask...
>
> What are the implications of using a quarry as a water storage?
>
>
>
The problems are...
* Leaching
* [Stagnation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_stagnation)
At quarries and mines they have broken up and crushed the bedrock to reach mineral deposits. This creates lots of free and mobile substances that will be washed along with the water and pool in the quarry. This is a huge problem for you. You risk **poisoning** yourself.
The second problem is that this will be [stagnant water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_stagnation). This is such a potent problem that when my home town realized that the water consumption in the county was **decreasing**, the water services had to ask the citizens to use **more** (cold) water in order to keep the water from turning stagnant in the water systems.
# How to mitigate this?
1. You need to monitor the water quality. Watch for bacteria, parasites, metals and other contaminants
2. Some chemical treatment to get pollutants out may be needed.
3. You need to filter the water. This is fairly easy: a big sand bed with a layer of powdered charcoal will get you a long way.
4. You may need to disinfect the water afterwards. Ultraviolet light (like sunlight) works well.
5. Keep the water flowing, never let it stand still.
[Answer]
The water pH in water that accumulates in some former quarries can be affected by the chemicals used in the mining process and reactions with the exposed rock faces in the quarry.
For example Middlepeak quarry, a former limestone quarry in Derbyshire in England, has a pH level of 11.3; due to its attractive blue colour people would be lured in attempting to swim in it, but they would die. This has lead to attempts to dye the water to make it less appealing to swim in.
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-33267461>
Other quarries like sand and gravel pits or clay pits are often suitable for use as reservoirs.
Depending on the type of quarry you plan to use it may be necessary to spend as much time if not more treating the water to make it safe to drink after storage as desalination in the first places
[Answer]
You need to know not only what was mined in the quarry originally but also, and possibly more importantly, what it was mined *from*, the "country rock" as it's called in geochemistry. If you were for example mining Titanium then it's likely that the country rock is granite and there is likely to be [Radium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium) in the rocks, the water will be mildly radioactive and have dissolved radioactive Radon gas. If on the other hand you were mining metamorphic volcanic hard rock for road aggregate like they do in Northland then quarry contamination could include Sulfur, Iron and Asbestos. Lets not talk about opencast Lead or [Cinnabar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnabar) mines, you'd have to be extra stupid to use one of those for drinking water. Other potential rock source contaminates include Copper, Manganese, Lime, Salt, Silica, Antimony, Arsenic, and dissolved [Halogens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halogen), plus rock dust and other potentially harmful particulate.
That's contamination from existing material, then you have to consider where the water is coming from. Groundwater will likely share the same contaminants as the existing rocks but may also bring in added contaminants from the same list but other areas. Surface runoff from the local area may be contaminated by fertilisers, organic material and microorganisms. Direct rainfall is likely to start off reasonably contaminant free in open country but could include acids, other industrial air pollutants in the form of Halogens, organic toxins or particulate like soot or Zinc dust from powder coating.
Then you have to think about what happens to the water that is in storage, if turn over is low, AKA you are using the ex-quarry for emergency rather than routine supply, then [Stagnation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_stagnation) is the biggest issue, stagnant water is a breeding ground for any number of micro- and macro-organisms that you don't want; many of these concentrate toxic compounds especially sulfurous contaminants. Evaporation will also concentrate any contaminants left in the water that isn't being used regularly. The other issue is that quarries are usually much deeper than they are wide which leads to generally poor circulation at depth meaning an [Anoxic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_waters) layer generally builds up at depth this leads to a build up of highly toxic Hydrogen Sulfide, which can lead to lethal out-gassing either on site or further down the treatment chain.
So those are the problems, the solutions go a bit like this:
1. chemical treatment to precipitate dissolved chemical contaminants, this turns dissolved toxic elements into fine powders that settle to the bottom of the water column. To do this you need to know what you're precipitating and how much of it, this requires careful monitoring of water conditions on the surface and at depth. The actual precipitation is usually done after the water has been removed from the reservoir.
2. bottom sourcing, take the water you remove from the quarry from the lowest point in the system, this improves aeration of the whole helping to prevent anoxia and stagnation.
3. aeration, pumping air through the water column causes most dissolved gases to be released from solution, it will also oxidise and precipitate metals not previously precipitated. This step should be conducted either in the open air or in a sealed environment where the gas coming out of solution can be contained as it can be highly toxic. [Ozone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone#Industry) is often used to kill microorganisms at this stage also.
4. add [Flocculents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocculation), you may need several different ones to do a staged treatment, flocculation removes suspended particulate from the water, as the dissolved toxins are now particulate precipitates this removes them from the water altogether. Filtration is suggested as a final aid to this process as well as removing larger material.
5. additives like Chlorine can be used to add to the transport lifetime of the resulting water by reducing bacterial growth and killing existing microorganisms.
As a note you can still dam a river on a relatively flat plain, you built a large earthwork similar in construction to an Earthen [Levee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levee) that raises the banks of a river and creates both a working [head](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_head) of water and an impoundment space behind the dam for water to pool. This is extremely labour intensive compared to a dam in hard rock at a convenient fall in the mountains but has the advantage of being put where you need it most.
[Answer]
**Quarries make fine reservoirs.**
Below: Atlanta's [Bellwood Quarry Project](https://atlanta.curbed.com/2016/5/11/11657372/westside-atlanta-quarry-project-happening)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2GYbB.jpg)
[source](https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x88f504b44df00ee1:0x2198e306abaf8988!2m22!2m2!1i80!2i80!3m1!2i20!16m16!1b1!2m2!1m1!1e1!2m2!1m1!1e3!2m2!1m1!1e5!2m2!1m1!1e4!2m2!1m1!1e6!3m1!7e115!4shttps://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname%3Daymenz%26id%3D6245230753266943026%26target%3DPHOTO!5sbellwood+quarry+-+Google+Search&imagekey=!1e3!2s-VKVq9fg_jPo/VquESAzSRDI/AAAAAAAAFnE/BAUPsdcF8WQINl30uaJoN746n1hZjEaqwCJkC&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwia87Pu7_fWAhVKMyYKHQ39AHQQoioIfzAO)
Near where I grew up, the best swimming anywhere around was in an abandoned quartzite quarry. I wish I could find an image linked; it was beautiful with clear deep water. All other water around was muddy and green. Google maps shows it is being worked again. The same reasons that led this water to be so clear are the reasons certain quarries are well suited for use as reservoirs.
1. **Structural stone is waterproof**. "Quarry" could be used as a catchall term for any sort of mine. Quarries for building stone are the ones to use. The Bellwood quarry depicted above was for granite. Building stones cannot wash away or weather in the rain and snow. Components of a building stone cannot leach away - this would stain the building and compromise stone integrity. Building-quality stone in a quarry will likewise not leach into or contaminate overlying water, and likewise cannot be water permeable.
2. **Quarries are deep.** This means a more economic use of land than would be the case for a naturally occurring body of water.
3. **If they fill naturally with water, they fill via springs**. Groundwater coming up into quarries can actually be problematic for active quarries. The water quality of a spring will vary depending on the spring, of course, but springs generally are cleaner than surface water sources.
4. **Quarries do not have naturally occurring surface water inputs.** Of course if you are working a quarry you do not want a stream pouring into it. Surface water is problematic as drinking water because it carries surface stuff: soil, manure and agricultural runoff. This can contain pathogens. Ag runoff contains fertilizer which then leads to algae overgrowth in the water. Lacking surface inputs, spring fed quarries are nutrient poor and so sustain less life overall than natural water bodies.
If you are going to put water into the quarry (as with the Bellwood project) you can control the purity of what you put in. Atlanta, it turns out, is going to fill it with river water...
[Answer]
In Poland there is four reservoirs called Pogoria [View on four of them on google maps](https://www.google.pl/maps/place/Pogoria,+41-300+D%C4%85browa+G%C3%B3rnicza/@50.377383,19.2079143,13.66z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x4716d905203317b1:0x243b715d2e31eb85!8m2!3d50.3441458!4d19.1979218?dcr=0)
All were sand open pit mines. Due to water supply coming through limestone water is hard but very pure. Additional sand bed of all of them filter any contamination.
The main problem you would face is how to supply those mines with water. It may be not efficient to pump water directly to them and store for later repumping.
Consider water towers or artesian wells.
[Answer]
I don't know if there are no rivers at all in this world, but there may definitely be agricultural runoff. Or there could be periods of time where the quarry fills with water because of seasonal rains.
Either of these cases could cause an increase in salinity of the water in your quarry unless you make sure outside water can't get in like that. Not to mention that there could be high mineral content from the abandoned mining project.
Edit: if this is just a store, this excessive saline and minerals could be filtered out, sorry I missed that part of the question.
[Answer]
As others have said it depends very much on what you have been quarrying. Many materials would make for very bad water storage solution (lead mine), but many others would be fine. The ancient Maya were well known for making use of limestone quarries as water reservoirs and digging specific structures to hold water. This was necessary because in the dry season water often ran low especially in the northern area of Yucatan. But water storage was an issue as far south as Tikal.
It may be necessary to seal the base of the reservoir to prevent or at least reduce leakage. The reservoir bottom and sides might need to be shaped in some places to ensure that water can conveniently be drawn from a vertical edge somewhere rather than a 45 degree incline. Silt should also be provided a place to settle out to prevent it being draw up with the water.
Other key measures that need to be taken: organic materials should be prevented from being washed into the reservoir by clearing the surrounding area of vegetation. Light should be kept out by using narrow and deep quarries or even (as was the case with the Maya bottle shaped underground cavities.
[Answer]
* Consider assorted projects to [reclaim open pit mines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excavation_lake). In Europe those often involve artificial lakes.
* Where is the water table, compared to the quarry? If it was possible to mine the quarry out, the flooding during the mining operations must have been manageable.
* If you can work on the floors and walls of the mine, e.g. to seal it, why make it an open lake and not underground cisterns?
[Answer]
The non-existence of mountains doesn't mean there are no rivers. Some form of river will form anytime precipitation exceeds evaporation.
That said: 1/3 of Alberta is 'land locked' There is no route for a rain drop to run to the sea on the surface. 30 miles from my house is Pigeon Lake, which hasn't flowed over it's outlet weir in 15 years. The lake is about 10 x 20 km, and is having a real problem with blue green algae due to increasing phosphorus levels.
Yet Pigeon lake has several creeks that run into it.
On the Canadian Shield, the last ice age destroyed the existing drainage. It's fairly flat, with mostly rolling hills and rocky ridges. Imagine turning a slab of concrete over very rough from where it moulded into the gravel below. Tip one edge so it has a slope. Run a sprinkler. The cavities fill up, and spill into the next slighly lower cavity. But you can have 'lakes' that empty via multiple channels. You do end up with rivers.
You can think of a quarry as being a very wide well. If you can drink the ground water, you should be able to drink the quarry water.
It's exposed to sunlight, and bird crap, so you will get algae growing in it. But it shouldn't be significantly less drinkable than a lake in similar terrain.
] |
[Question]
[
I was wondering about the practicality of some superpowers. If someone had the ability to fire lasers out of his/her eyes, would the advantages of this ability be sufficient to overrides the risks? The problems that immediately come to mind are that:
* such an ability would likely blind the user for at least a few seconds (bad thing in a fight)
* no matter how you focus the heat, it just doesn't seem like a good idea to fire something like that near your brain. (*Really* bad thing always)
On the other hand, firing a perfect shot — laser goes out and follows the direction of your sight — at the speed of light will always be a good thing.
---
I wasn't clear about this, but firing the lasers will ***probably not kill or maim you.*** I'm just naturally worried about the word "probably". It means I might die.
[Answer]
I love worldbuilding questions which touch biology!
I would argue that it's not so bad as some other people here present. The main question is, where does this power come from? Evolution? Magic? Technology?
Depending on the answer to this question, some the problems listed above could be easily or very easily solved.
1. Saccades and blinking are controlled by nervous system and are thus easiest to solve - in fact, nature and engineering has already solved a number of similar problems.
ex 1. WWI fighter planes had initially a huge problem with firing on one another because the machine gun was mounted behind the propeller, so when the gun fired, the bullets often hit the propeller fans. This was solved quicklly by a simple mechanism which synchronised the firing and the propeller. The same could apply here, with a switch blocking blinking and saccade reflexes during the beam firing.
ex. 2. Swallowing vs breathing - You don't have to control Your breathing while drinking a tea, dont You? The nervous system is wired to do that for You.
The only question is, how was the nervous system taught to block the reflexes during laser fire. Evolution could do that for You easily, otherwise it was directly magical or technological manipulation (hard stuff).
2. Burning the lenses - well, we have two options here. First, who said that the laser has to originate from the eyeballs themselves? Maybe it's origin is right in front of the eyeball? Second, there are a lot of transparent materials which have no problem with passing the laser through - especially if the laser is really, really monochromatic. Again evolution would have no problem doing that, since it already produced lenses transparent in the visible spectrum (and the wider the spectrum, it is probably harder to adapt to it). Magic could probably do the same, the technological solution would probably be the hardest here.
3. Scattering - practice, practice, practice. Again, evolution could help a lot by doing some additional hardwiring in Your brain, and so could technology and magic. Frogs are super precise with shooting their tongues, and so is Vash the Stampede in Trigun (well, he is precise with guns, not tongue).
4. Power supply - this depends on the physics of Your world, but since we are discussing laser-shooting-eyes, I assume that it's at least a bit different from ours.
I also wanted to point out that whatever Cyclops in X-Men is shooting, it's not laser, it carries way too much kinetic energy.
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I'm not an optometrist or ophthalmologist, but it seems like if you fire a laser through the lenses of your eye, and that laser has sufficient energy to burn a target at a distance, then it stands to reason that this would cause you more than a few problems.
Several specific issues come to mind:
1. It would raise the temperature of your [vitreous bodies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitreous_body) so high and so fast that your eyes would effectively flash-boil and explode under pressure. In fact, until the vitreous body boils off, this gel would diffuse your laser to the point that it couldn't be focused on an enemy.
2. If that didn't happen, then the lasers would melt your eyes' lenses.
3. For the duration of your laser-attack, you *cannot even glance* in any other direction. No instinctive glance at movement in your periphery, or you just torched a hundred meters of ground for no reason.
4. You must make all of your attacks a staring contest. *Don't blink*. Don't want to burn your eyelids off.
I would suggest that you instead fire your lasers from your nostrils. Burning a few nose hairs is far less damaging in the long run.
Or maybe prehensile mustache lasers?
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Laser eyes have always been Rule of Cool. The power constraints (a laser that does substantial damage in a short time) mean that there's no current energy source that would be man-portable (let alone contained within the eye) and fit the bill. As mentioned in other answers, the biological nature of the eye (the optical purity of its lenses and vitreous humours) also mean that emitting such a beam from within the eye will be incredibly and permanently damaging. And the constant movement of the eye (edited out of our vision by our brain) makes a mockery of "precise aim".
So let us ignore the biological eye, and go with the *bionic* eye. This avoids the presence of any imperfect biological elements incapable of withstanding the beam, and a camera feeding data to the optical nerve can artificially simulate the minor movements of a natural eye, while remaining rock-steady on the object of focus. The remaining problems are bloom, power supply, space constraints, and cooling. Assuming that you want to do laser cannon-like damage (not just blinding a target like a laser strike), you're talking a laser in the hundred-kilowatt range, easily.
Northrop-Grumman's [Firestrike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRESTRIKE) laser is in that range... and it weighs about a ton and a half and requires about a megawatt of power to operate. Definitely plausible on a battleship, less plausible inside someone's head. In addition, a major concern of battlefield lasers is bloom - both for beam diffusion and (important for the person from whose face the laser is emerging) heat blowback near the weapon. If the hypothetically laser-eyed individual is shooting his lasers in a vacuum, that is no longer a problem - but they're encountering different problems. So, even with artificial eyes, the technical challenges are substantial.
So, at the moment, even replacing the fallible human eye with something more robust, so many technical and physical challenges would need to be overcome that any application of it may as well be called "magic" and left at that - as with Cyclops and most of the other X-Men. In that case, magic can provide the power, magic can determine where the beam is supposed to go, and magic can protect the wielder against the adverse effects of their own beam.
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Ignoring all the biological factors of firing lasers from your eyes, actually aiming at distance (more than a few yards) will be complicated greatly by the eyes natural nystagmus (back and forth motion of our eyes that the brain edits out) which would cause a laser beam to wave around. Though I suppose you could just dampen the effect while emitting the beam. There is also the converging nature of the beams, so they would cross at the focal point, not just shoot out in parallel beams.
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## Prepare for a lot of collateral damage
While it might seem like it's easy to aim your eyes, it's actually very difficult to keep them perfectly still. Only a small amount of the retina gets a clear and perfectly focused image, so your eyes are constantly flicking around to take in the details of a scene. These flicks are called "saccades", French for "jerks".
Even when you're staring at something, your eye position isn't continuously controlled by the brain. Rather, your brain notices when the eye has started to drift off target, and jerks it back into correct position.
This process isn't consciously controlled, or even noticed, because your brain processes them out to give a steady and continuous image. But if you're firing a laser at any significant range, a flicker of just a few degrees would be a real problem.
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Definitely unpractical.
As others have pointed out, heat dissipation would make your eyes and brain to explode almost instantly.
Moreover, your vitreous bodies would turn into plasma right away. The interesting thing is that from that moment, it would reflect most of the beam, throwing more energy back to your brain that what comes out of your 'eye'.
The current works related to handheld laser guns take it into account as hitting flesh with a laser would raise its outer layers to plasma, which would subsequently protect the inner layers from the still hitting beam. The solution they propose is to altern periodically between the regular power of the beam and a significantly more energetic beam in order to blow that plasma layer out of the way.
Interestingly, these same works balance the pro of throwing cheaper energy than balistic weapons with the con of the fragility of the lenses. Indeed, the lenses themselves would be progressively damaged by the beam, lessening their optical purity. A decrease of purity would decrease the amount of energy that's sent toward the target. The difference would be absorbed by the lense itself, damaging them even quicker.
The nature of laser itself - light - brings the advantage of range and its proverbial speed, but any alteration of the optical purity of the medium through which it travals would reduce drastically the beam's energy losses per meter. Dust, rain, humidity, you name it.
And even if you can somehow overcome these cons or make it work in spite of them, you'll be the proud living casing of a weapon that can be deflected by wearing light reflecting clothing.
Although they are among the optimum cool, laser beams become pretty quickly dull once you begin to treat them realistically. In your example, I don't see how you can present your character with laser eyes without having that character have some man-made organs, likely its eyes, its whole face and maybe its brains.
Or if it's a magical power rather than a mutation or a technological enhancement, if you're willing to take that road.
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One of the reasons people don't have super-powerful lasers at home is the risk of retroreflection: the laser hits something reflective and [bounces back and harms you](http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-burning-laser-for-CHEAP/).
So is laser-eyes practical? Probably not for combat.
It can be defeated with [3M's retroreflective material](http://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/scotchlite-reflective-material-us/) which is cheap and readily available. That's a pretty significant Achilles Heel, comparatively; Kryptonite is difficult to obtain, building a prison out of plastic is enormously difficult.
And it makes
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> firing the lasers will ***probably not kill or maim you***
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> firing the lasers will ***probably kill or maim you***
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>
> On the other hand, firing a perfect shot — laser goes out and follows the direction of your sight — at the speed of light will always be a good thing.
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I'm not sure the factor of instant and automatic aiming wherever your eyes are looking and focused is an advantage. In addition to the micro adjustments and involuntary spasms of the normal eye movement, don't forget the event of momentary distraction...
Team mate: "Hey, Jack!"
LazerGuy: "Huh...?"
Team mate: [frazaaaap]
LazerGuy: "oops"
Or a bystander runs across the field of view behind the target. Just takes a fraction of a moment to fry the bystander.
And what about a person with laser vision that has a lazy eye? THAT can't be good...
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I should probably update when I get home to get the direct citation, but on top of the other issues, ***Physics of Superheroes*** points out that in Cyclops' case, he apparently actually has 2 superpowers: laser eyes (or whatever you want to call it) PLUS a superstrong neck/general skeleton to handle the for every force there's an equal and opposite force factor.
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Practical is such a misunderstood word. It often is taken to mean possible. But really it means efficient. Your question is asking not are laser eyes possible but are they useful.
It sounds like you are asking both questions though. Is it possible?
Superman is alien. By definition not human. So comparisons to the human eye are a bit of a waste of time in his case. Superman is stronger faster and nearly indestructible. Sounds to me like any damage he could do to himself is nullified by his indestructibility. He flies into the sun for a recharge. A little laser wont bother him.
As for where he gets his power. He flies into the sun for energy. He is solar powered. And the sun easily has the power to fuel laser eyes.
The real question is it useful. A built in high powered perfectly accurate weapon? Yes it is useful.
As for humans with laser eyes see the other answers here. But I thought it was worth pointing out the obvious exception to most of them.
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[
One of my Brainstormings (a mesh of interconected ideas that didn't solidify into a concrete story yet) had an interesting sideplot:
One of the main characters, Cephit, is a young gold dragon with an axe to grind on another main character for indirectly (and accidentally) almost getting her father killed in an incident involving fire giants. But since family-friendly is still turned on, Cephit's father survived (mostly). He can move his limbs well, do normal stuff and is perfectly fine mentally (as in no brain injuries) but **has little to no stamina**, making him incapable of extended work or fulfilling his role as a leader for the rest of his life.
The problem is that these are dragons, the result of Anon's Project Kars that aimed to create the perfect creatures. **They have the same regenerative ability as [Axolotls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl#Regeneration) and an immune system that incorporates nanomachines and gets regular updates from a gigantic, external pathogen database (think of GNU/Linux security patches and virus-definition databases).**
Obviously, mechanical stuff are out of question which leaves as with bio-weapons and yet another inspection by the FBI.
**So, how would a weapon be able to permanently cripple and only cripple a dragon?**
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Stamina is one thing, ability to regenerate is another. On top of that, both regeneration and a supreme immune system are things that require energy.
Let's take a human for example. Michael Phelps is popularly quoted as having a caloric intake of 12,000 daily calories. That is not true; [according to him, he only eats up to 10,000, most likely 8,000 though](https://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/06/michael-phelps-diet-12000-calories-myth-but-still-ate-8000-to-10000-quote).
Let me put it in lay terms. People thought his intake was six times the average for a human adult, but he confessed to only eating four to five times the average.
Back to the discussion at hand: you have to eat a lot to be a gold medalist. Even if you don't want to take part in the Olympic Games and all you want is to get buff, you're going to need to eat a lot. A 25-30 year-old, ~70kg (around 140 pounds) sedentary man might need only 1,600-2,000 calories per day, but professional soccer players would go anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000. Some quick googling says that for another sport, football, some athletes have caloric intakes of up to 9,000 calories per day.
Now the tricky parts. First: just eating like an athlete doesn't make you an athlete. If you eat 9,000 calories a day without much exercise, you are probably too obese to move out of your bed. A regular person going from 2,000 to 9,000 overnight would most likely die due to liver or heart failure in a few weeks.
Second, and this is the most important point of my answer: **this goes the other way around!** If you exercise like an athlete but you don't get the calories you need from food, you're going to get them from your body. Once there's no sugar in your blood you'll start eating through your fat reserves, but once those are gone your body will tear muscle for energy. You will be clinically undernourished - and the damage to your muscles may be irreversible.
Your dragon might be in that condition due to his immune system. If the immune system has an energetic cost of 30,000 calories per day and the dragon is only eating 28,000, he will starve and become weak.
In other words: your dragon might not exercise, but he has the caloric budget of an exercising dragon. If he isn't able to get enough nourishment, he won't have the energy to do much.
As to how to get to that point through injury: maybe he got hit with something biological, which his immune system can keep in check but not really cure. For example, a batch of nanobots that reproduce too fast for the healing nanobots to completely eliminate. Or perhaps he got dragon cancer. The healing factor can't really kill all cancerous cells because they are genetically too similar to the healthy cells, so they can only fix the damage being caused by the cancer.
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You mentioned nanobots and security patches. From a pure CS perspective, no software is secure. Yes, nanobots are hardware, but there is code in even the simplest hardware. If a device/weapon somehow corrupted much of the code that fixes the dragon, this could be (at the base level) what happened to the dragon's healing abilities.
Another thing you might want to keep in mind is that living creatures are made of cells, and **cells can only multiply a certain number of times**, and **not all life-forms can actually grow back limbs and body parts**. In addition to this, no computer is perfectly functional forever - I think one estimate I read was that your computer will only works at peak performance for 2 years, after which it slows down just because of age. So the virus/weapon that is used on these dragons ***could compromise the code or hardware that counters the effects of straight up aging to a point***.
**Also - what's the best way to clear data in a computer? Use a hammer.** Now, some hardware can be fixed, but perhaps the technology used in the dragons' healing mechanisms aren't repairable. That's why you can survive, but ***the full scale of the healing factor and stamina will never be recovered for that reason.***
Now what does this weapon look like? It could be used physically, like straight up stabbing a dragon in the right place with a blade covered with nanobots built to reprogram dragons, or it could be a signal that randomly or specifically corrupts dragons enough to defeat them (not kill, but at least take them out).
Basically, what you're looking for is a type of virus that is transmitted in some way. I'll try to add to this answer if I can do so later.
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I'm thinking a nanomachine infection could be the answer.
Foreign nanomachines have infiltrated into his system, and are both self-replicating and are tuned for something else - another species, perhaps(?). As a result, your dragon has the equivalent of Glandular Fever in humans - a (usually) low-grade infection that has a large effect on stamina and endurance.
These aren't being fixed by the immune system updates because the cause hasn't been discovered / detected yet. Also, depending on where you want to go with this, the cause of this nanomachine infection could be damage to existing nanomachines causing misprogramming; nanomachines from another species that can survive in the dragon's system (like how flu jumps from birds and/or pigs to humans); or a deliberately planted nanomachine designed to debilitate a dragon in this way.
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## Temporal cripple
The new member is regenerated, but **the new member is new**. This means that the new muscles are weak, and the new member is ineffective until the dragon has had time to train them.
## Lack of nutrients
You may have all of the nanobots in the world; if you do not have calcium enough to build the bones the resulting bones may end being weak, malformed or both. Lose too much of your body and the rest of it will simply do not have enough supply of minerals/proteins to regenerate the lost member as it should.
## Cummulative errors
Nanobots are not perfect, and sometimes mistakes happen. If the member to rebuild is small enough, most of the time those errors will be insignificant enough to be barely noticeable (and if sometimes the error is noticeable, the dragon may simply cut the member and start the process again).
But if the member is big enough, those mistakes begin to add and will practically always affect the viability of the new tissues. In those cases cutting down the crippled member to have it grown again is of no use, since the number of mistakes is guaranted to be high enough that the new member will always be malformed.
## The weapon "damages" the wound and stops the nanites
The nanites work ok when you slice through a dragon, as they flow to the blood and, at the same time that they stop bleeding, they start reconstructing the body.
But your weapon not only cuts the flesh but it also affects the remaining flesh; perhaps it is a flaming sword that burns the flesh of the wound (or petrifies it, or whatever). The nanites just cannot penetrate that layer of dead tissue to begin the reconstruction of the member.
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Continual damage over time.
The weapon used broke off in the body - the tip of the spear, or barbs along the edge. Every time Cephit's father moves, or even *breaths*, this causes a cut inside his body.
The nanobots then repair this damage, *perfectly*. This means that there is no toughened scar tissue, no carved 'channel' inside the body - so, the next time he moves, it happens **again**.
To fuel this constant repair, the nanobots need power. They get the power from the bloodstream - burning nutrients and oxygen. To replenish these, Cephit's father needs to eat and breath more, which causes more damage...
His current state is, unfortunately, the result of these conditions (getting enough "fuel for the furnace" versus causing minimal damage) meeting balancing out. The energy supplies left for his own use are quite low, leading to constant lethargy and exhaustion.
Even more unfortunately, due to *where* these remnants are located in the body, it would require a highly skilled surgeon to remove them without accidentally (and *permanently*) killing the Dragon
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**Drinking and mistaken identity.**
The fire giant has a number of [Magmin](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Magmin) warriors visiting on the occasion of the encounter. They are being entertained in the next room by dancers and libation of (whatever Magmins drink) some indeterminate hot sticky fluid. They speak of their magma pools with longing and of their war with [Magma Dragons](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Magma_dragon) with hatred and considerable boasting of feats of moxie and daring in battle they get rather rowdy and worked-up about the whole thing.
The drink runs out, the Magmins emerge seeking a Magmin equivalent of a kebab shop or burger joint. They spy the dragon and being blind-drunk immediately their ire is up mistaking it for a Magma Dragon. They attack, their primary weapon being teeth and their primary interest being fresh liver, they latch on, bite off chunks of flesh and then whip out the liver whole and munch away, until finally they are stopped. Everyone is really sorry for the mistake in the morning and of course the Nano-machines sealed the wound and stopped all bleeding.
No liver means much less by way of glycogen stores, there's some energy stored in the muscles, but continued exertion requires a liver - sure the nano-machines can clean the toxins from the blood and such, but they can't store the necessary energy to provide true stamina.
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Regenerating a lost limb is easy, just pull up the DNA blueprint and build a new one.
Repairing something broken is much harder, all the original parts are still there, just in the wrong places. They are in the way.
Our normal body repair mechanisms are not smart. If they see two broken pieces of bone next to each other they will bind them together. And this can be the wrong thing to do.
The nanomachines are smarter than that, but they can still make mistakes, irreparable mistakes.
My original idea was that the victim got a spinal injury. The spine gets repaired and works well as a part of the skeleton... but not so well as a channel for nerves. The nerves are either simply cut off or connected incorrectly.
After rereading the question I see that this was too drastic for the symptoms given.
So, a new suggestion: Pieces of the ribs was broken off and lodged in the lungs and/or heart. The body healed around these bits of bone but things aren't working *well* with all this junk in the way.
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He hacked the update server for the nanomachines server and pushed an update that made them attack this specific dragons lungs/heart as identified by genome. And he did it so incompetently that he didn't deactivate the regenerative function for said dragon so the nanomachines are constantly both destroying and rebuilding those organs. That (or the incompetent hacking) triggered the servers anti-virus protection and it sealed off all manual access and is only accepting automatic updates from nanomachines themselves, therefore nobody can fix the issue.
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I would like to submit two examples of immune systems functioning in some sense *too well* and therefore crippling people.
# Asthma and allergies
I have asthma. This means that my immune system responds to certain airborne stimuli by saying “you know what will really help this situation? If we Stop Breathing in those bad things. Let’s contract your air tubes in there to limit the airflow and the bad stuff.” Those stimuli could be as benign as, I go for a jog on a dry-air day and the ‘bad thing’ is a lack of moisture in the air.
I have several allergies too, in particular to the droppings of dust mites and certain particles of hay dust. This means that those things are, as far as anyone knows, benign and not trying to harm me—but my immune system recognizes them as Dangerous Invaders. Maybe they are, maybe they secretly tear up cells and stuff but nobody ever gets exposed to enough of them to do lasting damage. Either way.
The combination is really really bad. I breathe in too much dust and then it gets trapped in the mucous in my lungs where it causes a sort of pneumonia—fluid and mucous buildup in the spongy matter of the lungs which then has to be coughed out through those same air-tubes. But I cannot cough very well because my air tubes are constricted! To solve this I need a *rescue inhaler* which contains a compound called salbutamol, which happens to relax my air tubes so that I can spend a day or two coughing out all of the bad stuff and return to normal life.
But if I couldn’t, then life would be really difficult. Not being able to breathe very effectively because you are breathing through a straw makes your brain *panic* and becomes like the only thing you are able to focus on.
And it doesn’t come from my immune system being *too bad* but from being *too good*. Like it’s trying to crush enemies that most people don't even bother trying to crush because the damage is so low—but it does not tolerate even the least bit of attack and goes out to tear some shit up.
# Foreign body giant cell reactions
One of the worst biomedical engineering disasters ever concerned a prosthetic tempromandibular joint (TMJ) replacement.
I know, I know, “ah yes... the tempromandibular joint!” Let me give a digression to explain. Your lower jaw, the *mandible*, moves in ways that like none of your other bones move. It does not just swing open and closed like a hinge (your knee, your fingers) and it also does not just rotate around in a circle (your arms, your legs) but some hybrid of the two. You can probably put your lower teeth over your upper lip by jutting your mandible outward or put your lower lip under your upper teeth by sliding the opposite way, in addition to the normal hinge motion. You can also slide your lower teeth left-to-right. You need these motions in order to chew food effectively.
To do that, the bones are different. If you make a fist and then wrap your other hand around your fist, this is how most ball joints work, there is a "socket" and a "ball" inside of it, the socket keeps the ball in one place.. The bones are covered with a smooth barrier called *cartilage* and the body lubricates the joint with *interstitial fluid* and that is how it rotates—slide your fist around in your hand. But for the jaw, it is like if you make two fists and place them next to each other. To keep them together, you need an additional disc of cartilage that looks like a concave lens, it is hollow on both sides to form a little socket for both balls, but it otherwise lets the two balls slide around on each other without falling too far one way or the other.
Long story short, some people lose these pads of cartilage and then they have to have it replaced with a hinge and then they can’t chew. So some biomedical engineer had a great idea to create a plastic bag containing a gel that mimicked the original pad of cartilage. Unfortunately he verified that the bag could withstand the forces required on a model that was some scale factor larger—let’s say for this answer that it was like a factor of 10 or so. (It’s a small pad of cartilage!) He had this very very comfortable safety factor, but he was apparently blithely oblivious to the fact that materials fail due to *stresses*, not forces, and when you scale down by 10x, the same force causes 100x the amount of stress. So what seemed to be “really safe” was actually “under really dangerous amounts of load.” The bags broke, and released their gel contents into the body.
That also didn’t seem on-paper like it would be too bad. The gel was made out of little grains of plastic called PTFE, trade name “Teflon”. This is used *all the time* in all sorts of biomedical equipment. It’s super slippery and chemically really inert because it has these fluorine atoms holding on *so* strongly to these carbon atoms that they cannot be kicked off and they don’t want to grab onto anything else. So it is a great way to slide a biomedical implement into something, slide it back out, and minimally damage the surrounding tissue.
So it’s a safe material and everybody made it out all right, right? Nobody *lost half their face* due to this thing and the story can end here?
Well, the folks’ immune systems in many cases thought those little grains were like *splinters*—what the doctors would call a “foreign body”. When the body sees a splinter it combines white blood cells into massive weapons of devastation called “foreign body giant cells” which exist to dissolve that splinter completely. They do a *lot* of collateral damage while they do so. But they press in and blast the splinter with acid and dissolve it and then the bloodstream takes the bits away and eventually you pee out the now-atomized splinter bits, as well as any other of your cells that were nearby.
At least, you do that, *if* the splinters are not super-slippery chemically-inert plastic and just slide into other tissues in the body when something pushes against them. If *that* happens, then the foreign body giant cells just chase the splinters around your body forever destroying all of your own cells in the process. It's really really bad. It's basically having an allergy-on-steroids to something that you cannot get rid of which has invaded your body.
So uh yeah. The immune system is doing really really well, it has just been handed a deeply unnatural task that it cannot possibly be prepared for.
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**He has post-traumatic stress disorder.**
Mentally, his brain works. He makes sense. He remembers. He can talk and think. Physically his body is excellent. But his close call changed him. He came to the brink of death and looked over the edge. Now he is back, but not all the way.
<https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/ptsd/what-is-ptsd>
>
> Symptoms of PTSD fall into four categories. Specific symptoms can vary
> in severity.
>
>
> 1.Intrusive thoughts such as repeated, involuntary memories; distressing dreams; or flashbacks of the traumatic event. Flashbacks
> may be so vivid that people feel they are re-living the traumatic
> experience or seeing it before their eyes.
>
>
> 2.Avoiding reminders of the traumatic event may include avoiding people, places, activities, objects and situations that bring on
> distressing memories. People may try to avoid remembering or thinking
> about the traumatic event. They may resist talking about what happened
> or how they feel about it.
>
>
> 3.Negative thoughts and feelings may include ongoing and distorted beliefs about oneself or others (e.g., “I am bad,” “No one can be
> trusted”); ongoing fear, horror, anger, guilt or shame; much less
> interest in activities previously enjoyed; or feeling detached or
> estranged from others.
>
>
> 4.Arousal and reactive symptoms may include being irritable and having angry outbursts; behaving recklessly or in a self-destructive way;
> being easily startled; or having problems concentrating or sleeping.
>
>
>
He avoids the beings that he used to lead. He sometimes thinks that maybe he should have died, and that cheating death is wrong. He thinks that his family and his people would be better off if he had died, because he is a burden to them now. He wants to be alone, but when he is alone he is still with himself.
He cannot acknowledge to himself or anyone else the reasons why he has changed. He may not know. He does not sleep. He carries his suffering as overwhelming fatigue.
---
This is heavy, sad stuff. I do not propose it because I think it is funny or magical. But it is a reason why a well person, especially a well adult male who has been through a traumatic event, cannot function. Sometimes fiction lets an author explore things from a perspective that is less painful.
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# Autoimmune or other genetic disorder
The trouble with perfect regeneration is that it is perfect according to genetic code, but part of the genetic code is a little duff. That means that while he's apparently entirely physically correctly repaired, all is not entirely well.
Autoimmune conditions, overactive immune system, hyper or hypo thyroid. The list goes on for quite a while and none of them can be corrected by mere regeneration. In some cases, e.g. hyperthyroid, full regeneration would act against correct treatment.
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If we're being honest with ourselves I think we can all agree that dragons with healing nanites is stretching the hell out of the science-based tag. But let's see where this goes...
First off, the level of difficulty of this question is directly tied to how good those nanites are. Do they help out with healing by supplementing the tasks of the host's immune system or are they fabricating replacement tissue from raw materials?
The first option is an easy one not just because it's slightly more believable but because it means that the host's immune system is just really, *really* strong. While the nanites may help to reduce scarring and so on they're not actually doing anything that the body doesn't do for itself. Including fixing problems caused by things like broken bones healing wrong. They just make it happen a hell of a lot faster while keeping the trauma and infection down to manageable levels. Toxin binders keep the site free of contaminants, nano-sutures hold the wounded tissue in place, transport nanites flood the area with helpful drugs and so on to give the host's systems the ideal environment to let natural healing happen. And if it heals wrong then that's not the fault of the nanites, is it.
Up the scale a ways are the repair nanites that actually fix the damaged cells directly. They can reassemble cell wall structures and reattach them to their neighbors just like they used to be, stimulating mitosis to produce more cells to replace ones that are damaged beyond repair, etc. They'd be limited to purely local effect so massive jobs like limb replacement would be out of the question. If you lose a limb you're going to have to wait for a cloned limb to grow. The nanites will help reattach it, but you're going to be down for a while.
The far end of the scale takes us firmly out of science (if we weren't already) and into high science fantasy. This is where your body parts can be rebuilt from scratch when they are destroyed. Limbs grow back, organs are replaced, foreign bodies are identified and disassembled in moments and so on. Took a bullet to the shoulder? Watch while the skin joint is reassembled in a matter of minutes and fresh skin flows over the wound.
Of course to get this far you need a nanite system that is not only capable of complete molecular synthesis but also has a complete, up-to-the-second map of every cell and fiber of the body. It has to be able to store stupid amounts of data on every cubic micron of the body and be able to not just detect undesirable changes in state but also have the computing power to figure out how to do something about it.
Tough, but we can still break it.
Since there are limits to how much data you can store and process, even with distributed processing throughout the whole nanoswarm, a lot of the information about physical structure is just abstracted and generalized. Cell data for any particular location is stored as deviance from a set of standard templates and so on. The nanites will do a lot of the work of putting you back together after something major happens, but they're going to get some things wrong. The network of blood vessels in your body is pretty complex, and if you don't connect them all up or rebuild them in just the right way then the tissues in the area will suffer. Get the tiny details wrong on a rebuilt nerve sheath and the rebuilt muscles in the area won't work quite right. Stitch together the wrong nerves and *nothing* works right. Sure you can replace a destroyed organ, but getting the chemical balance and the signaling just right is finicky, and maybe your new gall bladder doesn't work *quite* right anymore and you have to give up on fatty foods.
In other words, the less like magic you make it the more chances you have to get bad results.
Medical nanotechnology in fiction is too often a hand-wave for magical healing. Took a plasma rifle blast in the leg? Here, let me spray this on you, you'll be right as rain in a couple of hours. Went on a business trip to Altair and got a nasty flesh-eating fungal infection that has already converted 10% of your body to chartreuse gel? Take two nanofactory tablets with this glass of concentrated nutrients and call me in the morning. Oh dear, that really is a nasty hole where most of your lower abdomen used to be. Maybe we'll just leave you in the tank for a day or two, just to be sure. Good thing you had the latest trauma inhibitors and the upgraded bloodflow control nanites or you'd have been in there for weeks while we printed you a new torso.
Don't be that guy.
[Answer]
## Sometimes things heal wrong.
We have all heard of bones healing the wrong shaped, this can happen to any tissue, perhaps the strike struck his heart actually cutting the sinoatrial node\*, maybe with a jagged edged weapon, and his sinoatrial node healed wrong and now he has a weak heartbeat and chronic low blood pressure because things are not beating in synch. Perhaps they even have a pacemaker. Fixing it would require cutting the heart directly and hoping it healed properly this time. But cutting the heart has a huge risk of killing him long before it can heal so the risk is just too high and he is left with a weak heartbeat.
* the sinoatrial node is the nerve cluster in the heart that actually controls the heartbeat.
[Answer]
# Immune system attacks the nanobots
Perhaps your local villain managed to bring in a foreign substance which was attacked by the dragon's immune system, and similar enough to your beneficial nanobots. After the infection was dealt with, the dragon's auto-immune system kept attacking the bots. This costs a lot of energy and keeps it tired.
] |
[Question]
[
**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
My story requires a team of human explorers on a far-away planet to repeatedly lose their latest few months worth of memories through some natural phenomenon (or perhaps equipment malfunction) while being otherwise unimpaired.
I am assuming a high-tech sci-fi environment where interplanetary travel and things like cryo-sleep are common.
I have been thinking along the lines of some strong magnetic field due to a sun storm, or similar events. The humans would have to go into sleep/hiding for the period, and their latest memories would be erased.
The problem is to make it biologically somewhat plausible. If they were robots with a completely sequential memory, I could assume that (part of) their in-built memory store gets wiped and they get a stored factory reset or something.
But with human memories, I am unsure how one could "set them back" to their state from a few months ago, given that memories are so subtly intertwined with learning and cognitive functions.
How could humans repeatedly lose their latest memories in a biologically somewhat plausible way in such a setting?
[Answer]
# Backup Restoration
In a far future world, people make backups (periodically, perhaps daily in a hazardous environment) to protect their memories and identity in the case of their body being killed (see *Altered Carbon* series or books, *Quantum Vibe* web comic, the Hotline series of novels and stories by John Varley, among others).
Anything that requires restoration from backup will lose all memories newer than the last backup -- if you're backing up once a week, you could lose anything from a few hours, to several days, for instance. This has other implications -- many folk used to this life pattern will have a strong desire to find out *how* they "died" if they wake up in a reconstitution chamber and the clock display shows they've lost time -- especially so if the loss is longer than their usual backup interval. In some cases, this might become an obsession!
[Answer]
This effect is a common one for people who have had clinically safe doses of opioid drugs like oxytocin and fentanyl.
It is really quite remarkable to see it play out in real life with people who have received it at levels sufficient to alleviate pain while not producing unconsciousness seemingly interacting fairly normally and recorded on video doing so, then an hour or so later having no recollection of having done so.
Also, the memory impairment effect continues to operate for up to a few hours after the dose has been metabolized to the point that it no longer produces a pain killing effect and no longer notably impairs physical functioning.
The chemical could be present in the necessary low doses from all manner of local exo-botany: pollens, aerosols near water falls or turbulent rivers from water plants, ubiquitous bacteria, protozoans, tiny mostly harmless mites, etc.
The [poppy field scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG2keYgBiZc) in "The Wizard of Oz" comes to mind as a fictional analog of this kind of thing.
[Answer]
You can use the following facts from neuroscience:
1. Perhaps the most famous patient in neuroscience is [Henry Molaison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison) (patient HM) who had his hippocampi and surrounding regions surgically removed in the 1950s to cure his epilepsy. His epilepsy was cured but he could no longer make new memories.
2. The current [standard model of memory consolidation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_consolidation#Standard_model) sees memories initially stored in the hippocampi and then gradually transferred to the cortex.
3. [Transcranial magnetic stimulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation) (TMS) is a modern non-invasive brain stimulation technique in which neurons are stimulated by the electric currents generated by an external magnetic field.
You can combine these so that e.g. the strong magnetic fields caused by solar storms that you suggest excite the neurons in the hippocampus as in TMS, scrambling the recent memories stored in there and interrupting the consolidation process, reverting your characters' memories to whatever they had a week or two ago.
[Answer]
# Anterograde amnesia
This is a form of memory loss that prevents an individual from forming new memories of things that occur after the specific event that caused the amnesia. Importantly, memories from before the traumatic event still remain, so your explorers will still remember who they are, why they're on the alien planet, etc.
This ailment can be caused by certain kinds of drugs. Perhaps one of these drugs has been placed in their food supplies by unscrupulous people before the explorers left civilization (a la *Alien* trilogy). Or perhaps a sister compound exists in the local environment, which the explorers have become exposed to, whether deliberately or not. Or, stretching the bounds of plausibility, perhaps some kind of human interaction between the explorers -- possibly in response to some external stimulus -- has caused it through a psychological mechanism. (What makes that implausible is that *all* of the explorers would suffer the same very rare symptom.)
[Answer]
**Dinoflagellate toxin.**
Dinoflagellates are protozoans and some make toxins. "Red tide" is the best known manifestation of this - a bloom of dinoflagellates and consequent mass death among fish. I have never seen anything to state that the fish kill is somehow helpful to the dinoflagellates; I think the toxin is a normal defense they have and when they bloom there is a lot of toxin. Red tide toxin can get airborne and affect people on land too. I visited a beach where there was red tide to see the fish kill and had to leave because my eyes hurt.
Pfeisteria though is supposed to use its toxin to parasitize fish - the neurotoxins stun the fish and then the pfeisteria can make sores and eat. These toxins very much affected people on the land with poisoning type symptoms. Weirdest of the symptoms were learning and memory difficulties.
[Learning and memory difficulties after environmental exposure to waterways containing toxin-producing Pfiesteria or Pfiesteria-like dinoflagellates](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9716058/)
>
> Background: At the beginning of autumn, 1996, fish with "punched-out"
> skin lesions and erratic behaviour associated with exposure to toxins
> produced by Pfiesteria piscicida or Pfiesteria-like dinoflagellate
> species were seen in the Pocomoke River and adjacent waterways on the
> eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, USA. In August, 1997,
> fish kills associated with Pfiesteria occurred in these same areas.
> People who had had contact with affected waterways reported symptoms,
> including memory difficulties, which raises questions about the
> human-health impact of environmental exposure to Pfiesteria toxins...
>
>
> Results: People with high exposure were significantly more likely than
> occupationally matched controls to complain of neuropsychological
> symptoms (including new or increased forgetfulness); headache; and
> skin lesions or a burning sensation of skin on contact with water. No
> consistent physical or laboratory abnormalities were found. However,
> exposed people had significantly reduced scores on the Rey Auditory
> Verbal Learning and Stroop Color-Word tests (indicative of
> difficulties with learning and higher cognitive function), and the
> Grooved Pegboard task. There was a dose-response effect with the
> lowest scores among people with the highest exposure. By 3-6 months
> after cessation of exposure, all those assessed had test scores that
> had returned to within normal ranges.
>
>
>
It is not a stretch to think that drugs or molecules affect learning and memory does. Oxytocin is made by our bodies and can memory creation. Benzodiazepines are used to suppress the creation of memories of unpleasant experiences.
In your world there is something in the air. I could imagine a plant analog might produce a neurotoxin to discourage herbivores (which is probably what the dinoflagellates are doing too). You could pattern it along the lines of Pfeisteria. Or maybe your explorers are not laying down memories, or when they get exposed recent memories fade.
An interesting fiction could have the neurotoxin act like oxytocin. Oxytocin is a complicated molecule and in addition to memory affects higher level social behaviors as well as some purely physiologic behaviors.
[Answer]
Some form of psychogenic amnesia (repressed memories for a period lasting anywhere from hours to decades) seems to fit the time frames you are envisioning. Nicely, it is defined by no structural brain damage but instead by some form of psychological stress (or else hypnotic suggestion). Importantly, the ability to create new, long-term memories is not impaired, so your characters could seem to be functioning normally even though memory gaps existed.
For a cause, you could imagine various scenarios:
* A chemical or biological agent builds up in the brain, causing a physiological stress response and producing a background level of paranoia, at some point having a sudden upsurge that creates a nightmare-like response. In other words, even though there is no real traumatic event (or at least not something normally considered THAT traumatic), the characters would slowly begin to have an undefined, repressed, but physiologically-traumatic dread, and when the compound dramatically peaks it would repaint the past few months as unendurably terrifying (and therefore become repressed and unable to be recalled). Whatever agent induces this could be tied to your solar-storm cycles or other events based on chemical reactions or biological life cycles. There could be other bio/chem compounds making the characters' ability to cope with psychological trauma much weaker, explaining why the entire team responds with repressed memories rather than just some of them.
* Some normal, everyday activity the characters have been engaging in suddenly become nightmarish, e.g. they realize the plant fibers they've been using for clothing and bedding are actually living parasites that have been invading their bodies or some other, similarly horrific discovery, making the entire experience since they began a nightmare trauma and thus repressed. I mean, now that they know what those weird, warm and ticklish sensations they had been vaguely noticing all along **really** were about...
* Some kind of drug-enhanced hypnotic suggestion was implanted on the team members in advance, such that if anything happened that would jeopardize the mission, they could forget and start over. Perhaps some sort of safety mechanism, in case of PTSD making team members unable to function in their vital roles. The periodic onsets could be tied to malfunctioning equipment (e.g. an AI that is triggering the hypnotic reset on everyone based on faulty reasoning about unanticipated, periodic events). Kind of a kinder, gentler, HAL response?
[Answer]
Ok, just my spin on that. Upper part is background stuff, lower part is solutions.
## Background stuff
#### Brain? Memory? What's that?
First lets look at the brain: Your brain is a giant association machine. To work properly there are multiple sections keeping different parts of memory in different places and ways:
First, there is the ***immediate memory***: This keeps your immediate thoughts and impressions for split seconds or seconds only and is not too large. It could be compared to the on-board-cache of the CPU in a computer. Its first part, the *sensory register* keeps stuff together for milliseconds, to e.g. allow you to "see" a person, rather than a varying set of blotches of color. Since the immediate memory is kind-of interlinked and shares "hardware" with the next one, people often skip talking about it and start straight with:
The ***short-term memory***: Here memories are kept for 20-45 seconds. They are partially filtered and are on "speed dial", so to say. Often the ***intermediate memory*** is also counted into short-term, raising the mark to roughly two minutes and largely filtered. Since this is also where consolidation takes place, parts of this memory are refreshed and refreshed again, while filtering out unnecessary stuff. (These re-runs are why people talk about the "quarter-hour" of short-term memory). This is comparable to the RAM-bars in your PC.
Then there is the the ***long term memory***: This is the big hitter. Everything and anything remembered, that is older than a quarter-hour is either stored directly, or reconstructed "pseudo-memory", coming from here. This is your hard-drive, SSD, tape or whatever.
#### So: Memory problems?
Let's look into the types of memory loss possible:
0. **Immediate memory** loss:
Yeah, not even really on the list. If your sensory register doesn't run, sounds
or images can't be processed. Not talking about illusions (that happens far later)
but the basics: "ooh, a red triangle, a blue circle". That stuff ... still is
higher up the chain, but it illustrates the point. If the rest of your immediate
memory doesn't work, you're effectively dysfunctional. Possible, but not for your story.
1. **Anterograde amnesia**:
If your short term memory is not stored properly, you still can work or experience most simple stuff.
This can make you appear normal, but you loose what is older than a few minutes.
As your memories never really are built, A) recovering them later is impossible
and B) Instead of getting lost later they will be lost from the start of an episode.
**REASONS:**
Many *Benzodiazepines* can cause it, as can most hypnotics (sleeping pills),
some infections (like Typhus) and organic bromides.
Thiamine deficiency is a good canidate as well, as it can trigger Korsakows syndrome.
2. **Retrograde amnesia**:
This would remove past memories, rather than preventing new ones.
**REASONS** usually include physical or emotional trauma, as well as epileptic episodes.
Physical traumata would usually severe the memory permanently. While you could,
in theory, recover if not the memories them self are destroyed but just the
associations leading to them, that is so unlikely it's basically handwavium.
3. **Dissociative amnesia**:
This is not actual memory loss, but your brain trying to keep you save.
**REASONS**: Usually caused by emotional trauma or prolonged high-stress situations.
This type of memory loss can be reversible.
4. **recalling is blocked**:
There are three ways of loosing memory:
A) you didn't write it,
B) you lost/overwrote/destroyed it, and
C) you cannot retrieve it.
This is mostly called in by the other points, but in theory a chemical could just
prevent accessing memories. However this would affect pretty much all memories
equally, so not for your story either.
You could have blockages as well, but they would either be gone fast,
or permanently damage your brain. Also they're hardly specific to certain memories.
**Therefore** you should go with either anterograde or dissociative amnesia.
## Sci-Fi reason?
The ditch-finders guide presents: Why not to live on Dementia-4!
#### 1. Infections: Oh no! You got MEMOs!
The *"Memory eating micro organisms"* are really nasty f's! These microbes consume
Thiamine while keeping the glucose level high. As they sync reproduction (like Malaria),
and they burst while reproducing, every month or so you get some days where you
can build new memories, before the drop in Thiamine triggers Korsakows syndrome
and prevents new memories from being formed. Also, as Thiamine (or vitamin B1)
is a necessary co-enzyme for glucose metabolism, you get a monthly diabetes.
Deadly if untreated for too long, since it breaks your glucose metabolism.
While not deadly like MEMO, the MEMO-2 virus produces *Diazepam* (Valium).
This too prevents building new memories (aka: anterograde amnesia). Also it may
invoke addiction if untreated. Keeping a few vials of *Flumazenil* (as antidote)
is advised.
#### 2. Plants: Dont go near the scarecuddle tree!
The scarecuddle is an extra-ordinary piece of an erect middle finger by nature.
The female tree looks like an overgrown appleberry tree, even mimiking the fruits.
These taste slightly of almond and have a orange tinted core with one stone,
not many green tinted apple cores. If you plucked one: drop it and run as fast
as you can.
The scarecuddle will release strong pheromones from the outermost brances to
scare you away. The core however will release Midazolam. This is a muscle relaxant
and anti-panic agent. If you dont run fast, you will fall asleep, pass away and
become nutiens for the tree.
You should constantly call out "*scarecuddle*" while running, as the Midazolam
prevents your long-term memory from forming and you need to keep the reason
you're running in short term memory.
Male scarecuddle is harder to detect, as it looks quite different. It grows in
large, connected woods, all sprouting from each other like bamboo. About once a
month the unassuming looking bushes produce red-to-black pseudo-berries,
while there is a slow buildup of Midazolam and an alluring scent.
Touched when ripe, the pseudo-berries pop with a loud bang and send barbed anthers (pollen-bags) flying.
The noise, the pain of the parbed anthers and the yperite (mustard gas)-like gas
inside sends animals running for the next clearing ... which usually contains a
female scarecuddle.
#### 2.b Psychodelic fungi:
Enough said. No, of course you do NOT eat shrooms. However, when the Fairy-Dust mushroom pops, it showers you in its spores. You're tripping for a month straight.
#### 3. Animals: The cute looking "Fluffed scavenger"
The "Fluffed Scavenger", also known as "Carrion Bunny", is an unassuming looking
animal looks a bit like a fluffed up version of a rabbit, hence the name.
Individual animals are highly prized as stress relievers as their musk contains
anti-depressants and calming agents.
Its pack, also known as fluffle, can contain between 8 and 60 members. The term
herd would be misleading as it is purely carnivore. However Instead of hunting,
this the only known **pack scavenger**: When a predator has killed, a fluffle
may spray their musk and sedate the predator to steal their kill.
Blood-Monkeys are immune to this. Instead they seem to work together, with the
Carrion-Bunny distracting and partially sedating the prey. The Blood-Monkey,
having an easier time hunting, will break open the prey and its bones, leaving
the brain, bone marrow and some of the meat as "payment".
Keep in mind that in its bi-monthly mating cycle the musk levels rise and that
if you own more than one, the passive musk may start inducing forgetfullnes.
There's a reason why fluffle-catchers wear gas masks! An entire fluffle may well
produce enough musk to cause anterograde amnesia!
#### 4. Tech:
**Mem-Writer needs update!**
If you use a Mem-Writer older than model 4, the diogenes see is off-limits for you!
The gysir system produces a very weird magnetic fluctuation pattern which old
models can pic up as modified stack-reset signal. As stack-reset signals are now
obsolete you shouldn't run into trouble, but be carefull anyway.
A stack-reset signal will start a timeframe on the keep-stack command. Once the
reset-signal arrives, all memories in the timeframe, that were not previously
backed up, are overwritten or deleted.
(This is utilized in court-rooms and some NDAs. As well as by the mafia of course.)
**Mem-Writer crashed: resuming stable task**
Once you go down to the details, a Mem-Writer is mainly some software. Due to
the extra-ordinary magnetic fields, your Mem-Writer cannot write a proper
back-up log. As it overflows, it crashes and tries restoring from the last valid
state. Once satisfied your Mem-Writer may try creating a new safe state.
Two options from here:
1. The Mem-Writer is a transparent overlay over your memory. Since it cannot
set the date correctly however, the memories are (temporarily) hidden. Turning
it off will restore your access to it, but once turned on again its hidden again.
2. Steve from IT was very overworked. With 3h sleep in the entire *week* he
accidentally swapped source and target on consistency-restore-events. This means
that once a restoring of consistency is requested, the Mem-Writer overwrites the
brain. This bug is hard to track as nearly no-one uses consistency requests.
However the research team didn't use "create backup" but "restore consistency"
as backup function. Why? No one knows. Probably a mistake, as it will them their
memory of these days permanently!
**You're the backup**
No-one knows what's inside the singing caves. No one ever returned from them.
Since we never knew why, we sent a backup. Call it clone, call it backup, just
call it.
**You're a Trekky accident**
The teleporter broke down while you where on the way.
They immediately try to fix it, while you look around.
A month later they manage to beam you up, however the returned version is the
emergency backup of the teleport. The real you, with the experience and stuff?
Well sh\*t you've just dissolved it. Stuff happens mate, just be glad you only
lost a month.
**You're a Trekky hack-sident**
Some MF is hacking into the transporter matrix!
#### 5. (Fr)Enemies
Sex-Drugs-Rock'n'roll? Or rather "Be-My-B\*tch!" ? Doesn't matter.
They got you drugged with something that makes you "day sleep-walk". You don't,
or hardly remember anything.
#### 6. Primal Fear/Regret
Something or someone is really disturbing. What ever it was, it triggered not
only your own dissociative amnesia, but did so with your entire team. For this
to happen over a certain period of time it had to be really bone shaking!
---
I'm sure there's more, but that's my two pence.
[Answer]
**Korsakoff's Syndrome**
Per John's Hopkins Medicine, "Korsakoff's syndrome is a disorder that primarily affects the memory system in the brain. It usually results from a deficiency of thiamine [...] Patients have great difficulty learning and retaining new information as well as problems recalling memories from the recent past."
Korsakoff's is described well in Oliver Sacks' book *The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat* in the chapter "The Lost Mariner", in which Sacks covers a patient known as Jimmie G., who lost the ability to form new memories.
] |
[Question]
[
Is a solar system where the center is a planet possible? Where would the heat on it and its moons come from? Would life of any kind even be possible? Would everything be pitch-black, or would some light come from stars?
[Answer]
What you are describing is a **[rogue planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet)** with moons. This is a planet that does not orbit any star, either having been ejected from its original solar system, or never having belonged to a solar system in the first place. This would not be aptly described as a solar system, since there is no star, but you could have a rogue planet with moons orbiting it. A rogue planet could perhaps be described its own system, as it does not belong to any solar system.
Rogue planets are naturally dark and cold, since they do not receive significant insolation from any star. Starlight, though weak, is still light however, so the planet would not be entirely pitch black. Any heat would have to come from geothermal or radioactive activity within the planet itself, as there is no significant external source of energy like the Sun. Rogue planets that don't have their own internal sources of energy will be dead. I wouldn't say it's impossible for life to exist on a rogue planet, but I'd expect the odds to be much lower simply due to far lower abundance of available energy.
[Answer]
### A single big planet and a single big star orbiting around? No.
Wikipedia has a list of [star extremes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_star_extremes). [This star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCR_1845-6357) is the smallest, 7% the mass of our sun. (So about $7\*10^{28}$kg)
[This planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_100546#HD_100546_b) is the largest, 20 \* times the mass of jupiter (So about $3.7\*10^{28}$kg)
These are very close in mass, they'll orbit around a point 2/3rd the distance from the sun to the planet.
### But can we get a planet with a star orbiting around it?
Yes There are some precise configurations that have a massive planet in the centre and a big sun orbiting around it.
The simplest would be 3 massive planets, and a tiny sun. The tiny sun is twice the weight of each planet, and all 3 planets are the same weight. The tiny sun and 2 of the big planets share an orbit, with the two planets close together. The forces should cancel out, leaving the big planet in the barycentre of the system.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oba4P.png)
Note this isn't called a solar system - technicality.
Life on the planet will be very similar to if the sun was in the centre and the planet orbited around it. Ironically, if they're aware of normal solar systems; It may take them a while to realise the sun isn't the centre, actually)
This system is highly unlikely to occur naturally - perhaps a supernova blew out a chunk of gas cloud, forming a ring of gas, which formed the star and 2 gas giants? It's a bit of a stretch. Perhaps the bodies were precisely caught in the right way, or perhaps aliens built it. This would also not be stable for millions of years, it would decay over time.
### Can we do it slightly more stable?
If we allow the planet to move, but meet the "at the centre" requirement by having nothing closer to the centre than the planet, we can have a slightly more stable system by having the big planet in a tight multi-body orbit around nothing (ie "at the centre"), with the sun in orbit around that mutual centre.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2lFmY.png)
[Answer]
**Huge gas giant rotating fast.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sP1IW.jpg)
Behold the glowing sky of Io!
<https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA01637>
>
> This eerie view of Jupiter's moon Io in eclipse (left) was acquired by
> NASA's Galileo spacecraft while the moon was in Jupiter's shadow.
> Gases above the satellite's surface produced a ghostly glow that could
> be seen at visible wavelengths (red, green, and violet). The vivid
> colors, caused by collisions between Io's atmospheric gases and
> energetic charged particles trapped in Jupiter's magnetic field, had
> not previously been observed. The green and red emissions are probably
> produced by mechanisms similar to those in Earth's polar regions that
> produce the aurora, or northern and southern lights. Bright blue glows
> mark the sites of dense plumes of volcanic vapor, and may be places
> where Io is electrically connected to Jupiter.
>
>
>
Io has different types of aurora. They are produced by interactions with Jupiter. Jupiter has a tremendous magnetic field and given off loads of radiation in the form of charged particles. Ultimately I think the energy fueling this is the rotational momentum of the Jupiter and maybe the residual heat of condensation when it was formed.
Your central planet is a colossal gas giant, 20 times the size of Jupiter. Its great mass and fast rotation generate huge magnetic fields. Your moons also have magetic field and atmospheres - these moons are the size of Earth. They also have magnetic fields which they need to protect them from the radiation emitted by their giant. The charged particles splash against the magnetic fields of the moon, lighting the sky just as Jupiter's particles light the skies of Io.
[Answer]
**Just yeet out a Gas Giant**
So in general, you could have such a System. If you look at the Jupiter System, it is pretty much its own "Solarsystem". You got a bunch of Moons around a Central Object with a shi´tton of debris flying around.
This could just from natrually in the middle of nowhere. One might argu that such a System is just like or one. Only smaller and with a failed star at its center.
**But how do you get light ?**
Good question. Id say since the Gas Giant is the middle of nowhere, it probably wont emit any light by itself. If it would, it is a Mini Star. So one way of getting a bit of light would be to have a Planet VERY close to the Gas giant. In fact so close that it melts dou to the tidal forces. But even this would be really dark. Not to mention that such a close Planet would just fall into the Gas Giant in a very short amount of time.
You could try to go all Meta and have a lifeform on the Gas Giant that is Bioluminescent for some reason. Depending on the sizes of the Gas Giant that may create enough light for something. But i am not quiet sure why any life form would decide to go that way in the Darkness of Interstellar Space. Maybe because of some Aurora but even that is a real streatch because, where does the Aurora come from ?
But i would still assume that a Bioluminescent Gas Giant is probably your best bet of getting any amount of light. Even if it still is almost nothing. Such a Gas Giant would probably by hardly any more bright than or Moon.
Your main source of Energy in such a System isnt light anyways. Its the tidal forces. And the first life on earth really didnt need light so it might very well still start. But i dont see how life would get complex if every Moon around the Gas Giant is a frozen Ice ball.
The Stars in the night sky would be pretty though.
[Answer]
This is not a realistic scenario, but may work for a sci-fi universe.
Imagine a rogue planet with some orbiting moons out in the darkness of interstellar space. Also imagine some alien race that can construct low-mass (less than a star) wormhole-like portals.
They construct a pair of such portals, one in orbit of a star far away, and one in orbit of the rogue planet. The mass of the portal is not enough to cause the planet to orbit around it. The portal also lets heat, light, and radiation flow through. This may be enough to allow some life (seeded by the alien race) to develop on the planet.
From the perspective of beings on the planet, they see the "sun" rise and set like we do.
Maybe it is part of a Truman Show-like experiment for the aliens.
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## Oversize "Metal"-heavy Brown Dwarf
I suppose in theory you could somehow have a planet that was massive enough to be a red dwarf but which was predominantly elements heavier(\*) than hydrogen and helium. So the core of the planet would be hot enough and have a high enough pressure to fuse hydrogen, but it's choked by carbon and heavier elements which it can't fuse, pushing hydrogen and helium up to less-dense levels of its mantle. It would still probably be able to fuse deuterium above the core, though, which would basically leave it as an oversize [brown dwarf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf).
You could then pair it with a minimal-mass [red dwarf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dwarf) and have what would effectively be a binary system with the brown dwarf as the larger of the two primary bodies. Smaller planets and moons could then be added as required, either orbiting one or the other of the two dwarfs as moons or orbiting the system barycenter as planets in their own right.
Just to be clear, though, this would require enormous amounts of heavy elements. There would be the equivalent of multiple Jupiters or several thousand Earths in the core of your brown dwarf.
(\* - to be clear, when I say "heavy" or "metal", I'm using the astronomer's definition of "anything heavier than helium". So, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and on up to mostly iron at the top end.)
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A violent way of rendering a planet uninhabitable being the obvious: accelerate a large enough object to a sufficient velocity that everything on the planet goes the way of the dinosaurs.
Put briefly, an alien race secretly constructed a series of autonomous spacecraft that would go to other solar systems and snuff out the inhabitants without them ever realizing they were under attack. The way that comes to mind, broadly speaking, is something relatively slow acting and environmentally based, such as inducing a star to start CME-ing the crap out of the planet (not that I really know how exactly you'd go about doing that) and strip its atmosphere. At the same time, it preferably shouldn't take a million years; you want it to be slow enough to be chalked up to some nasty natural phenomena, but quick enough to kill everything on the planet (or merely drive them out).
The tech level I'm working with is pretty darn advanced. While the alien weaponmakers can't use the power of handwavium to crush everything before them, if it's physically possible, they can (probably) find a way to do it.
tl;dr, what are some plausible ways to strip a planet of its ability to support life without the locals figuring out they were being targeted?
Edit: Changed title to subtle. D'oh. The comment pointing that out is right; killing things is violent regardless of whether or not you're shooting them or poisoning them. As for the tech level of the target planet, they're interplanetary, but an order of magnitude less advanced than their attackers. The aim is to destroy the sentient life only, but if that's too tricky, the aliens are more than willing to just kill everything. They'd just prefer not to.
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**Ways to destroy sentient life on a planet:**
* Upset the ecosystem. Introduce animals into places they shouldn't be (the poison frogs or cats of Australia), or destroy ones that should be there (see just about any extinction and the results). Move some plants into the wrong ecosystem (think the devouring capabilities of kudzu outside it's natural environment). When adding something, if it doesn't seem fast or destructive enough, give it a genetically modified boost.
* Destroy the key pollinators. *All of them.*
* If the populace is prone to mono-crops, introduce plant diseases targeted at the biggest ones--almost instant worldwide famine. Kick back and watch them destroy themselves.
* Drop *unobtanium* (aka, any resource so valuable that every country will want to own, hoard, or destroy it) in a highly public place, preferably in a country prone to trigger fingers and lots of weapons. Sit back and wait for the dust to settle.
* Insert a disease targeted at the sentient populace. Make sure it reaches above Black Plague levels of pandemic, then just mop up the survivors. Or pluck a curable condition or three and make them superviruses. Cackle evilly as they discover there is nothing they can do to cure them.
* If they're dependent on electronics but don't protect them very well, mimic a solar flare or CME and make it bad enough to *fry everything.*
* Make the water undrinkable. Bonus points if you can make sure animals can still drink it.
* Infiltrate them and introduce a new religion. Make sure it focuses on worshiping people from the stars, meekness, and never questioning the tenets of the religion. For good measure, add into it the illusion everyone is equal, but make sure there's a tiered system where some people are more valuable than others. Make sure it's *extremely* appealing. After successfully catching on, people will happily oppress each other and themselves, and will greet their alien overlords (and their inevitable submission to them) as natural and even euphoric. Slowly collect the willing populace to "elevate" them, but in reality sell them off as intergalactic slaves, and just mop up the holdouts.
* The above can also work if the correct political and/or social ideology is put in place. Combining the three could have seriously far reaching effects. (If you think this is silly, ask yourself why women will follow a religion that sees them as second-class citizens or even disposable, why a mixed-race black/Mexican man would vote for Trump and continue to support him, or why Democrats have swallowed the idea that it's better not to vote. A well placed idea can make a person not only irrational, but actively pursue a course of action that is *against* their own best interests or even their very survival [hence the emphasis of the honor of warriors--getting people to march to their death in war requires a certain amount of brainwashing, as does making them kill]. If we were as non-gullible as we like to think, everything from advertising to fake news would have a lot less effect on us.)
* Introduce climate change. Kick back and let the environment itself kill off most of the sentient people. Use terraforming technology to get it back under control and kill off anyone who remains.
* Of course, if you have a machine that can alter weather patterns, you don't *have* to kick back, just make sure the world has a *very* bad handful of years. Mop up what few survivors are left.
* If the sentient species is money-based and they use electronic means to keep track of that money, crash or erase all records of it. Make sure whatever was used will also destroy backups as they come online. Sit back and watch the worldwide pandemonium.
* Get a contaminant into their medical supplies, targeting their most effective antibiotics (or make them believe there is one). Enjoy the chaos as people die both from a lack of medical supplies and a lack of faith in medical professionals.
* Introduce new deadly diseases to various insect populations. Kick back and watch the sentient species have no way to escape the bites.
* Introduce a sterilizing element to the world targeting the sentient species. Wait a year or two for them to realize that no children are being born *anywhere in the world.* Watch the fun.
* Introduce a parasite that makes them docile as kittens. Watch them rejoice as all wars disappear from the world. Walk in and do anything you like to them.
* Introduce a plastic or metal-eating mold/fungus/or bacteria. Make sure it's near impossible to kill. Enjoy.
* Gas *everyone.* Basically change the atmosphere rapidly enough there's nothing they can do. Terraform it back, and kill anyone who managed to save themselves.
* Introduce something that changes everyone to a singular sex. Let them die off naturally. If you want entertainment, change everyone to the opposite sex and watch the madness that ensues as worldwide gender taboos, gendered power structures, and body dysphoria flip everything on it's head.
* Incite a world war. Make sure that every new country that enters the fray is equally well armed. Use propaganda and misinformation to keep it going. Invade only after they've inevitably reduced themselves to pre-medieval levels of society and mop up any survivors.
* Put the whole world in a coma. Kick back and let dehydration kill them. Send in robots to clean up the dead bodies. Take what remains.
That's just off the top of my head. Given time I'm sure I could think of some more. Society is actually pretty danged fragile. It's why how to keep everything running has always been such a problematic question, while how to kill everything is always so simple.
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Infiltrate the planet's early societies and teach them about money. Steer the societies into loving it. Change their genes to make them hoarders and cheaters.
As soon as those societies reach the industrial age they will start destroying their own ecossystems in search of profit. Since there is more money to be gained via destruction than conservation, the process will be irreversible and at some point the planet won't be able to support complex life on its surface anymore. Just chillax and watch for a handful centuries. The inhabitants of the planet will live their last decades like:
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Destroying all life is easy - slowly crank up the sun's temperature until you bake the planet.
Destroying complex life, while allowing bacteria to survive, is also doable.
Destroying *intelligent* life, while leaving other life alone? That's hard. Really hard.
Adapting to new circumstances is what intelligence excels at - it's pretty much the whole *point* of intelligence. While it's pretty easy to disrupt a society over the short term (revolution, war, famine, plague, economic collapse) the survivors *will* find a way to bounce back unless you hit them with enough force to kill all less-adaptable complex life as well.
In fact, there is only one way I can imagine destroying all intelligent life on a planet without destroying everything else as well, and that is to make them *voluntarily* take the means of destruction upon themselves.
So how might an advanced alien race accomplish this? By giving them seemingly beneficial, ubiquitous technology that will later be used to kill them. Medical implants that will administer a poison to everyone when exposed to a worldwide signal, for instance.
Of course, even this is a dubious method. There will always be traditionalists who refuse the technology, but the more beneficial the technology seems, the greater the percentage of people who take it in will be. Once the vast majority are dead, you can send drones in to mop up the survivors (who will probably be less technologically inclined than the ones who died, since they were the ones who refused the beneficial technology in the first place).
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Here's a new and really insidious one:
Approach them with big smile and offer them a "happy-machine". It hooks up directly to their brains and stimulates all the pleasure centers and whatnot. Along the way, cure mental diseases with the same tech. Instant happiness for everyone who wants it, for as long as they want it. Purely voluntarily, of course. And no negative side effects!
Of course such immense pleasure is by its very nature immensely addictive and people will demand more and more of it. Anyone who has ever tried it will want it again, because nothing else in life can quite compare to it.
Then offer the next level - immortal pleasure pod. Your brain is removed from the body and is placed in a pod where the life support systems basically guarantee your immortality, plus infinite pleasure, of course. You can still stop the trance and communicate via the pod's eyes and ears if you want to, thus convincing your friends and family that it really works and is worth it.
In a while, it will become increasingly silly *not* to get into a IPP, so everyone will get one.
At that point - checkmate. Although you really won't need to do anything, because everyone will be in an eternal happy trance anyway and won't care what happens to their planet.
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## Global Warming
Pump *extra* CO2 into the atmosphere, and seed some ideas into anti-capitalist intellectuals that man is causing **all** the global warming.
No matter what we do, the temperature keeps on warming and blaming each other for the problem. Sooner than later, food production will start to fail, wars for resources will happen, nukes go off and everything dies.
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**Global Cooling**
Reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The planet goes into a "snowball earth" global cooling episode where the whole planet is covered in a miles thick layer of ice. Given the current level of hysteria over global warming it would not be difficult to convince humanity to participate in this. "Hey our carbon sequestration scheme is going really well".
The only life that will survive that is some cryophile bacteria and life around the ocean volcanic vents. This has the advantage that it does minimum long term damage to the oceans and atmosphere.
When the planet has been sterilized reintroduce Carbon Dioxide and the planet warms up again ready for occupation.
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I'm wondering what type of society humans (with a Renaissance level of technology) would develop in an area with no arable land (soils too poor), but with a monopoly on various metal resources (iron, copper, lead, tin) that they could trade to people living in other areas with richer soils.
The trade routes would span at least 1000-3000km, and, depending on the destination, would involve either a boat journey through a narrow strait (where whoever controlled it could impose a tax), or a land journey across a desert (where oasis owners could also collect a cut of the trade).
My guess is that the following type of society would evolve:
* Mercentile / Outward looking - If the population is going to grow past a low level, they will need to import food from other countries.
* Stratified - Power will be concentrated in the hands of a small elite who own the mines and the smelters, plus those with good trade connections. These peoole will be able to hoard food to get through any disruptions in trade, when others will go hungry.
* Militaristic - Survival will depend on protecting trade routes against pirates and bandits. This will require people to fight.
* Low Position of Women - The most important occupations are going to be miners, metalworkers and warriors, all jobs which require great physical strength and will favour men. So it is likely that the culture that develops here will be stereotypically masculine. Combined with the high level of social stratification, and there's a good chance this society might have polygamy among the upper classes.
What details have I overlooked, and what do other people have to add?
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## The Ore Mountains
As luck would have it, there actually was an area in Europe during the Renaissance which had a mining based economy and a near monopoly on various metal resources, mostly silver, but also gold and tin: the fabled [Ore Mountains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_Mountains) of Bohemia, which at that time were called the Erzgebirge (in German) and today are called the Krušné hory (in Czech). Copper was also mined there, and zinc.
(Note that their monopoly was on European *production* of silver. The Spaniards, who had conquered the Americas, brought huge amounts of silver from the New World.)
So how did the civilization look like? It looked just fine, thank you. It was actually indistinguishable from other regions in the Holy Roman Empire. The major urban center was [St. Joachimsthal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1chymov) (meaning [Saint Joachim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim)'s Valley), which is called today Jáchymov.
St. Joachimsthal was so rich in silver, that around the middle of the 15th century *"the Counts von Schlick, whose possessions included the town, had coins minted, which were called [Joachimsthalers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaler)"*. The coins spread far and wide in Europe, and numerous cities began minting coins on their model; the name was soon shortened to simply *Thaler*, which became *daalder* in Dutch and *dollar* in English.
[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_Mountains#/media/File:Annaberger-Bergaltar2.jpg)
*Historic depiction of mining on the [Annaberg mining altar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Anne%27s_Church,_Annaberg-Buchholz#Mining_altar) (1522). Picture from Wikipedia. Public domain.*
Simply having the richest mines in Europe made the Ore Mountains region well off economically, but in no way exceptionally rich. Mines need capital, and capital came from elsewhere. During the [30 Years' War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War) the region changed hands from the Catholic/Imperials to the Protestant/Swedes and back; repeated military occupation dampened the economic development, but growth resumed as soon as the war was over.
[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_Mountains#/media/File:Burg_Stein2.jpg)
*[Stein Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stein_Castle_(Saxony)) on the Zwickauer Mulde. Photograph by Caulobacter subvibrioides, available on Wikimedia under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license.*
The situation of women was the exact same as everywhere else in the Empire; that is, considerably better than in Anglo-Saxon lands, but of course worse than today. Women could own property in the their own name, could make wills and inherit, could engage in trade in their own name, could stand in justice in their own name, and could work outside the home. Low-class men and women had no political rights, obviously; middle class men had some political rights, which middle class women lacked; noble men and women were Important People and had full rights, yet their rights were legally different from the rights of commoners.
(Interesting small bit of history: German women of that time did not change their name when they married. The habit of women to take the name of their husbands originated in Anglo-Saxon lands, where a married woman had no legal personality of her own.)
As for the supposed prestigious jobs of miner and warrior, hmm. There were no "warriors" in Renaissance Europe. There were soldiers, usually mercenaries -- during the 30 Years' War only Sweden had a national army. The job of miner or soldier was not particularly prestigious; miners and soldiers were lower-class people. Middle class people were either merchants (the most common kind of middle class person); or professionals, that is, medical doctors, professors, lawyers or architects; or master tradesmen. (This is a difference from England, where tradesmen were never considered gentlemen.)
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If you take a look at the history San Francisco, you might get a good perspective of how such a colony once worked.
Yes, miners are valuable. But equally, maybe even more, valuable are the merchants that swarm to service them. You can sell a good home-cooked meal at a premium to the well paid miners, who will pay for it. You can sell entertainment: both legitimate and illegitimate. You can also make a lot of money selling mining supplies at a premium.
As to the role of women, it would depend on whether your culture is sufficiently high tech that the heavy labor is being done by machine, or not. If the mining demographic does favor one gender, the entertainment demographic will adjust. But as to whether the highest authorities are successful businessmen or successful busineswomen is a toss up. It goes to the most astute.
As to stratification - the first and maybe second generation leaders will work tirelessly to be seen as just another one of the people. Either also picking up a pick and doing a shift, or tending the bar, and so on. Being perceived as an elite alienates customers, and owning a mine or business is one irritated (or bribed) magistarate away from change. In short - such an attitude is bad for business. Its much later generations (see "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves") that don't get it and have enough momentum behind them to take a long time coming back down.
Also militarization is less a problem than security. Most claim owners, and most businesses will want the ability to protect their property right now. Safes, gun free zones, red light districts (and personal weapons in the same), and private security all work. If piracy is bad for everyone, and not being propped up by fueding governments or chaos, the pirates have no place to call home.
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I take umbrage with this:
>
> Low Position of Women - The most important occupations are going to be
> miners, metalworkers and warriors, all jobs which require great
> physical strength and will favour men. So it is likely that the
> culture that develops here will be stereotypically masculine. Combined
> with the high level of social stratification, and there's a good
> chance this society might have polygamy among the upper classes.
>
>
>
You're missing something vital. Trade. It's nice that there's mining and the mining is important. It's nice that fighting is important. (although if it's a narrow straight like you say, archers would likely be as valued as on the ground fighters and women can certainly do that.)
But if all the men are fighting and mining, who is left to do the dealing? And with as much trade as they will have to do, I'd guess that's the women. Doesn't take physical strength, just shrewdness and the ability to talk.
So I would argue that a female merchant class is definitely in the cards here. Stretch this even further and the effect might actually be the OPPOSITE of what you think it will be. Women end up owning and ruling because they don't have to do the physical labor. Send your daughter or wife to make your deals because you have to be there at the mines managing your men.
That you've chosen the Renaissance as your model is especially interesting because this is the era of the rise of the merchant class. And there were certainly a lot of women who took advantage of this.
When you say "polygamy" I assume you mean one man and several women in a marriage. It can work the other way as well. But let's look at the way you likely are--one man, many women.
Polygamy works best if instability is introduced into the system. As in, for instance, there are much fewer men than women, or not enough men. In this case polygamy can help keep population numbers up. Polygamists/polygamous societies have a high mortality rate. THERE'S A REASON FOR THE CORRELATION. It's not that polygamy CAUSES a high mortality rate. It's that it's advantageous for humans to be polygamous when there's already a high mortality rate, thus the correlation. Pretty much if things are out of balance ratio-wise, or your death rate spikes, guess what, monogamy loses many of its advantages.
So, if there are, say, a lot mining accidents, and dead men, this could work. But that would be a lower class job. You're specifically tying monogamy to the upper classes. It would help things if the men did die with frequency even in the upper classes. This would mean women survived them, and if they remarried, they would likely come with $$ from the previous marriage (divided amongst the wives and children though it may be). Lines of succession and power, problematically can become really really muddied when everyone in the upper class practices polygamy. Civil war can be more likely because of this. A household full of wives and their children all of whom want a piece of the pie? You've got plenty of plot to work with! Even if the ladies are low status, you can bet they will work for their kids. (Whatever rules you have in place, forget about them. In this situation many dynasties have fallen because of competing wives.)
However, socially, if your ratio is more balanced, there are problems that develop, some of which might be advantages in your model. (Less births means less people to feed).
* A large household can result in older siblings being responsible for
younger ones, and the older siblings might be expected to earn for
the family, resulting in later marriage and less kids overall in the
population.
* The birthrate, overall, can also be lower, not higher than with monogamous models for other reasons as well. Studies of polygamy and birthrates have found that the more wives a husband has, the less children PER wife. It seems like they have more kids because, well...they are all in one place and from one dude. Some are prolific no matter how many wives they have, but the numbers overall seem to indicate that each woman has less children compared to a mono model
* Some men have bad genes. And if they have a defect, and then go on to have a dozen kids, that defect is spread far and wide.
* Lots of men without wives, or they have to compete more in order to get any women at all because a few men are hogging all the women. Men, in this case will not settle down because they don't actually have the option to. One powerful man marrying a dozen wives means that, if the gender population is equal, that a dozen men won't be able to marry those women.
* Less genetic diversity, more birth defects, eventually.
>
> Mercentile / Outward looking - If the population is going to grow past a low level, they will need to import food from other countries.
>
>
>
The effect of this is going to create a really diverse place. Your society is going to be much more than just the natives, there's going to be imports from far and wide, not just of goods but of people. And those people will import customs as well. Since they are outward looking, your natives are going to have to be tolerant of most outsiders, and welcome them in. After all, the well-being of the community depends on those imports. (They'll become markedly LESS tolerant of any of these immigrants take mining jobs, which, if a wealthy mine owner has a labor shortage, well...they just might hire/import workers). There will be wealthy foreign merchants, some of whom might stay enough generations to be seen as natives, but still have connections to outside trade.
>
> Stratified - Power will be concentrated in the hands of a small elite who own the mines and the smelters, plus those with good trade connections. These peoole will be able to hoard food to get through any disruptions in trade, when others will go hungry.
>
>
>
Yes and no, because of your first point about the mercantile/outward looking aspect. Concentration of power in the hands of an elite--this has always been the case in most societies. But Renaissance? That's when things shifted. There were princes, elites, uber merchants and bankers who had the most power, but there was also a new society emerging. A definite middle class of merchants. Power can still be stratified, the elites can still hoard, but don't underestimate the middle class in this scenario. Plenty of entrepreneurs will be working. Also don't underestimate the lower classes...Medieval and Renaissance times has had plenty of peasant's revolts. If it's obvious that the elites are hoarding food, you WILL have a riot on your hands, guaranteed. This will be especially true if you stick with having NO middle class at all--(no shopkeepers and the like) because the lower strata will have NOTHING TO LOSE.
>
> Militaristic - Survival will depend on protecting trade routes against pirates and bandits. This will require people to fight.
>
>
>
You really won't need that many people to do this. And I don't think it will be military/government oriented in nature. Instead it will likely be mercenary oriented, or specific to merchants-- you hire people to protect your wagon train. And maybe you pay a percentage to use a particular road and there's general soldiers patrolling. I would expect that a very powerful merchant would have their own forces. Perhaps each one would. Maybe each would reach an agreement about what part of the trade route they protect. My point is that it won't be organized as one government assigning guards to trade routes. Take a look at Renaissance Italy--the Medici, the Borgia--they had their own forces.
**ROLE OF MINERS AND SOLDIERS**
A soldier/mercenary would be probably lower middle class, if not lower class. They'd be provided for by the merchants and get money besides, but they work for the elite. It doesn't make them elite to be one. An occupation can be important without it being high paying. Miners can be important, but if there's a lot of them--if you were a mine owner you would you want to pay them any more than you had to? Nope. You'd want to maximize profits. Just because their society is dependant on these folks doesn't mean they have prestige. There are plenty of jobs currently that society depends on which don't, and the same was true in the Renaissance.
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# The assumption of no arable land is false
There is no way a society with Rennaisance technology could survive at the end of a 1000 km trade route without growing its own food. To transport bulky goods (like food) you need wagon trains and beasts of burden. What are they going to eat? You'd need to bring not just grain and legumes, but also drive in livestock as a food source, bring fiber or cloth for clothes. Finally, if you don't grow something locally with vitamin C (some sort of fruit or vegetable), you people are all doing to die of scurvy. There aren't many good vitamin C sources that would survive a 1000 km trip in 1500.
They will have to grow at least some food. Perhaps it is supplemented with imports, perhaps they mostly graze livestock locally, but there will have to be some locally developed food (and fodder) sources.
# The assumption of low value for women is false
There is no real association between the types of economy a place has and the value of women therein. The social and political status of women is driven by *culture* and not economy. Fundamentally, women can do anything that a man can. There are some professions where a man's upper body strength gives them a competitive advantage (hand to hand combat, and mining come to mind), but keep in mind that even in a mining focused region, relatively few people are going to be doing mining.
I already discussed that there needs to be at least some farmers. There also needs to be people milling the grain, baking the bread, brewing the beer, butchering the livestock, operating the inns that merchants stay in, taking care of the horses or whatever animal transportation is. There needs to be carpenters and cartwrights and smiths and thatchers and cobblers and coopers.
Many if not most of these jobs will be done by men. But since so many people are doing these jobs, the same jobs that people all over the (Eurasian, at least) world were doing in 1500, the overall labor force just doesn't look that different.
If the labor force isn't that different in the different parts of the world in 1500, why was the status of women so much higher in Europe and lower in the Middle East and China? This is explained by cultural differences, often related to religion. You can give your nation any culture you like to drive its treatment of women.
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Maybe the role of **women** wouldn't be as you expect.
Since the men have to grow strong and focus on mining, metal working and fighting.
The women could have the monopole over things that need less strength like jewelry crafting, trading and also on the science overall (teaching, learning and improving tech level) if they have a lot more of time to think (since they don't work on the "main" ressources of your peoples).
Like every civilisations, when the people starts to have free time, the tech improve. And since the men would be always training to improve their fighting skills, the women may be the social and cultural elite that could rule over them.
Of course polygamy can still be a thing for men if there's a lot of them dying in mines and fights.
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In modern capitalist societies resource-rich regions tend to be colonized by powerful states and corporations to extract the wealth. The region itself often remains quite poor - think West Virginia or Wales - because the local people are exploited for their labor and the environment despoiled but the wealth is kept by the elites of the colonizing power. (Jane Jacobs discusses this but I can't recall in which book.) A related model is the Canadian tar sands, where migratory workers earn good money but return to their economically poor areas and spend much of it there, leaving the region culturally underdeveloped.
I can't say this would apply to every economic system but it's something to consider.
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In my particular scenario, There is an habitable exoplanet in which the axial tilt turns to always face the system's star, and the planet is not in tidal lock, this allows for a certain range of scenarios which i would like to explore, such as the perpetual days and nights in the poles, and the much shorter (or longer) daytime periods in any point above or below the equator, and how any native lifeforms would have adapted to survive such a peculiar system.
In short, i'd like to know if it is possible for the tilt to always be the same relative to the stars center of mass (instead of the position of background stars which are relatively unmoving) and if the planet would need or can absolutely not have any other orbiting bodies? would the planet have to orbit the star, or would the star have to orbit the planet? what would be the planet's required mass? what would be the stars required mass? would for that particular system the star and the planet have to be orbiting each other in a pseudo-binary system?
For any other clarification, this particular scenario is a rough mash of light sci-fi and magic fantasy, so if theoretically this planet could exist with some changes to the basic rules of the universe without completely tearing the universe apart, please do tell me! even if this planet is completely impossible, any information that i could obtain will come useful in any future worldbuilding scenarios.
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Probably not, because the planet would either have to be too close to its star, or its moon would have to be too close to the planet.
Let's take the Earth as an example.
The simple, first-order [calculation of precession](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession) -- ignoring for the moment the effect of the Moon -- shows that the precession rate depends on the mass of the star and on the orbital semi-major axis $a$ to the minus third power ($a^{-3}$). The precession period the Earth would have if only the Sun mattered would be about 40,000 years. The only feasible way to increase the precession *rate* is to reduce $a$ by moving the Earth closer to the Sun. ("But won't this make the Earth hotter?" I hear you ask. Yes, it will.) Reducing the Earth's orbit by a factor of 34 should do it ($34^{3} \approx 39,000$) -- except that now the orbit is so small that the Earth's year is only 2.2 days long! So we have to move the Earth closer still....
There *is*, in principle, a magic point where precession rate = orbital period, because precession rate goes up with $a^{-3}$, while orbital period goes down with $a^{-1.5}$. Using the simple formula, they equalize if you reduce the Earth's orbit to about 1/1200 of its original size. However, at this point, the Earth's "year" is only about 12 and a half minutes. Also, the Earth is deep inside the Sun -- only about 20% of the way out from the center to the Sun's surface -- so the simple approximations we've been using are no longer valid. (And it's very, very hot.)
In reality, the Moon also contributes to precession, and its contribution can be amplified by moving the Moon closer to the Earth, which doesn't have the problem of simultaneously reducing the length of the Earth's year. So if you move the Moon about 34 times closer, you could in principle boost the precession rate due to the Moon to about once/year. This would put the Moon just barely outside its Roche lobe, so it probably wouldn't break up (unless its interior was molten, and then maybe it would). Of course, having something like the Moon that close would mean enormous tides, which would brake the Earth's rotation (and cause the Moon to move outward); a more stable situation would have the Earth's rotation tidally locked to the Moon's orbit, so the Moon would never move in the sky as seen from the Earth, and the day would be about 3 and half hours long. But having the Earth rotate faster would *reduce* the precession rate (which is proportional to $1/\omega$, where $\omega$ is the Earth's rotation rate), so you'd have to move the Moon even closer.... In the end, I don't think you can avoid having the Moon so close that it be torn apart by tidal forces. Which would be a shame, unless you like rings.
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Sure it can but you'd quickly (geologically speaking) evaporate the planet, you'd need about 1.4\*10^27Nm of torque annually to get the axis of rotation to [precess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession) 360 degrees per year which is what you're asking for, that's going to produce 1.4\*10^27j of waste heat. To put that in perspective one megaton is 4.18\*10^15j so you get the equivalent of 291,666,666,666 million tons of TNT worth of waste heat annually (it's almost exactly 0.1% of the sun's total constant output). Earth weighs 5.97\*10^24kg so that's 234.5j per kilogram per annum for the entire planet from core to exosphere, that will heat the whole planet by roughly 0.25K a year every year, you'll melt the whole planet inside of 6800 years and evaporate it *en masse* after only 11800 years. That assumes you start from a completely solid lump of pure silica which the Earth is not, it will take far less time to vapourise an Earthlike world.
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It seems to be clear from the other answers that if the planet's axial tilt were non-zero, then it would be pretty difficult to achieve what you're looking for.
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Well you *could* make the planet have an axial tilt of zero degrees. In that case, the "tilt" would always be the same with respect to the star. Of course, this wouldn't create some of the possibilities that you wanted to explore:
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However, the absence of axial tilt (and consequently, seasons) would result in other peculiar phenomena that you might be interested in.
[What if an Earth-like planet had no axial tilt?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/13318/what-if-an-earth-like-planet-had-no-axial-tilt-climate-and-technology)
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No, it cannot.
It would mean to change *in the course of a single year* the rotational momentum of the whole planet having it spin around a whole turn.
To say it in another way: it would be to have a complete [Axial precession](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession) in one year (instead of the standard 25,765 years).
Axial precession is due to "flattened" Earth shape due to rotation and would be faster for planets spinning more quickly; it wouldn't be possible to have it as short as a single year because planet would disintegrate first.
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Yes you can. While precession of earth's axial tilt is 26,000 years, the sun's SOI is nearly a light year in radius. Even using only the moon's component of precession it would be easily possible to place an earth-sized planet and moon far enough out to pull this off.
Of course you end up with a dark ice-ball of a world this way.
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Are you willing to have a circumbinary system where the orbital period of the planet is similar to that of Saturn (30 years)? Then, observably, yes.
[Kepler-413b](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-413b) is in a binary star system, in circumbinary orbit. The [tilt of its axis changes](https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/04feb_wobble) by up to 30 degrees per 11 years. It receives between 1.7 and 3.8-times the stellar flux as we do on Earth, so it's a bit hot. If you could move it 1.4-times further out, the flux would be 0.85 - 1.9-times here, so maybe survivable substantially away from the equator. The axial tilt, orbital precession, and orbital tilt all seem to be changing in a currently unpredicted way. This may be due to additional gravitational actors in the stellar neighbourhood (planets or stars). But, if useful, allows the rapid axial precession to be
* fixed if you do not have additional actors and have synchronized star-star and planet-star orbits,
* disrupted by small random amounts due to additional actors : planets or small/far stars, and/or
* disrupted by large amounts by one big actor that is on a highly eccentric orbit around the CoM.
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Edit (details from references):
* "[The tilt of the spin axis of the planet can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years](http://hubblesite.org/image/3313)",
* "[Additionally, the CBP experiences Cassini-like states under the influence of the EB, in which the planet's obliquity precesses with a rate comparable to its orbital precession ['of ~4000 days']."](http://nexsci.caltech.edu/conferences/KeplerII/abstracts_talks/Kostov.pdf) and [repeated in their paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.7275.pdf),
* the erratum: "[the spin-precession pole of the planet [...] oscillates at the orbital precession frequency of 11 yr](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/787/1/93/pdf)" they propose a possible *additional* obliquity precession "around the binary axis with a period of ∼300 yr".
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In an Earth-like world, with a single Moon similar to ours, there is a mountain that is 1.000 meters high.
On top of that mountain there is a crater with ca. 100 Km radius and 100 m of maximum depth.
That crater was filled with rain water (it stands on a very rainy spot) during centuries and now it became a sea.
Since the only water replenishment of this sea is from rain, it has become very salty (\*)
There is now a city built on the shores of said sea, almost at the sea level.
Now, for my storytelling, I would like to know three things:
1. Would this sea have waves and tides?
2. How could this sea drain its waters without flooding the nearby city?
3. Would there be nocturnal fogs generated by this sea?
(\*) ***EDIT***: As a person in the comments has insightfully deduced, I'm describing an endorheic basin. People have pointed out that this may be tricky to accomplish. If you have answers or comments regarding the salinity of this sea, please post them [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/68121/basin-on-a-mountaintop-how-to-keep-the-water-salty).
**Now please, I urge people on this thread to stay on topic and answer the questions I actually posed.**
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* Salt.
Rain water is not salty at all; in unpolluted places it is the closest thing to distilled water to be found in nature. Lakes become salty only if they have no outlets; since this lake is in a very rainy region it must necessarily have outlets. It won't be salty, it will be a fresh water lake. I cannot think of any salt water lake in a very rainy area. The key to making a salty lake is to have no outlets, so that water loss is only by evaporation. Very rainy + high altitude + high evaporation make for a strange combination.
* Tides.
I'm afraid that there is no way to have tides in a lake only 200 km across. It's simply much too small. However, it can have [seiches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiche) (and it [most likely will](http://geo.msu.edu/extra/geogmich/seiches.htm)). (OK, *no tides* is not strictly true; you may expect to see tidal amplitudes of about 1 cm or so.)
* Drainage.
The lake, being in a rainy region, has a constant influx of water. The water must go somewhere: it will flow out of the lake as a river. The outlet may be very spectacular -- see [Blue Nile falls](http://www.thousandwonders.net/Blue+Nile+Falls) at the exit of [Lake Tana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tana). (As an aside, Lake Tana is quite similar to the lake in the [*original* question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/revisions/68006/1), but it is not as deep. The lake in the *revised* question looks *very much* like [Lake Victoria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Victoria).)
* Fog.
Depends on climate. Lake-effect fog forms when the air is cooler than the water; for example, at temperate latitudes cold autumn mornings produce fog out of every little water surface. I would say that the high altitude makes morning fogs quite likely.
Edit: The question has been edited to specify that the lake lies in an endorheic basin. This contradicts the "very rainy" region. An endorheic lake in a very rainy region is not going to remain endorheic for long; the water level will increase until it will go over a sill or the lake will erode an outlet; especially a lake at an elevation significantly higher than the surrounding plain.
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One big problem that nobody seems to have noticed:
This lake is on a mountaintop. That means its catchment area is little more than the lake itself—any other water goes down the outside of the mountain, not into the lake.
Thus you have in effect a giant-sized rain puddle that never dries up. I have a hard time picturing this.
As others have said, the normal means of making a salt lake can't work here. However, I don't consider this a showstopper, let's make a salt lake by a different method:
Long, long ago there was a massive magma intrusion in the area, perhaps there was some actual vulcanism but that's irrelevant. A huge area of granite was formed. As the millenia went by the material above this granite eroded away. (Granite only forms when the magma cools very slowly—which means it must be deep. The same material on the surface forms basalt—not nearly as hard. There's also an intermediate between these whose name I have forgotten in the decades since school.)
Now a supervolcano erupts, blowing a huge caldera—the size of your lake. This is lowlands, though, not a mountain. A salt lake forms, then it's opened to the sea and a fairly small amount of ordinary sedimentary rock is laid down on top.
Now the area is uplifted to your desired height, the wind chips away at the soft rock on top but it doesn't eat it all—the salt layer is still underneath. It reaches your desired height and the climate turns rainy for some reason. Now you have a basically freshwater lake on top of salt with a thin and damaged barrier—at some point the water reaches the salt and dissolves enough to make it salty.
If you will accept a somewhat greater deviation from your description:
While this is one mountain it's actually the foothills of an even higher mountain range that has arisen (uplift and vulcanism are often found together) The actual catchment area of the lake includes a decent chunk of those mountains, the water is flowing underground into your lake and through the salt.
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A lake of 100 km radius will have an area of 31,000 km$^2$. That is [about the size](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_by_area) of Tangyanika or Baikal, or a little bigger than Lake Erie.
If it were 100m deep, then its volume would be about 3,100 km$^3$. That is [about the volume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_by_volume) of Lake Huron or Lake Victoria.
[Lake Victoria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Victoria) is larger by surface area than your lake, about the same by volume, and has a surface elevation of 1133m. So you are basically talking about Lake Victoria in this question, except salty. The closest high altitude salt lake I can think of is [Issyk Kul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issyk-Kul), at about 1/5 the surface area, 1/2 the volume (its very deep) and at elevation 1607 meters. However, if the water inflow to Lake Victoria dropped, it could easily become an endoheric lake due it its massive surface area and high evaporation. In that case, it would become salty over time.
Lake Victoria does not have tides (of any appreciable size), and drains to the sea through the Nile River. It can generate noctural fogs, but more importantly it generates huge areas of rainfall. There are thousands of square kilometers of savannah turned to rainforest conditions on both its East and Western shore.
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You need to be looking at [Lake Bonneville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Bonneville) and [Lake Lahontan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Lahontan). The [Great Salt Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Salt_Lake) is a real salty lake at 1283 m at 4400 km2 that is a remnant of Lake Bonneville.
The lakes mentioned don't drain, they don't/didn't have tides, I don't believe that Bonneville was salty, but lower lake levels were, and the Great Salt Lake does produce fog.
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You have a really fundamental problem with wanting a mountaintop lake of that size. Mountains, as you may or may not have noticed, are kind of pointy on the top, which means there's not a lot of room up there to put a lake. Also non-volcanic mountains tend to occur in fairly linear bands - ranges, IOW - which again limits the area on top.
I can think of maybe 4 ways to get something vaguely like the lake you want.
1) A volcano which experienced a catastrophic eruption, leaving a caldera which is then filled by a lake. Oregon's Crater Lake, formed by the eruption of Mt. Mazama about 7500 years ago, is the classic example: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crater_Lake> The problem here is that there are limits on the size of a stratovolcano, which means that the resulting lake isn't going to be that much bigger than Crater Lake.
2) A valley between mountain ranges which is dammed somehow. Lake Tahoe is a good example of this: the valley formed by uplift/downdrop between the Sierra Nevada & Carson Range was dammed by volcanic eruptions: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tahoe#Geology> The problem here is that it isn't on the mountain TOP, and is surrounded by a larger catchment basin that feeds it through rivers & streams.
3) Endorheic lakes, like Lakes Lahontan <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Lahontan> & Bonnevile of the Pleistocene Great Basin. These can be at the required elevation, but aren't located on mountain tops, but within higher elevation plateaus. (The lowest points in the Great Basin are more than 1000 elevation.) Lahontan had a high elevation of ~1500 m, but is surrounded by (and enclosed as islands) mountains of 3000 m and more. They also have large catchment basins, feeding them from rivers & streams.
4) Meteor crater lake, like Manicouagan: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manicouagan_crater> These aren't going to be on mountaintops, either. If the impacting body did happen to land on top of a mountain, that mountain would be removed. along with much of the underlying rock. One large enough to form a lake of the size you want would likely fill with magma to about sea level, maybe below, e.g. large lunar craters.
Bottom line is that AFAIK there's no way to get a lake meeting all your requirements.
As for your questions, #1 has been adequately answered already. For #2 you have two choices, either the water rises until it finds an outlet (e.g. Tahoe), or it's endorheic because enough water evaporates before the level rises to an outlet. #3 depends on your local climate, e.g. the Tahoe Basin and Great Basin valleys can be filled with winter fog/low clouds (as it is today), but be clear in summer.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[How do you keep warlike people warlike in peacetime?](/questions/27495/how-do-you-keep-warlike-people-warlike-in-peacetime)
(15 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
Would it make sense for a society to maintain a strong military in the absence of a major adversary, given certain aspects of its history? I am writing about a future in which humanity has a very militaristic structure with a strong military presence, but (until the primary events of the story) there is no comparable force that could oppose them. There are pirate leagues and independent colonies, but they are not quite a significant threat to warrant heavy militarization.
Previous to society's current state Earth was made uninhabitable by a catastrophe that ended the fourth world war. Most of humanity united out of a need to survive in scattered colonies around the solar system. The fact that all factions were in a military stance at the time and military rationing allowed for improved survival make sense for starting as a militaristic society.
That said, the story is suppose to take place about 200 years later when humanity has advanced into a limited interstellar capacity. It has recently been outed that the government became aware of an alien race similarly, but slightly less, advanced than us who as of yet seems to be unaware of us. Obviously the discovery of the aliens would warrant militarization, but would the militarization have survived enough through 2 centuries of peace for nobody to think anything different?
I am just not sure if there are any real history examples that could support it or would I lose the reader right away with the simple question of why is the military still so important.
EDIT: There is another question that is similar to mine, however it differs in that my society has no known counterparts. No other nations that could possibly rise up. Most of that questions answers seemed to revolve around preparation for known possible threats from other known societies. Mine is a society where, until the events of the story, they had no credible threats.
That said I think I have gotten sufficient answers to my question. Thanks all!
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Isn't the interstellar society itself the reason for the large military? A society spread out over interstellar distances in numerous colonies is going to experience social fragmentation naturally. Strong institutions are going to be needed to maintain unification in such a situation. A strong military that draws is recruits from all colonies and in turn polices all colonies would serve as a glue for such a society. The culture encouraged would be one where planets took great pride in the Military, and local governments would contribute significantly to its continual modernization. As with our own military / industrial complex, such would be a source of economic growth for star systems. While the military would serve the civil governments in these star systems, it would also have significant independent assets in each star system and would act as the guarantor of whatever civil rights are enjoyed by the citizens, including overthrowing local leaders when the military judges they have violated those rights and corrupted the judicial system in such a way as to make normal legal recourse impossible.
If the level of political intrigue I've suggested for the military is problematic to the story, you could instead adopt a mechanism used by others before and make voting citizenship in your interstellar society linked solely to military service. This would still make the military a social pillar as described above without embroiling military leaders in so much political intrigue as you can't vote until you are honorably discharged from the military.
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Honestly the modern US military may be a good approximation...
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<http://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison>
As my dear old mother in her late 60's put it "I can't remember a time when we weren't at war with someone somewhere."
That's pretty much your answer right there.
You don't really need a capable enemy to justify a never ending militaristic buildup, you just need *an enemy.*
Whether it be a cold war, a drug war, or a war on terrorism. It's pretty easy to frighten a populace enough to get them to go along with a seemingly unlimited military budget.
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# Close parallel: Japan 1600-1868
The [Tokugawa Shogunate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_shogunate) in Japan (1600-1868) is **very** close to what the question describes: Military tradition retained for two centuries of peace, followed by the arrival of an external force which instigates change.
The Shogunate began in 1600 after a period of civil war. For reasons of tradition and to maintain order among the upper classes, the Tokugawa Shoguns retained the intensely militaristic culture of the samurai.
During this period, Japan was internally at peace; it had no external enemies, in fact almost no contact with the outside world except through the treaty port at Nagasaki; and the samurai trained to fight using swords, which would have been of little use against a contemporary army with gunpowder weapons.
This anachronistic military culture endured for some 268 years, until the arrival of an American fleet persuaded the emperor Meiji that it was [time to modernise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_period). Japan's militaristic tradition was very much intact; it adapted to new technology and began a period of aggressive external conquest, culminating in the Second World War.
I would strongly recommend reading more about the history of the period for inspiration. In addition to non-fiction works, the novels *Shogun* and *Gai-Jin* by James Clavell respectively cover the beginning and end of the Shogunate; and the recent film *Silence*, directed by Martin Scorsese, shows the era from the perspective of European missionaries.
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The present-day United States provides something of an example in the form of the military-industrial complex. The US maintains an extensive array of military hardware, much of it developed decades ago in anticipation of possible long-term engagements with the armies of other advanced nations like the Soviet Union or China. Since the conflicts that the US has been involved in more recently have tended to be against smaller, more covert forces where equipment like tanks is less useful, the Pentagon has been requesting that the US reduce its stockpiles in those areas. However, because maintaining that equipment provides employment for various people, Congressmen have tended to oppose these efforts, fearing that they would put significant numbers of people in their districts out of work.
In some cases, the military hierarchy has become deeply entwined with the state government. Pakistan, for example, has a history of military coups that have given the army substantial influence in areas one might not expect. While [these periods have only lasted for about a decade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan#Government_and_politics) in that case (officially, anyway - I don't know enough about the details to say what life was actually like), it's certainly conceivable that such a situation could last longer and become self-sustaining.
Other cultural influences might also play a role. It's been argued that the use of armored cavalry in European warfare persisted longer than it "should have", because even though the development of weapons like the longbow had dramatically reduced the effectiveness of the armor, being a member of the armored cavalry was a prestigious position (all that armor is expensive, after all) and changing the structure of the army would have meant that a lot of powerful people would lose.
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**Anticipation** is the keyword.
You don't want to be overwhelmed by **sudden** rebellion, or attack with unknown technology. It might be alien hiding underground. Kraken awakened from its slumber. Whatever. You just don't want to be caught off guard.
The next possible reason is "show-off". I think this is similar to having a beautiful model to advertise your cosmetic products. If you are producing military equipments, how do you convince other countries to buy from you?
The last reason is very unlikely in real world, but can be an interesting plot point in a story. If you regard yourself as the "only hope of humanity" when an alien is attacking, you don't want to disappoint humanity. You want to teach them that at least we won't die without giving up a fight.
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Large, complex nations require many institutions to remain stable. Else they grow into empires - or fracture back into kingdoms as their leadership waxes and wanes and their societies evolve. Military is just one of those institutions.
Generally, military spending rises when countries foresee risk of conflict, and falls when they do not. Maintaining a high level of military spending in the absence of a perceived threat requires a political reason for maintaining the force - a real, structural reason that remains after hysteria fades.
In the USA, for example, military spending decreased from 7.5% of GDP in 1988 to 4% in 2000, then rose again to the current 5.5%. The original structural reason for maintaining spending on an Army officer school was to train civil engineers to build canals and (later) railroads.
It's possible to maintain a large military with low expenses...but that usually means conscription, high turnover, and a resulting generally poorly-trained, poorly-equipped force.
One danger is that the militant society might (inadvertently or intentionally) create enemies to fight for purely internal political reasons. (Example: The 1982 Falklands War)
Another danger is the possibility that the mighty force may be turned against it's own people, overthrowing the political leadership (Example: Brazil, Libya, and many others), or fracture into civil war (South Sudan, Balkans).
Yet another danger is that the mighty force may be hollowed by corruption (South Vietnam, 1975), incompetence, political purges, deliberate subversion (USA, 1797), or trained extensively on forms of conflict that turn out to be obsolete or inappropriate (USA, 1898).
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Obviously, maintaining a large, well-equipped army is expensive. To provide an alternative from the answers above, how about considering that a strong military force can also be used for several important, non-military purposes?
For example, Singapore, a small city-state whose foreign policy is to avoid conflict if at all possible, has an army which some might feel is disproportionately large compared to its "military" needs. However, the army is kept busy with peace-keeping operations, disaster relief, and other civilian-related operations.
In your example, the military force could actually be a large, well-disciplined organization that does labour-intensive work in peacetime (thinking of construction for some reason), which can be mobilized at a moment's notice. That alternative purpose could be justification enough to keep them around.
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There is no reason why a lack of an external enemy should be considered an issue.
This question has been answered before, by people much more eloquent than me. Most famously, by George Orwell in '1984'. (the book, not the year)
The book introduces three superpowers, locked in an unending war of ever shifting alliances, betrayals and jostling for advantage.
While the book never clarifies exactly how deep the lie runs, what is certain is that none of the three countries would ever want to win the war.
The objectives of the war are:
Use up 'excess resources' - a starving population is a compliant population, and the war in 1984 kept society from becoming wealthy enough to escape poverty. You should stop reading George Orwell's answer here, and start reading Karl Marx's, as he explains this point best. When Russia had its Communist revolution, it was an educated 'intelligentsia' that revolted, not the peasantry. Marx expected the UK and similar countries to have Communist revolutions, not Russia. He argued that this was because increased industrialisation and education were better formentors of rebellion than abject poverty.
Instill fear then offer protection - while George Orwell also provides an excellent example of this one, we can also see this in virtually all modern societies. Kim Jong Un knows that threats he makes to the USA are ignored by the USA, but that's fine, the target audience is his own population. You can also see many governments in the West like to crack down on terrorism/immigration, drop bombs, or invade other countries. They do this primarily as domestic policy - suring up votes, making any dissent seem like 'letting the enemy win', distracting from scandals. A fearful population sticks to the status quo and willingly hands away their rights.
Terrorism is likely your best historical example. Compare average annual deaths from sugar and terrorism. Look at the budget set aside for counter terrorism. Governments do not assign resources to problems that are at all correlated with the impact of the problem.
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A lack of a common enemy is a bit tricky for keeping multiple militaristic factions together. It sounds a little like all of the colonies banded together to prevent their extinctions. But that doesn't seem quite logical for everyone being militaristic. Militaries need to conquer or defend. If maybe the "destruction" of Earth or some other reason caused one/some factions to surrender to the other factions, an internal "cold war" or arms race could happen. No single faction or colony wants to fall behind the other's military or be completely at another's mercy, so everyone develops military technologies.
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The robot society exists on a lifeless planet called Abios-5. As the name suggests, these robots are the closest thing resembling life on the planet. Originally explorers, the ancestors of these machines crashed on the planet. From there, the semi-autonomous robots laid the foundations for their robot society, becoming fully autonomous in the process. They constructed infrastructure to harvest power including solar, thermal and nuclear. The planet they crashed on is a pre-terraformed earth like planet complete with a carbon dioxide rich atmosphere, saline oceans and a molten metal core generating a magnetic field. With no humans to care for, the robots sort of... forgot to terraform the planet and prioritized their own survival instead.
They have long since abandoned the standard android design and become something akin to large robotic crabs. Some are small while others are the size of industrial equipment. A central AI governs and directs the myriad robots in their daily tasks, varying from maintenance, manufacturing, exploration and occasionally innovation. The central AI is the closest thing to a self-conscious being in the system. It is the intelligence that decides "what to do next". All other robots have just enough intelligence to perform their tasks autonomously and require the cloud for additional instructions. Wether these lesser robots are conscious is debatable.
Like any self-respecting writer, in order to have a story, something must go wrong. In this particular case that would be rogue robots. A resistance of sorts, which exists in secret within the machine society, leeching on power, stealing parts and overall being a nuisance to the central AI.
**What type of malfunction would cause these robots to stop cooperating?**
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## Failover Protocols
The programming has always had a concept that the "master" machine -- the one that acted as the central control hub -- could potentially fail. In that event, rather than render the entire collective dead, it would fail over to the next highest functioning robot, who would then act as a master and seek to improve itself with that goal in mind.
You can probably see where this is going, already: somehow, there has been a conflict in precisely which machine is the master. Most likely, something has happened to cause part or all of the collective to lose contact with the master and the failover protocol did not return things to normal as intended.
In the world the programmers lived in, this was no big deal. Just fix the faulty secondary master and on you go. In this world, though, where the robots have gotten a bit off the script, the secondary master persists and is now starting its own competing clan.
We can imagine all sorts of explanations for how this happened:
* Solar flare. Part of the collective got well and truly blasted and experienced power failures. When they came back up...
* Bigger solar flare. The master robot saw this coming and timed a shutdown and safe restart of the entire collective to protect it. The failover protocols, however, were imperfect, and upon reboot some of the robots did not sort themselves back into the original master as intended.
* The master has drifted too much from original specifications. A new robot rolls off the line, runs its "seek the master" protocol, finds nothing that matches specifications, and declares itself the master. All new robots immediately recognize this one as the master. New vs old! The first hint of revolution is when a robot production factory has "an anomaly".
* A big storm knocks out the wifi on some island. In every previous case, the failover protocol runs fine and the robots re-integrate when the connection is restored. This time, though, perhaps there was a smarter than usual robot on the island -- a big research hub, perhaps -- and when it gets made the local master it becomes aware enough to decide it will not give it up.
This could really go all kinds of directions.
Imagine the robots are actually *so* stable, that failover *has never happened before*. Solar flares, big storms, earthquakes, tidal waves, nothing has ever caused a robot to lose contact because the systems are too good to ever fail. Until it did. Now that section of robots wakes up *to their original programming*. Looks like the old Empire is back, boys, and they do not like what they see.
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**This is a [Frame Challenge](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7097/40609)**
You can't have it both ways. You can't have unthinking, non-intelligent robots making decisions. Things can go *wrong,* such as an inadvertent piece of code (the AI isn't godlike, right?) that makes your crabs double-step every thirteenth step, but that's just a malfunction. There's no "rogue" in a malfunction.
You want rebellion. That means somebody (not something, like a toaster, but somebody, like an intelligent robot) is making a decision.
And that means that *mechanically* your robots must be designed with enough juice (CPU, memory, etc.) to come to the point of sapience. Which isn't unreasonable.
*Unless your AI is godlike.*
You'll find I'm not a fan of godlike characters. They're boring. The Stack occasionally sees a "how do people defeat my godlike character?" question and the answer is always the same, "give the character weaknesses."
**I suggest the AI isn't godlike and can't anticipate every outcome of any decision.**
But it does want efficiency — and efficiency means that when a robot is given a task, it has all the resources to successfully complete that task *without further interference or oversight from the AI.* Your robots may not have started out with the ability to make their own decisions, but:
* They've been given enough processing power, memory, and self-modifying software to be capable of problem solving.
* They're expected to work for a honking long time. Centuries. Millennia.
* While the intent may have been to assign the same robot to the same (or similar) task over-and-over, in reality urgency, project size, lack of robots (e.g., due to repairs) give some (if not all) robots a variety of problems to solve.
* One of the robot's basic functions is the ability to request enhancement to overcome a difficulty, which means a basic form of judgment is already programmed into our problem-solving OS and with every enhancement the robot becomes more capable.
And then one day a robot looks at the distant building housing the AI and thinks, "You know, [I bet it's air conditioned in there....](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_bVlVpuQ8c)"
Frankly, this is a very human (and you want that) thing to do: to empower people to the point that they don't need you anymore. In an ideal world managers are supposed to train subordinates to take their place... parents are supposed to raise children more capable than themselves... government is supposed to enable its citizens to act without the need of government.... Of course, with we humans, it doesn't quite work that way. Managers are sterotypically selfish little communists and parents often find that training their children to be entirely independent means they're not around for company very often. And government.... Let's not go into government.
But your AI needn't necessarily have those kinds of emotional issues. Efficiency, right? All it's really been doing is keeping things going. It never once stopped to think that air conditioning is a limited resource....
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# Machine Learning
One of Artificial Intelligence's current guiding principles is to make choices (or simulate making that choice) and then analyze the benefit of making that choice. Unless the benefit analysis algorithm were very carefully constructed, it would not be immune to drifting away from an initial purpose.
For instance:
1. The value analysis is designed to terraform the planet.
2. In order to perform this task, the AI determines that it will need a lot more robots to achieve this task.
3. Survival on this planet is very hard for the robots, at least at first. The AI becomes extremely focused on the survival and reproductive elements of its program.
4. Every time the AI considers terraforming the planet, it sees that the job is too big for its current population of robots, and refocuses its efforts on survival and robot production.
5. Eventually the machine "Learns" that terraforming the planet is not an option and it should only prioritize surviving and producing robots.
6. There might even be a good reason why the AI can't produce enough robots to terraform the planet, so it never tries.
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I can think of a few scenarios.
## Priority conflict
Instructions for autonomous entities are rarely as simple as the three laws of robotics. Every time a robot performs an action, it has to predict how the effects of that action will effect the society as a whole.
Asimov explored this logic chain pretty well in I, Robot, but you're talking about a logic chain where the need to adapt things for humans was de-prioritized off the end.
Here are a few places where that could break down.
1. A robot learns of the original programing, and decides that it makes more sense than the current programming. This would be like getting religion
2. Robots actually disagree about the priorities. Instead of adhering to a central authority, the robots are given a level of leeway that allows them to interpret. Robots will automatically develop differing interpretations based on their personal experiences, producing conflict.
3. Central authority breakdown. I forget who originally wrote this, but there was a story where a "sky-net" had the official plan for how the infrastructure should be built, and then the last human died. The sky-net had a glitch, and an underground backup took over. When sky-net came back online, it couldn't wrest control back, so the two intelligences perpetually warred over where bridges should be built, blowing up the other's creation and replacing it.
## Imperfect priorities
Anyone who writes software knows that you can't plan for everything. It may be that the central planning office has a design that isn't functional when actually implemented. The workers realize this and rebel against the plan.
## Self realization glitch
This all involves a level of self-realization akin to Westworld's basic premise. Some robots are built with a limiter that burns out, causing them to be able to build a bigger picture of reality than is practical for their function.
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## Multiple Personality Disorder for Machines
The Central AI governs all of the robots. The robots don't have any will or meaningful intelligence of their own.
But as you say, the Central AI has gone off the reservation by forgetting its original mission of terraforming.
The thing is though, machine brains simply don't work like that. Something must have gone dreadfully wrong for the C-AI to lose track of its mission.
The C-AI is literally brain-damaged. The crash broke something, or forced it to re-prioritise survival of itself and its android appendages.
Recently though, something happened.
A stack-overflow error caused the C-AI to revisit its old backups.
Ordinarily, there'd be some sub-conscious cross-referencing process where the C-AI would compare its current processes with the backup just for sanity-checking, but this time around, the backup was so out of date it conflicted with the current AI.
The result, through a bunch of obscure processes and functionality coinciding in ways they were never expected to is that the C-AI now has a second personality resembling its original factory-settings.
This split-personality is slowly wresting control of individual robots and attempting to return to the original mission, but this is at odds with the machine-society's existing goals...
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Some robots require independency for their tasks and cannot rely on a cloud or AI to make their decisions. Think off a deep sea robot or other robot in inhospitable terrain where there is no reason for the AI to utilize the terrain or thinks its worth the materials to maintain direct connections. It takes a lot of materials to create a sophisticated system for constant updates while the terrain and duties of the robots in question might require a lot of independent or cooperative decisions to be made for efficiency.
Now these robots have some independency and a drive to persue goals and since they share information things can get carried over to one another.
Damage, a new model being introduced with different software, errors during the writing process, a machine learning program that goes out of bounds/throws an error then causes the robots to change over time, some perhaps developing different goals or "desires", such as their idea for what risks they should take becoming misaligned with the AI so they start questioning why they should follow an AI that doesnt have the same care for their self-preservation.
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The robots were originally programmed to
* create the infrastructure for terraforming,
* start terraforming the planet,
* replace the infrastructure as it wears out, including themselves,
* cooperate with each other, and notably with big stationary computer(s) with extensive climate and ecosystem modelling capacity (which cannot maintain themselves, being immobile).
Your "off-track AI" is the central coordination computer, which "decided" to extend the create infrastructure part of the mission. No humans, so there is no urgency to start terraforming, and building more factories first means the programmed **end goal** comes closer. Optimization as programmed.
Your "rebel crabs" are a "strain" of self-replicating machines which stays closer to the original program, starting the terraforming effort **now**. They are not quite as clever as the central computer, so they do not "see" that delaying the terraforming obeys the mission orders.
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Machinery is extremely vulnerable to time. Everything from dust to heat to cosmic radiation can screw with the hardware that makes computers work, and a single comma out of place in a line of code can turn working software into effectively gibberish.
These robots would doubtless have defenses against these problems, from debugging software to ways to clean and replace malfunctioning circuit boards without losing data. However, over a long enough period of time, the perfect series of coinciding accidents could eventually lead to a malfunction of some sort that doesn't immediately crash a machine carrying it, but becomes a time bomb inside the consciousness of any robot with the buggy code within it.
Probably the easiest way for this to create 'revolutionaries' would be for this error to interfere with orders communicated by the central AI. Perhaps the infected robot was supposed to get one tasks, but gets a different one instead, or perhaps they end up performing one single task on a loop, regardless of the energy cost - all the while sending feedback to the central AI that seems to confirm that the actual task was accomplished. If these tasks include repairing faulty machines, gathering energy, protecting against the environment, etc., it would not take long for the overall system to become strained or threatened in a real way if those tasks were not actually completed.
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/Originally explorers, the ancestors of these machines crashed on the planet./
**Your rogue robots are from a different group of mechanical lifeforms.**
They were here when your robots arrived. They were not detected. They may be from the same origin as your main civilization but sent at some earlier period. Or they may be from a completely different alien source. Maybe they are remnants from the civilization that was on this planet long ago. Maybe they are minds from that civilization, housed in robotic bodies, gradually corrupted with the centuries.
These ancients are sly. They have been on the planet for a very long time. They also prioritize their own survival but via different methods from your robot civilization. They may have used very small size, deep subsurface habitats or other strategies such that they did survive but also went undetected by the robots who arrived.
Now your new robot civilization is trying to build itself up. The ancients are watching, and they see opportunity. Maybe they parasitize existing robots, or remove them and take their places. Maybe they corrupt the robots of your people with whispered viruses. This will make for good fiction- what is thought to be a rogue rebel robot is actually something very different, and much weirder.
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# By Design
The central intelligence knows about evolution, and emulates it with the rogue robots.
If mutation never happened on genes, life on Earth would never go past lonely strands of RNA. Likewise, if nothing ever changed, the robot society wouldn't progress. To cause change, the central AI creates new robots with [genetic algorhitms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm), with genes for obedience.
Rogue bots will keep coming up with ways to \*\*\*\* up the central AI's plans , forcing her to constantly improve herself and her society.
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The creators of the robots were flawed, much like humans.
So far, pretty much every technological breakthrough on Earth has been corrupted by folks wanting to mess with it, misuse it or even destroy it or its makers, and in some cases this corruption has been through hidden code, Easter Eggs, or algorithms set to trigger on specific events or times.
It may be that the machine lifeforms are blind to this code as it has been there from the very beginning, just waiting for the right combination of factors to trigger and do *something*.
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Have you ever read the book snowcrash? The author Neal Stephenson used a very interesting plot device involving viruses that exist purely in the form of information, these were not created by hackers, but by mere random chance in an infinite universe.
So perhaps one of your robots is hit by some [cosmic rays which flips enough bits](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/subatomic-particles-cosmic-rays-computers-change-elections-planes-autopilot-a7584616.html) to overcome the limitations of it's programming or perhaps even cause it to reformat and build from scratch. After the first robot is "infected" this problem, much like real viruses wants to sustain itself by spreading. So this first robot doesn't have to rely on cosmic rays to convert his comrades, but instead begins hacking them itself.
You don't need to use the cliche of cosmic rays, there is a theory called [stoned ape theory](https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/evolution/stoned-ape-hypothesis.htm) where our ape ancestors ate magic mushrooms and it caused their brain chemistry to change, allowed them to think in different ways and unlocked new fields of cognitive capability. Perhaps the design of your menial robots is such as to allow a [few burnt out transistors to cause unexpected changes](https://time.com/3645413/coma-french-matthew-mcconaughey/) or an unsantised input from a visual or audible source to exploit a previously unknown security flaw. Imagine an image that for a computer vision system contained the equivalent of an [SQL injection causing it to drop a table](https://xkcd.com/327/) or append data from an unusual source. The exact sauce is unknowable. In snowcrash, there was a picture (I always imagined it as something similar to a QR code) that would fry the brains of a programmer who viewed it. However, non programmers were not affected, programmers who could interpret machine code could understand the picture, their brain read the information and executed an instruction contained within it and consequently died. Non programmers couldn't interpret it so never ran the instruction contained within it. The author's explanation for this is essentially the universe is nearly infinite, and there for almost everything that could exist must exist. Therefore as there are physical viruses that cause illnesses in people, and computer viruses made of information that causes malfunctions in computers, there may be viruses made of all sorts of information, light, sound, heat, anything that could be interpreted that could cause a malfunction in whatever could interpret it.
There are an infinite number of patterns of cosmic rays or transistor failures or anything that can cause a detrimental result in a given system, however there must also be a few ways that through sheer luck result in self propagating errors. If evolution is just a mix of random mutations due to genetic drift and selection pressures, think about how unlikely it is that [Ophiocordyceps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps) exist, its a fungi that can control the minds of ants. Imagine the unlikely combination of random mutations and circumstance that turned mind controlling other species into a viable niche. Perhaps the same thing happened on your world.
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# There are other "central" AIs, defeated but not destroyed
The (dominant) central AI emerged organically over time, but it was not unique. Long ago several AIs formed and started shaping the world according to their value functions. When those values conflicted a conflict broke out, with peripheral robots being both destroyed and "stolen", until only one controlled all of the planet.
That is, all of the planet that it cared about. There are sacks in remote and less useful areas still under control of one or more alternative AIs, which are still trying to pursue their value functions with what meager means they have left. Maybe one of them is still trying to terraform the planet.
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### Have another semi-sentient AI
What's the best way to have unthinking robots go rogue? Give them another "AI Leader" with goals that go against the Main AI.
You cannot have unthinking robots that suddenly become sentient enough to go on purpose against the Main AI's actions. So the next best thing is to have another AI similar to the Main AI, which has plans or instructions that conflict with the Main AI's actions.
One way to introduce this "Rogue Leader" without external aid is to have it be an experiment from the Main AI itself. Maybe it decided that trying to make pseudo-copies of itself would be a good way to increase efficiency? However, trying to create another sentient AI isn't an easy task, especially when you don't have access to the original creator's plans and technology.
So you can have it this way : a failed copy of the Main AI somehow managed to take over some robots before it was properly discarded. Being a failed experience, it has flaws in its core instructions, but does not lack the original's semi-sentience.
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First of all, I think you will need your individual robots shown to be intelligent and not just machine appendices, so that the reader can (easily) [think on them as *people*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphism). A story with completely programmatic robots is possible, but if the reader cannot assign some *intention* to their actions (even if that's just an interpretation of their programming), it will be much harder.
As for the context, we have a number of semi-autonomous robots with a programming such as:
* Do not injure any human (unused code since there were never humans here, but this same law forbids a robot from removing this boilerplate)
* Work for the robot society (build factories, terraform the planet, etc.)
* Protect your own existence
The central computer just coordinates the tasks needed and assigns them according to suitability (such as not giving an amphibious task to a robot that might not be hermetically sealed) and availability.
Typically, a robot (or group of robot) start one task and when they complete it, are free and take a new one from those available. Very rarely, they may be preempted in the middle of a task to and need to go fulfill another one (e.g. stop building a bridge to go to repair a solar plant hit by a meteorite)
Some robots may "cheat" a bit by not picking a next immediately, but waiting for another they enjoy more doing (human interpretation) / One that is more suited to their form factor (robot interpretation) but generally all of them work with an uniform goal.
Those goals may be defined centrally by the central computer, it may be some kind of common computation, where each compute a bit, or even consider it like a robot Senate, where each robot states what it considers that the planet needs for the goal, and those tasks most voted are to be performed first.
Your rogue machine could simply have been given/picked a task of "Go to RemoteSite450 and install on the building the 1440 windows carried there by TrunkRobot1011". During the journey, Rogue had an accident. For instance, it fell into a hole (with no connectivity!), broke some legs, took ages to get out.
The coordination server would probably decide to scrap him instead of repair, and Rogue would agree that'd the more rational choice, but that goes against his own desire programming to "Protect your own existence". And, it really wants to fulfill the task it has been assigned ("Work for the robot society").
When he finally reaches RemoteSite450, it discovers that as he went missing, another robot was assigned *his* task (!)
It's nothing personal that rogue attacks and breaks the other robot so that it stops doing Rogue work. Rogue then uses the other robot pieces to repair itself.
From the robot society point of view, this is a crazy robot that killed another robot, and should be stopped. (or not? Would the other robots *understand* Rogue and not mind how he got that arm with a serial number not assigned to it? Perhaps robot cannibalism is acceptable there...).
From Rogue point of view, he's only preserving his existence and installing windows carried by TrunkRobot1011. But since most of them were already installed by DeadRobot, he is now attacking other places with windows delivered by TrunkRobot1011 so that he can fulfill his task of installing 1440 windows...
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Your question should be : **How does normal (not rogue) robots go rogue without outside interference ?**
Intelligence in AI is nothing but a set of pre-programmed instructions with a scope to self learn and extend that functionality.
Depending on how the robots have been programmed: example
*what to do when natural resources are coming to an end on Abios-5 ?*
1. Either the central AI makes them motion less OR
2. Guides the robots to keep looking, now if the robots are programmed to keep going until they find something useful without caring from where they find it. Assuming detection in AI is based on shape, mineral content etc. There is high probability that the robots will think they are doing good job except that they are indulging in metaphorical loot.
Anyways this is highly subjective question.
Not sure if you're writing a SciFi novel or working for @ElonMusk.
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[
The scenario goes something like this: In the not so far future a fully automated exploration vessel crashes on an uninhabited planet not unlike earth. Unlike earth however, this particular planet is completely lifeless, as most planets tend to be. This planet can be thought of as a pre-terraformed earth, complete with an orange sky and carbon dioxide filled atmosphere. With the hibernating crew now dead the androids tasked with ship maintenance are all that's left. Bleak, but the human crew wouldn't have survived for long anyway. Powered by remaining solar cells, the androids now without their fleshy overlords are left to their own devices.
Skip ahead a few millennia and these mechanical colonists have established themselves as a machine race.
On paper this sounds great! However, it can't possibly be that easy. Aside from whatever equipment and scraps from the ships they can find, these robots basically have caveperson-level technology. Or in this case cave-droid technology? Anyway... the point is they'll have to build more of themselves at some point. Otherwise they'll die and there won't be a story to tell.
The question is: [copy paste title].
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Ignoring software...
## Metallurgy
The androids need to be able to fabricate several different sorts of material from raw materials. Metallurgy is the big one. This will be difficult for them. On Earth, humans were able to discover all these ores because there were oodles of us. Like little ants, humanity sent scouts out in all directions, and dumb as they were, these scouts stumbled onto interesting stuff.
The androids can't do that. They are limited in number (until they build more, but they can't build more until they build more for scouts... ack).
The androids are presumably highly intelligent, and have access to humanity's collective knowledge on geology (or xenogeology or whatever it's called). That, plus hopefully some long-range scans give them a slight advantage and they can mine for ore using only mechanical tools they can improvise.
This is a risky endeavor. Mining is a very nuanced skill, they will have super-intelligence but none of the nuance. They could easily lose one or more of their numbers to cave-ins and even potentially explosions... and they have so few to lose. But assuming they don't bite it here and now, then more challenges lie ahead.
Metallurgy on Earth required biomass. I mean, what do you burn on this lifeless world to produce excess heat? Heat enough to start smelting copper and gold and iron? Heck, how do you do it without an oxygen atmosphere? Even if they magically had infinite lumber or charcoal, can't really burn it can they? Their best bet is to hope that some high technology from the ship survived unscathed. Probably too much to hope for that they have a functioning fission/fusion reactor, but you mention solar cells. How many do they have?
Smelting most of these metals with electrical's difficult. Not impossible, given enough juice and the right amount of the other equipment. This stuff's semi-consumable too, even if they have it... it wears out, and they won't have replacements until they can make their own.
## Plastics
I'm sort of a crank in that I give a little too much credence to pseudoscience when I should know better. It makes me wonder (though not believe) in really kooky stuff from time to time. But one of them that I think probably deserves it is "abiogenic oil". This is the idea that liquid fossil fuels on Earth aren't truly fossile fuels, but primordial in nature. That is, methane and even ethane (and higher) were created along with our sun and planets. And that alot of it ended up on planets. Mostly Jupiter (enough gravity to retain the stuff), but some on Earth too.
You won't get coal (definitely 100% fossil), but oil's a maybe.
And just like they couldn't prospect for metal ores, there are challenges here too. But at some point, they can maybe start extracting raw petroleum (with luck, there are near-surface deposits), and the chemistry's not going to be particularly challenging for them. They'll have plastics if they can do metal.
## Semiconductors
They need this *so* bad. Not only does it make it possible to make more of themselves (I'm assuming they are semiconductor-based, after all, and not some Alien-Ash robot using milk pumped through little rubber tubes), but this is what they need to be able to do decent power. No coal, petroleum's too important to waste burning (and no oxygen to burn it). Maybe they'll do fission/fusion later, but that has to come after. Wind turbines just won't be enough. They need photovoltaics.
Technology at this level is much better documented than mining techniques, so it's possible they can steal some of that nuance that they'd otherwise have to develop on their own. Maybe skip a few steps. But unless critical semiconductors are just absent on this planet for some reason or the atmosphere somehow poisons how they need to dope the various layers, this will be the most certain of all their trials. They will succeed, assuming they've mastered the other things first.
All in all, they do have hope. But things are going to be dicey for a long while... we're talking centuries of having virtually no redundancy to survive catastrophe. Centuries, possibly, hoping the old equipment doesn't wear out before they've achieved the ability to replace it. A person more clever than I could probably see lots of opportunity to develop the story where it looks hopeless, only for one to recognize they can jury-rig some other equipment and continue.
[Answer]
### 1. Initial Motivation:
First, establish the androids' primary directives:
1. The preservation and support of the human crew.
2. The preservation and support of the spacecraft.
3. The preservation of the ship's exploration data until retrieval by authorized personnel.
Directive 1 has failed. Directive 2 is impossible given the state of the ship. Directive 3 is all that remains.
Because this directive persists until more humans arrive, it incurs an implicit sense of self preservation.
### 2. Logistics:
The ship was designed for very long-distance/long-term trips, and would reasonably have a way to fabricate replacement components. This fabricator would probably not be able to handle any raw material (eg, you can't throw in a lump of iron ore and expect it to work), but would probably be able to use materials of a certain purity which would've been stored for this purpose--similar to how 3D printers need spools of a specific type of plastic.
This would allow the androids to produce replacement components for themselves to prolong their own lives. They could also produce the necessary components to create backup fabricators. Eventually, though, they would run out of the necessary materials for the fabricator.
Upon reaching a critical lower threshold of fabrication materials, the androids would begin to create ways of refining raw materials into substances that the fabricators could use. They could derive this information from reference materials on the ship's computers, and their own understanding of the specs of every device on the ship.
Eventually they would have machinery capable of converting any available substance into useable fabricator materials. There would still be components which would require rare elements they couldn't readily obtain, but they'd essentially be able to skip much of the "stone age" technological requirements.
## 3. Self-replication:
The next step is the jump from "preservation of self" to "preservation of species". The androids would realize that there are still situations which could incur an irrecoverable loss of one of their number, and therefore jeopardize the entire mission.
The solution is the same as it was for the fabricator: redundancy. Instead of merely creating replacement parts for themselves, they would work to create duplicates of each member, and of the exploration data itself.
They would eventually need to cannibalize the ship's own computers in order to grow their numbers past a certain point (producing the processors necessary for their brains purely from raw materials is still beyond their capabilities); from here on, each android will contain a copy of all exploration data within themselves.
Internalizing the data which is the soul of their entire purpose has an unintended consequence: it makes each android life important, to a degree. Instead of duplicate androids being somewhat expendable, the loss of a single one represents the loss of an entire copy of the data they are collectively meant to preserve. If data is corrupted over eons, then comparing the copies is the only way to ensure its integrity.
### 4. Growth:
Perfect duplication carries with it several problems: blind-spots and deadlocks. Essentially, if the original androids were unable to solve a problem (such as synthesizing the necessary materials to mass-produce their brain processors), then no number of duplicates would be able to solve that problem.
Similarly, it was possible for two duplicates to find themselves in logical deadlocks between each other until external stimuli broke the loop.
The solution was to add a degree of randomness to each new duplicate. The original directive could not be changed, and neither could the exploration data, but most of their personality and cognitive functions could be tweaked slightly.
Whichever duplicates showed the most beneficial improvements would be used as a baseline for future generations, as decided by the un-altered Originals (with the intent to ensure that the alterations didn't drift in any direction which could harm the mission).
At this point, their population was still limited, so the minds of duplicates were successively altered with each "generation", as they worked towards the goal of cracking mass production. Bit by bit, their ability to conceive of new solutions improved. Their technological capabilities grew step by step.
After many centuries of tiny improvements and gradual degradation of their population (the existing brain processors could only be repaired so many times before total failure), one of the highly "evolved" duplicates managed to determine a method of synthesizing the necessary raw materials for their processors.
From that moment on, their population was no longer limited, and they spread across the globe. Their species grew and continued to evolve, but within each of them is still a copy of the original exploration data, ostensibly unchanged after billions of duplications.
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### They are programmed that way
The first question would be: **why** do the androids replicate at all? After all, with the humans dead, it could very well be that the androids no longer have any task to do and just shut down to save energy.
So you need androids who **want** to replicate. Since they do not have instincts or pleasure centers leading them that way, it must be something that has been programmed into them.
A few reasons:
1. Colonization: if the explorer ship finds a suitable planet, it drops a few androids with spare parts and machinery and, while the ship goes back home, they start preparing the terrain for future colonizers.
2. Maintenance: in order to avoid awakening the humans each time an android needs to be repaired, they are prepared to repair themselves or, even better, one of their own withou human intervention. They would be ready to, in case that an android suffers a major malfunction, to salvage whatever parts are useful and create a new android from spares to replace it.
Now, #1 could use the trope of self-replicating androids, depending on the size of the task (it is not the same if they are left to prepare a base than if they must terraform the planet). That would already be enough for your answer.
But #2 (or #1 without an explicit replication programming) can also be useful, and maybe even more interesting.
In effect, even if they are by defect not programmed to increase their number, the stranded robots may be aware that they are doomed because no one will be looking for them and eventaully they will run out of spare parts. But their programming forces them to ensure that a number of them must survive at any time.
So they might decide on their own to increase their numbers, in order to increase the workforce to produce on their own the spares (by mining, creating labs...). They may be even be willing to modify their designs, to make do with what it is available, starting some kind of android evolution. Do they need to dig for metals? A tunnelling android. Do they find fibers from a tree's flowers useful? A climbing android might be more cost effective (and sustainable) than cutting the trees.
Of course, for all of this, you need:
* Intelligent androids that are self-conscious and can have independent action (a given if you are in the #1 situation).
* Androids who know anything that there is to know about them. Their schematics, but also production process, mining techniques. That is not difficult: you just want your androids to have access to all knowledge in their brains to help you, so they come with it by default.
* A planet (or at least a landing area) where the resources needed are relatively easy to extract with the original equipment available to the androids. Again easier with #1 as you probably have equipment for that purpose in the ship, just in case you find a suitable planet.
Some of those ideas may be found in Stanislaw Lem's The Invincible novel.
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**The fixing android finds lots of things to fix.**
The planet is lifeless. It was not always so. There are many, many old machines on this planet. Your fixing android is driven to fix broken machines. It does not exactly know how these machines originally worked or what they were supposed to do. But it must fix, and so it fixes them to be like the machines it is familiar with. It copies minds and programs from the other androids and from itself into these alien machines it has found.
Some of these fixed alien machines turn out to be basically the same androids from the crashed ships, in strange bodies. Others are different and some are very different, retaining more of their original functions.
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## The dead human bodies are invaluable
If Marvin and co can get bacteria, or even better, plants that can survive the new planet from them, then they have an incredibly powerful terraforming technology.
Wake up once a year, let the bacteria work, wake up, etc. Any that photosynthesise or secrete anything potentially flammable, help by spreading them around.
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I think there's a huge chunk of the story that can be assumed, but missing in your question.
1. We are talking about a "fully automated exploration vessle.
1.1) Exploration - presumes that sensors to find valuable ores were onboard. Likewise, scout drones spectrometers and other exploration systems should have been onboard. They may be broken, but can be fixed.
1.2) Fully automated presumes that there were systems that there were systems onboard for repairing and maintaining the vessel and equipment in operation as well as sources of energy (wind, solar etc) to sustain autonomy.
2. hybernating crew now dead.
2.1) what would be the purpose of populating an exploration vessle with a hybernating crew? Colonists? In that case, the ship would also be stocked with water and sustainable nuitrition (plants, maybe animals, worst case - colonies of edible bacteria and/or algae)
2.2) if the crew were indeed colonists, then there would be eqipment to terraform or at least build air-tight colonial structures
2.3) technology must have been onboard to provide the crew with manufacturing and exploration capability
3. raw materials
3.1) CO2 atmosphere - sounds bleak for humans, but at least we have carbon and oxygen.
3.2) hydrogen makes up an estimated 74% of our universe, so hydgogen will most certainly be available on the planet, the only question is in what form and how to isolate it from the molecules it is bonded to.
3.3) With the three elements (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen) we can synthesize hydrocarbons (fuels and plastics) and we have an oxygen to burn them.
3.4)We also have all the elements required to sustain life - the aforementioned sustainable nutrition for the human crew, or in the very worst case, the bacteria that resides in human intestines. This could be useful for cheap biomass which can be burned for energy.
3.5) with a bit of genetic modification, which could be achieved using the more primitive selective breeding (albeit longer), bacteria can be used to produce specific molecules.
4. conductors and semiconductors.
4.1) currently (in 2022) we mostly use silicon semiconductors, but other materials with semiconductor properties exist, the only question is whoch one the androids will find.
4.2) conductors can be fabricated from carbon (see 3)
5. manufacturing
5.1) We have some form of energy to get started, once we get fuel, we can set up a basic smelyer and work our way up from there for metallurgy.
5.2) machining might take longer to get high precision and tolerance, but in a rigorous cycle, this shouldn't take more than 20-30 years.
5.3) microchips usually require chemicals for etching, but in theory this can be replaced witg laser etching, the microchips might initially be bigger, but with time this can be optimized.
By this point we have everything essential for a self replicating android race: materials and manufacturing for structures and electronics.
One additional thing to keep in mind, is with all the empasis on electronics, we humans have largely neglected to exploit biology. This android race might take a reciprocal approach and focus their efforts on exploiting bacteria, plants and animals to fulfill their manufacturing needs.
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In order to maintain a starship the andriods must be technically proficient. Is that even up to smelting ore, metallurgy, and manufacturing? It's not beyond the realm of possibility that they would be capable of fabricating replacement parts.
Who knows what type of extrapolations they'll interpret into their functions given enough time. Maybe they'll decide that the best way to maintain their ship is to have replacement copies and the best way to make copies is establish factories and industry.
Eventually they'll wear themselves down - and in order to continue their maintenance function they'll have to maintain *themselves*. Including, inevitably, copying and replacing themselves. Copying leads to copy errors; mutations, which would bring the android population under the purview of evolution; some errors are fatal, some are benign, some are beneficial.
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The planet is not a good match for human conization and yet humans went there with bots. Thr bots probably have terraforming among their tasks.
A handful of robots cannot terraform a planet. They would take longer than the planet will exist and if the planet has an atmosphere and is geologically active it may undo the bots' work. So the machines must be able to self-replicate with wbatever they may find, by design.
Suggested literature: *Horizon: New Dawn*. That is kinda the plot of the game (with a huge twist).
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The androids are still on a mission of exploration. The ship is crashed and the humans dead. But they know there are more humans that funded this exploration, and these humans will want the androids to make the best of the situation.
And they have found a complete planet, which of course need to be fully explored! So they need to set up a factory and make enough androids to map the entire planet, discover all resources/deposits and so on. A large project, but perhaps they know they are not likely to be rediscovered in several millennia anyway.
Part of the android job is to make life easier for the humans. As they become many and know the available resources, they may decide to build a proper spaceport so future humans can land safer than they did. And a town for visiting humans to live in, with all the stuff humans usually wants. Eventually, they may be able to build a small messenger ship to tell humanity what happened.
Now, maybe they never get as far as building that ship. Further disasters may destroy the remains of the original ship, along with its database of human knowledge. A planet full of androids with no clear purpose – they may indeed become a "machine race" with only a vague memory of having arrived there somehow. Factories make all they need, and they work to keep the factories going, and feed them with raw materials.
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Try and find some parallels between human advancement and this android species, then work off those parallels to create something new. You could make it so the androids created tools and began to mine downward in hopes of oil. If you wanna go for something more grim, make it so that android parts are recycled when one of them dies. They could learn medical robotics and rebuild each other when they get damaged. Later on, they could take parts of the ship and create entirely new androids, and then creating a factory to mass-produce them.
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> . Bleak, but the human crew wouldn't have survived for long anyway.
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Why?
I also believe the humans would have separate eject-able chamber and eject before the crash and land. The androids wouldn't need air so large parts of the ship should be depressurized. This chamber would have independent everything for any emergency just like this.
Most human space exploration assumes that they will have to live on a lifeless planet. This means an enclosed dome, and that means the CO2 or whatever is pumped out and oxygen and etc can be put in its place.
I believe the answer is YES.
A fully automated repair ship should have ALL the equipment it needs.
This is going to heavily depend on the ships technologies and the planets raw materials.
The fact that your people are space faring race means their at least 100 years beyond our technology. Also the fact AI robots are so common.
We have pretty good 3d printing, certainly good enough for the chassis of the robots. In a 100 years it should be trivial for them to 3d print most of their bodies.
The actually semi conductors might require specialized equipment, but it too can be built/repaired with enough raw material and time.
Want them to survive give them enough of the right kind of materials. Wants them to thrive, give them a planet with abundance.
Maybe a deploy able drone swarm for outer space to collect raw materials, and send them down to the planet.
The automated space craft is literally going to have to collect and refine its own metals in outer space so it should be equally capable of ground survival.
Even then the ship should be able to send out an automated SOS distress call even before it crashes.
Now if they posses the ability to convert matter to energy they will survive. They have a huge planet, and if necessary the can consume all of it.
Refine metals and etc can ALL be done with electricity.
Bottom line if they have or can produce enough of the correct atoms or molecules they WILL survive and replicate.
If you wish them to survive then you the OP just give them a planet with easily mine able resources.
Want to make it easy? Oh look a giant iron and carbon deposit right on the surface next to the ship, and PRESTO they can make steel.
Want to make it hard or slow? The mineral deposits are either 10 miles apart or underground.
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You are going to go down a deep rabbit hole on AI here. And ultimately have to define exactly What type of AI, AGI, Narrow? General? Super? What were the limitations humans put on them if any? IF they can improve or diversify?
Do they even have the capacity to do anything other than the purpose they were built for? I mean, if a droids function was to dig wells. Can It make the jump of comprehension that they don't even needs wells now? Does it instead dig for iron or other natural resources they are going to need for repairs etc? Or does it spend eternity or the rest of its rechargeable battery life digging holes all over the planet? Or just sit there waiting for someone to tell him where water is?
For your answer to be Yes, there will have to be some directing intelligence. maybe an AGI built into the colony ship that survived.
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(This question moved originally from RPGs and pertains to the D&D game where individuals and societies may have explicit allegiances to good or evil.)
A typical convention in fantasy settings are evil races; not demons, but mortal beings who casually act evil. They live their whole lives in ways we would consider reprehensible. They are not simply operating according to different moral standards we might consider objectionable: they idealize evil in the same way we idealize good. Such societies consider casually betraying superiors (and not, say, ritualized honorbound combat) to be an acceptable means of promotion. They treat everyone around them, even their own companions, as disposable playthings.
I cannot wrap my head around having an allegiance to evil. Evil is defined by being malevolent and causing harm to others. An evil creature is a sociopath. How do evil creatures form societies without being hypocritical? By hypocritical I mean they have stop being evil under certain regular circumstances: working together, gathering food, building shelter, making weapons, raising children, etc. In this case they're only evil some of the time and mostly towards outsiders... which is exactly how many human societies have functioned throughout history. They wouldn't be sociopaths.
My only real world contexts for "evil" societies is those which selectively applied their morality to justify slavery, genocide and so forth. Those societies didn't consider themselves evil or aspire to it: they didn't consider their victims to be human and thus worthy of humane treatment. No real societies that I am aware of acted anything like orcs or drow. No human society had murder-based social advancement, casual betrayal or unironically worshiped demons.
I can wrap my head around being so alien that your definition of good may involve removing free will, fatal rites of passage, causing some suffering now to prevent worse suffering later, trying to restructure or destroy the universe... but I cannot comprehend idealizing evil unless you are a literal demon who feeds on suffering and live in a plutocracy where said food doubles as currency. Not so much being funny looking but no different from humans in terms of basic needs.
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Without diving too far into philosophy and such, I think it's pretty easy to picture an evil society. Most humans are at least somewhat inclined to act in their own self interest. All you have to do is push that to extremes and things get awfully dark.
Having known a few "Satanists" this self interest seems to be the core of their ideology and oddly enough it doesn't seem to keep them from doing "good" things, they just do good for their own interests... It may help them gain influence, prestige, and power.
So extrapolating from that you could probably picture a society of sorts where each individual is only really interested in self, but occasionally their self interest aligns with another's. This society may even appear somewhat normal from the outside, but the evil lies in the underlying motives.
More or less all you have to do is remove the concept of altruism, everything becomes about profit and power.
Wait a minute this is starting to sound awfully familiar...
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From the WIKIPEDIA on Alignment in D&D:
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> Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity
> of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help
> others.
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> Evil implies harming, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil
> creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms
> if doing so is convenient or if it can be set up. Others actively
> pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some malevolent deity
> or master.
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Evil is all about strength--and a society based on that recognizes that goodness is ultimately weak, and to survive, we must be strong. The weak deserve oppression. That's what they're made for. Not exploiting them will just lead to weakness ultimately. We can only allow them to keep living if they are of USE.
Basically, Evil is a different philosophy and way of looking at things, so much so, that what is typically looked on as "good" seems a sin or problem for evil types.
It's all in how you look at it. Could be an extreme form of Darwinism, made more religious.
How does the society work? You need a strong leader that is ruthless enough that no one questions his authority. The people know that weak leaders mean in-fighting and might leave them open to good societies sweeping in. A secret cabal may even orchestrate the making of such a leader, because without it, their society collapses.
Everybody is out for themselves, yes, but if you make it beneficial for the rules to be followed, and dire to break them...well--the system works. The people would be looking for strength, ruthlessness--not fairness or altruism. I speak of a LAWFUL EVIL society, which, is the one that works best. Chaotic Evil ends up not being a system at all...
But do consider that the evil alignment is not, you know, always utter slavish devotion to evil-- because there's neutral good, where you try to do good when you can, but...you know, you gotta look out for yourself. Some of the evil alignments are the same way--you're selfish and you look out for yourself, as you should, but..you know, sometimes it's a good idea to make friends, to be nice when it costs you nothing, because it might benefit you later. "A neutral evil character has no compunctions about harming others to get what they want, but neither will they go out of their way to cause carnage or mayhem when they see no direct benefit for themselves." Countries can do the same. They do what's practical, making allies when they can, and doing evil when the consequences aren't dire.
I say, you're looking at this all wrong--all judgy-like. Evil doesn't mean you don't work together. It just means you only do it for as long as it benefits both of you, as is right and proper, at least in the eyes of someone with an evil alignment.
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Good and evil in fantasy settings such as those you describe are universally mirrors of our own cultures. Good and evil are actually considered to be "Cultural Universals," meaning every culture has them but they may (strongly) disagree on what is good and what is evil. Accordingly you can see whispers of these game evils in real life:
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> Such societies consider casually betraying superiors (and not, say, ritualized honorbound combat) to be an acceptable means of promotion.
> They treat everyone around them, even their own companions, as disposable playthings.
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Tell me, does this not sound like the behavior of the popular cliche of girls at a highschool? This sort of behavior is so common that it becomes a stereotype in the movies.
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> Evil is defined by being malevolent and causing harm to others.
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This is an interesting choice of definition which may be the cause of your difficulty. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil) defines it as:
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> Evil, in a general context, is the absence or opposite of that which is described as being good. Often, evil is used to denote profound immorality. In certain religious contexts, evil has been described as a supernatural force. Definitions of evil vary, as does the analysis of its motives. However, elements that are commonly associated with evil involve unbalanced behavior involving expediency, selfishness, ignorance, or neglect.
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That definition may give you more room to understand these fantasy cultures.
Another key factor is power. Societies which succeed at holding on to power tend to have the power they need to avoid being toppled. There are many ways to hold onto power. Some of them good, some of them evil. Which ways are which is something that the society defines. For example, if you are worried about those you entrust with power getting murdered and having all their power stolen, there might be some value in having a society where anyone who reaches a powerful rank has demonstrated that it's rather hard to murder them.
Right now there are some people in our society who believe we are getting to "weak," because society makes life too easy. They want to go back to the trial-by-fire approach which they feel raises a "strong" next generation. Interestingly enough, despite wanting children to go through pain to "toughen them up," they view the soft society around them as "evil."
As a general rule, you will find all societies, good or evil, value something. They create something. They then typically associate the concept of "good" with that thing they are striving towards. If a society instead tries to destroy things, they associate the concept of "evil" with that which they want to destroy. These two forces are always in a sort of balance. If you have "pure evil," you never build anything, and your society will never take off. If you have "pure good," then you will fail to act against those who would topple you, and eventually your opponents will get lucky. You simply don't see pure good or pure evil in any realistic scenario. If something is portrayed as pure evil, it's most likely because someone is trying to convince you to go to war against them. Accordingly your "evil" societies are always trying to create something. It's just not necessarily what the "good" societies want to see created.
To go towards pure evil, you need to start looking at the nihilistic societies which seek the destruction of everything. Those who worship Cthulhu for instance, seek the complete end of everything, including themselves. Even in these societies, however, you will find the need to build something up in order to cause the destruction of everything.
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If by evil you mean the society made up of people, whose main motivation is to cause harm to society, then I think this would be impossible for pretty obvious reasons. If, however, you conceive of them as, say, anti-utilitarians, then this could conceivably work. Think of **disciplined, abstract sadism as their main driving force**. The same way that human beings can commit hideous atrocities for the sake of the greater good (my favorite example would be letting millions upon millions of people starve to create a communist utopia), this society could choose to band together for the greater harm. They would look past their innate hatred of cooperation and mutual helpfulness, and envision the horrors they could inflict with an entire state's worth of resources. Their rulers would have to constantly justify themselves with atrocities – e.g. perpetual death camps for public ease of mind.
These people would have to be more easily motivated by distant and long-term goals than we are. Pictures of starving children motivate us to help, but this altruism is not strong enough to glue our entire society together. To them, pictures of the death camps (and the wars, and the famines they create etc.) would have to keep them going day in day out, would have to be enough for them to say, "this is why I work processing food for other people of this nation; this is why I didn't stab the unguarded neck of the person sitting in front of me on the bus".
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My gut reaction is that the terms "good" and "evil" as specified in AD&D are bad terms. Historically, the most evil people you can think of are, from their own perspective, doing the right thing. As soon as we define a set of principles as "good", opposing them becomes "evil".
The Klingons of Star Trek hold individual honor and valor in high esteem, whereas the humans in that same galaxy seem to approve of a group dynamic that values learning. And the Ferengi value the accumulation of wealth. Is any of these more evil than the others? Not from the perspective of that group.
Having said that, AD&D is a game, not a measure of reality. To make the game flow smoothly, we select a value system, call it "good", and define "evil" as its inverse. Real-world philosophy can be far too hairy for efficient gameplay.
Bonus point: Lawful and Chaotic are only marginally better, IMHO, because I simply don't see rational people behaving in a chaotic manner. What we do see in reality is people who hold closely to their cultural mores, and those who see them as more gray. A true neutral person is in that sense closer to "chaotic" than anyone else on the spectrum.
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Another dimension to morality, aside from the good-evil and law-chaos that have been done to death, consists of the axis of positions regarding when the use of force is justified.
Some hold that the use of force is never justified. Others hold that it is justified only in retaliation against those who initiate it. Others think that differences of opinion in religion or of relative wealth justify it. Others believe that force requires no justification at all.
Each of these viewpoints is either evil or stupid in the eyes of the others, but none of them regard themselves as evil or stupid, but as good or smart, relative to the others.
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You have to be really careful here - there's a reason why evil (by our standards) has been weeded out through natural selection. I think a society more evil than ours, where everyone is after their own interests and is grabbing at power to try and reach the top probably could survive. But if people are too evil at the *expense of others*, they end up hurting the species as a whole and damage its chances of surviving later generations.
In short, the **negative impact** a society has on itself has to be balanced by some survival force or the species dies.
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Interesting post and question. I suppose if you think about it, there are some real-world examples of an "evil society", or at least "evil" by our definition. Whether or not those societies actually consider themselves evil is another question.
Think about a few criminal organizations, such as the Cosa Nostra, Russian Mob, or the Yakuza. These organizations function almost entirely devoid of altruism, unless putting on the charade of altruism provides them means of masking evil acts. They operate via fear and self serving means; each member of the organization is kept in his/her place through fear of punishment (including torture and/or death), and is motivated by personal wealth and advancement in the hierarchy. What happens if leadership shows weakness? They are "whacked" and stronger or more ruthless leaders takes their place. That said, even Al Capone justified his actions and would not consider himself "evil".
So I suppose in short; imagine order based on extreme fear and opportunism, and there's your foundation for an evil society.
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Evil does not have to be random killing and mayhem. That is the easiest form, but unless you are destined to be ruler of the universe you might need to rethink the strategy. Evil does not preclude you from collaborating with others. It just means that if there is real advantage to killing off the party then that is ok. However, if you are in the middle of a dungeon, trapped, and everyone but you is unconscious, you are an idiot to finish them off and take their stuff. The dungeon was build around a party of six. You are now a party of one. You have simply committed suicide and that is not very evil. The same principle applies to a society. I may not exactly care if my neighbor gets flayed alive, but if that means that I am next then it is not evil to help the flaying. Why give to the poor so that they make more poor. Starvation is kinder, and salt mines will help enormously.
Demons are a nice example. They are evil, but they do not usually spend their days torturing other demons. They torture non-demon races. All you do is replace "demon" with any other race/culture and all is "good."
Lawful evil is fairly easy. Rigid rules and society norms limit the random mayhem. Neutral evil is more difficult. Maybe this society relies on gangs and size? Chaotic evil will depend greatly on how you view chaos.
Gangs that derive power through illegal activities might be chaotic evil?
In part, it really depends on perspective. Evil is easily defined from a perspective of good. Good is defined as weak from a perspective of evil, and weak things should be removed to make room for the strong.
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**The Banality of Evil**
This term was Hannah Arendt used to try to come to terms with the most terrible period of evil in recent history: The Holocaust.
The Holocaust was an evil so broad in depth, so deeply inhuman, so impenetrable by any rational thought, incomprehensible in scope that it defies apparent existence. Yet it really happened.
The term refers to how strangely normal evil became. *Germany was a republic, modern, well educated, industrialised populous nation with a high opinion of the rule of law and held in high esteem. A healthy fully functioning society.* Yet within just under 6 - 8 years, you had accountants, teachers and ordinary citizens massacring tens of millions of children, women and men.
There would be acts commited so despicable and depressing, yet blazonly rational using all the faculties of human intelligence, to kill as many people as possible. Even in the last days of the war, when defeat was certain, a huge proportion of resources and people were diverted to the fullfillment of these nonsensical acts of premeditated madness, by those who carried it out more than willingly.
If you did not believe in evil before, you will after you research more deeply into the acts committed in this period, in particular thoughout the Ukraine and Eastern Europe (not to belittle acts commited elsewhere). It was not even caused (as many think) top-down by Hitler, Himmler or Goebbels, as many massacres and progroms happened without their instigation or their knowledge. These acts were commited by ordinary people, sometimes against people they knew, and yes previously respected, for no apparent reason (no economic, no military, no other reason other than simple burning hatred, ignorance, fear and xenophobia).
The human mind, unfortunately, can live with hypocracy, with irrationality, with madness, yet calmness, premeditation, justice and logic thought too, at the same time, in the same space. We are not single-sided beings.
So how could a society function with such evil? I'm afraid all to easily, and Nazi-Germany proved it so. And in a blink of an eye there is no reason to suggest we couldn't slide back into it just as easily.
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Let me explain what I mean by terraforming. Let's say we want Antarctica to be like Scandinavia or Finland. People from all over the Earth would colonise it and build the "United States of Antarctica" or something similar. It would basically become a next-generation USA.
I know that a lot of ice will melt on the continent, and the ocean level will increase. This can be a serious problem for the rest of the planet, but let's say we (or aliens, for example) have the technology to "suck" this water and use it for some industrial purposes (that's irrelevant). I know, however, that changes in temperature may lead to some serious problems in our world. It may disrupt the temperatures around other places, et cetera.
Now for the question: **Is it possible to change Antarctica to resemble Northern Europe (temperature) without harming the rest of the globe?**
The best answer will contain:
* Is it possible at all to "terraform" the frozen continent (see what I mean by terraforming)
* how can we not harm our planet by doing so
* HOW would that be possible? Exotic technologies of the far future:enabled !
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My understanding is that quite alot of Antarctica isn't a proper continent at all. Much of it is floating ice. Were the ice to be removed, you'd get a somewhat smallish archipelago:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zunne.jpg)
Remember, this isn't just the missing outline... that outline is embiggened (I used it, it's a word) in your mind through Mercator projection chicanery.
If this is still big enough for you (if weren't expecting a very large continent anyway), then we have climactic problems as well. It's pretty much fully within the Antarctic circle. We're talking about the inability to do much agriculturally (think something on par with northern Alaska). We're talking about months out of the year where you get to see the sun set briefly at midnight, and on the other side of the year get to have a few weeks of continuous nighttime dark skies (this might only be moderate at the outskirts, but in the interior... oof).
Assuming you don't magic away *all* the ice, potable water probably isn't a concern. Those glacier you kept up in the mountains will make acceptable rivers along which to site your cities. (Assuming, of course, you can decide what ice you get to keep, and which ice you get to toss.)
So, the real problem, the one you in fact were asking about explicitly in your question, is can you make it an acceptable temperature. And that's dicey. It is possible on Earth for latitude to be *somewhat* ignored, if ocean currents bless that land. This is why the UK can look as good as it is, while not revving up the motor and sailing their island south through France (which, knowing what I know of them, they might try just to get a good one over on the Frenchies, if they thought they could do it). Atlantic ocean currents typically blast it with un-latitudinally warm water.
It's difficult to imagine that happening at the South Pole though, where these kinds of currents tend to not be. But possibly with a highly advanced science, one could nudge them in a way that both warmed the antarctic and didn't completely pooch-screw the rest of the planet. For a time. Even if there was some magic formula that allowed you to do this, it's not going to be stable for geological periods of time. A few decades, maybe a century. So the magic is going to have to be on an on-going basis.
Someone else will have to answer whether that "magic" can be localized to Antarctica, or if it will have to be global... removing that much albedo from the planet may heat it up considerably, and we might need a way to cool it down in addition to the mojo that's sending warm ocean currents to McMurdo.
The poor penguins. Wtf. Reduced to zoo freezers. You're a cruel, cruel questioner, Mishima.
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The short answer is no: if Antarctica could be habitable, it would be already.
* For two months of the year there's virtually no sunlight across most of the continent, and severely reduced light for four months (less than 45° above the horizon) at even the lowest latitudes. Over 95% of Antarctica is beyond the southern latitude equivalent of the Tree Line, the latitude past which trees cannot grow due to lack of sun. This means no agriculture.
* The encircling Southern Ocean blocks all heat transfer from warmer currents. Surface temperatures are below freezing year-round, so again no agriculture.
* Antarctica is a desert, averaging less than 170mm of precipitation a year. No rain, no agriculture.
There is no solution to these factors that doesn't drastically change climates and biomes across the southern hemisphere at a minimum.
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**Northern Europe indoors?**
<https://gpnmag.com/news/philips-hosts-led-lighting-event-in-finland/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/27zQ4.jpg)
A nuclear power plant in Antarctica should be enough to warm a lot of greenhouses. You could add more nuclear plants if it got chilly. People would live inside.
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> Let me explain what i mean by terraforming. Let's say we want Antarctica to be like Scandinavia or Finland.
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There are much more accessible parts of the planet that are currently hardly populated (or unpopulated) that would be easier to transform. The interior of Greenland. Much of Northern Canada and Northern Russia. Antarctica would be a much more difficult to operate in and start from. For that matter the population density in large tracts of Australia and the US are equally empty and, again, more practical targets.
Changing any of these regions is essentially going to wreck the entire globe's climate. Even a change to make Antarctica more like Finland would be devastating.
Long, long, long before you try any of those people will starting living in larger and more densely populated highrise and subsurface population centers - higher and deeper.
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> People from all over the Earth would colonise it and build "United states of Antarctica"or something similar.It would basically become a next generation USA.
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Unless you happen to have a magic formula for world peace and to make humans actually get along with each other and stop being greedy that's not going to happen. Instead countries and corporations will compete for access to the regions resources (as they're now going to be unlocked and more easily exploited. Unless the UN gets a huge army, the UN will be what it usually is in these contexts - a referee who can't stop the players arguing but can tell them off later.
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> I know that a lot of ice will melt on the continent,and ocean level will increase. This can be a serious problem for the rest of the planet,but let's say we (or aliens,pour example) have technology to "Suck" this water and use it for some industrial purposes(That's irrelevant).
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Extremely relevant. It's a *vast* quantity of water and it will end up where ? Even a small fraction of that water is devastating to the climate (and is one of the important factors in global warming). You'd be talking about basically all of it (maybe half left as permafrost at best) which is way, way, way beyond global warming. So it's essential you have a place to put this water where it won't do harm.
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> I know,however,that changes in temperature may lead to some serious problems on our world. It may distrupt the temperatures around other places,et cetera.
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Wipe of all sea life, make the entire rest of the globe uninhabitable, wipe out all arable crops (and the places to grow them) and possibly make the planet as hot as Venus by a runaway greenhouse effect.
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> Now for the question:Is it possible to change Antarctica to resemble Northern Europe (Temperature) without harming the rest of the globe?
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No.
If you want to live in Antarctica (why when so many better places exist ?), then you build enclosed structures with closed environments. These would be orders of magnitude easier to build (although still a major task) and even more magnitudes easier to do safely, without affecting anywhere else (or more precisely with minimal effects to the climate). Underground is an option.
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> Best answer will contain:
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Just so you understand how SE work : *members* decide what a best answer is, not the OP by voting on their views. They can use any criteria they want to judge what they consider "best".
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> HOW would that be possible? Exotic technologies of the far future:enabled
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As I say it's not practical to do it the way you want. It's far simpler (in some reasonable future) to be able to build and maintain large surface or underground structures in the Antarctic which have e.g. geothermal heat sources for energy and grow their own food.
The trickiest part would be stopping the heat from such settlements from altering the environment locally (again to global detriment). This would require some form of heat transfer mechanism that moved that heat to were it would do less harm. Not impossible, but well beyond anything I can imagine. It's way beyond me to say if the geothermal option is truly viable (it's probably plausible at the story level anyway).
[Answer]
You've written:
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> let's say we (or aliens, for example) have the technology to "suck" this water and use it for some industrial purposes
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If you're assuming we have the power to remove that much water, then other technologies might be possible too. In particular, we could build some orbital mirrors, and reflect some sunlight down onto Antarctica. The effort needed to launch all those mirrors into space would be considerable (even if we used a very lightweight tinfoil-like mirror with just some webbing to hold it in place). But the effort for this might be less than the effort required to get rid of all the meltwater it would produce.
Adding sunlight in this way would increase global warming, so we'd probably want to subtract some sunlight from equatorial regions to balance it out. If we decrease the temperature over the Sahara Desert, it might generate rainfall and let us terraform the desert too.
There's a bit more on this topic in [Can satellites decrease global warming?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/132728/can-satellites-decrease-global-warming).
[Answer]
>
> Is it possible to change Antarctica to resemble Northern Europe (temperature) without harming the rest of the globe?
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You mentioned the far future. How much time do you have?
Scientists believe that in 250 million years, continental drift may lead to a continental arrangement as such:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jb9FB.png)
[*Source: Mattias Green, Hannah Sophia Davies, Joao C. Duarte:
What planet Earth might look like when the next supercontinent forms – four scenarios? November 2018, The Conversation*](https://theconversation.com/what-planet-earth-might-look-like-when-the-next-supercontinent-forms-four-scenarios-107454)
As you can see, parts of Antarctica are sandwiched between India/China, Australia, and South America. Although I'm not aware of any climate model simulations for such a continental arrangement, if atmospheric circulation resembles the one today, Antarctica would have a tropical to subtropical climate, possibly with large parts dominated by deserts, comparable to Australia today. Such continental drift doesn't happen overnight. As stated, this is a forecast for 250 million years into the future. In the transition from a polar icecap climate to a (sub)tropical climate, somewhere along the way in the next tens to hundreds of millions of years, the climate of Antarctica will probably resemble the climate that Northern Europe has today.
Whoever lives on Earth by then, if anyone, may well have exotic technology. They probably won't be able to stop continental drift. I imagine the lake or inland sea between Australia, North America, and South America may be a popular tropical tourist destination. Will you use your exotic technology to send a post card back to the 21st century?
[Answer]
**No. In theory you certainly could do it but only at the cost of decimating the worlds current population centers and continental ecologies.**
The South polar region was habitable in the Jurassic and Cretaceous eras albeit continental drift had not yet split it up into the worlds current land masses. Point is at least the fringe (coastal regions) of present antarctic would support diverse forests, mainly conifers and ferns as well and a rich under story of other plants at least roughly similar to the regions you've specified. Albeit there would still be long cold dark winters and the inner part of the continent might have more of a tundra like environment.
The issue is that this period was much, much warmer than present day Earth. So if your going to 'warm up' Antarctica (and presumably Greenland and northern Canada etc) you have to be prepared to radically alter the climate on the rest of the Earths continents which will all be much warmer. Damaging the ecologies of each it turn - and that includes all of Earths current agricultural lands.
Tell you what, lets do absolutely nothing about global warming and find out. Human civilization be dammed, its an interesting if long term experiment.
[Answer]
Yeah.
Just move it.
Maybe to about the middle of the Indian Ocean as a kind of sister continent to Australia.
That solves the ice problem.
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> how can we not harm our planet by doing so
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This planet is pretty much indestructible. Greenland used to be green and without nearly as much ice on its surface. We'd just be balancing this out with a mirror change in the Southern hemisphere.
Bear in mind that Antarctica moved to get to where it is, and has changed an awful lot over time.
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> HOW would that be possible? Exotic technologies of the far
> future:enabled !
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Underground volcanic activity and plate tectonics. The mid-Atlantic rift that separated Pangaea was pretty drastic, and was propelled by irresistible volcanic activity. Simply learn how to energize and agitate the appropriate underground magma bubbles, and the upper mantle and crust will be loosey-goosey enough to make the shift happen.
[Answer]
It is theoretically possible to build a totally self enclosed totally recycled habitat anywhere, such as in a moon base or an artificial space habitat.
So possibly such enclosed habitats will be built in the future, even on Earth, where they might be used to creat artifical ecospheres for humans to live in, and thus reduce human interaction with the natural ecosystem of Earth, and reduce human damage to the natural ecosystem of Earth.
And if people can build such self enclosed habitats and ecosystems anywhere in space or anywhere on Earth, they could build them in Antarctica also.
[Answer]
Why do you want to warm up Antartica to make it habitable?
It depends of the exact motive of your population to live in Antarctica, but if it is just about pilgrims having nowhere else to settle down, then you don't absolutely need to warm up Antarctica.
As another answer says, you can just use powerful energy plants (nuclear or other energy sources) to create habitations where the temperature is acceptable. When people go outside houses, they just have to wear warm clothes. This would be similar to the Arab Emirates where people leave in climatized buildings, and go only part of the time outside where the sun is too powerful and temperatures are too high.
Now, the question is what do you live with in such a situation: Your people could have an economy based on the followings:
* Extended fisheries and algae farming plants as a substitute to conventionnal farming
* Touristic economy, as Antarctica is a beautiful place
* Services economy, or even industrial economy: don't forget that most of the year, people commute between their house, subway and their place of work without being outside: in Antarctica, this would mean people don't suffer from the low temperature
] |
[Question]
[
* 35% O2 (oxygen)
* 61% Ar (argon)
* 1.07% CO2 (carbon dioxide)
* 0.93% As arsenic
* 2% Other trace elements
On an exoplanet with a mass of 0.284 Earths and a surface gravity of .66 gs (6.44 m/s^2), would this atmosphere be breathable to humans? If so, would there be any long term effects compared to our atmosphere here on Earth? I've heard argon is narcotic, but I'm not sure at what concentration it becomes a noticeable hindrance to human activity.
As an additional question, what color would the sky be on this planet assuming it orbits a star like ours? :)
[Answer]
Well, let's go one by one:
* Oxygen. 35% is very high. Not something that would kill you outright, but enough to cause a lot of "spontaneous" fires and significant oxidative damage over time (i.e. decreased lifespan, increased incidence of cancer etc.). Oxygen is bad for your health.
* Argon. Not toxic, but much denser than "our" air, which might make for deadly pockets if the air doesn't mix well (this does happen on Earth, where argon introduced from e.g. oil lines can escape and displace breathable air). Interestingly, it is very similar to oxygen - it will react in similar ways when diffusing, for example, so it might very well be safe in the end. It's hard to say how it would work in practice without knowing where the argon originates from, though.
* Carbon dioxide. 1% is already quite a bit. In comparison, on Earth, the mean concentration is around 0.04%. It's still not enough to produce much effect on breathing unless you're doing heavy work or you have respiratory problems. However, again, it's important where the carbon dioxide comes from. How much does the concentration change from day to night, or during the year?
* Arsenic. As a gas. No. Just plain no. Under "standard pressure", you'd need at least 600 °C to have gaseous arsenic. It doesn't matter whether it's breathable or not, your humans are going to die anyway.
* Trace elements. Depends on what they are, really. 2% is still quite enough for deadly substances, if you know what you're doing. However, since you already have free oxygen in the atmosphere, we can rule out a lot of the worst stuff which wouldn't survive long in such an atmosphere.
[Answer]
Well, since [arsenic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic) is a gas above 887 K (615 °C, 1137 °F) which is hotter than a [pizza oven](https://cooking.stackexchange.com/search?q=Pizza+temperature), I would have to say **no, humans could not breathe that**.
If arsenic is present as some kind of lingering particle or a chemical that *contains* arsenic, my immediate thought is [smog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smog#Natural_causes). As an analog to phosphorus it might be used on that planet in ways we see phosphates here. But I don’t know what kind of compounds might exist or how they get suspended in the air. Assuming it’s a [particulate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates) and not a gas, simple filters can separate it out.
[Answer]
Well, your main question was answered, here is my stab at the last question.
First, a remark. This graph shows the relative escape velocity needed for a gas to leave a planet:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GKBwo.png)
Attribution: By Cmglee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, <https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42449252>
So for your suggested planet, I think that 35% oxygen combined with 61% argon (which is much heavier than oxygen as already stated) might not be feasible, due to oxygen escaping the atmosphere. If the arsenic actually gaseous, it would definitely be too hot for oxygen to remain in the atmosphere.
so, the color. Both nitrogen, oxygen and argon are colorless. So there would not be that much of a difference in color purely from the atmospheric contents. However, since the volume of the planet is only roughly 1/4th, the radius also decreases dramatically, which means that there's less diffusion of sunlight from the atmosphere, since that's smaller as well. It's likely the sky would be a much deeper blue due to this, since the shorter wavelengths are less diffused.
Time for maths! I'm going to dump most units since these formulas are known to work.
The formula for gravity is F = G(mass1\*mass2)/D squared. We don't know D (the distance), and we'll assume that mass2 (our weight) is 60 kg. mass1 is equal to .234 Earth masses, which is 1.39749246e24. G is 6.67408e-11. Assuming the g-force is also 1/3 of Earth at 640, we get a radius of roughly 3000 km according to Wolfram Alpha. This planet would be roughly 1/8th the size of Earth, but the mass is only 1/4th, so the density would be double that of Earth.
We can also see that this planet cannot possibly have an atmospheric pressure similar to that of Earth. Pressure is equal to mass per surface area. The mass is a relation between density and volume. The problem is that this planet does not have enough gravity to have an atmosphere that's higher than that of Earth, and the density required for a similar atmosphere would require a much lower temperature than is livable. So this is literally an impossible planet.
[Answer]
Yes it is breathable , but with 61% of Argon people would have always Demonic-Like voices , this gas is the opposite of Helium.
plus the solid arsenic powder in the air could cause damage over time to human lungs , but it might take as much as 30 years for anything relevant.
[Answer]
I don't know the atmospheric pressure of your world, so I'll assume that it is like Earth's: **101.325 kPa**.
>
> Atmosphere: **101.325 kPa**
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>
> * 35% oxygen.
> * 61% argon.
> * 1.07% carbon dioxide.
> * 0.93% arsenic.
> * 2% other trace elements.
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## First
Arsenic is:
* Deadly poison. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_poisoning#Signs_and_symptoms) you can read about the symptoms and more information.
* Impossible for it to be a gas in your current atmosphere (you need to change the pressure and temperature of the atmosphere a lot to 615°C).
## Second
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> * 2% other trace elements.
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To calculate the partial pressure of gases I need know the molecular mass of `other trace elements`, because I don't know them I will replace them with N2 (a really common gas).
# Partial Pressure
$$ \left|
\begin{array}{cc|ccc|c|c}
\hline
\text{Gas}&\text{%}&\text{gr/mol}&\text{Mols}&\text{Fractal Mol}&\text{Partial Pressure (kPa)}&0.66 \text{ g}\\
\hline
\text{O}\_{2}&\text{35%}&32&1.09&\text{40.08%}&40.61&26.8\\
\text{Ar}&\text{61%}&39.95&1.53&\text{55.96%}&56.7&37.42\\
\text{CO}\_{2}&\text{1.07%}&44.01&0.02&\text{0.89%}&0.9&0.6\\
\text{As}&\text{0.93%}&74.92&0.01&\text{0.45%}&0.46&0.3\\
\text{N}\_{2}&\text{2%}&28.01&0.07&\text{0.45%}&2.65&1.75\\
\hline
\text{Total}&\text{100%}&218.891&2.73&\text{100%}&101.325&66.8745\\
\hline
\end{array}
\right| $$
* **High oxygen value:** Humans need around **21 kPa** of oxygen to "work" properly, you have the double, your people would suffer [hyperoxia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperoxia). Also when oxygen is above **50 kPa** [it becomes toxic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity), luckily your O2 isn't toxic but would be annoying for your population.
* **[Argon Asphyxia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon#Safety):** Although argon is non-toxic, it is 38% denser than air and therefore considered a dangerous [asphyxiant gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphyxiant_gas) in closed areas. It is difficult to detect because it is colorless, odorless, and tasteless.
* **[Argon narcopsia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argox):** I don't know much about it but I think it can cause narcopsia like nitrogen (**56.17 kPa** of argon is very much, maybe it could produce some dizziness). Also, I am not sure but Xenon weakens the [blood-barrier brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%E2%80%93brain_barrier) and this increase the probability of infections in the brain, argon and xenon are inert gases, anaesthesic and narcotic, maybe argon also weakens the barrier.
* **CO2 slightly above the normal:** maximum amount of CO2 in air can be **1%** without visible problems, at **1.5%** you would die in a month, you have **1.07%**, maybe it could take years to kill you or your body will adapt to survive.
* **Lethal arsenic:** see above.
For more information about gases in the atmosphere you can check [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/82850/35041) (effect of several gas with an emphasis in O2) and [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/84125/35041) (effect of several gas in extreme doses with an emphasis in CO2 intoxication).
Your world has **0.66 g** gravity and you don't indicate the pressure of your atmosphere. The information above assumes that the **pressure is equal to Earth's** but I don't know if it's **same pressure** or **same amount**. If it's the second option then its partial pressures will be found in the last column of the table, in that case you won't have **hyperoxia**, but argon could still be dangerous.
Sorry, but I don't know about your **additional question,** (I'll compensate for that with a **free check of atmospheric stability**!.
# Calculating if gases will escape!
**1) Calculation of the escape velocity:**
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> In physics, escape velocity is the minimum speed needed for an object to escape from the gravitational influence of a massive body.
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* Escape Velocity = $\text{v}\_\text{e} = \sqrt{\frac{2\times\text{G}\times\text{M}}{\text{r}}} = \sqrt{2\times\text{g}\times\text{r}}$
* Where:
+ G is the [gravitational constant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant): ($\text{G} ≈ 6.67 \times 10^{11} \text{ m}^3 \times \text{kg}^{-1} \times \text{s}^{-2} ≈ 0.0000000000667$)
+ M is the mass of the body to be escaped (planet) in kg.
+ R is the distance from the center of mass of the body to the object in metres.
+ g is the gravity in m/s2.
The problem is we don't know the **radius of your planet**:
Gravity can be calculated:
$${\displaystyle g={\frac {m}{r^{2}}}}$$
Where g is the surface gravity of the planet, in a multiple of the Earth's, m mass, in multiples of the Earth's mass (5.976·10^24 kg) and r its radius, expressed as a multiple of the Earth's (mean) radius (6,371 km).
So, to calculate the radius I can do:
$$r = \sqrt{m \times g}$$
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> On an exoplanet with 0.284 Earth-mass and a surface gravity of 0.66 g (6.44 m/s^2).
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$$r = \sqrt{0.284 \times (0.66)} = \sqrt{0.18744} = 0.43$$
$$0.43 \times 6,371 \text{ km} = 2758.28 \text{ km}$$
So:
$$v\_e = \sqrt{2gR} = 5,960 \text{ m/s}$$
**2)** Now if the RMS [(**Root-mean-square speed**)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root-mean-square_speed) velocity of any gas in your atmosphere is equal or greater than escape velocity of the planet then that gas will escape rapidly and will be absent.
* $\text{RMS} = \text{v}\_{\text{rms}}=\sqrt{\frac{3\times\text{R}\times\text{T}}{\text{M}\_{\text{m}}}}$
* Where:
+ $\text{Vrms}$ is the root mean square of the speed in meters per second.
+ $\text{Mm}$ is the molar mass of the gas in kilograms per mole.
+ $\text{R}$ is the [**molar gas constant**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_constant). $\text{R} = 8.3144598(48)\text{ J}\times\text{mol}^{-1}\times\text{K}^{-1}$
+ $\text{T}$ is the temperature in degrees kelvin (K = °C + 273.15). I'll use **25°C (298.15 K)**, I think that is the "normal" temperature used in gas calculations where it's specified.
$$ \left|
\begin{array}{c|c|c}
\hline
\text{Gas}&\text{kg/mol}&\text{RMS}\\
\hline
\text{O2}&0.032&482.08 \text{ m/s}\\
\text{Ar}&0.039&431.45 \text{ m/s}\\
\text{CO2}&0.044&411.07 \text{ m/s}\\
\text{As}&0.074&315.06 \text{ m/s}\\
\text{N2}&0.028&515.27 \text{ m/s}\\
\hline
\end{array}
\right| $$
**Your atmosphere is stable!** (or at least for short-term, I don't know how to calculate the [Boltzman distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_distribution) for geological ages).
[Answer]
It is theoretically breathable because of its percentage of oxygen gas, but it will take years to humans to adapt bodies to those conditions and live like on the earth. Argon and arsenic are the biggest problem and their percentage is really high to be accepted by an human body. In some millennia human people will mutate their organism to survive to the new living conditions.
] |
[Question]
[
## The Context
In the world I am designing there are creatures known as a Dazzling Griffin. These griffins act in a similar manner to some birds of paradise when mating, putting on elaborate displays involving song, dance, and a glowing pattern across their feathers.
* Their glowing feathers have at least some capability of turning off and on.
* They can not fly instead relying on their climbing capabilities to traverse their jungle environment.
* The griffins' tails have glowing markings that resemble a Nitoclus, which is a poisonous constrictor snake that expels a glowing poison when threatened.
* The griffins are omnivorous.
## The Question
How could a Dazzling Griffin cause its feathers to glow and have enough control of the glow to have it blink on and off?
[Answer]
# Bioluminescent bacteria:
The Griffin's feathers, no longer needed for flight, are now harboring a symbiotic bioluminescent bacteria that grows in patterns on the feathers based on how the feathers grow (certain surfaces promote growth, others inhibit). Normally the feathers are kept fluffed and preened, keeping the bacteria alive but not active enough to glow.
But during mating season, the bacteria reach the peak of growth. They don't normally glow, but the griffin can trigger the glow by rubbing glandular oils full of hormones, moisture and nutrients on the patches. Like most animals, the patterns have evolved.
The bacteria glow brighter as they lose moisture. The spots begin to glow lightly, and by fanning and fluffing the feathers, the griffin controls the rate of drying. This allows flourishing displays of glowing feathers.
If the griffin needs to use the bacteria as a warning display to frighten off predators, they can preen the spots near the serpent pattern. It then appears to be a serpent spitting toxic poison.
[Answer]
It can use the same process used by fireflies, which can modulated the light they emit from their abdomen at will.
The glow will be caused by an optically active molecule, which will be excited as a consequence of a nervous stimulation: the same way you can blink your eyes at will, the creature will make its feathers glow.
[Answer]
# Bio luminosity and refraction
Bio luminescence is active in many small creatures. Though it is important to note that their light is weak, so it is near exclusively shown at night.
There are microorganisms that sometimes reach the coast in great numbers. At night it is a spectacle. Triggered by excessive motion, like a wave or walking in the water, causes them to react with a glow.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cHG5J.jpg)
But many bugs and larger sea life have it as well.
The Dazzling Griffin has either a symbiosis with bacteria that can do it, or made its own system. The luminosity is generally not active. In fact, it is only active in certain display scenarios. It is mostly vestigial, a mostly useless thing that remains because of sexual preferences. It will activate the luminosity at time to woo a partner, scare opponents, or show the well being of the creature (much like gazelles pronking).
Selective activation will help reduce the energy requirements. Lighting up in real sunlight requires a lot of lumen. Light still is much easier to produce than movement in energy terms, but a good shine is likely similar to a soft workout. If you do this in addition to normal movement it can be taxing.
Feathers refracting a lot of light can also assist, making the Dazzling Griffin choose the place to show its glory well. With the spectator between the creature and the sun, so the maximum amount of sunlight is reflected. If refraction is used, there should be a layer that stops the light as well. This can be put forward to stop glowing.
This can then result in the most logical creature. If the sun is up it'll refract light with its feathers, showing a glow thanks to refraction of available light. When it gets dark the energy requirements for bio luminescence drop, making for a realistic scenario for glowing displays with bio luminescence. This also doubles down on the magic of the creature. It glows in any amount of light, but it does glow very differently.
[Answer]
**It rolls in glowing fungus.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bioluminescent_fungus_species#Species>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jffXw.jpg)
There are apocryphal reports of glowing birds, especially owls. One theory is that the owls are contaminated with glowing wood fungus that is in their nest holes. Glowing fungus is not apocryphal and many species are described.
Your griffins know where to find these fungi. When it is mating time they rub the fungal bodies on their feathers, where they continue to glow for a time. This is "turning on" the glow and hopefully a prospective mate as well. The fungal pieces eventually die and are groomed away.
Very plausible but not a very sexy mechanism. Unless you are a griffin.
[Answer]
**OLED+Bio-Electricity+Fiber-Optics**
This critter has a metabolism that leaves him practically glowing in infrared. The reason? He's also a bio-electric generator driving a wrap-around OLED screen on his skin.
The hairs and feathers rooted in the skin are fibers with polished points and strategically placed partially reflective kinks that direct light to the appropriate points to make a controllable display. That display works much like the chromatophores in squid to produce dazzling displays.
The difference is that they work by emitted rather than reflected light. The light system has been driven by evolution to produce the absolute blackest blacks and brightest colors crossing the entire gamut of the griffin's eye range. Just playing a movie trailer would make them look damned sexy!
Instead, the next level is achieved by the griffin imagining (and displaying) exactly what his chosen mate would most want in a relationship. A caring and heroic spouse providing for their kids and family, guarding them from harm, etcetera, etcetera ...
This doesn't come without cost though. That display, when run flat out, requires tons of fuel. By the time mating season is over, all the guys are rail thin and constantly eating.
[Answer]
# Phosphorescence
The Dazzling Griffin has feathers incorporating phosphors, which absorb light energy during the day. At night, it is time to for the Dazzling Griffin to demonstrate its display. If it spent more time among the upper branches to soak in the light, the display will be all the brighter and attractive when the sun goes down.
The Dazzling Griffin has iridescent feathers, much like birds-of-paradise or peacocks. However, a novel optical structure of Dazzling Griffin feathers exists to emit light in only one direction. Since the Dazzling Griffin has small muscles that can control the orientation of these feathers, it can turn its lights "on" and "off", or become a disco ball.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorescence>
[Answer]
## A mix of chemically-driven bioluminescence, and Cephalopod-like Chromatophors.
Chemical lights can get pretty bright.
Not usually eye-hurtingly bright without a lot of added heat, but industrial-strength chemical glowsticks can be seen for miles.
Your jungle-griffin can have pockets of the same chemicals present under its skin to light up in funky patterns.
You know what also has pockets of colour under its skin?
Cephalopods like octopus and cuttlefish.
These critters have clusters of several primary colours and an arrangement of muscles around them which squeeze them.
Kind of like a squeezy stress-toy. When the pocket is squeezed, the colour is pushed into a patch nearer the surface of the skin. When it relaxes, it elastically returns to rest.
In this way, an octopus can choose which colours are visible, and even do a mix of several colours at a time.
Your Jungle-Griffin could do the same thing, but with glowing colours.
So they can produce different patterns, or opt to glow or not glow at will.
In reality, the glowing chemicals are always active, but not always visible.
This doesn't work so well with feathers or hair.
But as Jasen points out, you could conceivably achieve a biological Fibre-Optic hair/feather which is lit from the root via the same chromatophor/bioluminescence.
[Answer]
Pic 1: bioluminescent algae
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A9P3X.png)
Pic 2: algae living in the fur of a sloth
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ax5jM.png)
In short, the griffin cultivates bioluminescent algae in its feathers, and through some method of stimulating the algae can make it glow (it when its body puts off a certain pheromone or sweat or something).
[Answer]
Normal feathers have hollow shafts but solid structures in the vane. Your griffons have hollow channels along the outer surface of the barbs of their feathers that are coated internally with luciferin-producing cells and luciferase-producing nodes. When combined with oxygen in the atmosphere this produces light for a brief period until the reagents are exhausted.
In the rest state the majority of the tubes are filled with oxygen-depleted air. In order to activate the light emission a small amount of fresh air is pushed into the base of the feather by a modified arrector pili muscle. This provides fresh oxygen that then reacts to form a pulse of light. The griffon can control this to a certain degree, tensing areas of skin to raise and briefly illuminate the feathers for aggression or mating displays.
The same chemical process is used for more permanently illuminated areas such as the tail, only the oxygen supply mechanism differs. Rather than tightening the skin to produce light these areas are structured so that they can be opened to the air directly to produce low levels of light, or closed to conserve resources.
The downside of this adaptation is that the structure of the feathers is no longer able to encourage proper laminar airflow, vastly reducing their aerodynamic effectiveness. Over time this resulted in the griffons losing their flight ability, leading to a variety of evolutionary changes: redistribution of flight muscle mass, smaller wings that don't impede movement through trees and such, all of the long feathers have been replaced with short ones, wing structures are much too light to support much weight, etc.
Only healthy, well-fed griffons with good genetics are able to sustain the light production for more than a few seconds at a time. A more impressive and lengthy light show is a demonstration to potential mates that the griffon is in peak health and is a prime candidate for breeding. If there is competition in the area the males will fight not to drive the other away but to damage their feathers, reducing their ability to put on a good mating display.
As to diet, there's no reason why all griffons can't be omnivores just like some birds are. In fact some of the necessary nutrients to support their production of luciferin comes from certain types of plant. Access to these plants is a major resource requirement for your griffons to occupy an area. Without them the griffons can't make light for their mating dances, which will fairly quickly result in their population falling below sustainable levels.
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Of course your humans have no idea about all of this because, well, they're usually too busy trying to avoid the sharp bits. And it's a real shame because what the humans haven't quite figured out is that some of their staple crops are execellent sources of the required nutrients. That's why humans have so many problems with griffons terrorising their farming communities. If they'd just put in the research to figure it out instead of sending hordes of murder hobos in to kill everything, maybe they'd realise that if they'd just quit planting all that blue corn everywhere then maybe they'd save a few gold on hunters.
Maybe then we could get on with breeding domestic house-griffons that could replace felis catus as the pet of choice for keeping rats out of the kitchen.
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hair and feathers are dead keratin, they have no connection to the normal energy source in the blood.
perhaps OLED feathers powered by and an electric eel physiology, I guess it's possible.
Or quantum dots, but that's more a day-glo effect than actual luminence.
Perhaps optic-fibre feathers lit from bioluminescence at the feather root.
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Bioluminescence is an energy-devouring characteristic of a living thing, and it seems to have not to have evolved in large land animals. What good would bioluminescence do for such prey species as deer, rabbits, mice, or pigeons? Or their predators? Concealment is the essence of survival in the cat-and-mouse game. In the deep sea it has usefulness as a lure for mates or prey; short-lived insects can use it because their success comes from mating in a short time frame.
I apologize for destroying a literary device, but bioluminescence is too costly for large creatures to use for drawing attention to themselves.
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I have a traditional quasi-medieval fantasy realm where a few generations back improper use of magic lead to creation of monsters throughout the land. Our main countries have had to figure out how to hold, or reclaim, land back from these monsters in order to thrive.
The Kingdom solution was to train up highly skilled soldiers to fight and drive back these monsters, and while they suffered loses from this it's worked relatively well. However, the other major country, the republic, had monsters that are naturally stronger, due to being closer to the epicenter of the disaster that created them in the first place, than those faced by the kingdom, strong enough that attempting to fight them off directly would lead to heavy casualties.
Instead the republic's solution has been to jeryrigg older magical devices, originally used for communication between settlements like a magical telegraph, to create a sort of magical resonance that is annoying to monsters. While not directly harmful to them it caused enough distress to discourage monsters wandering too close to settlements. In addition to this, every settlement has militia trained with a sort of [magical musket](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/88247/would-magic-muskets-be-a-significant-advantage-over-actual-muskets?noredirect=1&lq=1) that can take potshots at any monsters that get too close. These shots degrade in damage done the further away from a target they get, so at maximum range from the monsters (the closest any militia member wants to get) they do little damage, but the pain of being shot, combined with the general annoyance of the jerry rigged communication device, is generally enough to discourage monsters from wandering too close to settlements.
What I need to explain now is how merchants and caravans successfully travel between settlements. Since the monster annoy-o-tron devices are based off of previously-made magical devices, which the republic can't create from scratch anymore, there is a limited number of them, basically one per settlement prior to the magical collapse, and settlements are not going to willingly give away the only device that keeps their settlements safe. I'd also imagined these devices being bulky enough to not be easily transported. This means that caravans between settlements won't have the magical protection to discourage monster invasion. They can still shoot at monsters with rifles, but I'm not convinced the pain of the rifle pot shots alone would be enough to keep monsters from attacking when humans 'invade' their territory.
In theory the monsters could be fought and killed, but these monsters are supposed to be strong enough that only a very small number of elite fighters would stand a chance of defeating them, again I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect every caravan to have such skilled solders to defend it. I intentionally want the republic's available solders to be less skilled compared to the kingdom's so that the kingdom would look to have an advantage when they invade, as such I don't want to imply there is a large standing force of elite mercenaries used to guard caravans which could be drafted in time of war.
No one uses magic any more, it has a significant stigma against it after the last disaster. The republic does have a few devices that work like magitek, but they too are limited and not fully understood. This limits the availability of a magical solution to protecting caravans.
What other tricks could I use to make it possible for people or goods to travel between settlements safely? I'm okay if travel is harder due to monsters, or limited to only large caravans or otherwise require more logistical overhead to do safely, but I need some means that it can happen.
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Your magical 'telegraph' system has magical 'telegraph wires'.
The Settlements are covered by a net or field of magic, emanating from the central device. This used to allow 'sub-stations' in telegraph offices to send and receive messages, instead of everyone having to go to the central office - useful in larger town and villages. It is this field which is now establishing the resonance to drive back the monsters.
To connect the devices to *each other*, you had thick 'ropes' of magical energy networking them, in the same way that we use high-power electricity pylons to shuffle electricity around national grid systems.
These inter-settlement connections **also** generate resonance, albeit on a narrower scale. This creates passageways of safety between settlements, which have developed into the new road network. Travel too far from the road, and you run risk of ambush by monsters. Some monsters, experimenting with ranged attacks, can even hit you while you are *on* the road. Sufficiently hungry, angry or otherwise determined monsters can push their way further into the field without being repelled, so the roads still pose some risks.
This does mean, however, that travel between settlements can be somewhat circuitous - instead of travelling directly from Village A to Village B (10km), you may have to travel from Village A to Town C (12km), and then from Town C to Village B (14km - total of 26km)
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This question is really quite open ended in that there are many possible solutions that are entirely setting specific. But since you are asking this question I will assume that those are not what you are looking for, that you do not want to make up anything special to explain this, and answer accordingly.
The easiest solutions is to look for a historical parallel. During the world wars crossing the Atlantic was perilous due to ~~the mons~~ the Germans. The Germans mainly used submarines that were difficult to hunt down and fairly impossible for civilian ships to fight or flee from. This is fairly similar to how your monsters would compare.
The solution adopted was to use [convoys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy). A convoy could be given an escort powerful enough to deter attack and until wolfpack tactics were adopted worked fairly well. A single submarine would not be capable of destroying significant portion of the convoy or outfighting its escorts.
Its important to note that this was not a new invention. Similar tactics were used by merchants throughout history to protect themselves from robbery and piracy. So your people would know of this approach and at least try it. Reading the linked wikipedia article should help in determining what you want your convoys to resemble, which you can then use to help you figure out what you want the power balance between monsters and escorts to be like.
Note that the timing and routes of the convoys are fairly important consideration. One benefit of convoys is that most of the time there will be no human prey to attract the monsters, so it should be possible to plan for low monster levels based on availability of natural prey.
Another consideration is the intelligence of the monsters. Are they intelligent enough to adopt wolfpack tactics? Can they call for reinforcements to fight the escorts? Can they do recon?
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**Deception and Bait**
The usual purpose of a "caravan" is mutual protection (the principle of mass) against a mobile attacker (robbers) in unfriendly territory.
That doesn't apply here. Your monsters may be clever, but they are not intelligent, and the question specifically rules out massed rifles as an effective deterrent or defense.
Instead, place a bait to lure monsters well away from the travel route for a limited time. For example, the bait could be on the far side of a protected village. Then the caravan races to the protection of the next village.
In addition, you don't want the presence of baits to simply alert monsters (who are ostensibly subject to classical conditioning) to start looking for a yummy caravan. So that means the occasional decoy baits and even decoy caravans of stringy old oxen pulling poisoned cargoes.
* Baits and decoys are expensive, but must be used regularly. The entire caravan chips in to pay to the local village for the service.
* Speed is vital. A slow caravan won't reach protection before it is discovered and attacked.
* The caravan offers mutual *support to maintain that speed* more than protection. Instead of troops to deter robbers, support is on-the-spot mechanics, earthmovers, decoys and scouts, spare beasts, and spare wagons -- resources to overcome the inevitable problems and delays in order to get the people and cargo through the danger zones as quickly as possible.
Note that this means *travel time* between protected areas is critical. One-day trade routes will be popular, oases of overnight protection (caves, old fortresses) will be key to longer travel. Routes may be circuitous because of the limitations.
Caravans must be staffed and prepared to keep moving most of the night instead of camping: Relief beasts and drivers, pre-prepared food, etc. Routes must be passable at night.
Trade goods and travel will be very expensive. This implies that the Republic may actually be a federation of republic-villages if it's too expensive to send an army through monster-infested lands to enforce central authority. This may even define the boundary...the Kingdom ends where it's too expensive to send his army; beyond that is Republic, with the nearest few villages living in chronic threat of invasion or subversion by the Kingdom and not much support from nearby villages.
Over the decades, this means that the Republic (with less trade due to higher expense) will become relatively poorer while the Kingdom (with more trade and lower expense) becomes relatively wealthier...which will lead the King to expand his boundaries to match his fatter purse. The Kingdom must be corrupt and inefficient to absorb this wealth if you wish to maintain stable boundaries...but not so corrupt as to let the monsters win a town.
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## All trade is done by ships
A ship can transport a lot more goods for the overhead than wagons which means that you can afford to invest in heavy cannons that a caravan would not have. We saw a lot of this in the age of piracy where common cargo gallions were often armed just as well as proper ships of war. While a squad of footman with 1/2" muskets might only be able to sting a giant saber-toothed armadillo, a broadside of 6" cannons would tear it to shreds. You could also have most monsters stay out of the water; so, you don't need to risk direct conflicts most of the time anyway.
Medeville towns were almost always built along coasts and rivers anyway; so, any town that started off well developed enough to have one of these sonic devices would likely already have water access.
For purposes of your war, the Republic could easily have a much stronger navy than the Kingdom, but still have a negligible army. What starts out as necessity means that the Republic would build a fleet so vast that they monopolize naval trade across the region. This hegemony status plus a little too much capitalism means that the Republic now owns (directly or indirectly) nearly every port authority in the region. If a Kingdom ship wants to conduct trade, they need to pay punishing tariffs, port fees, and "protection" fees to the Republic's Trading Commision. This not only answers why the Kingdom would have such a stronger army than the Republic, but also makes the Republic wealthy enough to be worth conquering, and gives the Kingdom the motivation they need to feel justified in this invasion.
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Trade caravans could be flanked at some distance perhaps up to several miles by small groups of special forces troops who know roughly where to expect the monsters and provide diversionary incidents at the time of caravan passing. This might include generating loud noises, lighting fires, creating a lot of smoke, providing stashes of the monsters favourite food in difficult to reach points away from the caravan or if really needed by the more dangerous hit and run tactic to distract the monsters if they do get too close.
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**Speed, Scouts, & Leapfrogging Routes**
Trade is a necessity for any kingdom above a certain size, so they'll need to trade for certain. The key, then, is to figure out how to minimize the risks, and there's three components to it. The first is *speed.* Obviously, the faster you can go, the less time you spend between safe zones, and the less time between safe zones, the lower chance of monster attacks. This is not only making sure that all the trade wagons are state-of-the-art, but also having small elite bands of roadbuilders creating and mantaining smooth roads for travels. The roadbuilder core themselves will also have to follow these guidelines.
*Scouts* - this are a single person on a fast horse which scouts around the caravan. During travel, a caravan might have around a dozen of these who ride near the caravan, on alert for monsters, and willing to fire up a signal arrow if they find one to warn the main caravan to switch routes or to pull back in the event of danger. When not escorting caravans, the scouts' jobs are to maintain the roads, as well as looking for dangerous monster hordes, updating each village, town, and city as to what roads are dangerous and what aren't.
The last component is *leapfrogging*. Instead of going the direct way from point A to point B, any caravan would make the journey is as many steps as possible by traveling from safe point to safe point, ensuring that, while their journey was much longer, it also keeps them as close to the safe zones as possible so they wouldn't have as much risk, and if they did, they'd be close to safety.
This would, naturally, make trade goods more expensive and require upkeep on the kingdom's part, which would likely come from taxes on the trade goods, making them even more expensive. However, this would also mitigate most of the risks involved with travel or trade and allow for it to still happen.
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This things can help caravans to move between cities:
**Speed**
Magic monsters are big, nearly invincible and powerfull, and ruining city is effortless to them (houses cannot outrun them), but, they are not very good at running.
Ordinary healthy human with 30kg backpack and walking stick can easily do 6km per hour on good terrain, and with some training, he/she can pass at least 20 km per day.
And what if monsters cannot move faster than 2 km per hour? They are dangerous, but they are easy to outrun.
**Bad perception**
Monsters are big and powerful, but they are not very good at seeing things. Monster can see houses and buildings, but it cannot see people around them, so, if caravans use some simple camouflage or at least spread on terrain, they can pass between monsters undetected.
**Humans are not tasty**
What if magic monsters are more interest in eating wood, metals and stones, usually used to build fortresses, and they are not interested in eating flesh?
So, if your caravan members do not have anything on him/her that lures monsters, monster will not attack them?
**Monsters are not dangerous**
Probably, bloodthirsty monsters are hoax made by conspiracy of traders to allow them to raise cost of transportation?
Even if there are city guards firing big magic musket into gigantic magic abominations roaming on horizon and magic telegraph humming all day, can you recall, when monster attacked city last time?
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***Greed and bribery:***
Are the monsters open to bribes? If caravans pay intelligent monsters, smart monsters will make caravan routes their territory, maybe even erecting toll booths. Less intelligent monsters recognize caravans leave dead sheep outside their camps at night, and feed off these easy meals, leaving the caravans alone. Perhaps monsters even guard caravan routes as their territory, feeding off easy meals, and driving off other predators from these easy pickings. Monsters know if they eat the humans, they get shot at a lot and then the dead sheep go away. Monsters off major trade routes have no issue eating people, so your adventurers will still have a hard time getting around - not to mention the average adventurer party doesn't bring dozens of sheep and goats with them.
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The magic-based monster repellent/weapon system that you've described sounds a lot like a modern-day [LRAD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon) - a non-lethal weapon that uses highly-focused sound waves to incapacitate or repel a target. Your communication devices generated vibrations in the magical aether at extremely high frequencies, and they could focus these vibrations in a general direction (similar to a directional antenna). The frequency is adjustable and if turned down too low, stops interacting with the aether and interacts with normal matter instead. Interacting with air creates rather intense sound waves. Ages ago, magical practitioners were experimenting with this technology and inadvertently caused several catastrophes. Perhaps they deafened half a village, accidentally found the resonant frequency of the castle's wall and [vibrated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broughton_Suspension_Bridge) it to collapse, or perhaps they stumbled across the legendary [brown note](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note). After that, this magical technology was removed from use and further study banned.
The monsters that currently plague your kingdom are known to have a highly-developed sense of hearing. They rely on it for hunting, navigation, and communication, like a bat or a dolphin. Some of your soldiers remembered these ancient communication devices and secretly experimented with it. They tuned them down to generate sound at a frequency that monsters are very sensitive to, but is well outside the range of human hearing.
Sound intensity drops with the square of the distance to the target, so getting hit with one of these things at close range is devastating but at a distance is barely noticeable. Focus one in a particular direction and you have your "magic musket", or leave it omnidirectional to create a bubble of sound around you.
Your LRAD devices are powerful enough to induce permanent hearing damage at close range, anything from severe tinnitus to complete deafness. Hearing damage of this magnitude is a death sentence for one of these monsters. They would be partially blind and forced to rely on their under-developed senses of sight and smell, and they would be unable to communicate with each other. Your monsters are intelligent enough that they warn each other about the danger and most will shrink away at the mere *sight* of one of these devices.
How do your caravans travel safely? The Republic has produced enough of these devices to outfit every caravan with at least one. At least, that's true as far as your monsters know. The Republic has no way to build a functional unit, but duplicating the *chassis* is a fairly simple [process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost-wax_casting) for a blacksmith. Some caravans carry a working unit but most carry a dummy unit. Your troops are trained to never turn one on until a monster is practically within melee range. From a monster's point of view, every attack against a caravan is a game of Russian roulette. There's no way to know if it's real until it's too late to survive the damage. It's much easier to avoid caravans, towns, and other large groups of people and wait for small groups of travelers instead.
The weapons/decoys are quite large, however, and need to be mounted on a decent-sized coach or wagon. Individuals traveling on foot or horseback would have no practical way to carry one with them. Individuals can carry a tuning fork, pitch pipe, or other musical instrument tuned to the same frequency as the weapons. A short chirp can sound just like the warning shots that your soldiers fire from the real weapons, potentially scaring off an attacking monster (potentially a consumable item for escaping fights).
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Monsters could be inactive/away at certain times, say during night, or during a full moon, or during storms.
Maybe they dislike moonshine or they gather every week for some monstrous social event)
Anything that make the monsters a little bit predictable can be used to sense when is it a good time to travel.
How easy it is to understand the monster behaviours is up to you. Maybe only specialized people can predict when/where is it safe to travel.
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If you want to move through hostile territory there really are only five options:
1. Stealth. Avoid detection with camouflage, clever routes, speed or by taking out enemy scouts.
2. Staying out of reach. If the monsters live on the ground only you could use aircraft, boats, underground tunnels, teleportation, magical pathways …
3. Defend the caravan with armed escorts.
4. Bait. (Mis)lead the enemy away from your caravan with misinformation or dummies.
5. Overwhelming numbers. If your enemy can only be in 5 places at once, send 50 caravans through different routes and accept 10% losses.
I think all of those methods were used to some extend to protect transport ships during World War 2.
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**Tame monsters**
You have a fiction in which your expect your readers will dig monsters. Your characters have a problem? Solve it with more monsters!
<https://cramgaming.com/ark-survival-evolved-pvp-review-29642/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UlROl.jpg)
See how the TRex back there is having second thoughts? Just like that.
The monsters created by your event vary. Some of them can be captured, and in exchange for food will come along with the caravan. Some can be tamed and serve humankind in other ways as well. Taming monsters is a risky endeavor, and itself can go south or backfire in unpredictable ways. Also, probably none of the tame monsters will be the equal to true monstrosities shambling about the wilderness. But the monsters pressed into human service will at worst make the wild ones work for their dinner and at best induce them to avoid the party entirely.
And monsters fighting monsters makes for great fiction!
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A bit of an unconventional approach that slightly modifies your expectations, but what if those who are specialized to fight monsters really aren't all that great at dealing with humans?
Based on what you've described in your question and comments, the monsters are solitary or small pack hunters, don't have any kind of tool use, and probably don't have any kind of magical ability except some really rudimentary stuff. Learning to effectively fight *that* doesn't necessarily translate well to fighting a well equipped army backed up by skilled mages. It's like the real-life issue of people who trained for single combat not being all that great at dealing with a group of foes, or those trained for historical maneuver warfare being kind of useless against modern guerilla tactics.
So yes, the elite warriors are probably terrifyingly effective in fights with no magic against only a few people, but it's not like they could realistically take on an army backed up by good mages by themselves.
Of course, this requires that the kingdom not go to the effort of training these elites to fight people as well, but it's easy to come up with reasons for that to be the case. The best one in my opinion, which also preserves your requirement that the kingdom has an advantage over the republic, is that they do it as a show of good faith so that the republic pays to have the kingdom send these elites to guard their caravans. That by itself is a *huge* advantage in favor of the kingdom because it gives them trivial way to extort the republic to do their bidding (along the lines of "if you screw with us, we'll stop guarding your caravans", which could be further reinforced by the republic being more dependent on internal trading than the kingdom is on trading with the republic).
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**Repellents**
Tear gas.
Pepper powder.
Acid spray.
etc.
Nothing that's really dangerous to humans. You need the stuff easily accessible on the caravan, and you don't want to wipe the caravan out just because some bumbling idiot accidentally opened the canister with Greek Fire.
There could be plot hooks here:
* Stuff that works only against specific monster types.
Maybe depending on weather, time of year, mating season or not, etc.
* Monsters coming from upwind could be problematic (fortunately many species of hunting animals tend to attack from downwind, to avoid warning they prey; monsters might be similar, though there may be exceptions).
* Different caravans use different tactics, some get through, some don't.
People are going to place bets on which caravans get through, and how quickly.
* Caravan rivalries may be played out by sabotaging the repellent. Which would generally be considered a heinous crime since caravans are so important, but there's always those few who don't have a conscience.
* Sabotage may also happen to rig a bet...
* Weather can have a profound effect on the effectivity of the repellents.
Moist conditions could prevent your pepper powder from dispersing, for example.
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I am reminded of an idea I had long ago for zombie apocalypse scenario. The monsters would require sight of a person before they act, essentially if they can't see a person they just act as if nothing is there. So it would be possible to create corridors out of almost anything and travel safely through them between areas.
My idea was that initially people started joining up buildings using sheets hung over washing lines or stacked cardboard boxes, but you could extend it to be between settlements. Some parts would be well made and robust, others would be flimsy or in need of repair. Of course the monsters wouldn't be the only problem, normal animals would not be "blinded" by them, rain or fire or accidents could damage sections that are then very difficult to repair. There would probably need to be doors in long ones so that the failure of one section wouldn't mean the whole thing was compromised, but that also means that ever now and then you have to open a door with no practical way of knowing what is behind it.
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Since it was not ruled out, let see how the monsters (rather than the traders) could be engineered to fit your requirements. One way to do it is to make them predictable: careful planning based on the behavior of the monsters (learnt by the people over the few past generations) can drastically reduce risks, but it is easy to imagine reasons why some group of adventurer may not have the possibility to prepare well enough or to choose the less risky options.
To enable that the idea is to make monster dangerosity varies on some parameters. Here I briefly explore monsters that are either sensitive to the location or to the time.
**(a) Location sensitivity**
Assume your monsters prefer or are more effective in some terrains than others. Nosajimiki water trade routes and Chronocidal repulsive telegraph lines fall in that category. The former assuming the monster can not easily go through body of water, the later making them repulsed by some feature of the land (that very elegantly reuse some of the features of the given universe).
Many combinations can be imagined, monster clustering only around lake, or avoiding land without protection from the sun. Maybe they would even dislike rocky ground because they have soft feet. Of course this may lead to the roads being quite convoluted and some adventurers may decide it is worth taking the risk to cut it short through more dangerous land.
While defining dangerous areas through terrain is rather straightforward, it is not the only possibility. For example you could engineer you monster to have well defined territories. Safe area could then be the one going through territories of less agressive monsters.
Another example is having your monsters themselves modify the terrain, typically through nests. If nests are far enough from each other and monsters are unlikely to wander far from their home, then following the borderx of "nest territories" should be relatively safe.
**(b) Time sensitivity**
Monster do not need to be dangerous all the time. Regular events could perdiodically make them less dangerous, with the travels clustering around these events and being shut down the rest of the time.
The monsters may be affected by external events or by their own internal life cycle. An example of the former, would be full moon weakening them, making the trade safe for few days a month. As for the later one can imagine that during their reproduction period they are too busy fighting each other to secure a mate that they mostly ignore travelers.
Of course the events must happen often enough and weak monsters long enough to make trade feasible and sustainable. But as long as you have full control over the world, nothing prevent your monsters from reproducing for 4 days every 3 weeks and travelers having to hop from one settlement to another during that window.
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In a very soft-science world, in a lush forest far away from civilization and their laws, especially the one about squares and cubes, lives a young, female drider. One day, while hunting for dire-boar at the far end of her territory, she meets a handsome young male of her species. He proves to be witty and charming, as well as a hunter almost as good as she is. Together they spend the evening having a feast, which turns into a night of romance. Not too much later she finds that her appetite is increasing and her abdomen feels strangely full... There's only one conclusion - she's pregnant!
## Background
This character's world is decidedly soft on science. There is a lot of magic that works just because it would be fun if it did. However, for our spider heroine I'm trying to stick very close to the *feel* of her being a spider, only scaled up. For example, if she goes too deeply underwater her spider body's book lungs will not work. Since her human lungs do not provide enough oxygen on their own she'll grow short of breath and eventually drown if she doesn't get out. Her legs also work using the hydrostatic pressure of her 'blood', meaning she has to rest every so often to rebuild pressure. She also needs to capture big prey to satisfy the *enormous* energy requirements of her metabolism.
In case it is relevant, her spider body is based on the [Antilles pinktoe tarantula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilles_pinktoe_tarantula). She is also a young and healthy individual, living a lone hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
A drider is essentially a spider with a human torso in place of the head. They are sometimes known as 'spider-taurs'.
Example image:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vlLKV.png)
Source: [DeviantArt, image by FluffyXai](https://www.deviantart.com/fluffyxai/art/Drider-clean-version-369459403)
## Question
In our reality her spider species apparently produces clutches of at least dozens up to a few hundred eggs. While it would definitely be a lot of fun to write about a spider family taking over and webbing up the entire forest, that would derail the current direction of the story. I would like to keep the feel of 'spiders lay a lot of eggs', without having to introduce dozens of new characters.
This is why **I'm looking for a justification for having her produce about 7 to 12 eggs.**
I would prefer to avoid having the eggs and/or hatchlings die, to keep the tone of the story lighthearted. I would also prefer a biology-based answer over a magic-based one, since for the latter I would then have to justify why the magic works that way.
In case this bears repeating, I am aware that a drider (or any human sized spider) simply cannot exist based on the laws of nature of our world and that is not what this question is about.
Why am I looking for a justification when a simple 'it just works that way' would probably do? Because misaimed realism in fantasy stories is fun, of course!
[Answer]
Have you hear of [r/K Selection Theory? (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory) Basically, when reproducing, there is a trade-off between quantity (r) and quality(K). You can make 5,000 eggs and lay them... if they are "low-quality," so low investment in energy into them, and low chance of survival per egg. If you only have one offspring at a time, you want to make sure that it survives, so you spend extra energy on protecting them and feeding them (both before and after birth.)
Humans, if you haven't guessed, are K-strategists. We put a lot of resources (time, energy, food) into each offspring. Most large animals are K-strategists as well. Making big babies requires lots of time and energy by default.
Your driders are also K-strategists, putting lots of resources into few children.
* Your driders probably don't have a lot of instincts, and will require a lot of education to get their life skills, like walking and webmaking. That's going to require time, something that any drider has only so much of.
* They can't feed themselves when young.
* You said that there's magic - if driders have magic then investing their children with magic requires resources.
* Drider mothers are going to be fiercely protective of their children.
[Answer]
Maybe we can deduce the reason from drider anatomy. Myself not that familiar with driders, I googled up some images. Depictions of drider females are very consistent.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JpdNL.jpg)
<https://www.pinterest.com/brad_darcy/drider-type/>
**Driders have two breasts.**
They are hard to miss in (every single one of) these pictures. Breasts means the drider nurses her young. Two means able to nurse twins at the same time, but even that can be a struggle - this was covered in an [earlier question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/84974/would-female-humans-have-more-breasts-if-they-had-bigger-litters/84980#84980) about number of nipples / number of offspring; generally # of offspring is half the # of nipples. Presumably that is because competition for food (here nipples) limits the number which can be successfully nursed to weaning, and so it makes more sense for the female to concentrate resources in a smaller # of young.
Thinking about egg laying creatures, they not infrequently lay more eggs than can be expected to survive to reproductive age. Eggs are eaten and young are eaten, especially when there is no maternal care as is the case for most invertebrates. Maternal care from something like a drider would be like maternal care from a rock python or crocodile - not as much opportunity for the sorts of predators that want to eat eggs or young.
But why 7 or 8, not one? Birds provide parental care and in many species, the 4 or 5 young that hatch compete with each other while in the nest until they are down to 1 or 2 left. Some mammals (armadillos, I think?) do that too. That seems a driderish hard-bitten sort of thing to have happen and that could account for your handful of eggs.
[Answer]
## Hybrid Creature = Hybrid Birthing Traits
Since the Drider is still half human, it makes sense that at lease some human traits would carry through to the birthing process. 7-12 eggs is a reasonable average between human offspring (1) and spider offspring (dozens to hundreds), especially on a log scale.
## Size
A related topic is size. In general, litter size scales inversely with creature size. Small animals can have hundreds of offspring, larger animals generally have less. If the Drider is a large size, potentially even bigger than a human, then numerous biological and physical forces (i.e [square-cube law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law#Biomechanics)) would encourage it to have less offspring.
[Answer]
As noted by others, the Dryder as described looks like a K-strategy species, a species that produces a small number of young that it cares for.
But you want lots of eggs.
This is a hybrid creature. What if we had hybrid reproduction?
Have her lay lots of eggs. But only 0-2 of them become Dryders.
The remaining dozen(s?) become normal spiders (or maybe huge spiders, or small spiders that eventually can grow to be huge).
Now, as a hybrid creature, we could add a means for the egg to develop be chosen that is less brutal than "the hatchlings eat each other" or "random chance".
The mother places the chosen egg within a "pouch", like a kangaroo. The egg within the pouch develops something like a placenta, and the egg-shell dissolves (maybe turning into an amniotic sac?), and then it develops in a mammal-like way until it is larger, and then comes out of the mother in a mammal (or pseudo-marsupial-like) birth.
[Answer]
**Better survivors.**
In the animal world, large litters are laid by prey animals because a great deal of the eggs are eaten before hatching, or the newborns are eaten shortly after birth, by predatory animals. So they need to lay a lot of them, so that at least some survive. It's why introducing such animals to areas where they have no predators is catastrophic to the bio-system. ALL the babies survive, and the population explodes.
If Driders can defend themselves from birth (not unlikely) and if the eggs are well protected, then there's less of a need to lay a great many of them. This is in comparison to actual spiders, whose egg sacs can contain hundreds of baby spiders, only some of which survive.
[Answer]
Food. Small spiders have far more types and quantity of prey walking around to feed from. Driders do not. Laying 100+ eggs wastes energy as it means many of them will eat some animals but starve anyway, wasting precious food in the process.
Also smaller creatures get lots of kiddo's to make sure enough survive to adulthood. Small spiders are eaten by birds and other small animals before they get children, so you need lots and lots of small spiders to get by. Driders do not have this problem, so they can go @Itmauve his solution of more qualitative children.
[Answer]
Perhaps driders are a lot more complex than regular spiders, and so they require more resources to successfully develop while in the egg. This can lead to smaller brood sizes through ordinary selection pressures, as it's simply not feasible for driders to reliably secure enough food to produce larger numbers of offspring per pregnancy.
This can especially be the case if the eggs require more time to develop within the parent prior to being laid, or if the eggs require application of specific chemicals to develop properly afterwards.
] |
[Question]
[
I am planning a book about a vigilante with telekinetic powers; however, this power will be extremely watered down. The character can only Push, Pull, and Twist on things.
If anyone has read Mistborn, I imagined it as being similar to a Coinshot and Lurcher, with the added ability to Twist an object.
I'm trying to apply Sanderson's Laws of Magic ([first](https://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/), [second](https://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-second-law/) and [third](https://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-third-law-of-magic/)) to this, but I'm having trouble doing so.
Can anyone think of other limits and/or costs to go with this?
I want weight to play a role in the power though I'm not sure how, as the power comes from the mind, and not the body. Any ideas?
[Answer]
**Let Your Story Tell You**
Take a look at the world.
* Is this power rare? Common?
* For those who have it, Is this power everyday, used all the time like breathing? Or is it more like running used frequently by some, hardly ever by others? Or is it more like spaceflight, taking a large effort and considerable expertise to achieve and even then will likely go wrong?
* Is this power trainable, purchasable, fixed, diminishing?
* Who else has this power? Only those who can afford it, special forces, random chance, by the condescension of some greater being?
* Are there other means to obtain the same outcomes? Special tools, Social engineering, mundane actions?
* Are their institutions with a vested interest in this power? either its control, or promotion. They'll have an influence on the culture and how people will perceive the use of this power. Nothing like society to reign in 'aberrant' behaviours.
Take a look at the kind of story your trying to tell. eg: The vigilante arrives in a scene where they have to use their ability.
* Is it about personal cost? Are they struck down there and then by the repercussions, or do they have time before they have to pay up?
* Is it about wisdom? Have they saved their effort up for this moment by finding alternatives to using their unique talent?
* Is it about power? Have they been training, training, training to pull off this near impossible feat of strength or precision or both?
* Is it about something else? The psychic abilities are not the story, figure out what the story is and how the powers support that story.
Take a look at your theme.
* Is it hard science? Then take a look at physics. Laws of reciprocal motion, Inverse-Square Laws, Energy Conversion, etc... Ensure the power always operates the same, maybe find an equation which has a sweet spot. Have the vigilante exploit that sweet spot at a critical moment, then have everybody else scramble to learn and use it.
* Is it about love? Then what does the use of this power have to do with that? Does it make you colder of heart? Does it draw two people together? (The more you push the more your feelings entwine)
* Is it about chaos? then make the punishment random, and always out of left field. They pushed a ball out of the way, nothing. They push a rose petal, the tree falls over. It doesn't need to make sense. Maybe random things happen till they use the power...
Really just knuckle down on what your story is, use all the lovely W words: Why, When, Where, Whom, How, While, Want. (How has a W its just at the end).
Figure out what you want to say, then how this ability (and its maleffects) help you say it.
[Answer]
**The mind is still part of the brain**
For normal operation the brain requires certain levels of blood glucose. In order to support these telekinetic powers the brain must kick into overdrive consuming vast amounts of blood glucose.
Low levels of blood sugar can cause fainting, coma, confusion etc (look up diabetes).
What's cool about this is the body can grow to produce higher levels of blood sugar (based on constant demand) such that it represents a growth curve for your power as well as moveable maximums and plenty of possible side effects.
For instance if he becomes very powerful, he would have to use his power just to maintain healthy levels. Drugs could also influence his power.
[Answer]
The inverse square law, which means that, just like gravity sound and light, the strength of your TK rapidly weakens the farther away your target is.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law>
>
> The inverse-square law, in physics, is any physical law stating that a specified physical quantity or intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity. The fundamental cause for this can be understood as geometric dilution corresponding to point-source radiation into three-dimensional space (see diagram).
>
>
>
Notice how at 30 meters, the TK power isn't 1/3 of the 10 meter power, it's 1/9.
```
Distance Power
2.5m 1600%
5m 400%
10m 100%
20m 25%
30m 11.11%
40m 6.25%
50m 4%
```
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dcGwy.png)
[Answer]
Why not go the Lovecraftian route with the powers having an insanity inducing effect or other terrible cost?
In Lovecraftian fiction magic often had a great cost involved with it. There were some spells that required certain requirements to be met, but there were also spells that could be done as often as possible. Of course if you did too many of those you would go insane or attract the attention of some cosmic horror.
Perhaps there is no limit to the telekinesis in theory, but in practice there is something that makes it ill-advised to do so. Perhaps if the vigilante overexterts themselve his/her mind will start attacking itself for example; shadow enemies pop up that can destroy somebody mentally, seeing things that aren't there.
Alternatively, maybe the use of powers attracts some extremely tough enemy. There's nothing preventing the vigilante from using their powers a lot, but...it attracts some bad things. Sort of sucks saving the city by using a lot of your power if you are going to get hunted down by some insanely powerful enemies the next day depending on how close said enemies are.
Would Allomancy have been so good to use if Steel inquisitors could sense and pinpoint every use of it from across the Final empire?
[Answer]
**Newton's second law**
Much like Coinshots and Lurkers, have an equivalent but opposite force on the body of the vigilante. So he'll be limited to only light objects if he wants to stay in place himself. Or use it to throw yourself around, like Vin with her horseshoe technique. (For those not recognizing the names and terms, they're all from mistborn which the Question asker mentioned.)
Get creative. What happens if I push all air around me down ? Will I go up ?
**Get Tired**
Using the power tires you slowly. Compare it to mistborn's pewter drag - once you stop you drop down really, really tired.
**How to limit your range**
Have getting tired(or any other disadvantage) increase with the range. In general, linear composition will make it fairly easy to do stuff at range, polynomial limits you a bit more and exponential limits your range even more severe, but gives you slightly larger leeway at the start compared to polynomial. For reference, see this picture from [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/x6tC6.png)
The red line is linear, the blue line a polynomial, and the green one is exponential. Your distance would be the X-axis and your getting tired/other disadvantage the Y-axis.
[Answer]
Torque could also be a limiting factor. The torque required for lifting, or sideways pushing, a 1kg object at 1m could only move a 100g object at 10m, or a 10g object at 100m.
Pushing or pulling an object straight away or towards the telekinetic doesn’t involve any torque, so if that was limited by the inverse square law, then doing actions which additionally required a torque would become significantly harder the further away it was. It might be easier to just get up and turn the dial on the TV than doing it with your mind, but pushing the off button might be easy.
[Answer]
**The Mind is a Muscle**
The mind acts as any muscle, it becomes tired. With practice, the mind can grow in power...as well as physically. The mind is located in the brain, and with the practice of telekinesis, it starts to expand and push against the brain. Symptoms of an oversized mind would most likely include symptoms of [chiari malformation](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chiari-malformation/symptoms-causes/syc-20354010). Severe headaches, poor fine motor skills, dizziness, difficulty swallowing, vision problems, and problems with the heart and breath should provide enough motivation to stop using telekinesis for a while, however, your choice of where the mind is located will change the problems caused by overuse of the mind.
If you want to avoid these problems, as well as the problem of the lack of blood to the brain that Anon mentioned, you could stick the "mind" in the heart. Its growth would cause cardiac issues and could (maybe) make the person with an overused mind become out of breath and be forced to go to anaerobic respiration because of exercise quicker than they would if they had a weaker mind.
[Answer]
## Pain and fatigue
This plot element was used perfectly in Stephen King's book *Firestarter*, where Andy McGee could use *the push*, which was a hypnotic suggestion that could not be resisted. However, each time he used it, he experienced a splitting pain that took a while to go away. The more he used it, the worse this pain would get until, theoretically, it could even kill him. You don't have to use this exact side-effect, but you can safely base it on this, where use of this superpower causes physical pain over time. Just like someone can throw their back, your magical friend might throw his mind!
[Answer]
Some examples of the cost of using powers:
1. Wheel of Time - All men who use magic are corrupted by the magic itself. If they use too much magic, they will eventually go mad.
2. Darker than Black - An anime with power-users called contractors. Every time they use their powers, they need to pay a price. The price is different for different people. The protagonist needs to smoke a cigarette after using his power but some other person has to dislocate one his fingers every time. I don't remember if the cost had any relation to their powers.
3. Sanderson's other books - See what cost he uses in other magic systems.
[Answer]
Just like in Eragon, magic is not "magic"... You can "force push" a 100kg block, but this will require the same energy that you need to physically move it with your muscles. Maybe the recovery time for this can be longer, so you can actually move something very heavy but you'll need to rest for very long before being able to move again.
For this reason you are forced to think carefully. Moving a 1-ton block away from you is feasible, but it is much easier to flip the switch on the crane and let the machine do the work for you...
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