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*[Blindsight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel))* is a first-contact Sci-Fi novel based on a group of transhumans exploring an anomaly in space and discovers a species that has great intelligence but no self-awareness.
The author mentions that consciousness is a bottleneck and reduces the fitness of a species / renders a species noncompetitive in the long run compared to other unconscious space-faring species. "*Intelligence and self-awareness stuck in counterproductive lock-step for half a million years*"
I find such a conclusion disturbing as a major idea of being human is based on self-awareness.
Is there any empirical evidence or theory that unconsciousness is superior in terms of evolution and the evolution of being conscious is "wrong" for a species?
Can a highly intelligent organic species be unconscious? If so, then what is the difference between being dead and living your whole life unconsciously?
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I'm not familiar with any *empirical* evidence on the topic, only the theoretical side. But the topic of an "unconscious" super-race is one that has been explored in a number of franchises. The *Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri* series, for example, has an environmental antagonist in the form of an extremely aggressive vegetation that produces hostile worms that consume all sources of nutrients they come across. In the story, the vegetation is the apex predator on the planet and the human colonists are constantly fighting it off to survive.
Having an "unconscious" race like this does give some advantages. No individual thought means everything/everyone reacts based on their genetic programming. Such a race would not shy away from hazards that offer greater reward, because individual beings could be expendable. Throw enough bodies at any problem and you'll eventually solve it. This would allow rapid advancement in areas that we might consider unethical, and use of tactics that would horrify free-thinking individuals. You basically can ignore psychology all together and just aggressively pursue optimizing the species for whatever environment is needed. Things like long space journeys would be irrelevant, as such a species would have no problem sending generation ships for even small tasks, because nobody would mind.
Ultimately the way I would envision such a species is that they would be very embedded in their environment and have developed numerous natural advantages. Without conscious thought and free will to get in the way, they're free to focus all their energy on improving the race as a whole. Think of a virus, but with decision-making capacity. Pure efficiency.
Does this mean that consciousness is ultimately a disadvantage? Not necessarily. It's probably more like two sides of the same coin. After all, insects are the dominant life form on earth, and they don't have anything close to what we consider "consciousness", but we're doing just fine living along side them.
As to your last question about the difference between unconscious life and just plain death, that's more subjective. We generally know what happens when you knock out the part of the brain that gives us our free will, there are plenty of brain damage studies out there about that. Is it the same as dying? That all depends on your point of view and possibly your religion.
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## You can't have a technological species that is not self aware.
There are many advantages to being self-aware, starting down with simple if/then reasoning, all the way up to using your own knowledge of your own decision making process to analyse and predict the decision making of others. The main disadvantage is caloric and material cost to build and maintain the larger brain, this is a relatively minor cost if your species is already evolving greater intelligence.
Being self-aware is prerequisite for a certain level of complexity of thought, of being able to model the world around you, basically when you start including yourself in such a model you are self aware. For instance being able to realize a novel threat, like crossing traffic, is dangerous without actually doing it, requires modeling yourself, thus self awareness. Or planning a hunt requires self-awareness, you do things like model "if the prey runs around the left side of the tree I can run around the right side and drive it back towards packmate X so I should wait here"
A creature that is not self aware is never going to develop civilization becasue it has very little ability to plan. Its ability to model the future is extremely limited, it can't invent tools because it can't plan itself doing a sequence of events necessary to make and use it. It can't logically assess a novel threat becasue it can't model how it would interact with itself. Their ability to learn is pure trial and error and not predictive and also thus can't be passed onto the next generation. the example of social insects is a poor one because their behavior is almost completely instinctual they are not capable of invention. Instinctual behavior can be very complex but it lacks the ability to produce novel and more importantly the progressive iterative behavior that denotes technological ability. Instinctual behavior changes at the speed of evolution which is breathtakingly slow and more importantly is not predictive. It cannot plan anew tool and build it.
The books author could use a basic course in ethology. Being a good writer doesn't mean your science is good.
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The question is actually a surprisingly muddled concept. The best description I have heard of the real story that goes on in our heads is that of the elephant and the rider. In theory, it is the rider that is in charge. But if you look deeper, you find the elephant is the one in power at all times.
Most of what we do is not conscious. I don't know if it can be put into percentages, but if the answer was 99.5% of our activity is not conscious, I would not bat an eye. Our senses are so unconscious that great artists like Apollo Robbins can [misdirect us](https://www.ted.com/talks/apollo_robbins_the_art_of_misdirection?language=en) while drawing conscious attention to the fact that he is misdirecting us! (I highly recommend spending the 8 minutes on that video)
Now self-awarneess is a tricky term. It has many meanings to different people. But for this purpose, I find the best definition is that a self-aware individual can account for the effect of their own actions when deciding which action to undertake. For some mathematical reasons that can be rather tricky, but we can see it in the dance of death many of us partake in. This is where two people approach on a sidewalk on a collision course. One dodges one way, right as the other dodges the same. They go back and forth for a bit until a resolution comes forth, often with a lavish gesture and a great deal of laughter.
So what happened? Each person acted in a way which resolved the conundrum in front of them. But they failed to account for how the other individual will respond to their actions. Sure, they had a high level view, but the human sense of balance operates on the scale of tenths of seconds. So, if in the process of committing to an action, they *telegraph* a different action with their balance, they fail to account for the total effects of their actions, especially the fast ones.
This is a non-trivial thing to learn. It takes us many years. But what would happen if we did not learn it? Well, one of two things would happen. One is we would fail to achieve any inner goals because we would fail to understand the consequences. For an excellent example of that consider the plight of the poor sound hardware at an event where a speaker is speaking too quietly and too far from the microphone. It's supposed to make the speaker audible. So the gain (volume) is increased, louder, and louder. Many of us can guess what happens next. The amplifier hears its own amplified sound and amplifies it in a squeal of feedback that completely decimates any hope of hearing the poor speaker.
The other is that we simply have no inner goals. All "target states" are external. And this makes them manipulable. We see this in Apollo Robbins when he convinces "Fred," our consciousness, to check out and just just let the unconsciousness roll. Many of us simply leave our goals and targets out where they can be reached and manipulated. Indeed, there are many training regimines which focus on how to avoid doing this (those that deal with combat and other aggressors).
Of course, the storyline of Blindsight makes the disadvantages of consciousness quite clear, so what gives? What is the resolution? This is a philosophical question, and one which many spend their entire lives trying to answer. Myself, I find several Asian concepts fascinating. The Japanese Zen Buddhists have mushin no shin(無心の心), and the Chinese Taoists have wei wu wei(爲無爲).\* Both are paradoxes: "mind of no mind" and "action without action." Both are often shortened to just the negative portion of the phrasing ("no mind" and "without action"), choosing a phrasing suggestive of unconsciousness. But any teacher teaching these concepts will capture something far more nuanced than mere unconsciousness.
So Blindsight uses the phrasing "Intelligence and self-awareness stuck in counterproductive lock-step for half a million years." But perhaps that is only because they chose counterproductive paths. Perhaps there are other paths where intelligence and self-awareness smile at each other instead. Or perhaps both are merely illusions, figments of the progression of physics and time.
Perhaps those two extremes are not as opposed as they appear.
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\*To be fair, both cultures have an intermingling of ideas here which is very hard to tease apart. My introductions to both terms were from their corresponding cultures, so they remain tied to that language and culutre in my mind.
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I doubt very much that self-awareness is a disadvantage. If it were it would have been selected against and disappeared long ago being out competed by the non-aware.
On theoretical grounds (depending on how intelligence is defined) it would also seem unlikely that a creature with a truly human level of intelligence would not be self-aware. In order to deal with the external environment effectively and efficiently it is necessary to plan a course of action and in order to do that it is necessary to hold some form of internal model of the external environment in the brain.
When those models increase in complexity, as they will do when having to plan for increasingly complex activities, part of the model will need to include a representation of the creature itself and the creatures own behaviours as the creature is also part of its own environment. This is the beginning of self-awareness and excluding it will damage the creatures understanding of the world.
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Coincidentally, I just finished *Blindsight* several days ago so this question is fresh on my mind and I'm excited to discuss it. You've incentivized me to finally sign up for StackExchange after years of lurking. Bravo.
First off, it bears to be said that *Blindsight* is a work of speculative fiction, meant to explore the idea that self-awareness is an evolutionary disadvantage - it is not meant to be a rigorous argument in that regard. (Watts explains this in his appendices: "*Blindsight* is a thought experiment, a game of Just suppose and What if. Nothing more.")
A trait can be an evolutionary advantage in one environment while being an indirect disadvantage (merely useless) or a direct disadvantage in another environment. For any given trait X, asking "Is X an evolutionary disadvantage" requires establishing - or making assumptions about - the environment. Breathing oxygen is fantastic in an oxygen-rich environment. It's not so great if you're living in a sulfur vent on the ocean floor. Watts went to great lengths to establish a hypothetical scenario that could result in the evolution of a non-self-aware species like Rorschach, and furthermore to imagine how such a species could be an apex predator in a environment that is extremely hostile to humans (extrasolar orbit around a hyperjovian body with intense magnetic fields).
This is a bit like imagining a chess variant where the house rules are "Rule 1: Any time you move a piece, punch yourself in the face. Rule 2: If you move diagonally, you're exempt from Rule 1" and then narrating a match-up where bishops are dominant.
Some of Watts's counterarguments are a bit weak. (I don't mean this to be a fatal criticism of the novel; again, it's meant to be speculative.) For example, he spends a little bit of time discussing how chimpanzees fail the [Gallup Mirror Test](https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/mirror_test.htm) more often than orangutans do. He implies that this could be a sign of [regressive evolution](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/10/reverse-evolution-explained-hagfish-penguins-snakes-science/), a phenomenon where a species loses a trait when it is no longer beneficial. The classic example is when a darkness-dwelling cave animal loses eyesight.
One of the problems with this argument is that the Gallup Mirror Test is not a perfect proxy for self-awareness. It has an unknown, but non-negligible, chance of a false negative: an organism may opt not to explore the mark they see in the mirror because they just don't have motivation to. (For example, children in Kenya are less likely to pass the Gallup Mirror Test. This isn't because Kenyan children are less self-aware; it's because they're culturally conditioned to consider that a mark that appears on the body may have been placed there by an adult for a good reason. Pigeons will fail the Gallup Mirror Test at first, but can be trained to pass it. While it's possible that this shows the pigeon developing self-awareness due to training, that intuitively seems unlikely. Other animals will fail the Mirror Test, but will otherwise display novel behaviors in front of the mirror. [Wikipedia has an excellent description of these species-level variations.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test)) Differences in eyesight, visual processing, and motor control are all confounds for the Gallup Mirror Test.
Watts also explores Benjamin Libet's cerebral readiness potential experiments. When *Blindsight* was published (2006), the most popular interpretation of the Libet free will experiments is that the brain "chooses" to make a decision before the participant is aware that a choice has been made. According to this interpretation, our decisions arise from deep in our unconscious brain. We do not have "free will" and our conscious selves are just spectators to our own behavior. Our feeling of agency is an illusion. However, in 2012, US-French neuroscientist Aaron Schurger ran experiments that support an alternative explanation of Libet's results. I won't go into too much detail, but you can read about the [classic interpretation of Libet here](https://www.wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/) and the [Schurger interpretation here.](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-bereitschaftspotential/597736/) (Note: I'm not a believer in free will and I'm not arguing for the concept. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms.)
Benjamin Libet also had an interesting perspective on human volition that speaks directly to one of the exchanges in the novel. Libet hypothesized that our volition serves an inhibitory function. Perhaps our choices truly are made deep in our unconscious brain, however, our conscious minds filter out unnecessary behaviors. This is conveniently consistent with some observations of humans with traumatic brain injury, where damage to the frontal lobes can cause behavioral disinhibition. The glib formulation of this is: maybe we don't have free will. Maybe we have free won't.
How is this interpretation relevant to *Blindsight*? Late in the novel (spoilers ahead)...
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Imagine for the sake of argument that Libet's hypothesis is correct. That complicated expensive brain then prevents us from engaging in behaviors that are also expensive (running away from imaginary predators in the shadows), or high-risk (running away from imaginary predators in the shadows right into the jaws of a real tiger in the bush).
Maybe Libet is wrong. However, despite Watts's familiarity with Libet's experiments, Watts didn't engage with Libet's interpretation of consciousness. It might be interesting to read what Robert Cunningham thinks of free won't.
Finally, the lynchpin is that the evidence for the evolutionary fitness of the human brain is all around us. Our technology, culture, and language has allowed us to become, for better or worse, the dominant species on our planet. (This doesn't mean that the human brain is perfect, or even particularly good at what it does. Just that it's better than the competition so far.) It's hard to imagine how we might have done that without all of our cognitive abilities, including self-awareness. (That's part of what makes *Blindsight* such a stimulating work of speculative fiction - it skillfully challenges a ubquitous aspect of our lives.) For regressive evolution to occur, there would have to be a dire alteration in our environment.
Once in a while, a science fiction story posits a predator that feeds on, or is hostile to, consciousness. For a couple of video game examples - undoubtedly inspired by *Blindsight* - I'm thinking of Mass Effect and 2017's Prey, respectively. I'm sure there are other science fiction novels with similar themes. In the face of an overwhelming adversary that attacks consciousness, then perhaps regression to a simpler state of cognition might allow us to carve out a niche and continue to breed.
But at the moment, such monsters, much like *Blindsight*'s Rorschach, remain imaginary.
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## Not for social creatures
Consciousness (as defined by *Blindsight*) is the idea that "I am" - having a part of the brain that describes the *me* in relation to things that are *not me*, as opposed to simply solving problems for personal survival. The concept of the *I* likely evolved as a mechanism for understanding the *you* - relating to others on a personal level. This is a major function in making empathy and altruism natural human behaviors, and is probably linked to us becoming more social creatures.
(This is not the universal definition of "consciousness"; to be fair, consciousness is one of those terms that has many varied definitions ranging from the practical to the vague and philosophical. Since this is the definition used by the author, this is the definition I am using.)
As evidence for the idea that this kind of consciousness is an evolutionary disadvantage, the author describes an "ideal sociopath" - a person that is entirely selfish, simply using their brain to acquire a personal advantage. They can *pretend* to be empathetic if it benefits them, but are not programmed to be. This kind of sociopath, he argues, is disproportionally represented among the upper echelons of humanity - politicians, CEOs, and so on. He uses the idea of "vampires" to explore the concept a human subspecies that is fundamentally non-conscious; i.e. completely selfish and dispassionate problem-solving machines (but that at least understand consciousness enough to manipulate normal humans), as well as Rorschach, an alien entity that doesn't even have the frame of reference necessary to understand what consciousness *is*.
There is one major thing he fails to recognize, however: *Sociopaths (and vampires) only have an advantage in a world where there are hordes of gullible, trusting non-sociopaths to manipulate*. It is an *individual* advantage, but not a *species* advantage - which means that as these non-conscious, non-empathetic genes spread through a population, or as the vampire-to-human ratio increases, these genes will grow *less* advantageous, since people will become less trusting. A world in which *everyone* is "looking out for number one" is ultimately going to break down on a societal level, since society is ultimately built upon the ability to trust that others will "play by the rules", at least most of the time.
Ah, but each individual might voluntarily decide to play by social rules anyway, since it benefits them in the long run? True, given enough time, experience, and intelligence, *some* might come to this conclusion *eventually* - but they will have a disadvantage against groups of humans where *most* individuals already have the necessary mechanics for empathy and altruism hard-coded into their DNA.
Social species - those with hard-coded self-awareness, and the other-awareness that comes with it - have numerous advantages over their solitary counterparts, especially in the long run, including the ability to share information and technology, pass on knowledge, and team up against enemies without having to constantly be watching their backs for attacks by their own teammates. In fact, the main advantage of being solitary - the ability to survive without sharing while resources are scarce - is likely to become *less* advantageous as a species advances technologically and resources become plentiful.
So, no, for human-like species, the author of *Blindsight* is wrong. Humans beat vampires, in the long run. Consciousness is here to stay.
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When an author writes a novel they pour on it what they belive because they are the God of their world and everything will occur the way they think it is right. Ex.: Tolkien and his reactionary, christian views. Or Ayn Rand and her hatred of anything collective.
So, the author, in this case, says a lot about what he thinks is self-awerness and very little about what self-awerness is. He didn't gave a science-based answer and we can't give a science-based answer because science doesn't know what is self-awerness. The best half-answer that can be given is that, whatever this thing is, it gave those that had it an evolutionary advantage in a given environment and they left descendents (us).
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## Artificial Intelligence (AI)
This is a practical example answering your question:
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Since AI may be created through organic entities:
[Is Artificial Intelligence restricted to electrical based technology?](https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/2185/is-artificial-intelligence-restricted-to-electrical-based-technology)
Constructing highly intelligent organic beings which would constantly attempt to maximize the success rate of their (initially proggammed) goals may be possible. They would not need to be self-aware or even aware of the surroundings that do not relate to accomplishing those goals.
Building up on a previous example: genetically engineered vegetation could be "programmed" for terraforming a planet if the required resources were present for accomplishing that goal. Those entities would detect those resources and discover/implement new ways to use them more efficiently but would not be aware of the consequences of their own development (e.g. climate change and impact on aboriginal species) or even other entities cohabiting with them.
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As long as those entities are able to propagate and accomplish the goals they were designed to achieve, one could say they are alive.
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**Empirical Evidence:**
For all their benefits (which are a lot, but mainly in prediction and ability to adapt to changes in between self and environment), Consciousness and Self-Awareness burn a lot more calories. Thinking hard can burn up to 1 third of the calories of heavy activity. As a result, if species are bottlenecked by available energy, this means Consciousness and Self-Awareness, once their benefits are addressed by other methods, might become redundant and lose their edge (this is highly unlikely, but hypothetically possible.)
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[Blindsight](https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm) is based on an awful lot of science, but also on philosophy - see the appendix, which had to be shortened for the print editions.
Peter Watts, the author, wrote in a [Q&A sesssion](https://www.reddit.com/r/SF_Book_Club/comments/2hzpmt/echopraxia_qa_questions_fended_off_by_peter_watts/):
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Personally, I think that the metaphor of the elephant and the rider (see Cort Ammon's answer) is flawed.
As we learn, we commit more and more tasks to unconscious processes. E.g., we have learned to drive a car for hours and do completely unrelated things in our conscious mind in the meantime. We might not even remember much about the way, until something unexpected happens that requires our conscious attention.
At least in humans, consciousness is necessary to handle new things, to discover, to learn, and to decide what to learn.
To advance a civilisation, individuals must be free to follow their own interests and work on new ideas and technologies. Some intelligence might be encoded in process and structure (like a Chinese Room), but that tends to be inflexible, not creative.
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Whether it's possible for a technological, tool-using lifeform to lack self-awareness is another question, but consider that bacteria have been around for billions of years, survived multiple extinction events which decimated life on the planet, and colonised virtually every environment imaginable. Their lack of self-awareness has certainly not been an evolutionary disadvantage. If anything it is the opposite.
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Neither intelligence, self awareness or abstract complex thought are necessarily an advantage evolutionary. On a purely empirical level we have troglodytes, cockroaches and amphibians etc, who've outlived humanity by hundreds of millions of years by now. And they have brains the size of chickpea! Whilst humanity has come close several times to wiping itself out. All that matters is reproduction and survival of the species.
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### Does consciousness matter?
There is this philosophical Zombie hypothesis: what if you were all zombies who don't actually experience consciousness, but occasionally talk about it nevertheless so I don't feel special? The idea sounds absurd to most of us (except some? psychopaths, who are confident they are special anyway) and we believe all humans are conscious, but there does not seem to be any way to actually falsify that hypothesis.
And that's humans. Now given how similar we are to apes, are bonobos conscious? And where do we stop? Are cats? Or roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans)? There is no clear boundary anywhere between. There is no clear boundary even to amoebas. But then, if amoebas are conscious, they are just cells, and we are also composed of cells, so are our cells individually conscious too? And since we are composed of smaller elements, what about other entities composed of smaller elements like bee swarms. Or the planet Earth, which can also be considered alive (see Gaia theory).
To some people it seems obvious that even things may be conscious. Compare all the religious disputes what does and does not have soul. Or Buddha nature. It's kind of the same thing except we are not talking about immortality, just first-person experience.
So we can't really prove some entity does or does not have consciousness. It might even “not matter” in a sense that nothing on the observable universe depends on it.
### Intelligence without desires
Ok, so lets shift from first-person to desires. We tend to consider someone or something worthy of respects because they want something and fear something, that is, have desires.
And the thing is that desires are a necessary ingredient of intelligence. Reason can only solve how to achieve goals, but it cannot set those goals. Desires set goals. So an “intelligent” entity without desires wouldn't actually do anything.
Specifically, entity that does not want to preserve itself, or some higher entity it is part of, is unlikely to persist. And note that humans can under various conditions give preference to preservation of their family or community over their own.
Except evolution makes it a sort of circular argument. Because what “wants” to preserve itself will preserve itself, and we still can't tell whether it was “conscious”.
### What is evolving anyway
Also don't forget it is not really the species as a whole that is evolving. There is competition inside it between the elements that actually replicate, which is the genes. The gene that is passed down the heritage is the good one, even if it may not ultimately be in the best interest of the species.
Except the gene still needs the species in context of which it exists, so ultimately genes that prevent the species to sacrifice some members for sake of collective survival will be stopped when such situation comes up.
Or sometimes it is just the relationships between the entities—worker bees are more closely related to the queen than they are to each other, so while they would like to become queens (they are still females and can become fertile when the queen dies or disappears), they will still guard the queen against any other worker who would like to throw her over.
But it is, again, unrelated to consciousness. We still have nothing to tell us whether the queen, the workers, the swarm, or all of them, have consciousness.
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Your questions don't make much sense to me: Any creature can be intelligent and unconscious. Being dead is like sleeping. -I assume you came up with them because of this statement here:
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I won't fill in the gaps you left by not explaining what that author thinks of as 'intelligence' or 'self-consciosness' and just try ot explain what I can: Self-awareness starts, when an intelligence tries to imagine what another entity might think. From there on the intelligence **might** start to use the same function it has trained, for trying to predict what its own thoughts might mean. These predictions aren't worth much, considering that we can't consciously read, write, create or delete parts of our memory. If we could, and this may very well be possible when have replaced our brains, we'd obviously be much more adaptable than beings that aren't self-aware.
The example of these autistic Blindsight-vampires is probably based on the myth that highly functional autistic people have no or a different kind of self-awarenes whilst also being much more intellligent than the average human. This myth is based on their lack of communication and empathy in certain situations and has nothing to do with self-awareness. The writer may want to write hard scifi, but he also wants to follow his themes. That's why he'll mostly use his personal experience to speculate about things he has no time to put a lot of research in.
Conclusion:
* The concept of self-awareness has no downsides, if you use it the right way.
* There's no empirical evidence that self-awareness is an issue when you're trying to process data.
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At first, I must note that confusing consciousness with self-awareness is a big flaw to start with this discussion. Second, I would like to direct your attention to the fact that ego-dissolution, a common term in spiritual and alternative circles today, is a goal to achieve for many thousands of people that: seek to let go of the chains of the ego to live a better life. So, in a way, if you become unconscious of the ego, achieving ego-loss, you are letting go of "some" of your consciousness. That level of "unconsciousness" could be enough to allow for the intelligence to flourish unimpeded. However, this looks a lot like mass/group-consciousness. The only way I have seen intelligence efficiently applied has mostly been in groups. So evolution may yet have some incredible surprises for us in store and turn us into group creatures without ego, working together for a better world. I wonder about the form... coral and medusae do live in colonies as so many others.
On another note:
Maybe you can even have self-awareness without intelligence at all. Oh, wait... We surely have empirical proof for that ;)
Cheers
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It's now the late 23rd century and there are now hundreds of space stations, orbiting approximately at the height of the (now deceased) ISS, give or take a few kilometers. Lately, the International Space Fleet™ has been trying to find a way to get people back down to Earth without the need to use lots of rocket fuel for descents.
To do this, the ISF™ has decided to, rather than sending people down from stations in rockets that they're going to instead send people down by having them *"skydive"* to Earth. Let's assume that the following things are already in place:
* There are now methods to keep people from blacking out at high speeds and high G-forces.
* The *"skydiver"* has to manually operate the mechanisms on their suit, e.g, deploying parachutes, etc.
* The *"skydivers"* leave and *"dive"* from the space stations at scheduled times to make sure there are no collisions, and that they land in the right-ish area.
Is this plausible in any way? If so, is there anything that needs to be changed to make it more plausible? If it's not plausible, or possible at all for that matter, then why? And if so, is there anything that could be changed to make if somewhat plausible?
EDIT: This question *is not* the same as [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/25851/returning-from-iss-felix-style). That question is asking if this kind of scenario is possible given some very tight constraints, in an earlier time period. My question is set in a completely different time period and has looser constraints.
[Answer]
Such a system has already been considered as an emergency evacuation system for space station, see [the MOOSE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE).
It is like a backpack which contains basically the bare minimum to deorbit and try to survive reentry :
* A small rocket to lose enough speed in order to lower your perigee (lowest point of your trajectory) enough to meet the atmosphere.
* An polyurethane foam to shield you from the heat during reentry.
* A chute to slow you down once you have reached a dense enough atmosphere.
It still require a rocket, but it will be really small given that the mass to decelerate if really low compared to an actual spacecraft (I have read somewhere that it would be about the size of a fire extinguisher).
Although it is really simple, it has never been actually deployed in a space station or a spacecraft, let alone used for an actual reentry.
[Answer]
The first and foremost issue is how is the person going to be decelerated? Orbiting the Earth involves moving at high velocity (@ 7.8 Kilometres/sec), and you need to shed some of the velocity if you are going to head towards Earth. This explains the rockets, etc that are currently used.
You could postulate something like a railgun or electromagnetic mass driver, but I think you can already see the problem; a dramatic reduction in velocity would involve either incredible acceleration or an improbably long "gun barrel" to keep the forces on the person reasonable. Other means of deceleration like an electrodynamic tether or Morovec "Rotovator" are going to be rather massive (essentially the space station itself), which is kind of beside the point.
Assuming the individual is decelerated below orbital velocity, they are still going to have issues on re entry into Earth's atmosphere. Unless they have somehow managed to get to zero velocity (i.e. subtracted the entire 7.8 Km/sec velocity needed to remain in orbit) they are going to hit the atmosphere at considerable velocity. The air will be rapidly compressed in front of them due to the velocity (the effect is the same as a piston in a diesel engine compressing the air in the cylinder, just much faster and on a larger scale), so the space suit, parachute, etc. will be subjected to incredible temperature stresses, far beyond what normal materials can withstand. (The heat shields of most spacecraft ablate to carry away some of the heat load; only Space Shuttle tiles don't do this and even they needed replacing on a regular basis).
While I suppose there is some sort of handwavium to get around these problems, in reality you will need to find a way for your character to survive being shot from a cannon many times faster than any rifle bullet, then hit the atmosphere at several "G" and be subjected to incredible temperatures, then be able to deploy some sort of arresting device to slow down and land.
I'll just get Scotty to beam me down instead.....
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Ignoring the technical limits, already quite well addressed above, there is an important other aspect, liability!
What happens if one idiot forgets to activate his parachute and goes splat? what happens if someone drops his luggage, which will be moving at such huge speeds that if it doesn't burn up in the atmosphere it *will* be lethal to anyone it hits, and potentially quite damaging to objects it strikes as well; not to mention what happens if a terrorist intentionally drops his 'luggage' in a preplanned time to strike something. What if someone falls asleep on the fall (this will take hours as a control fall!) and twists up his parachute etc.
In short, you can't allow an untrained layman to be responsible for his own return to earth. He could screw up, and no matter how much of an idiot he is you become liable for whatever he does. Not only is his own life in danger if he does, but so is anyone below him. Think about how much training you get for 'simple' sky diving, now imagine a system that is 3 times as complicated...
As an alternative I could see a drop pod being used. The concept is similar to the idea of skydiving, but with the entire drop pod doing the 'skydiving' for you. Everyone files into a pod and it's dropped into earth orbit. It handles deceleration, ejection of parachute etc. It also stores all the luggage that people wanting to return to earth are using and times it's drop and deceleration to 'land' in pre-planed parts of the world. Of course this is pretty similar to how shuttles already work, the only real difference would be to make the drop pod much smaller/lighter (so it can be brought back *up* to the space-station before the drop), probably with the pods somehow folding up or even being shipped 'unassembled' for easier transport up to the station. and with a heavier focus on cheaper deceleration methods. It's sounds far less exciting then the orbital sky diving, but it's really the same idea done in a way to be safe for untrained layman.
Of course you could still have orbital skydiving without a pod be an evacuation technique, or the next step to sky diving for a thrill seeker...with the limits of science mentioned in other questions.
[Answer]
I must object to the problem requirements.
Given the tech level I see no reason to require manual control of anything and every reason to think it's a bad idea.
Given that, yes, it can be done. There are two important issues: Deorbit and reentry heating.
First, deorbit: The posts above have attempted to deal with this with a gun type device which is problematic due to the barrel length. This is going at it backwards, a gun is absolutely the wrong answer. Don't push them off, pull them off: Your passenger is strapped into a ring which is then deployed outside (but still attached to) the station. When it's in position the passenger is ejected **prograde** at low velocity. They are still tethered by at least three cables, probably more for safety reasons. The passenger drifts forward as far as needed, the cables playing out as he goes. When he has reached the required distance they are wound back up quickly. Instead of a barrel that must withstand force in compression you have simple cables that only must withstand force in tension--much lighter, they can be much longer than the size of the station, a passenger can be deorbited from above ISS altitudes even. When the cables are fully rewound as the passenger zips through the departure point they disconnect, ready to be attached to the next passenger.
Second, reentry: This is the harder one to deal with as the plunge through the fire is very, very hot. I would handle this by making a cheap dish of foamed material (refinery slag from lunar mining makes a likely candidate.) While such a dish isn't going to be as good a heat shield as NASA builds we aren't so weight-limited when dealing with stuff built in space. The shield isn't going to be reused, either, so it can be a simple ablative design rather than the fancy stuff NASA put on the Shuttle.
During the trip through the fire the passenger is strapped to this dish to ensure their weight doesn't shift around. It extends enough around them to keep the center of mass ahead of the center of pressure so it's stable without flight controls. The back is covered by a thin layer of foamed material with a reflective layer on top--all you need to do is slow the entry of the heat, the shield is jettisoned before the heat bakes through.
At the right point pyro charges (the only equipment on the shield!) release the passenger from the shield. You do this while there still is some horizontal velocity left so the spend shield diverges from the passenger and won't smack him on the head when his chutes deploy.
[Answer]
You could use a [Momentum Exchange Tether](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_exchange_tether). I first saw this concept in the Neal Stephenson novel, [Seveneves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves). The concept is that being on the end of the rotating tether, you get decelerated with respect to the surface of the Earth while the other end is accelerated. At the lowest point, you disconnect and just fall down, since you're now at almost zero horizontal velocity. The deceleration is (potentially) nice and slow.
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Aside from the extreme heat experienced, re-entry also requires aerodynamic stability. The 8-9 g's experienced during the maximum braking portion of re-entry by astronauts indicates a substantial amount of pressure applied - if that pressure isn't applied evenly, the person is going to spin like crazy, more than enough to kill them.
It's one thing to enter a crouch for stability under the 1g of a free fall in the lower atmosphere. It's probably impossible to to maintain control of a human form when the aero braking force is 8-9 times higher. Thus, the blunt heat shield not only insulates, but provides a platform that can decelerate in a stable manner.
So you might think along the lines of a 'mini capsule', a blunt heat shield the person sits on to also provide the required aerodynamic stability on top of heat shielding, with side panels to protect them from the superheated ionized gases streaming past during the maximum G portion of re-entry. Perhaps some reaction jets to rotate the craft for steering... both Gemini and Apollo had an off center weight bias, so that rotating the craft during re-entry would cause the horizontal trajectory to change slightly.
A person isn't going to de-orbit (and survive the journey) in just a suit. Even if a suit that could insulate them from the extreme heat was developed, a person would die from the extreme forces of a spin or other gyrations that result from uneven aerodynamic braking.
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[Question]
[
The hero saves the captured giant, and as a reward, the giant presents the hero with a magic ring... However, the ring is made for giant fingers, so the hero decides to wear it as an armband instead.
If the ring is a suitable size to be used as an armband, and assuming the giant has human proportions, just larger, how large must the giant be?
***Clarification:***
I am struggling to work out how big the giant must be for this scenario to work. It seems that a finger is maybe 1/10th of the radius of a forearm, but does that mean that the giant is 10 times the size of a human? Does it work that way, or does the radius of an appendage scale up at a different rate to the overall size of a creature? I'm a bit stuck.
***EDIT:*** 1:10 appears to have been a significant overestimation on my part. 1:3.6 to 1:4 seem to be the more probable ratios, as suggested by Trish and Chasly.
[Answer]
Square-Cubic Law tells us that at some size the neck of our giant breaks under its own weight(2), but how large is a giant that has a ring that fits a forearm?
Our Giant's finger's **diameter** is the diameter of the forearm of the human. I am a rather slender person of 2 meters height, my wrist is pretty much skin over bone. To fit my wrist, that'd be $d\_{w}=70 \text{ mm}$, while my ring finger is $d\_{rf}=22 \text{ mm}$. To slip the ring over the hand (which means I have to deform my hand to the smallest diameter I can achieve) it has to be at least a diameter of $d\_{h}=80 \text{ mm}$.
Let's take the 80 mm giant finger, that sounds reasonable, right? So to fit me, the giant has fingers of a diameter that is scaled up by a factor of $f=\frac {d\_h}{d\_{rf}}=\frac {80}{22}=3.{63}$. Total height would be 7.26 meters or 24 feet, 5.7 inches(1). In either case pretty gigantic... but is that reasonable?
(1) - If the giant wore the ring on the thumb, the factor would be lower, at *merely* a $\frac{80}{25}=3.2$, so *just* 6.4 meters/21'.
# Reality check time!
Picking out my trusty old matter on the Square-Law, and a [BBC documentation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_ZDlJ61erY) we know that humans at 2.5 meters, we have critical health conditions. But if we blow up the bone diameters some, we could go somewhat bigger, but also reengineer other parts... Let's skip the heart and muscles and such.
Just from the bones alone, James Kakalios does offer the basics for an answer in his book *The Physics of Superheroes*, using Giant Man as an example in chapter *10. Does Size Matter? - **The Cube-Square Law***.
>
> If Giant-Man is going to maintain a constant density as he
> grows, then his mass must increase at the same rate as does his
> volume
>
>
>
And we know, Volume goes by length to the cube. A Giant 3.5 times our height occupies approximately 12.25 times the area and has 42.875 times our volume - and thus weight(2). But why do we want to know the area? Actually, we want to know the cross section of some bones, as we know rather well how well bones hold up stress depending on the cross section:
>
> The compressive strength of an object, such as the femur in your thigh or the vertebrae in your spine, is determined by its cross-sectional area—that
> is, the area of one of its faces if it were a rectangular solid.
>
>
> Suppose at his normal height Dr. Pym is six feet tall and weighs
> 185 pounds [m\_h]. His femur at his normal height can support a weight
> of 18,000 pounds while a single vertebra [$m\_{s\_v}$] can support 800 pounds
>
>
>
So, That's an easy thing to calculate, right? Well yes! Let's assume our giant is Hank Pym. His factor is, as we calculated above, $f=3.63$.
So, $m\_g=m\_h \text{ lbs}\times f^3=8848\text{ lbs}$ while $m\_{{s\_v}g}=m\_{s\_v} \text{ lbs}\times f^2=10541\text{ lbs}$. You see easily: Our human vertebra shape scaled up can still support the weight of our giant! Oh, and our giant has just roundabout 1700 pounds of force as a safety margin: At the force of 119% of the own weight the giant's vertebra snaps, while a human has a safety factor of 432%.
As we see, our Giant is still able to live with just about a human skeleton scaled up, but they have a very fatal weakness of strikes to the head and tripping: falling flat induces forces well above the own body's mass. Slipping on a wet surface and not catching yourself is for humans not usually deadly, but for our 3.6 times scaled giants that would be rather deadly.
The muscles and such surely can be addressed rather easily, making them more heavyset and changing their composition. Even increasing all the muscles by an extra factor could mitigate some problems of the biological side (blood flow etc). But that surprisingly does not change the geometry of fingers a lot: A finger contains only a minimal amount of muscles, most o the force in a finger is generated in the lower arm and transmitted via ligaments.
(2) - Note that I speak about weight not mass: Weight is a *force*, which is *on earth* linearly related to the mass of an objects: $\vec F=m\vec g$ has a static factor $g=9.81\frac{\text m}{\text s ^2}$ directed towards the center of the planet, so for simplicity's sake, it boils down to this: *An object's **Weight** is the **Force** created by its **Mass times 10**, directed to the center of the planet.*
This allows us to speak of Weight in terms of Kilograms while it should technically be noted in Newtons - the conversion factor $g=9.81$ (or the rounded $g=10$) is easy enough to keep on the sidelines though, as it rarely matters in a planetary environment.
### Vulnerability
>
> As to the vulnerability to head injuries and tripping, if the giant had much thicker cranial bones and was much stockier/more robust (while still being recognisably human in proportion), would you think this would solve that issue somewhat? Are denser and stronger bones reasonable for such a being? – Arkenstein XII
>
>
>
It's not the skull that is the main problem (A skull 3.6 times our skull might arguably survive the impacts of most small arms fire - it's thicker than hip bones). The true problem is the vertebrae: if one doesn't scale up the diameter of the spine by an additional factor, the spine (and for the matter, other bones) would shatter under a normal fall, as that easily exceeds the small 120% of force it is made to keep up against, while humans falling often manage to buffer dangerous falls into their safety range of below 430% of their body weight.(2)
When falling, the body typically impacts with at least two (a stumble) to 10 times the force of its mass (being shoved backwards onto the edge of a pedestrian walkway). To retain the same safety factor our human bones have, the bones need to be not 3.63² times as thick as a humans (normal scaling) but 3.63³ times as thick. This though would flaw our premise of scaleability of the finger bones.
To some degree, it can be mitigated by denser bone material. Typical quotes for human bone range from 1 to 1.9 g/cm³[source](https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/AnnaYarusskaya.shtml). Think at least elephant bone density, not human bone density. Some Blainville's Beaked Whale's bones are quoted to be 2.6 g/cm³.
>
> Osteometric parameters show that the relationship of the length of the femur to the circumference is 2.5, 2.75 and 2.8 in elephant, horse and cattle respectively. Similarly, humerus length to circumference is 2.3 in the three species showing isometric scaling. There is a positive allometric scaling be-tween bone weight and bone length; the ratio of femur length to weight is 205 g/cm, 72 g/cm and 64 g/cm in elephants, horses and cattle. The ratio of weight of the humerus to length or weights of the humerus plus femur to their combined length is a good estimate of the body weight in kg= $(\frac{wh}{lh}\times 10)$.[here](https://www.academia.edu/4204202/Kinematics_of_some_elephant_limb_bones_Melaku_Tefera_Kinematics_and_Comparative_Anatomy_of_Some_Limb_Bones_of_the_African_Elephant_Loxodonta_africana_and_Large_Domestic_Animals)
>
>
>
The rough gist of that paragraph is: The femur bones of elephants are about 3 times as dense per length as those of bovine cattle while having a slightly more slender shape. This means that they are in fact of a more dense design. Note that their notation is *kilograms of force*(2).
## tl;dr: Conclusion
The giants are about 3.2 to 3.6 times as tall as humans (depending on which finger it comes from) and their skeletons are rather similar to humans. Their muscles might be more suited for fast acceleration in contrast to low tiring as humans, which might make them more stocky and heavyset in look, somewhat ogrish. Remember though, that their stride is much larger, so they are still faster than humans, even though they would tire after a shorter time than humans. Their bones might be of a stronger makeup than humans to compensate the lower safety factor the cube-square-law bestows upon them.
[Answer]
Are giants magical?
If you have magic, then the giant is probably proportional. The ratio of finger-radius-to-arm-radius is going to be about the ratio of height-to-height. I'd be real dubious about that 10-to-1 number, though. You might want to check that with your own fingers. Eyeballing it on myself, I get something a lot closer to 4-to-1. Alternately, you might want a giant who's somewhat thicker and stockier all around (ogre/dwarf build) in which case you could reasonably trim the height down by about half.
If you haven't got magic, then you have a lot of things to figure out about stuff like how their limbs sustain their weight and whatnot, and "how do I get the finger and arm radius to match up" is the least of your problems. On the bright side, you can fix a bunch of the simplest squared/cubed issues by having it be a particularly cold planet.
[Answer]
I see that Trish answered while I was typing. I'll give my answer anyway because it doesn't require complicated formulae to understand.
Radius is a length. For scaling up distance you don't have to worry about the square-cube law.
**Estimating finger diameter to forearm diameter** (and equivalently radius).
Hold two fingers together. Are the as wide as your wrist? Probably not unless you have fat fingers and skinny wrists.
Try with three fingers. In my case that's not enough.
Try holding four fingers together. In my case that's about right, maybe a little over.
So for me, the ratio between fingers and wrist is about 4:1
Because we are only dealing with distance at this point, you just scale everything up by the same ratio.
Thus if the human is 6 ft tall, a giant of exactly the same proportions will be 4 x 6 = 24 ft tall.
**Now we come to the weight**
Think of it this way. Suppose you have a cube of wood that is 1 inch per side. It's volume is 1 x 1 x 1 = 1 cubic inches.
Now we make a bigger cube of these small cubes. If the big cube is 4 small cubes high, 4 wide and 4 deep, then the volume of the big cube is 4 x 4 x 4 = 64 cubic inches.
So by multiplying the height of the cube by 4, you have multiplied the volume (and therefore the weight) by 64.
So if the human weighs 140 lbs the giant will weigh 140 x 64 = 8,960 lbs even though only four times taller.
That difference in scaling between height and weight is what causes the problem.
**EDIT**
As Trish points out, the *area* of a cross-section of any equivalent part of the body goes up in proportion to the square. Thus if you chopped the human's and giant's arms off at the equivalent places, the area of the cross-section would be 4 x 4 = 16 times bigger for the giant. (Again this is assuming the giant is 4 times as tall as the human)
[Answer]
It's entirely reasonable for the giant to have proportionally thicker limbs. This will help him walk.
Consider a giant 2.5x the overall size of a human with 1.5x proportionally thicker limbs. He'll weigh roughly 2.5^3=15.6x what a human does, and have legs roughly (2.5×1.5)^2=14x thicker. A few handwaves about bone and muscle density and this should actually support him. Square-cube problems averted! (This is the only solution to these equations)
It also means that his finger radius will be 2.5×1.5=3.75x that of a human, just enough for his ring to be worn as an armband.
Why do giants who only need thicker legs also have thicker arms? Pleiotropy, aesthetics, evolutionary history, they crawl sometimes...
I think at 1.5x thicker limbs, the giant will still look human, just noticeably heavyset. You might want to get a 3d model and check that, though
[Answer]
If you are worried about scientific plausibility, make your hero a little boy who saves the giant. A normal man who saves a giant would be saving someone much stronger than himself anyway, so making the hero a little boy simply increases the fact that someone weaker saves someone stronger from a situation where strength is not enough.
And if you can't change the story enough to make the hero a little boy when he saves the giant, then remember this anyway and maybe have a child save a giant in another story sometime and be rewarded with something giant-sized, like a magical coronet that the kid uses as a hulu hoop.
So if you can make your kid about 8 to 12 and about 4 to 5 feet tall a giant that might be 3 to 4 times as tall as him might be about 12 to 20 feet tall and a bit more plausible than a giant 3 to 4 times as tall as a man 6 feet tall, and thus 18 to 24 feet tall.
This is especially important if your giant is not a nonhuman member of a different species, but supposed to be merely a very big human.
Another factor is variation in the width of human body parts. I happen to have thin wrists and small hands that aren't much wider than the wrists, so that I can squeeze my hands to only about 1.1 times the width of my wrists. But some men who are the same height as me have much bigger hands and thicker wrists and maybe thicker fingers and thumbs.
And if your giant is nonhuman he can have somewhat thicker fingers proportionally than a human.
PS I think I remember somewhere seeing solid objects made of some materials that are flexible enough to be pulled open and then allowed to close, so that if the giant's ring is made of such a material it could be pulled open and put around the hero's wrist and then released and allowed to snap closed around the wrist. I don't know how many times a metal ring could do that without getting metal fatigue and snapping, but probably both the giant and the smaller person intended to wear it for the rest of their lives when they put it on.
PPS I notice you say the hero saves the captured giant. Then either the hero is on the giant's side and sneaks into the enemy camp or fortress to do something like getting the keys and unlocking the giant's cell, or else the hero is a member of the enemy society, living in the enemy city or is present in the enemy armed forces, and maybe convinces or orders the others to make a deal with the giant and release him instead of burning the giant at the stake, or whatever.
And certainly there are many examples of children being present in military forces.
[Answer]
The average index finger is 1.6-2 cm in diameter. The average forearm is 24.3 cm in girth, or 7.7 cm in diameter.
The average adult male is 5'9.1" and 197.9 lb, therefore your giant is 22'2" to 27'8" and 11,300-22,060 lb.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9DQDZ.png)
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[Question]
[
In the following I consider "reality" to be "all the sensorial evidence a living being can obtain by interacting with its surrounding world".
I am setting up a world where two realities exist, but they are mutually orthogonal. To clarify this concept, look at the image:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gFC1X.png)
The thing A, projected on reality Y is different from a dot, therefore it exist in that reality and can interact with it. In reality X instead its projection is a point, meaning it cannot interact in any way with that reality and its entities. To make a long story short, reality X is non existent for A.
The thing B has the same, but with reversed outcome.
The thing C is a very rare case (1 in a billion or so) of something that can interact with both realities.
Now my question is: if A, B and C are sentient creatures, is there any way that C can prove the universe is structured in this way, or will he always be treated as a lunatic from both A and B? (The universe is not limited to the only A, B and C)
For the sake of clarity, reality X and Y are not geometrical directions. You may name them as "physical world" and "spiritual world" if it makes easier to grasp what I mean.
[Answer]
You ask a very deep philosophical question whose answer, over millennia of study by the likes of Aristotle, Pascal, and Popper is "dunno."
*You'll have to forgive me for this, but those who know me on WorldBuilding know "ask a deep philosophical question, get a wall of text from me in return," so forgive the length. It's so easy for world building to cover great swaths of philosophy in a single stride.*
Your question is a very generalized one, in the language of mathematics. However, it turns out even the specific examples are hard. You mention the "physical" and "spiritual" dimensions as one example of this structure. This is the source of one of the golden unanswered questions of philosophy: physicalism or dualism? The question is one of consciousness. Do you need some non-physical substance to be conscious? Typically this is given the name "mind" rather than "spirit," leading to the following definitions:
* **Physicalism** - Matter is the only substance in the universe. The mind is just an illusion.
* **Dualism** - Mind and matter are different substances. You cannot have consciousness without mind.
* **Idealism** - Mind is the only substance in the universe. Matter and the physical realm are just an illusion -- a shared dream.
I put idealism in the list to line up better with your A B and C groups, even though it is currently less popular than the other two. This particular trio of ideas has existed for thousands of years, without resolution. Philosophers cannot seem to figure out how a dualist can convince a physicalist that there's "mind," and a physicalist cannot convince a dualist that there is no "mind." They've been locked in disagreement for almost as long as we can remember.
One of the critical concepts for understanding why this disagreement is so difficult is the concept of something "supervening on another." "Supervene" is a great philosophical word which is used to describe behaviors which are completely explained by underlying behaviors. For example, "the boiling point of water" supervenes on lower level electrostatic attractions and molecular structures. If you understand the electrostatics and the shape of water molecules, you can perfectly predict the boiling point of water. In fact, you can explain what "boiling" is in general.
Physicalists claim consciousness *supervenes* on matter. They claim that consciousness can be completely explained by the physical state of the brain. Dualists disagree and say that there is *something* that cannot be explained by brain states, but they haven't been able to pin down what it is in a language which the physicalists can agree with. This inability to distinguish between the positions has lead to even a fourth category of thinking called ***compatabailism***, which suggests that we can never know whether the universe is made of one substance or two!
Another great problem of the same nature is the problem of Many Minds. If you assume you are conscious (either by the phisicalist or dualist concept of the word), how can you be sure other conscious entities exist? It turns out to be surprisingly difficult. One of the major challenges is the concept of **qualia**, which is your subjective experience of the world around you. Take the concept of "red." Are you certain what you perceive as "red" is the same as what everyone else experiences as "red?" Maybe you were born with "red" and "green" flipped, but then you were taught English and flipped the words as well. You'd never know that you'd flipped both the words and the qualia themselves unless you could somehow experience someone else's qualia. This takes your concept of orthogonal realities to an extreme. **This would suggest one separate reality for every conscious being in the world!** It's also an unsolved problem in philosophy. Nobody knows how to resolve the question of many minds.
Next on the great list of philosophical questions is what does it mean to "prove" something. You always prove something within a system of proof. For example, you may prove "2+1=3" using First Order Logic and the Peano axioms, which are the basis for arithmetic. This concept of proof is tricky because it is incredibly more precise than the day-to-day intuitive meaning of the word. For example, science never actually *proves* anything by the philosophical definition. All it does is try to reject hypotheses which seem false, until they are left with hypotheses that work so well that you *assume* they must be true (a process called abduction). Without a definition of "prove," you cannot answer such existence questions.
However, what you can do is unsettle existing theories of reality. Let's say we get really lucky and *two* individuals fit into group C. Science of type A could run experiments on them by separating then, feeding knowledge to one individual, letting them communicate through B, and the other individual repeating that same bit of knowledge. Do this enough times and you would demonstrate that either there is another orthogonal existence *or* the reality of A is non-local, permitting the two individuals to have telepathy. That's as close as it gets.
However, an alternative is that the realities may not be perfectly orthogonal. Given that some individuals do fit into group C, it seems very likely that the world of A has *some* connection to the world of B. It may be terribly terribly faint, but it's there. The world of A may be able to communicate with B, just weakly.
Of course, if this isn't true, then you have created another interesting problem: a demarcation problem. If you have an individual in group C, you now have to *define* what an "individual" is. It turns out that this is famously difficult. The line between one person and another is not all that clear when you get down to the molecular level. Your people in A now need to be able to explain why this person (in group C) suddenly has access to all this content that nobody in the rest of the world has, and more importantly, you as an author need to conceptualize where that boundary is.
If a person in group C forms a religion in world A, and people begin to truly believe in world B, what happens? Can C start "giving" them insight into world B? If I am a worshiper in world A, believing that world B exists, can some of the group C individual's abilities "wear off" on me? If the person in group C "dies," and we eat his body and drink his blood, do those atoms connect to world B? What about just breathing the same air as he breathes?
There's a good reason religious wars are fought over these complications. They're not easy questions to answer.
[Answer]
[*Esse est percipi*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley): to be is to be perceived. An "alternate reality" which has no interaction whatsoever with "our" reality has no existence.
If the special entity C can take objects from reality A and make them perceivable in reality B then yes, the existence of reality A can be proven to those who live in reality B -- and A and B form one single universe, and physics will have to be restarted from scatch, yay! (Because taking objects from reality A and making them available in reality B implies that energy is conserved only in the "total reality" A + B.)
If C cannot do it, then reality A *does not exist* for those who live in reality B.
[Answer]
Yes, to some degree, if he can find and cooperate with another such rare person, D.
Have B relay messages between C and D. After ruling out other explanations, A will have to either believe in the existence of reality X or telepathy. Since A has been convinced that *something* implausible is going on, he's likely to believe in reality X, assuming he can't see any reason for C and D to lie about telepathy vs. reality X.
Another possibility: If C can interact with objects in both realities, just take a table from either reality and stand on it. Either people in the other reality will have to swallow your explanation for it or believe that you can levitate. (Though if this were the case, this "demonstration" would presumably have happened automatically soon after C was born or gained his "powers", since the layouts of the realities are probably significantly different, and would pose interesting challenges, as mentioned in another answer wrt. cars)
This scenario also presents interesting challenges in interacting with the realities. Any time you interact with people in one reality, you will seem insane in one. I'd imagine it'd presumably be very hard to hold a job in both realities... (Which raises questions about food, which was touched upon by another answer)
[Answer]
I'm not sure the picture is helpful, but I think I get your concept.
Could a team from persons in A, B, and C create a scientific experiment to support the "orthogonal reality" hypothesis? This would be complicated that only people from C can talk with the entire team.
* Have a person in C demonstrate something to observers in B which is best explained by "having gone through" A.
* Have an experimental subject in C stay healthy on food and air from A, while interacting with B.
This would not prove alternate realities, but perhaps researchers from B will start to think of experiments consistent with the many realities. If all work, the theory will get support.
**That won't be proof, because science does not work that way.**
[Answer]
What you do, is get two Cs. A tells something to C1, who then tells B. B then tells C2, **who has had no contact with C1**(and so no way of knowing the original message) who then relays the original message to A. You then repeat the experiment with A's and B's roles reversed.
It is probably similar to a test for long-range telepathy (10-1000 m).
[Answer]
If A can interact with C and C can interact with B, then just by the transitive property A can interact with B.
Photons only interact with things that couple to the electromagnetic field, but we've learned virtually everything we know about the strong, weak, and gravitational forces of the universe by seeing things with our eyes. Whether it's from seeing a ball fly through the air, seeing something in a telescope, seeing the readout of some sensor in a particle accelerator, it's all come to us only via a particle that doesn't directly interact with the other fields.
Since there exist things that can physically interact with both worlds, they aren't actually separate. Not only would there be experiments to prove to A or B that the other exists, I would expect there to be technology made of C type material that could let A or B directly see or manipulate matter in the other "reality".
All you have to do is have A throw a rock at C's head while B is watching and it will quickly become clear something weird is going on.
[Answer]
***tl;dr-*** By saying that $\text{A}$ and $\text{B}$ are orthogonal, you've explicitly defined them as being unable to meaningfully interact. This question seems to be if this situation is even possible if we allow a mutually interactive $\text{C}$ between them. The answer is that, yes, $\text{C}$ can exist while $\text{A}$ and $\text{B}$ maintain complete orthogonality.
## Understanding an orthogonal reality is impossible by definition
No entity in $\text{A}$ could ever understand, know of, or meaningfully interact with an entity in $\text{B}$, even if an entity in $\text{C}$ attempts to serve as a bridge. If $\text{C}$ attempted to tell If $\text{A}$ or $\text{B}$ about the other, it'd be meaningless gibberish to their ear.
The issue is that minds are themselves physical entities, and cannot have any congruence with a fully orthogonal externality. Therefore, it is impossible for any mind in $\text{A}$ to reason about anything in $\text{B}$.
### Example: Orthogonal beings can't understand $1+1=2$
For a concrete example, consider $1+1=2$. Really easy, right? Your brain solves this question in two ways:
1. **Memorization**: You've seen $1+1=2$ a million times; so much so that, even if you didn't know what it actually meant, you could recite it.
2. **Understanding**: You know how numbers and addition work, and $1+1=2$ is really easy for your brain to reason out.
It's possible for $\text{C}$ to get $\text{A}$ or $\text{B}$ to memorize $1+1=2$, in the sense that $\text{C}$ can teach them to reproduce symbols that $\text{C}$ would recognize as representing $1+1=2$. But, if that fact's orthogonal to their reality, then they're unable to understand it, even if they've memorized the symbols that $\text{C}$ can interpret as that fact.
If $\text{C}$ *could* eventually teach $\text{A}$ or $\text{B}$ what $1+1=2$ means, i.e. addition, then they weren't fully orthogonal in the first place, violating the premise of the question.
### Note: $\text{C}$ is underdefined
In the question statement, $\text{C}$ is defined as not being fully orthogonal to either $\text{A}$ or $\text{B}$, enabling it to act as a mediator. However, this description could be true in several ways. For example, $\text{C}$ could be a strict superset of $\text{A}$ and $\text{B}$. In this case, $\text{C}$ can fully understand everything in both $\text{A}$ and $\text{B}$.
However, it's possible that $\text{C}$ only shares a single aspect in common with $\text{A}$, and a different, single commonality with $\text{B}$. In this case, while $\text{C}$ isn't fully orthogonal to either $\text{A}$ or $\text{B}$, it would be pretty close.
This isn't a problem for the question because $\text{A}$ and $\text{B}$ will never see each other as more than pure, random, senseless noise, regardless of $\text{C}$'s exact nature.
[Answer]
You might consider them to be more spacial dimensions, but that doesn’t work as I explained in [this earlier answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10666/interactions-with-higher-dimensions/10834#10834).
If the “realities” are different, then even if they intersect it won’t make any difference as they will ignore each other. A candidate for what that “reality” might be is a [D-Brane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-brane). If you posit that different branes don’t interfere with each other, we could still feel **gravity** from objects in other nearby branes.
[Answer]
It's good. But for psycological answer you can look to the "Flatland", sure, it's a bit dated, but human minds didn't changed that much about another dimensions. Also, it seems obvious that C live in its own realm (Z?), which at some point intersect X and Y. So, Z-aborigens have hard time with avoiding objects from X and Y realms, while their own buildings should take places in both realms.
Just to demonstrate, imagine you see a man, who walking down the street. He has hard time to cross the street, as he see both the cars you see, some other cars, invisible to you, he can't pass some empty spaces you see, as there are buildings, or other objects, in alternate realms. The only way they could prove the other realm — their inability to pass the objects from other realm. Try to drag him through the wall of another realm, it's painfull, but solid, as the wall, proof. Another way for C-creature — to realize there could be realm, which is not intersects any other realm, true Z axes in your diagram, where C is not intersects X and Y at all. With such a life I'm sure C's will escape ASAP to it.
[Answer]
**tl;dr** *There are multiple problems about defining the various parts of this question (like what a proof means in this scenario) and how the claims of the being existing in both realities might be interpreted by a sceptical person. But my personal verdict would be you can get the other being to believe in the other reality but you cannot proof it.*
*(I hope this post is not too long but I was a bit interested in these kinds of questions for world building myself so my answers are a bit lengthy.)*
I think the task of getting A to believe that reality X of B exists
gives C multiple different problems and as we are already talking
about different realities the solutions might in the end depend
heavily on properties of those realities and their inhabitants, that
are fundamentally different from our own or even your views on what
can be seen as a proof or what exactly needs to be proven.
There is the problem of how a physicist A would have to solve the task
in getting information about this other reality by proxy of C. But
there is also the problem of how a philosopher A would interpret it
and actually say the claim of C "there exists another reality from
this one" is true or false or any other claim of C about this other
reality of B for that matter because C wanted to prove not only
certain properties but the actual "structure" of the reality.
The problem with the philosopher A interacting and communicating with C
and interpreting the findings of physicist A is the following. When do
I say a "reality" "exists"? For example no matter what you tell me
about our actual universe with planet earth and everything I could
argue, that it is just made up in the back of my mind and none of the
persons I see really exist. But if I form the will in my head to stomp
my foot on the ground and my foot and leg move as if I had a foot and
a leg and they stomp on what looks like there is a ground that belongs
to the planet earth as if such a thing exists maybe you could say
reality exists but there is no actual proof of reality existing. There
is just the interpretation, that the things that I perceive are part
of a reality. This might sound like a non-issue for most of us but
depending on what kind of philosopher A is it might come to different
conclusions about these kind of claims especially because there
already is a reality that it calls its own so everything else is
either part of this reality anyway and is perceivable anyway or its
perception behaves as if it does not exist, so that might be important
if you think of A actually arguing with C about the reality of B.
I think what we should say is that this task of C to persuade A of
another reality can probably not solved by mere communication, because
all that would prove is that C talks to A as if there would be another
world for C to perceive but A would just tell C that it should stop
all this world-building in its head and get a real hobby.
But now to what would actually be the basis of all this philosophical
arguing about what might be non-sense or not. Physicist A has to start
its work and its object of interest is C. Now C has to be very
cooperative about all of this. Basically to get the best kind of
argument about the reality of B that A can only perceive "through" C A
has to analyze C in every conceivable way possible with the scientific
method.
The other answers speak about for example taking an object from the
other reality, but that would look to A only as if C can materialize
objects from thin air, which depending on the universe they live in
might be impressive or not but not a proof for a different reality
actually existing. Even if it would have properties that only things
in the other reality can have, A would not know that those properties
exist on the other reality. This would also have to be proven to A by
C. I guess you see the problem here, the properties would also just be
seen as being new in this world and created out of thin air, so there
still is no proof.
Now lets think about all the ways A could analyze C to figure stuff
out about the other reality of B. A could try to push C but if B stands
behind C and does not let C move A would be confused about that. If B
would heat up C so that energy seems to just come into existence
another thing about the laws of physics that A believed in might have
been just proven false. But A would as a physicist only think of those
things as things that it did not know before about its own reality and
it would think that C is a thing with special properties, but only in
this reality.
So the problem is, if A believes, that it can still figure out new
stuff about the world it will through C only find out more properties
about how C interacts with its own reality, everything as if C would
have its own rules but maybe not its own reality where there are
things like B that communicate with it in some way. Every form of
communication can just be seen as made up or popping into existence
from nowhere.
So A can use C to scan the other reality of B like a blind man scans
his surroundings with a stick, but the interpretation of its findings
might just be something scientifically sounding like:
"C reacts to some field that we cannot interact with directly, and
this field does not let C through as if the claim of C that there is
another person that I am trying to push C through is standing behind C
were true. And the field disappears sometimes as if the claim of C
that the person has gone away were true. But we cannot catch that
person that C is talking about because nothing in our reality except C
interacts with it, so the thing does not really act like a person,
more like a magical field, that sometimes pops up and sometimes goes
away, with some other rules i could find out about it that make its
behavior somewhat predictable. I will call this field the dark field
(because we can only perceive it indirectly like dark matter) and get
a nobel price for the weird properties I have found out about C and
some field that interacts with C. Maybe we will figure out more stuff
about that in the future"
So C cannot prove A that anything that is able to communicate with him
exists in a different reality, and for everything that does happen
with C in the other reality, A might interpret it in the simplest way
possible like "it just appeared out of thin air" but not like "it
appeared, so it must belong to a different reality and the people C is
talking to are real".
But A could also just call that a different world "the world of C" or
something like that. Or A could just stop being a sceptic and just
believe in the claims C is making as we do all the time in the "real"
world with our believes, but there would never be absolute proof for a
being communicating with C because even if as in a different answer
two things of the type of C would know something because B helped
would probably be interpreted as a direct form of communication
between the to C-like things but not as something like B being
here. That might just be the interpretation of C of what is happening
because C is hallucinating.
However if for some reason A knows with absolute certainty that some
things just are not possible in its world, because maybe A created
this reality and knows everything about it and its consistent logic,
then that axiomatic truth might be used to deduce that something
different must exist. But as far as I know at least we as humans have
no proof of anything existing at all we just take this fact as given
because it seems obvious.
So either A needs special information, that we cannot have or C needs
to be able to basically bullshit A into believing its lies. At least
other people in the reality of A would not know the difference between
the other reality existing or A just being really gullible and C
making stuff up.
But this is a weird topic to think about. I guess because of the
nature of thinking about alternate realities a lot of this stuff
depends on how something would be interpreted philosophically or what
type of assumption you could make about the basic logic of different
realities. So you maybe had to define what the consciousness of a
different being is and how it works together with things that are
objectively perceivable and maybe you could prove the existence of
communication with a different being that nobody else can
perceive. Although I myself would not be THAT sceptical if you would
only want to prove to me that somebody on the other side of the world
exists and we can communicate with that over the Internet with a
computer. So maybe talking about what a REAL proof is might be a bit
unnecessary. I believe things, that I have no REAL ABSOLUTE proof for
all the time. The medias I consume ARE my reality, if the things they
talk about exist or not and I behave as if those things exist, even if
the maybe don't. Maybe C would say that is proof enough, that I
believe in them and C should focus on making A behave as if the other
reality is existing. If A would have an incentive to believe the
claims of C, then A and maybe all other beings would act like that,
but now we are debating as what counts as "proof" if there is no other
absolute proof.
So to wrap up, there would through the scientific method and logical
deduction in a reality with the same logical rules as ours be no way
to absolutely proof the structure of the universe with two realities
existing and beings with consciousnesses and the ability to
communicate in both realities.
But I tried to include some possibilities for "alternative facts" in
other realities and some alternative ways of interpreting the claims
of somebody as "truth" then the scientific method and logical
deduction. I hope this helps and I did not go way too overboard with
my explanations.
[Answer]
I assume person A trying to persuade person B, and only person A can perceive the orthogonal reality and interact with it (but can't take any material objects or energy back except for memories).
A can still try to prove the orthogonal reality by asking 1000 people in orthogonal reality to factorize big numbers given to him by B and answering in seconds without any devices available to him.
[Answer]
If he can touch both realities then how does he choose which reality to touch. For example if his body is physically touching reality X then he might be going through a wall in reality Y which he could use to prove the existence of both realities. If you want him to touch both realities then both would have to look exactly the same (mountains, houses and other beings all in the same place), however there would be no point in having those realities.
If you however choose to limit his interaction in one of the worlds, like not being able to touch things in reality Y, then I think you'd have to go with [Aleksi Torhamo's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/70083/31746) and find someone else with the same perception and relay a message like (A > D > B > C) proving to A that there is a being B. This could be relatively easy if the world you're creating is similar to ours. Both people could meet up accidentally on a paranormal internet group or meet up at a paranormal investigation society.
[Answer]
Is this a similar concept to the [Apprentice Adept](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprentice_Adept) series by Piers Anthony?
>
> The series takes place on Phaze and Proton, two worlds occupying the same space in two different dimensional planes. Phaze is a lush planet of magic, where Proton is a barren mining planet of science. As the series opens, each person born on Phaze and Proton has an alternate self living on the other world. But if a person on either world lacks a duplicate (for instance if a Proton citizen immigrated there from another planet, or a counterpart from the opposite frame died), he can cross to the other through an energy "curtain" that circumscribes each frame.
>
>
>
[Answer]
As I pointed out in some comments, let **belief** do the trick.
Your question pretty much implies that creature C has to provide A & B in both their universes a tangible/perceivable proof (which sounds to me a lot like scientific method), but since the dimensions are orthogonal, each inhabitant of these planes would not have the possibility to glimpse the existance of "the others".
Let C be a creature A e B look up to (God?) in both worlds. Through belief of C's words, A could believe in B and vice versa.
Let me write an example: suppose my terrestrial life and the hell are orthogonal. Through religion I believe in the existence of hell, therefore I don't commit crimes or such in order to preserve my soul in the afterlife. By acting like I do, I am altering what happens/will happen in hell (I am wildly assuming that hell has no time). The two dimensions are entwined, but I never had the possibility to experience any proof about it being real.
[Answer]
The question answers itself. Its premise is that a proof can be communicated; its restriction is only that the proof must be convincing. Therefore, since the question contains sufficient data regarding mutually orthogonal universes to convince beings in its own frame of reference, the conclusion must be that any being in any frame of reference would be convinced by the same data.
[Answer]
Because C can interact with both X and Y, if C can determine a constant in X that is a variable in Y, and manipulates the variable within Y while A observes it in X, A will observe a constant become variable against all known laws of X, thus proving a property from Y, outside of X, exists. Vice versa for having B observe an effect from X.
Alternatively, have reality Z, perhaps called "quantum world" existing interactively in both X and Y and relationships are proven indirectly. What A does to affect Z by acting on N, changes things in Z that B in Y can observe, even though B cannot observe A or N. C, able to observe A and N, knows what will happen and tells B to watch for the observable change in Z before it happens. Thus A is proven to B.
] |
[Question]
[
Moon's surface is about thirty million square kilometers large. That's a lot of plastic, but no bigger effort than many other terraforming projects we have discussed.
Description:
A global bubble of plastic floating at a height of eight thousand meters over the moon's surface, sustained by an atmospheric pressure of 1 bar. Not much more advanced materials technology than the present.
Some questions:
1.- How to make it.
Would it be better to extend the plastic on the surface and then inject the gas? Or would it be better to place plastic sheeting in orbit and go creating a cocoon? This cocoon would then decay from the orbit for being sustained by the atmosphere.
2.- How to maintain it.
How long will an ordinary plastic or PVC last in the space? How long will take for an small meteoritic impact to have irreparable consequences if not fixed?
3.- How to live with it.
Best designs for access portholes. Best ecological choices for the lunar biosphere. Best social choices for a human society that would live in a near earthly, but low gravity environment with a monthly day-night cycle.
[Answer]
I saw several answers here close to what I wanted to say, but none of them quite do. So:
## Plastic Wrap Not Needed
If you supply the Moon with an atmosphere, that atmosphere will not be instantly lost to space. On human time scales the Moon holds most atmospheric gases quite well.
However, it will slowly bleed water away to space. So the important question is, "how long can the Moon hold onto its atmospheric water?" According to my calculations (table below), atmospheric water has a half-life of almost 400,000 years.
Half-life of gases on significant bodies:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R4GCR.jpg)
Key:
* Black letters, red background - gas half-life < $1 \cdot 10^8$ years.
* Orange letters, yellow background - $1 \cdot 10^8$ years < gas half-life
< $4 \cdot 10^9$ years.
* Green letters, green background - $4 \cdot 10^9$ years < gas half-life.
* Blue lettered "liquid" - substance is a liquid at these conditions.
* Green lettered "solid" - substance is a solid at these conditions.
* White letters, brown background - two phase solid/gas $4 \cdot 10^9$ years < gas half-life.
* Yellow letters, brown background - two phase solid/gas $1 \cdot 10^8$ years < gas half-life < $4 \cdot 10^9$ years.
* Red letters, brown background - two phase solid/gas gas half-life < $1 \cdot 10^8$ years.
* White letters, blue background - two phase liquid/gas $4 \cdot 10^9$ years < gas half-life.
* Yellow letters, blue background - two phase liquid/gas $1 \cdot 10^8$ years < gas half-life < $4 \cdot 10^9$ years.
* Red letters, blue background - two phase liquid/gas with gas half-life < $1 \cdot 10^8$ years.
**NOTE**: I consider the substance to be two phase when its partial pressure at these conditions exceeds 0.01 bar (1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure). Anything below that and the loss of gases to space will be significantly reduced due to the small amount of the substance in the atmosphere. Also because it was exceedingly difficult to find the conditions required for partial pressures lower than 0.01 bar for many of these substances.
So for a long-lived technologically sophisticated civilization, it may just be easier to periodically refresh the Moon's surface water inventory than to build and maintain a plastic wrapping.
## How to accomplish it anyway
Assuming you want to throw caution to the wind and construct the Moon's plastic wrapper anyway...
### Materials
Start with composite materials.
For the matrix material, you will want a durable plastic that's not reactive to either the conditions in space or the atmosphere. The plastic must also be transparent. [Something like this PVC (polyvinyl chloride) that's been mixed with a number of other plastics to make it inert.](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B007SPW0HG)
Then embed either glass (for transparency) or carbon (for strength) fibers. You'll want to lay-up the fibers at 60 degree intervals to accommodate stresses in all directions.
### Structure
Rather than making one continuous sheet of plastic across the Moon. Make this as a bunch of interconnected smaller domes. Select a standard dome size and make this the size of each segment.
Each dome will consist of a minimum of two layers of dome material. Separate the layers by about 32 feet. Fill the inter layer region with pure water. This provides your terraformed habitat with 3 essential things:
1. Radiation shielding.
2. Mass to counter (some of) the pressure of the atmosphere
3. A thermal reservoir to help mitigate some of the extreme temperature
swings from the 28 day long light/dark cycle.
Shape the structure so that the carbon fiber reinforcing strands reach down to anchor points in the Moons surface. The carbon fiber strands anchored to the surface of the Moon provide the rest of the necessary force to hold the gases in.
Each of the dome's sides will include something like "tent flaps". This allows a dome segment to retain atmosphere when an undomed (or depressurized dome) section is adjacent to it. But the flap will be raised when there is an adjacent dome and it is pressurized. Ideally the raising and lowering of flaps will occur automatically.
Domes will include anchor & sealing points on their exterior surface. This will allow a "dome" patch to extend from the 6 adjacent domes and cover a dome that has been damaged or needs maintenance.
### Construction
To construction this in sections, make each segment a hexagonal dome. As you add segments, attach them to the appropriate face the adjacent dome. When first added, the plastic layer will extend all the way down to the surface.
Making a tight seal with the surface of the Moon will be difficult. It probably requires a special construction effort to create a rim made of some concrete or plastic analog at the dome edges. This rim probably needs to extend down into the Lunar bedrock and be formed of an inert material too.
The designers & builders would embed airlocks in the dome rim structure so they wouldn't have to put holes in the dome structural materials. Each connection face would likely have at least one airlock connection.
### Timing
This is a massive effort. Before you finish the project, the original domes will probably require complete refurbishment. Some method of sealing domes away from the vacuum of space and each other must be included in the structure. That enables the construction crew to repair dome segments without total depressurization.
After completing a dome segment, the terraforming crew will pump the proper hydrospheric and atmospheric substances into the segment. Expect the Moon's surface to react, possibly violently, with the materials for a while. I presume that additional oxygen and water will need to be pumped back in after a time since the initial mix will likely react with the Lunar surface.
### Including "port holes" in the structure
Simply leave some hexagonal segments empty. Then the adjoining segments would provide the airlock facilities required to access the area of vacuum.
Similarly, industrial process which could take advantage of the vacuum of space, could leave adjoining segments empty too. However, if they're exhausting corrosive substances, the builders will want to coat the dome materials with extra substances to make it inert to the caustic materials being exhausted at that point.
### Living in this biosphere
Unfortunately, we really don't have any data for how things will do in this environment. Therefore, the biologists in charge of the effort might keep several of the domed hexagons sealed off from each other and experiment with different biospheres in each segment. Once the find some biospheres that work, then they might simply open the "tent flaps" and allow that one to spread across the surface.
Of course the main problem will be the day-night cycles. This will be extremely difficult for the plant life to live with. Therefore, the domes will likely possess an artificial light source to provide light during the long lunar night.
The temperature extremes will also pose a problem. The water trapped between the two dome layers will help but won't solve the problem. Including large bodies of water (water filled craters, anyone?) will help moderate temperatures but probably the Lunar surface will require additional heating and cooling. I expect the dome structures as I've envisioned them to interfere with natural atmospheric convection that might otherwise help moderate those temperatures. However, the surface could have built in heat pumps. During the long day, they exchange heat between the surface and the bottom of nearby crater-lakes - cooling the surface. During the long night, they do the same in reverse - heating the surface.
## Fluffy Lunar Atmosphere
Because the Moon's gravity is so much less than Earth's, the Moon's atmosphere will be much deeper. You will also need 6x the mass of atmosphere in a column to make the same pressure that you see on Earth. What this means is that the Moon requires nearly the same mass of gases as the Earth does for a given pressure.
* Earth's atmosphere mass = $5.1 \cdot 10^{18}$ kg
* Moon's atmosphere mass (for 1 bar pressure) = $2.3 \cdot 10^{18}$
In fact, the Moon's atmospheric profile ought to look very similar to Titan's (at least the pressure would - probably need to add ~200 K to the temperature though):
Titan Atmosphere Profile
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WzUr6.jpg)
[Answer]
**Actually, there are multiple reasons it can't be done as you hoped**
Trying to make a single air-supported structure to cover the entire moon is a rather insane idea. For safety and other reasons, large areas would be necessarily be broken into a (possibly connected) series of pressurized areas. Losing pressure (planned or accidental) would limit the affected area. Some maintenance would certainly be required, and that implies depressurization in some cases -- replacing an old section, etc.
Building in sections is also a huge advantage in that you don't have to pay to envelop the entire moon at one time; you can pay as you go while you expand. The 8000 meter high is a pretty strong constraint on the smallest individual dome size (as the vertical extent is 8000m, as you would probably want the horizontal dimension to be at least 8000m, so you are probably 100 sq. km. or so for the individual domes -- thus you need about 380,600 domes to cover the moon.
We have zero experience trying to make such large structures, esp. for huge [air supported structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-supported_structure). While this does not necessarily mean it can't be done, it will certainly raise the difficulty of doing so.
Your suggested internal air pressure is far in excess of the air pressure actually used in existing inflated structures (well over 100 times as great). This actually is a huge problem too; even a 1 km square structure would require impossible strength to keep the roof (or the sides of the dome) from destruction as it would have a net lift of over 10 million tonnes.
Standard PVC does not have near the operating temperature range that you would need for lunar use. -- it becomes soft and distorts, and may even melt at the top daily lunar temperature (2 week long days and nights).
Even without temperature softening problems, PVC would not last long due to oxygen degradation from the inside of the dome, esp. at high temperatures that accelerate the oxygen reactions, and photo degradation from the abundant ultraviolet light during the day. Micro-meteors and ablation from solar wind won't help the dome much either.
Other materials would be more durable, but are going to be more expensive and likely require more research. For example, glass has many desirable characteristics including transparency at visible wavelengths. Some modern flexible glass display materials might serve or could be adapted. On a large scale, air pressure could certainly be able lift such a structure, were it not for the high pressure that would destroy it.
Even if you make a pure oxygen atmosphere at 15% of standard atmospheric pressure, the internal pressure will still destroy any huge pressure supported structure. You could (as is actually done with some such structures), build internal support bracing that connects to the roof, but this is rather far from your stated design, i.e., it tends toward a more typical rigid roof design, esp. given the high pressures required for a breathable environment.
Just thought of another big problem -- the huge windstorms inside the dome. Due to the month long days and corresponding temperature changes, there will be very active internal storms systems.
**To be specific re: your questions.**
1) How to build -- no need to bother, since it will break apart once you try to inflate it
2) How to maintain -- you must build it in sections, or invent new tech to repair your roof in situ, but for safety you must build it in sections. Actually, even when built in sections, you will still want the automated repair bots to handle most of the maintenance without closing the sections.
3) Any sort of airlock design would be acceptable for access to the pressured region. Presumable a mix of large and small airlocks of various designs would ultimately be desirable.
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How about a better idea. It would be better just be forget the dome entirely, and just add an atmosphere to the moon.
8000 meters worth of atmosphere means you already have a significant fraction of the atmospheric mass needed for the whole moon. On earth, about 65% percent of the atmosphere is in the lowest 8000 meters. Due to the lower lunar gravity, the pressure drop with altitude will be slower than on earth, but if you add enough air, you eventually get a nice breathable atmosphere with earth normal pressure at ground level.
Sure, it leaks into space, but the rate will slow enough to be usable perhaps. Some people have calculated that you would only need to top off such a lunar atmosphere only once per 10,000 years or so. You could add a solar wind shield to the moon to slow the rate of air loss too, though there is disagreement on how much difference it actually makes.
Terraform the moon by dropping plenty of comets, etc. selectively to get the lunar spin back to a decent day duration that provides the oxygen, nitrogen, etc. If you have high enough tech, you get all the oxygen you needed from a icy comets, moons, etc. You also want inert gas to add to the overall mass of the atmosphere. There is probably no better choice for this than nitrogen and there is plenty of ammonia on some planets, moons, and comets to fill this need.
There are a few big complications, once you add atmosphere, the oxygen will start reacting with the existing lunar surface -- think lots of rust being formed, so you many need to wait a few thousand years after initial terraforming for things to settle down. That's not too bad, since you have to wait a long time for the moon to cool from the cometary bombardment anyway.
But, wouldn't it be grand to look up in the sky and see another blue marble.
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**It will crash into the planet if not supported.**
In addition to the problems other people have listed, the air present inside your bubble won't stop it from crashing into the planet. The air on the 'day' side of the planet will start to expand from the heat, while the air on the 'night' side contracts due to cooling. This will create a significant net force on the bubble, pushing it towards the sun.
While the air inside the bubble will slow its collapse, it will not stop it. Air will stream from the cold side of the bubble to the warm side, ripping up buildings on the surface and throwing around boulders with sustained, hurricane force winds. Then, the plastic on the cold side of the moon will slam into the surface, crushing any remaining structures before rupturing. The force of the moon stopping the plastic from moving further will then propagate across the plastic on the sunny side as a shockwave, which will grow progressively stronger and more concentrated as it moves across the sunny side, which will rupture, crack, and break apart, releasing the rest of the trapped air into space. Some bits of the plastic sphere will likely reach escape velocity and fly off into space, possibly towards Earth where they will cut swathes of destruction through our orbital satellites before burning up in the atmosphere. The rest of the plastic will fall back to the surface of the moon, where it will form a clear plastic sarcophagus for the lifeless corpses of the once-hopeful lunar settlers who once tried to live beneath it.
TLDR: Plastic falls. Everybody dies.
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You might run into another problem. Even if you have no holes air will gradually pass through a thin sheet of plastic. Even over the course of decades you'd lose a hell of a lot of air through it.
Also seconding the people saying it's not strong enough. Imagine the effects of some air getting heated in one spot. You end up with a plume 8KM high. at the top it hits the plastic and distorts it upwards, it could be doing it over thousands of square miles. the plastic would be rippling like waves on the surface of the ocean but at larger scales. PVC would disintegrate from all the constant pulling in different directions even if it somehow survived the forces involved in the first place.
I would suggest something a lot more modest. Perhaps a few thousand square miles of reinforced airtight greenhouses on the lunar surface.
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To create what you suggest will take far more advanced technology than a bubble of plastic.
First of all, plastic isn't a suitable material anyway, lacking strength, being susceptible to breaking down due to the action of oxygen and ultraviolet light as well as temperature extremes and generally permeable to air.
The substitute will have to be far stronger and more stable. I would suggest using diamond as the substrate, and possibly one or more over layers of materials like gold to protect the diamond from oxygen and reflect some of the unwanted solar energy from the Moon. This would still resemble a thin, flexible sheet on the scale we are talking about.
The next issue is that there needs to be active control. The sheets of diamond might be held together with flexible graphine gaskets, which have some sort of electrical or mechanical controls to adjust for deflections from the atmosphere below. Further control would have to come from a elaborate system of tethers to the surface, which help keep the bubble overhead at a constant altitude.
The natural circulation of the atmosphere might also need to be adjusted, since the "hot spot" at local noon will deliver a huge amount of energy into the atmosphere, causing potentially hurricane force winds. Selectively adjusting the reflectivity would keep the temperature extremes more reasonable. On the cold side, the opposite problem would occur, as heat leaks from the atmosphere into space. The bubble might have to have multiple layers to provide insulation from both heat and cold, and active circulation of fluid between the layers to equalize temperatures.
OF course, even without a bubble covering the entire moon, the Moon has enough gravity to hold an atmosphere for tens of thousands of years on its own, longer than any recorded civilization on Earth.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SoIV8.jpg)
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Everyone is forgetting the biggest hazard on the moon - radiation. Without a magnetosphere, the moon is constantly bombarded by huge amounts of radiation from the Sun. and PVC is not particularly good at shielding from the intense radiation you'd be getting. There's a reason the Apollo missions were all relatively short and nobody got to go more than once. Your best bet for long term colonization is heavily shielded underground bunkers. Granted it's not as sexy as walking around in the open air on the surface, but it's far more viable.
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`Ordinary plastic` like [PVC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_chloride#Mechanical_properties) would not have the necessary strength to resist either an inflation or an orbit maneuver for scales of that size.
This means that if you pulled one part (or even several) of the plastic piece it would not move the entire piece. It would just rip apart.
Assuming that this plastic piece was already somehow in place notice that 1 Bar is almost the pressure we have, on Earth, at sea level. This is quite a bit. For your structure to support itself without collapsing (it would be in free fall after all) it would need to orbit the moon at speeds far from [Selenosynchronous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit) orbit requirement (I doubt 8000 meters is enough). In any case this isolation "plastic" would rip apart with the forces produced by the speed difference between plastic surface and moon surface.
I do not think you can get away with using such a conventional material, or such a simplistic (one piece?) structure, for such an unconventional use. Neither the implementation or maintenance would work. Off the top of my head I would say the deterioration would be immediate.
I think pursuing this idea in similar molds to the ones you have stated would require other type of structure (or composition of structures).
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While it's certainly not practical there's a fix that addresses most of the points brought up in this thread:
Put your sheet of material and then on top of it put 10 meters of water and then another sheet to keep that from boiling away into space.
Radiation: You'll have less than on Earth.
Strength: No super materials needed--the net force on the inner sheet is zero, the net force on the outer sheet is only the vapor pressure of the water--and you can keep it just above freezing to keep this down. The water balances the pressure of the atmosphere underneath, the outer layer can be heavy enough to balance the vapor pressure. You only need support to keep things in place.
Micrometeors: They'll be absorbed in the water. A little hole gets punched in the upper sheet that has to be repaired, that's all.
We still don't have a good construction material for the sheets and the sheer scale of the project is far beyond anything we could do at present. A water roof would be far more practical over a crater than over the whole moon.
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One thick sheet of plastic strong enough to hold back 1 bar isn't going to be very practical, as other answers point out.
(source for this idea: [Neal Stephenson's Seveneves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves).)
Some (**but not all**) of the problems can be addressed by a design using multiple layers of plastic, like an onion. The pressure differential between any two layers is small. This means each layer is thin enough to fold. It also has the huge advantage of defence in depth and maintainability. You can remove and replace one layer without a huge increase in pressure on the other layers.
The whole moon is too big to depressurize quickly through a meteor puncture. You'd need to make sure you used a material where holes don't grow quickly from the force of air rushing out through it. You need to patch the outer layer before the pressure differential on an inner layer gets too big.
1 bar of air pressure is enough to hold up a layer of water 62m thick, there's no chance of using enough material for the weight to actually balance the pressure, whether we use *many* layers of plastic, or just several thick-ish layers. It will take a huge amount of material, but maybe less than with one thick layer.
(Water has a density of $1000 kg/m^3$, and thus on the moon a weight of $1.62 \cdot 1000 N/m^3$. $1 bar = 100kN/m^2$, which is enough pressure to hold up a layer of water $62m = \frac{100kN/m^2}{1620N/m^3}$. Note how the units mostly cancel out, leaving just meters.)
Tether the inner layer to the ground. Stopping it from getting too far away anywhere will also stop it from getting to close on the other side. Tethering the outer layers to each other may not be necessary, other than at airlocks, since it doesn't really matter how the outer layers move around relative to each other.
It would even be possible to have bladders of water sewn in so the weight could help balance some of the pressure. (This probably works better with a single thick layer than with many thin layers, so maybe think of this as more of an alternative idea.) This works as meteor and radiation shielding, too. (But this idea is much more feasible for a local dome than a moon-enclosing bubble.)
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Everybody so far is forgetting one simple problem: meteorids. There is a plenty of them, they are fast (50 km/s) and they will shred your plastic cover to pieces.
According to [this astronomer researching asteroids hitting Moon](https://www.quora.com/How-often-do-meteoroids-hit-the-Moon) asteroid 30g or bigger will hit in average area size of Hong-Kong every year or so.
So yes, even if you can wrap the Moon, wrap will not last. Earth is protected by the atmosphere (meteroids will burn), Moon - not so much.
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It is impossible to make a spherical bubble of that size. Many small bubbles may be more feasible for several reasons.
Consider an arbitrarily long inflated cylinder. The tension in pounds around a short ring is the pressure (say, 14.7 pounds/square inch) times the width and circumference (in inches). When this ring becomes large, it will rupture. Physics doesn't allow arbitrarily large inflated habitats.
But that doesn't mean you can't have inflated domes across the surface.
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Where you gonna get enough nitrogen to make the air? The lunar regolith is nearly 50% oxygen, but whence the nitrogen? You would need an ammonia-rich asteroid so large that hitting the Moon with it would split the Moon open and shower the Earth with dinosaur-killing fragments. Even a simple concrete dome with a 1:4 height-to-width ratio and 1 kilometer in diameter (vastly smaller than your idea) would require about 100 million cubic meters of nitrogen. An asteroid that size hitting at a speed of 3 klicks per second (slightly over escape velocity) would make a bang in the near-one kiloton range. A mini Hiroshima. And that's for one little dome a kilometer across. Domes, in general, don't work on the Moon unless you have a lot of free air. They are very wasteful of air. And this 'wrap it in plastic' idea is like a dome on super-steroids. Completely un-doable.
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When reading fantasy novels, I have as a rule been left with the impression that exact timekeeping is either avoided as a topic, or referred to only vaguely and obliquely. In many cases, the author would freely use "hours" as a metonymy for a part of the day spent doing something, however never actually imply that these hours can be counted and consist of minutes and seconds, or let his elven queen invite the orc delegates to convene in her throne room at precisely 10.30 in the morning for trade negotiations.
It is true that for most intents and purposes in a medieval fantasy world, the protagonists can safely and realistically use dawn, morning, noon, etc. when referring to the time of day, just as our ancestors in the real world didn’t need to worry that they will oversleep for the autumn harvest or be late for an evening round of beers at the local inn. Still, I believe that a developed fantasy society does need to keep track of time and that there are situations when coordination of efforts between numerous persons is essential and can only be achieved if people have a way of keeping exact time.
In my opinion, simply transferring our timekeeping system into a fantasy world seems lazy and, most of all, robs this world of its rugged romanticism and faux historic flair. Yet in order to be believable and feel natural when referred to in prose, this system needs to convey the sense that it has developed organically in the course of the world’s history. Therefore I ask you:
***What is a realistic way of creating a unique timekeeping system for a fantasy society that is mainly high to late medieval in its phase of development?***
*(The planet of this world is identical to Earth from an astronomical perspective, so there’s no need to account for anything strange and exotic in the day/night cycle. There is also no magic whatsoever.)*
Thank you in advance for your thoughts.
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If I understand the question correctly, you’re asking how you as a worldbuilder might go about developing a flavorful, plausible, not-insanely-unwieldy timekeeping system. In addition, it appears that the various societies in your world more or less agree about the system. What follows are some practical suggestions for something of a step-by-step, noting a number of the more significant choices you might make along the way. There are other ways of doing this, of course—this isn’t a question that can be answered definitively—but I hope this may be helpful.
# Sexagesimal Thinking
As several have noted already, sexagesimal numbers are exceedingly convenient for quick calculation, because 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. This naturally lends itself to divisions of 12 & 5, thus the division of our clock face into 12 blocks of 5 minutes, our 12 months of the year, and so forth.
I suggest that you keep to something like this. The obvious alternative is a lunar calendar, as traditionally used in China and its broad area of influence (among other places), but you have to understand it clearly enough that you can use it fluently and fluidly in passing conversations among characters.
A further point of pragmatism: since your readers will almost certainly assume a sexagesimal solar calendar and timekeeping system, the only reason to draw a great deal of attention to your system is if it is much different. And yet, if you already had a great idea for how the weird calendar system was going to be a big deal in your world, you wouldn’t be asking this question. So I think what you want is window-dressing on a sexagesimal system. It’s easier for you and for the reader.
# The Twelve
Start by coming up with an arbitrary list of images or objects to fit the 12 Zodiac signs. They don’t have to be animals: they could be plants, for instance. I think it will be a bit easier for the reader to follow if you are consistent (all animals, all plants, etc.), but there’s no reason you have to do it this way if you prefer not.
It may be convenient and elegant to come up with a sort of story in which each of the 12 signs leads naturally to the next. This can also provide extensive flavor-material for mythology and whatnot.
For the sake of high precision, cut each item in three parts: head, body, tail; blossom, stem, root; etc. It needs to be clear to you which end comes first.
You now have a complete system of **decans**. These label every ten-degree arc of a complete circle: lion-head, daisy-stem, etc. Under normal circumstances, however, everything will be labeled by the main image (hour of the lion, month of the daisy, etc.).
# Cutting the Year
The year is traditionally cut at the four “corners”: the vernal and autumnal equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices. These are very readily observable with a low level of precision necessary, and have been known around the world since Neolithic times. The only reason to remove them from your calendar is because you have some clever idea about that—in which case, again, you’d not be asking this question. So we can assume that the year has four corners.
Now you get more choices:
1. Does each corner begin or end something? (Begin and end are of course chronologically the same, but they are conceptually quite different.)
2. At what point does the Zodiac begin? (Since the Mesopotamians, it begins at the vernal equinox, but you can pick any corner.)
Line up your 12 zodiac signs with the proposed rough calendar. You may wish to tweak this or that sign to fit well with the relevant season, but since that’s not the case on earth, it may be best to leave the list apparently incoherent to the seasons.
One more choice:
3. What happens to intercalary dates?
This system presumes that there are exactly 360 days in a year, and there just ain’t. And your medieval society knows that. So what do they do about it? There are many options, such as:
* Add one festival (or penitence) day right before or right after each corner, plus one more at the very end of the year cycle, plus another every four years.
* Add five days at New Year’s, plus one every four years. (This is probably the most popular option, historically, and lends itself to really exciting and complex New Year rituals—great stuff for more flavor!)
* Make a dramatic adjustment every six or twelve years, or some other convenient unit, by adding a whole month somewhere.
* Add a special counting number to each year’s name, and make a dramatic adjustment—skip a year, most likely—when this counting number reaches X (probably 6, 7, or 12, but possibly something else). Thus this year is 3-Lion. This will tend to make your months get way out of whack with the seasons, which is less of a problem the closer to the equator you are.
Note that *every* intercalary system is a nod to practicality, making the system more usable by normal people. People whose job it is to study the stars—astrologers, for one, but also navigators and possibly many others—will need to use the *celestial* year that always runs equinox to equinox.
# Cutting the Day
This is just a matter of deciding what the major unit is. Two-hour watches have been convenient and useful around the world for much of human history, so you might want to just stick to that. These can and should be named for your zodiac signs, in the same order, but you do need to decide what “zero” is. That is, does the day begin at midnight, sunup, sundown, or noon (to list the most obvious choices)? Midnight and noon have the advantage of being consistent, but are a pain in the tail to use practically. Sunup and sundown are easy to use, but they have an infuriating habit of drifting. As with seasonal calendars, you may want to think how close these folks live to the equator, because the closer they are, the easier it is to use the sun.
Counting these is easy enough: water clocks, sundials, hourglasses, marked candles.
# Houses
This may seem like an unnecessary refinement, but a House system is a great way to add flavor and depth without making things more difficult for you. If you’re not trying to do precise astrological calculations (and I assume you’re not!), the House system really amounts to nothing more than labeling the sky with hours. You know how you might say “enemies coming in at 9:00,” and that basically means “from your right”? Same deal, only vertically. Due east is 0:00, straight up or down is 6:00, straight west is 12:00, and straight down or up is 18:00.
In the western system developed by the Mesopotamians, **down** is 6:00, and **up** is 18:00. This is because whatever is currently at 6:00 will rise on the eastern horizon in six hours, and so on. But for purposes of flavoring your world system, it makes no difference: you could reverse up and down, and while you’re at it you could focus on the western (setting) horizon rather than the eastern (rising) one. Take your pick—four options.
Since your hours/watches are named, this means that people used to paying close attention to the sky may remark that they see the moon “in the house of the Lion” or the like.
# Explanation
Don’t. It’s not necessary, and it’s very hard to justify. How often have you heard someone have a conversation about the nature and structure of the calendar and time system we use? That’s about how often it should happen in your world too.
The thing is, if you’re absolutely consistent about it, the whole thing will start to hang together by itself. And here and there, there are some opportunities for a little fleshing out:
1. An ordinary person and a sailor try to set a time for the attack. The sailor says he’ll start the attack when the moon enters the Lion’s house, and the ordinary person will say he’s got no idea what the sailor is talking about. The sailor now has to explain very simply, without justification: east is Zebra, straight up is Bullock, west is Crab, so Lion is from just east of straight up, so entering the Lion’s house is when the moon gets to 20 degrees east of straight up (you can come up with another term for “degree” if you choose, remembering that they’re using the things anyway).
2. An astrologer gets all mystic-weird about crossings and paths and houses and decans and whatnot. He won’t really explain, but in the process of his making it sound like he’s being coherent (if perhaps pretentious), he’s going to use a lot of terminology that the reader has seen in passing before.
Remember that the fine details are irrelevant, but their consistent application will give a little flesh to the bare bones. And because the system is actually, behind all the window dressing, essentially identical to what we’ve been using for the last 3000+ years, it will all seem eerily comprehensible even without explanation.
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First you need to understand that the concept of time that we have today is only about 200 years old. We didn't have time that was shared with more then a handful of people until the [popularity of the train made it a requirement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_time). Until that time, a community would have one "master clock" that everyone else would set their "little" clocks by.
Even then, modern time keeping didn't exist till maybe 50 years ago, when it became more important for two parties to do a thing at the same time. Computers and other time pieces that share information ( the ability to sync a clock) is very very new, even in our world.
Back when a community ran on a shared clock (usually at the town hall or other important civic building), people would set a schedule by it. However that schedule was only important to the people in range of that clock. Everyone else just used a generic time like "Next Tuesday Morning" instead of 9am Tuesday.
Now back in your world, what you need is a reason to have time exist in more then one location. The real trick is why do you need that, and how are people going to track it. How are they going to sync it? What needs to be done at such a precise time that it's worth that effort? Remember that until very recently, everyone not sitting next to a community clock still just used sun up, noon, morning, etc. And two people sitting next to different clocks could be hours off.
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Clocks are not the only way to keep track of time.
I think we all agree that the purpose of clocks is to synchronize the activity of multiple people over an area. We like to say things like "At 12:30 I will go to the store." However, is is also possible to synchronize actions based on events. "I will go to the store after the Blacksmith I am apprenticing finishes eating his lunch." One can synchronize that way.
Consider the courts in fantasy capitols. Time can be managed by the flurry of movement of paiges letting people know how the audience with the queen is going. In fact, in many cases, this is a more effective approach to timekeeping. How many times have you had a 30 minute meeting that becomes a 4 hour discussion? It happens often enough that flexibility in time is useful.
This works well until you need people who aren't interacting to all convene at the same time. Then you need something more synchronous. Often the town bells may be used to provide such a synchronous moment for all people. In Islamic countries, they could syncrhonize to the Muezzin calls, 5 times a day.
In the end, clocks are needed when you must synchronize many arbitrary events at many times of day, over long distances. That calls for an absolute sense of time, and if you need that, you need a clock. However, if your fantasy culture doesn't need quite that much synchronicity, time may be defined by particularly important events to the people of the area. Many school children learn to tell time of day by how many recess bells they hear, long before they learn to read a clock. Such a culturally specific form of synchronization could fit the bill.
In the other extreme, farm life is not all that dependent on exact timing. You may find that sunrise and sunset are sufficient to synchronize farmer life. It all just depends on the individual culture.
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Clocks have a deep and long history on earth. Sundials were used by ancient egyptians over 3000 years ago, and whilst sundials are deceptively simple, they are a very accurate way to tell time. The list goes on and on, candle clocks, hourglasses, astronomical clocks (which the sundial is technical a part of)...If there's one thing humans figured out pretty good in ancient times it was how to quantify and tell time.
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As others have already noted, it wasn't often expected during the medieval ages of various Earth cultures that one have a precise idea of "what time" it is.
But let's assume that this is a very punctual medieval society.
The most obvious way to tell time is to deduce it from the position of the sun or other celestial objects. This has very compelling advantages over other possibilities:
* Everyone in the world sees the same sun, and everyone in a large region sees largely the same stars.
* No special equipment is required to see the sun or stars, though some simple contraptions can help time-telling accuracy.
* The sun is (almost) always visible during the day, and its granularity of movement is absolute. In other words, during the day, you can always use the sun to tell what time it is.
* No randomness.
Since you mentioned that this world is very Earth-like, I don't think it's likely for time systems to develop that are not anchored by the positions of celestial objects, as such systems do not appear common on Earth (I'm unaware of any).
Handheld sundials did get some use (mainly by the upper class) in medieval times on Earth. Another possibility, easier to construct, is an astrolabe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ltQW1.gif)
An astrolabe typically manifests as a small tube with a protractor attached to it and a weight hanging from it. By aiming the tube at the sun (don't look through it!) or a star, you can use the hanging weight to find that object's altitude. And if your system of timekeeping happens to be based on that object's altitude, then you know the time, too (you may also need to know the day of the year since a star's path through the sky depends on that).
Time would probably be defined in terms of the sun during the day, and a particularly bright star during the night, preferably one that is distant from the celestial poles since circumpolar stars and other stars near to a pole don't appear to move as much. However, the stars that do move don't just move throughout the night, but also throughout the year, such that you may only see a particular star during autumn and winter but not during spring and summer.
Of course, this is a fantasy world, so we wouldn't have degrees on our protractor. We would have zodiac symbols or whatnot, and the position of the hanging weight would tell us that we are halfway through the hour of the lion.
In a city, it is likely that bells would be used to help people keep track of time. Since this is a particularly punctual society, there might be one bell to chime the hour, and another to chime how many periods of perhaps 5 minutes have passed since the start of that hour. This would mean a lot of chiming, but no one would have an excuse for being late.
In the case of a city using bells to *announce* the time, they still of course need a way to *tell* the time, and this could also be done based on the position of stellar objects, or they might have some other mechanism that allows them to do so. This could be a giant hourglass, a pendulum, or a water clock. There are many possibilities there, though even these time telling means would likely need to be occasionally synced with the time as represented by the positions of celestial objects. Methods like this are especially important on cloudy nights when the stars are not visible.
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What you need to do is go back to the time period in question and just do what they did.
The simplest form is a stick in the ground as a sundial.
There's also the 12 hour day option. When the sun rises it's 6am, noon is noon, sunset is 6pm. There are always 12 daylight hours, always 12 hours of darkness. The fact that the hours are of variable length doesn't matter, that's just how the day runs. It also doesn't matter that this measure of time only applies over a very small area, there's no form of long distance travel or communication over which mere hours matter.
Here's some further reading on the matter:
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sundials-Theory-Construction-Albert-Waugh-ebook/dp/B00A3YES4M>
Yes, a real paper book.
The reason accurate timekeeping is a subject not mentioned in medieaval periods is that it just isn't a thing. Only daylight matters. Things happen, one after the last, from first light until it's too dark to see, it really doesn't matter what time it is (until you need to navigate the open oceans).
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Timekeeping in the Middle Ages was actually rather situational, as alluded to in some of the other answers.
For the farmers and serfs working the land, the cycles of the sun dominated the day to day work, weeks for markets and festivals and the seasons for the major events like harrowing and planting, campaigning season (when you might get called up to fight a war, or protect your crops), harvest and winter (where a lot of the repair and preparation work happened).
In the towns, there was a bit more need for time keeping, as you might need to coordinate several people meeting at the same time to buy and sell stuff, plot against the king or make a private transaction of some sort. Even then, the daylight hours would probably be divided into quarters, i.e. sunup, midmorning, noon, mid afternoon, sunset.
In the most highly regulated parts of the society (not economy), timekeeping became much more important. Monasteries were the places where you would be most likely to find clocks of various sorts (water clocks, "candle clocks" or even primitive mechanical clocks) in the European Middle Ages in order to ensure the members and lay members attended the regular cycle of prayers and devotions in the Christian day. Monasteries and churches would also ring bells at set times to remind the townsfolk when it was time to pray, come to church and perform other spiritual tasks, although obviously not as often as inside the church or monastery itself.
Modern timekeeping as we understand it only became important as people began carrying out long distance travel (calculating latitude and longitude requires accurate astronomical instruments and clocks, hence the introduction of naval chronometers), and synchronizing schedules for railway traffic on land. This is far beyond the middle ages, naval chronometers needed large advancements in technology and didn't become possible until the 1700's, while the idea of standard time and time zones needed for railway scheduling didn't appear until the 1800's.
In the Middle Ages, we can continue to debate the subject until the forenoon....
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In villages you didn't care. "After Breakfast" was good enough. If you were early, you checked out the 2-3 places the person might be.
In monasteries, it was common to use candle clocks, water clocks, and hour glasses to keep track of the hours for the daily Offices
A town would have a church tower that rang hours, and later on a clock with a single hand. Then quarter hours could be rung too.
Even in small roman catholic towns the Angelus was rung, approximately at 6, 12, and 6, dividing up the day.
The university where I grew up had a carolin that rang Westminster chimes every hour from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. As a boy growing up, the 8 p.m. was my signal to be home, later moved to 9 on warm summer evenings.
Think too of how a school works, with bells ringing for classes. I worked for years in a boarding school. Most of the boys didn't have watches. One boy, with a watch, was appointed to ring bells. Other boys, who wanted a short period would sometimes sit on them, usually earning themselves a spanking from the duty master.
Not all bells were on strict time marks. There was a bell for each meal which wasn't rung until the servers were ready.
Another way to look at your problem: How do we send a signal across a wide area with small amount of effort. Cannon fire -- the noon gun. Signal rockets. Drums (Google lambeg) (google pow wow drums) (google taiko drums.)
The best example I can find right now is: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsKqBy2uJ34> The youtube vids do NOT capture the intensity. Both are felt as much as heard.
Gongs. Alpenhorns.
There is a reason that bugles or valveless trumpets are used for signalling on the pre-radio battlefield. You could actually hear them over the din. Having a castle above the town with a troop of trumpeters on the hour could coordinate time very well.
General observation: Lower pitches travel further, and do better with obstacles
Remember too, if using sound signals, that you have a 5 second per mile (3 sec per km) delay.
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Even in industrial age, like the town I grew up in, in the past the only way to tell time was by the factory siren, telling people the shift was over - like a medieval belltower ringing vespers etc. Sundials are not too useful since you need sun, so that they do not work in cloudy weather, and of course only in daytime; without some sort of outside announcement most people would have little idea (clocks used to be really expensive even when they existed) what time it is, other than morning, mid-morning, about noonish, time to eat, etc. So unless your world has invented some sort of common clock, telling time accurately would not work, or your world maybe has a similar system as a belltower telling time to people.
For inspiration, the Canonical Hours are:
matins, morning prayer - the first canonical hour; at daybreak
prime - the second canonical hour; about 6 a.m.
terce, tierce - the third canonical hour; about 9 a.m.
sext - the fourth of the seven canonical hours; about noon
nones - the fifth of the seven canonical hours; about 3 p.m.
evensong, vespers - the sixth of the seven canonical hours of the divine office;
complin, compline - last of the seven canonical hours just before retiring.
Or, you could follow the five times Muslims pray per day.
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When you say "exact timekeeping", I am assuming you mean the ability to measure (and count) very short periods of time. It isn't hard to explain how someone observes and counts days and years, but it is more difficult (without assuming mechanical clocks) to measure minutes or seconds reliably.
I suggest biological clocks. Many species make noises that have some relation to time. For example bird-songs or cricket chirps. Since you are world-building, you can create a species that would allow for convenient counting of passing time by a caste of timekeepers. Or just have that caste count their own heartbeats while resting.
A world that relies on biological clocks would allow you to make the world feel unique, since it is so different from how our culture does so.
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In medieval christian Europe [1] the day was divided by according to the hours of prayer in the monasteries, so you would have: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, daily Mass, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. In that situation, the daily prayer duties were describing the pace of the day, so you would have people saying "let's meet after Vespers" or "that happened at Lauds".
A monastery was a very closed micro-cosmos, so that schedule was the closest thing they had to an absolute timetable, shared and known by everybody.
[1] I am deliberately over-simplifying.
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**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
Suppose our alien neighbors woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided humans would be less annoying if their home planet was hit with a giant artillery shell travelling at half the speed of light. At what range would modern day human astronomers be able to detect it?
The specifics of the situation I'm thinking of are a slug the size/shape of the Chrysler building made out of depleted uranium and titanium traveling at .6c on an "orbit" tangent to Earth's but about 30-45 degrees inclined from Earth's orbital plane, but I'm interested in similar scenarios just as well.
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If it was painted black they probably wouldn't see it coming at all.
We just don't watch space that carefully with very many telescopes. If we didn't know where to look we'd have no chance and if we did know where to look we might still miss it.
It's really hard to spot even much larger objects on slow lazy swings around the sun.
If it's a point in your story you'd need something to direct peoples attention at that portion of the sky in which case they have a slim chance of spotting flashes of radiation as it hits interstellar dust.
That answer is boring so I ran the numbers through wolfram alpha:
Estimates for the volume of the Chrysler building: $2880000 \text{ m}^3$
$2880000 \text{ m}^3$ of uranium weighs about $54,864,000 \text{ tons}$
At $0.6c$ that has an energy of $1.223×10^{27} \text{ J}$
For reference the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuke ever detonated (50 megaton) released $2.1×10^{17} \text{ J}$ of energy.
The Chicxulub impact which wiped out the dinosaurs was about 2 million times larger than the Tsar Bomba ($5.43×10^{23} \text{ J}$).
The impact would be like $5,000,000,000$ Tsar Bombas going off at once or ~ 3000 thousand dinosaur-killer asteroids hitting at once.
So bad, very very bad.
Edit, additional math:
using the figures for a cold neutral interstellar medium from wikipedia:
$20—50 \text{ atoms}/ \text{cm}^3$
So let's take the higher number of $50 \text{ atoms}/ \text{cm}^3$
Cross section of the object from skysurf3000's post:
$1429 \text{ m}^2$
Because it was the first number that came into my head and nobody has given a distance I'm going to assume the aliens are:
20 light years away.
We can treat the volume of space that the block of depleted uranium passes through as a cylinder 20 light years long and 1429 m^2 on either end which gives.
$2.704×10^{20} \text{ m}^3$
This lets us estimate the total number of (almost all hydrogen) atoms in the path of the projectile, lets assume they all hit and there's no shockwave effects:
$1.351×10^{28}$
Which is actually a spectacularly small quantity, I was expecting it to be much higher, anyone want to re-check my workings?
Which is about $22.61 \text{ kg}$ of hydrogen atoms. (It isn't going to measuably slow it down.)
Now we can assume that the hydrogen atoms are at rest when they're struck so we can treat it as if they're simply slamming into the front at 0.6c which allows us to calculate the total energy being pumped into the thing.
$5.08×10^{17} \text{ J}$ over 33.3 years.
There's 291700 hours in 33.3 years.
so that's $1.7415×10^{12}$ joules per hour or **483.7 megawatts**
It'll certainly heat up but once it's putting out 483.7 megawatts it'll stop getting hotter.
This is pretty close to the maximum output of Topaz Solar Farm or the standard output of 1 small nuclear reactor.(thanks again wolfram alpha)
skysurf3000 gives the surface area of the Chrysler building as $110,000 \text{ m}^2$ (thanks again). It's metal so it should radiate that heat fairly evenly (except for the front which will be hotter with some higher energy flashes) at about:
**$4.397\text{ kW}/\text{m}^2$ which is less than an average room heater per square meter.** It might be glowing a dull red all over but not blazing like the sun.
Given the small quantity of hydrogen atoms I think a thick copper cap coated in something tarry and very heat resistant should carry away most of the heat and keep the front fairly dark apart from flashes.
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Let's try to calculate of much energy is produced by protons colliding with your projectile.
According to the Wikipedia page about [the Chrysler Building](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Building), I will take a height of about 280m. Using [this tool](http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-area-calculator-tool.htm) we can measure that the cross section of the Chrysler building is about $1000\text{ m}^2$. Since it is a square that means each side is about 30m long.
Let's talk about space now. Deep space consists of about [1 proton per 4 cubic meters](http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_matter.html). That means that by moving at $0.6c$, your projectiles meets $4.5×10^{10}$ protons per second, or [$4.5×10^7$ protons per second per square meter.](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.6c%20*1%2F4%20m%5E%28-3%29)
We can also calculate the energy of these protons. With a [Lorentz factor of $1.25$](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F%28sqrt%281-%280.6c%29%5E2%2Fc%5E2%29%29), their momentum is [$3.761 \text{ kg m}/\text{s}$](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mass%20proton%20*%201.25%20*%200.6c), hence each proton has a kinetic energy of [$234.6 \text{ MeV}$](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sqrt%20%28%283.761%C3%9710%5E-19%20kilogram%20meters%20per%20second%29%5E2%20c%5E2%20%2B%20%28proton%20mass%20%5E2%20*%20c%5E4%29%29%20-%20%28proton%20mass%20*%20c%5E2%29), which is comparable to that [of a small particle accelerator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accelerators_in_particle_physics).
According to the documentation of the [Talys software](http://www.talys.eu/download-talys/), that means our protons are fast enough to completely ignore the electromagnetic forces when going through the projectile, and will only stop if they hit the nucleus of an Uranium atom. Let's calculate how often that happens.
In order to calculate the probability of a collision, I will use the method of [this page](http://www.lhc-closer.es/1/3/9/0).
Given the density of Uranium, your projectile weights about [$5×10^9 \text{ kg}$](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000m%5E2%20*%20280m%20*%20density%20of%20uranium). Given the molar mass of Uranium, that means that your projectile is composed of about $2×10^{10}$ moles of Uranium. Using cross sections, the probability of a given proton to hit a given nucleus is about $3×10^{-31}$. So in average, there are [a few thousand nucleus](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3%20*%2010%5E-31%20*%202%20*%2010%5E10%20mole*%20Avogadro%20constant) on the path of every proton. This is well enough so that we can assume that every proton hits a nucleus. Some probability also tells us that the impact will occur in the [first few centimeters](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=280m%20%2F%203614&a=*C.m-_*Unit-) of the projectile.
Those collisions are energetic enough that uranium atoms undergo fission.
[To Do: How much energy is released by this?]
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We'd pick it up easily.
Consider that space isn't empty. It is full of hydrogen and other materials known as the interstellar medium or ISM. Because there's stuff there, you'll see collisions, and that will be detectable.
First off, the object will be well above the speed of sound in the ISM (which can be as high as 300km/s, but nowhere near your 200000km/s of an object at .6c. There will literally be a sonic boom coming off of it. Not that we would ever get to hear the boom, but that should be enough to show that we'd notice this coming: there would be heat generation. While most objects in space are quite cold, this would be blistering hot, and shedding a remarkably large amount of energy on spectral bands that stars tend not to emit on (due to the composition of the object).
But it gets better. .6c is fast. Really fast. Really really freaking fast. Those hydrogen atoms are plowing into the object with about 32uJ of energy each. That doesn't sound like much until we change units to MeV: 200000MeV. For perspective, the energies involved in fusion of hydrogen into helium are on the order of 15MeV. We are literally going to have solar fusion occurring on the front edges of this shockwave, like an unholy sun approaching.
One more step: consider the energy of any photons emitted in these collisions. Gamma rays start around 100MeV. I don't know enough of high speed hydrogen collisions to calculate exactly what sort of photons would actually be emitted, but considering the energies of the collisions, I do not think it unreasonable to make the claim that we would see a very "bright" burst of hard gamma rays from that sector, acting like runway landing lights to tell us where to train the rest of our telescope equipment to see this new hot sun quickly approaching.
Not that it would do much, of course. But it would let us know ahead of time that we picked the wrong sun to orbit around this time of year. I hear alpha centauri is nice.
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The projectile you describe best qualifies as a "planet-killer"; unless it strikes at a very shallow angle, merely wiping out half a continent, it would release its energy inside the Earth - as others have already calculated, this is on the order of $20,000,000$ times the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.
So the moment the planet-killer enters the story, the grim follow-up seems to be pretty unavoidable unless we can advance enough the detection point - which we'd like to do without *deus ex machina* plot devices.
So -- how did this projectile come to possess such an energy - roughly equivalent to the total daily output of a G0 star? One possibility would be the use of a *really* long linear accelerator (powered by a star). A less ruinously expensive solution would be to employ a [matter-antimatter rocket](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_rocket#Matter-antimatter_annihilation_rockets) of which the sixty-million-tons impactor is the payload.
(Coincidentally, Project Valkyrie's author Charles Pellegrino has also written on the subject of relativistic kill vehicles).
The Chrysler Building bomb assumes a lengthy acceleration process which should give off a distinctive energy signature (mostly gamma and X), **and** it would do so from the same general area where a truly enormous antimatter plant needs to have been built and operated. This could supply a justification on the subject of *why* are Earth astronomers actively investigating that area of sky, even at light-years distance.
For example, the energy siphoned off a sizeable star could alter its spectrum years before the projectile is even assembled. The antimatter flare of its acceleration *and* the ionization backwash against the background (sort of a Gegenschein effect) ought to be quite visible - and recognizable (antimatter annihilation should exhibit [a distinctive signal](http://ns.ph.liv.ac.uk/~ajb/radiometrics/glossary/images/pair_production_peak.gif)). That would supply justification enough to deploy some really sensitive gamma detector in exactly the right direction; from there, we could detect the pitter-patter of hydrogen ions triggering heavy metal spallation, Doppler shifted to $.6 c$. It's a bit farfetched (mostly in the "very sensitive gamma detector" area) but plausible, and it would lend itself to a nice story buildup while new data arrive and the picture clarifies.
Of course, if the unfriendly alien is *also* capable of stealthily accelerating an impactor that size, or of doing it undetected in a short time from nearer than Proxima Centauri, it's curtains for us all. Doing so from very large distances, being able to compensate the greater uncertainty in the trajectory, seems unlikely - but if it happens, again we sort of get it in the neck.
But otherwise, the signature plus the Doppler effect just *could* be enough to give the game away with time enough to do something about it - perhaps even several years.
The "something" would need to be pretty drastic, effective, and comparatively low tech. Moving an asteroid on the impactor's path would probably not be enough. On the other hand, it would likely destroy any hope of course correction (assuming there was any), and a slight course modification might be all that's needed to save our planet.
Unfortunately, intercepting the impactor would require extreme precision in positioning, implying very precise - perhaps *impossibly* precise - knowledge of the impactor's position and speed (or a perhaps unrealistically massive effort to deploy redundant obstacles).
# "Nuclear flashlight"
Our inbound behemoth is ripping its way through interstellar medium, receiving what from its point of view is a hail of hydrogen atoms accelerated to $0.6 \text{c }$. The speed is enough to overcome the Coulomb barrier and induce fission in the uranium. This energy translates to heat and radiations and is radiated away, and depending on the object's shape, some part could be re-radiated towards the Earth.
Is this enough of a warning? I suspect not.
Building on skysurf3000's excellent answer, we have $234 \text{ MeV}$ per nucleon, plus say some $370 \text{ MeV}$ calculating catastrophic [proton-induced fission/spallation](http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.98.107).
Having no idea of the actual energy release, let's take this as an upper bound and suppose, first, that it is all converted to the most visible form of energy and re-radiated Earthwards; *or*, alternatively, that it is all converted to heat in order to sublimate the projectile itself.
If the heat is sufficient to evaporate the projectile, we'll have found a sort of [distance limit for relativistic kill vehicles](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greisen%E2%80%93Zatsepin%E2%80%93Kuzmin_limit). Or if the energy is enough, we should be able to estimate its detectability.
So an upper bound to the energy yield is $600 \text{ MeV}$ total. Which looks like a lot (and it is), until we consider that *there aren't that many nucleons*, or we convert it to joules.
$1 \text{ MeV}$ being about $1.602 \* 10^{-13} \text{ J}$, $600 \text{ MeV}$ is around [$9\*10^{-11} \text{ J}$](https://www.google.it/search?q=600%20MeV%20to%20Joule) per nucleon (by comparison, the [OMGion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle) had an energy of thirty **billion** MeV).
We have a bombardment of $4.5 \*10^7$ nucleons per square meter per second, so that the total incoming annd generated energy is [$4 \text{ mJ}$](https://www.google.it/search?q=4.5E%2B7%20*%20600%20MeV%20to%20Joule) per square meter per second -- that is, 4 paltry milliwatts per square meter.
More than enough to die if exposed to, but if we're talking of heating a slug of cold uranium...
Being received on a surface section of $40\*40 = 1600$ square meters that makes around $6.4 \text{W}$ total incoming energy (the narrower the slug, the less energy received). Due to uranium conductivity, this heat would then disperse in the whole projectile and be re-radiated in all directions until the uranium body is at such a temperature that its black body radiation equals 6.4 W. We could employ Stefan-Boltzmann's equation for radiative cooling, but the number is small enough (and the total surface of 110,000 m^2 large enough) that - barring some mistake on my part - I feel safe in excluding that this energy output could ever be sufficient to either
* alter the projectile's speed or heading in any meaningful way;
* erode the projectile to any useful extent;
* when radiated (uncollimated, remember), even assuming a flat surface facing Earth instead of some more vacuodynamic shape such as a cone, to give advance warning of the impending doom.
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The problem isn't the speed - although that does reduce the time in which we have to spot it. The problem is that space is vast, incredibly vast. We haven't even mapped all the asteroids in a near earth orbit yet, and most of those are bigger and closer than the object you are describing.
We couldn't even detect it by its gravitational field as there would be no time for it to perturb the orbits of other things (and its mass is too low anyway).
So basically we would have as much chance of spotting it as you would have of spotting an approaching sniper bullet...
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Since i already did the thinking, i might as well write a useful answer.
We start by assuming that the object would either reflect light from the sun or stars, or would create interesting flashes from collisions with micrometeorites and such.
We further assume that those reflections or flashes are bright enough to be visible with a good enough telescope.
And finally, we assume that someone is actually looking in the right direction, although that is very unlikely unless you expect something to be there.
If all those assumptions were correct, you would notice the object some five minutes 30 seconds times the distance of the event (in astronomical units).
That is because the light from the event takes 8'20'' to travel one AU. Thus, we see it only 8'20'' later than it happened. The projectile takes roughly 13'53'' for the same distance, so it hits us 5'33'' after we saw the event, if it was 1 AU distant when it happened.
Or, more plainly: simply not long enough before the impact to do anything about it, unless, say, you have some super powerful laser weapon or something along those lines, already pointed at least roughly in the same direction, loaded and ready to fire.
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Making the slug "out of depleted uranium and titanium" is just overkill and economically wasteful. At relativistic speeds, they could use a giant roll of bubblewrap and it would still destroy the planet. Kinetic energy is proportional to mass times velocity *squared*, so the contribution from mass is relatively low compared to the huge contribution from the velocity. There really is no point in using anything more exotic than a big lump of nickel/iron and/or rock, unless you actually want to show off. (Like the Lone Ranger and his silver bullets, only much more expensive.)
Given how enormously big space is, and how few people are looking for giant space bullets aimed at us, and what a tiny energy signature it would have, the only notice we would have would be people on the opposite side of the world from the impact would have just long enough to go "What's th..." before the continent disintegrates beneath their feet and the shock wave sets them on fire.
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One more factor: Many answers are talking about flashes. I'm not at all sure there would be much in the way of flashes as it's moving too fast. At the energy level of the collisions chemical bonds mean nothing, there is no surface. There is simply atoms to collide with. If I'm understanding SRIM's output correctly the average penetration of a hydrogen atom will be over an inch. The energy is not going to appear on the surface, it's going to appear within the body of the object. Only if something large enough to blow off a chunk hits will there be any visible sign of the impacts.
Now, as for detecting it. Yes, it's going to be glowing at a red heat and that's pretty easy to detect except for one little detail: It's **tiny** by space standards. Furthermore, IR telescopes don't have the resolution that visible light telescopes have.
Lets consider the Hubble as I very much doubt there's an IR telescope that can outperform it. It has a resolution of .05 arcseconds. How far out will it be when the projectile comprises one pixel in the Hubble's field? About 100,000 miles. In other words, even if it were pointed in exactly the right direct the Hubble would probably only see it in literally the last second of flight.
Not only that but a one-pixel dot in the image isn't going to draw attention to itself. It's going to have to get a lot closer before an observer realizes it's closing. Given human reaction time I don't think an observer looking at would actually realize it was an impactor until it hit.
The only hope of detecting it before impact would be if it hit something big enough to make a big flash and a telescope with a spectroscope attached was pointed in the right direction at that instant--seeing the flash that heavily blue-shifted would stir up interest in the astronomical community but unless there were further such impacts they would not learn anything useful.
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I've got a group of characters exploring an ancient ruin who've just set off a classic "darts flying from the walls" booby trap. In theory, when the trap was first built these darts would have been coated in poison (something adjacent to spider venom). But since it's been 4000 years, would that still be the case? Or would any kind of organic material coating these darts have long-since dried up, or eroded away, or lost its potency?
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## Maybe, if chosen carefully
Very, very few organic molecules other than hydrocarbons and simple molecules are stable for more than a century or two under normal conditions.
The very few molecules and materials (e.g. cellulose) that are close to completely stable still suffer from:
1. photoreactions and radical reactions if exposed to any amount of light. Even sitting on crystalline silicates is bad on a timescale of thousands of years due to photoreactions.
2. slow evaporation
3. slow hydrolysis, often catalytic, so tiny amounts of water will do it
4. biologically mediated damage
5. very slow catalysed reactions with trace impurities.
However, with all that said, if you actually set out to make something poisonous in a few thousand years, you could do it.
Potassium cyanide won't go away and is an obvious choice.
Heavy metals won't go away.
Various radioactive isotopes will be as bad or worse than they started.
Closer in spirit to your spider venom:
One can imagine some maniacal Atlantean\* chemist making polymerised toxins (botulin? sarin? other nerve agents?) that are thus stabilised and break down back into the poison itself slowly over thousands of years.
The monomer would need to have a relatively simple, compact structure with no really funky functional groups.
(EDIT: depending on your fictional world's history. Not an option in real life).
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# Fill the [floor with hematite](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-sep-16-mn-21968-story.html)
This is a yellow powder, an oxide of iron. It's extremely common and long lasting. The Egyptians coated their floors with it. It rips apart the lungs and softer tissues. When the darts hit they'll likely move quickly or fall over, stirring up the dust and making their lives much more painful.
It doesn't decay since it's stable, so it can last 4000 years easily, just as the Egyptian version did.
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## Make the dart alive
As you suspected, no organic poison will stay stable for thousands of years. If Atlanteans want to use an organic poison, they need to refresh it once in a while... or let it refresh on its own.
Imagine a colony of poison-producing bacteria, fungi, lichen or such, growing on the dart. A species, that [already lives underground](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endolith), will be able to grow also within the trap. Many underground organisms also have [very slow metabolic rate](https://www.forbes.com/sites/linhanhcat/2019/08/13/bacteria-has-metabolism-1-million-times-slower-eats-centuries-old-food/), that will help them survive for a very long time.
The organisms can be poisonous on their own (when they are inserted into the body through a wound). Or they can produce poisonous molecules and deposit them in their environment. Layers and layers of deposited poison could arguably make the trap **more** dangerous now, than it was when it was built.
If Atlantean architects are worried about their poison-producers running out of water or energy, they can drill a narrow chimney to occasionally deliver new material. That gives them a wider selection of poison producers, that can survive in their trap. We know that works even for more complex organisms [like ants](https://www.sciencealert.com/ants-trapped-in-an-old-soviet-nuclear-bunker-survived-for-years-by-turning-on-their-own).
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**Tetanus?**
<https://www.cdc.gov/tetanus/about/causes-transmission.html>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QKDFm.jpg)
[source](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DZkH0AeIk9DI&psig=AOvVaw0BlzS7pQ1EG0ZFZkq8aBlm&ust=1671034926762000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCMD0v6yA9_sCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD)
This would not be the intent of the builders. But darts bursting out of rat nests or other dirty stuff could cause a dirty wound and tetanus. Lockjaw is weird and horrible and if it has been used in a fiction I have not read it.
That seizure comes with terminal tetanus. It is called "opisthonos". It is an attention getter.
<https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318868>
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4000 years would probably be enough to degrade most organic poisons via oxidation, hydrolysis, temperature and moisture cycling through the days and seasons etc in the open.
But if the intention from the beginning was to design a trap that would last a very long time then it should be possible. The best option would be a glass tube filled with poison under nitrogen gas with one end heated and drawn out into a long point and sealed. The tube could then be coated in something to keep the light out or it simply could be mechanically hidden in the dark.
Many poisons would be able to retain their potency for very extended periods under these conditions. The pointed nature of the tube if attached to some form of heavy swinging device should prove deadly.
Poisons like Strychnine or Ricin or nerve agents
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I note that the Chinses historians claimed that the unexcavated tomb of Qin Shih Huang, First Emperor of China (d. 210 BC) contained booby traps, crossbows rigged to shoot intruders.
The legends also claimed that the tomb had a giant map of Chinas with rivers and seas of liquid mercury. And studies of the tomb area indicate an abnormally high concentration of mercury. Obviously when the tomb is explored sometime in the future the archaeologists will have to take precautions against mercury poisoning, and maybe wear armor to protect from crossbow bolts.
So possibly the ruin in the story combines both features and contains booby traps of automatic crossbows dipped in liquid mercury or with arrowheads made of a toxic alloy of mercury.
Or maybe a booby trap will use a device to push the intruders off a ledge into a pool of poisonous liquid mercury. People who fall into a pool of liquid mercury might swallow a lot of it.
[Answer]
## Make the darts barbed and covered with mud
What if you start with (1) barbed darts, (2) dipped in poison (3) dried (4) dipped in mud or clay or other impervious coating (5) dry the coating? The premise here is that the crunchy outer coating protects against oxidation and moisture. When the barbed darts get stuck in someone's body, coating gets broken and the poison is dissolved in bodily fluids.
4000 years is a long time for an organic molecule to survive. Especially in a tropical climate. If your climate is temperate, the ruins could be arranged so that they're a lot cooler. Either underground or behind VERY thick walls. I don't know what the phenomenon is called, but once you get more than 4 ft underground or behind walls, the temperature is close to the average temperature for the whole year, day or night.
Cooler temperatures will slow down the decay of your poison.
[Answer]
As others have said, no organic compound would stay stable trough centuries. So you should go for inorganic ones.
**Mercury!**
It's not hard to work with. In fact, we have [examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)#Historic_uses) of mercury usage that are millenia old. And it cannot spoil, so it's toxicity won't degrade. And it is extremely toxic, especially if you use some compound forms of it. If you put it into glass containers (for example, in dart tips) you won't even have an issue with mercury evaporation. Or, if you are feeling particulary nasty, go for vapor route. In a sealed tomb that contain a large enough pool of mercury whole atmosphere would be toxic because of mercury vapors. And since tomb was sealed it won't run out.
] |
[Question]
[
I encountered sci-fi stories about planets of the twice the mass of Earth, and the characters were able to leave them in spaceships.
I wonder, whether it is possible at all?
[Answer]
On Space Exploration Stack Exchange, Russell Borogove addressed a very similar question and made [some reasonable estimates](https://space.stackexchange.com/a/17576/5963) about the required mass of a Saturn V-like rocket (arguing it's impractical to consider all possible rocket designs, given the variation in performance) to escape a planet of various surface gravities (see also [Hippke 2018](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.11384.pdf)). Above $10g$, the rocket is effectively the same mass as the planet. At this point, we would need literally quadrillions of Saturn Vs. Even escaping a planet with a surface gravity of $6g$ would require millions of them. On the other hand, that assembly would weigh 38 billion tons, which is tiny compared to Earth's mass. $10g$ is a somewhat generous limit, but beyond that, we do know it's fairly absurd. This corresponds to an escape velocity of $35.4\text{ km s}^{-1}$.
From an astronomical point of view, is it even possible to have a terrestrial planet with that sort of escape velocity? Looking at the mass-radius curves by [Seager et al. 2007](https://arxiv.org/abs/0707.2895), it seems like a super-Earth composed predominantly of silicates and iron could achieve that surface gravity with a mass of $M\sim30M\_{\oplus}$ and $R\sim2.5R\_{\oplus}$. From a compositional perspective, this is certainly reasonable, according to their numerical work.
What if we consider non-silicate compositions? Perhaps we could make the planet less dense, ensuring that the same mass yields a higher radius and therefore raises the mass limit. Say we have a planet made mostly of water. To achieve that same velocity, it appears that we may be able to reach $\sim40M\_{\oplus}$.
On the other hand, super-Earths larger than $2R\_{\oplus}$ aren't expected to exist. At masses above this (corresponding to $20M\_{\oplus}$ for a mainly silicate planet, and larger for an iron planet), the body would accrete a thick atmosphere, beginning to bridge the gap between terrestrial and gas planets (see [Lopez & Fortney 2013](https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0329) for an even more conservative limit!). (Coincidentally, this ends up yielding, actually, a similar escape velocity for the silicate case.)
In the particular scenario you describe, a $2M\_{\oplus}$ planet would have a radius of perhaps $1.4R\_{\oplus}$, according to Seager et al.'s models, and thus a surface gravity (and escape velocity) barely greater than Earth's. This is obviously quite easy to escape with a chemical rocket.
[Answer]
**Rockoon!**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockoon>
Gravity drags hard on rockets. But a balloon cares nothing for gravity. The lift conferred by a hydrogen balloon will depend on the composition of your atmosphere, but will be the same regardless of the gravity of your planet.
Using balloons to get rockets above the atmosphere and (partly) out of the gravity well is a real thing.
<https://www.universetoday.com/tag/rockoon/>
>
> Is there a better way to get to space? Current traditional methods
> using expendable rockets launching from the surface of the Earth are
> terribly inefficient. About 90% of the bulk and mass of what you see
> on the launch pad is expended in the first few minutes of the mission,
> just getting the tiny payload above the murk of Earth’s atmosphere and
> out of the planet’s gravity well.
>
>
> Recently, on May 20th, 2016, Zero2infinity lofted Aistech’s first
> satellite into the upper atmosphere, aboard its Sub-Orbital Platform
> in Near Space balloon system. Zero2infinity uses these Near Space
> balloons to carry client payloads up above 99% of the Earth’s
> atmosphere. This is a cheap and effective way to get payloads into a
> very space-like environment.
>
>
>
I here assert that one could use this method with a high gravity planet and avoid the need for a prohibitively large and powerful rocket. But you cannot leave the planet in a balloon - you still need the rocket to get away, and so this meets the OP's request for "a chemical rocket to leave it".
[Answer]
The escape-speed of a planet is given as
$v\_2=\sqrt{{2GM}\over{r}}$
r = radius of the planet
G = gravitational constant
M = mass of the planet
As long as the spaceship is able to reach this speed, it can leave the planet. Twice the mass of earth and the same radius would result in $v\_2$ = 15.7 km/s, that's absolutely possible.
[Answer]
I suggest that a deltaV of 13.5km/s is about the most that might be expected for a chemical rocket.
This is calculated from the rocket equation and assumes a high (hydrogen-oxygen based) exhaust velocity and a high mass ratio (20:1) giving a deltaV of 4500\*In(20) = 13.5km/sec but is probably optimistic. Although using hydrogen provides a good exhaust velocity, it is very low density and so needs a very big tank which in turn makes a mass ration of 20:1 very difficult.
But taking this as a best case, it is possible to put this number into the escape velocity equation holding either the radius constant or the mass constant to see what we get.
Keeping the radius constant whilst increasing the mass:
A mass of 1.4 x Earth mass would produce an escape velocity of 13.2km/s
Keeping the mass constant whilst decreasing the radius:
A radius 0.7 x earths would have an escape velocity of 13.4km/s
Alternatively the mass can be increased whilst the radius is also increased. Case in point as suggested by HDE where mass = 2 x Earths mass and radius = 1.4 x Earths mass:
In this case the escape velocity would be 13.4km/s
In each of these cases it may be just barely possible to escape from the planet using chemical rockets alone. But I would stress only with the greatest of difficulty.
It should also be noted that it might be possible to escape from a planet using an orbital rather than an escape velocity. This might be achieved by using gravitational assists from moons and planets.
Alternatively this might be achieved by retanking the rocket in orbit. Refilling the propellant tanks in orbit provides a practical method for effectively increasing the mass ratio.
Minimum DeltaV for low Earth orbit is 7.8km/s (9.4km/s allowing for air resistance and gravitational losses), whereas Earth escape velocity is 11.2 km/s so there is a bit of wriggle room here.
[Answer]
There is a limit to the size of a planet, above which it is a star.
Jupiter is nudging that.
Jupiter doesn't exactly have a surface, but at the cloudtops it has a little over 2.5g, which is I think escapable with a suitable chemical rocket.
The problems of assembling a suitable rocket and suitable chemistry are left as exercises ;)
Hal Clement wrote about a solid and dense planet, Mesklin, with a high surface gravity, but with a very high rate of rotation.
Launching from near Earth's equator reduces the delta-V for escape by a 25th - for orbit by an 18th.
Spin your planet fast enough, and you should be able to jump off the equator. It may be a bit windy.
] |
[Question]
[
I have had an ingenious idea of combining the two most dangerous creatures the world has ever seen by using my massive and titanic intellect. Mankind, the deadliest land mammal, and sharks, the most feared creature in the sea. For decades, these two species have been at odds due to Spielberg. But together, they make an unstoppable force!
This ocean world is covered in mostly water, with small islands dotting the surface and large landmasses being rare. Ocean life is far more diverse, with many larger predators. I have had dogs become extinct due to some virus because they suck and are boring. Sharks are much cooler, so I had them take their place as loyal servants to humanity.
These humans use sharks for a number of things, specifically to hunt for food. Hunters ride on the backs of sharks to search for prey. The riders use spears as weapons of choice while sharks assist by catching and ripping chunks out of the animal. Then the carcass is towed back home.
How can I make this vision possible? To what extent must I change a shark to allow for this compatibility ?
[Answer]
Sounds impractical at best.
>
> These humans use sharks for a number of things, specifically to hunt for food.
>
>
>
Call me Mr. Obvious, but if we've domesticated sharks and we need food, what's wrong with shark meat ? :-)
>
> Hunters ride on the backs of sharks
>
>
>
A human "riding" a shark is essentially the shark carrying a packed lunch with them.
This sounds impractical. Sharks are *fish* and they need to be *under* the water to breath - they can't air breath and so they can't skim the surface in the way "riding" a shark would require. On the other hand people can't breath water, so there's no happy meeting ground here (unless it's inside a shark's digestive system).
Also note that in terms of stability, sharks (and all sea going creatures) are designed to operate *without* some dead weight on top of it causing enormous drag in the water. People riding sea creatures may sound nice in children's books, but it's an insane idea unless your idea of a good time is giant wave surfing. It's doubtful a shark would be at all keen on dragging a human around, given it can hunt fine on it's own.
The idea of a shark ignoring food and towing it is just not an option. They kill, they eat. They have no equivalent of "home" : home is where a shark is swimming. A land animal typically will have a location that equates to a home (a base, a lair, a nest, if you will). That's practical on land.
>
> I have had dogs become extinct due to some virus because they suck and are boring. Sharks are much cooler, so I had them take their place as loyal servants to humanity.
>
>
>
First. Things. First. Dogs Are Cool. I'd prefer most dogs to e.g. most lawyers. Lawyers, as an example, are indeed boring, whereas dogs are fun. I rarely have arguments with dogs, but I have arguments with lawyers all the time. Sharks may be your idea of fun, but I can't make that connection myself. I'll stick with dogs. :-)
Humans are land based creatures. Even if we could somehow use sharks in hunting at sea (what for ?), we're going to live on land and we're going to use some other land based creates as our loyal servants (actually dogs are domestically loyal *companions* not servants). Horses would be the next most likely "servant" (companion). We've used elephants, donkeys, cows, horses and other animals for labor and typically provide them with something in return (like food - not such a good idea with a shark when we're the food !).
But they key here is that we can communicate with these animals is a practical sense and we can provide them something they want. Can't do that with sharks.
>
> Ocean life is far more diverse, with many larger predators
> These humans use sharks for a number of things, specifically to hunt for food.
>
>
>
Humans have been successfully hunting marine creatures for food for as long as there are records. We've hunted, on an industrial scale, everything from tiny fish and shell fish to the largest whales. We even hunt sharks !
We don't need help hunting marine creatures. We have evolved a device for doing all that is required ourselves - the brain. That and the ability to create tools, like boats and trawl nets give us all the advantages we require.
>
> How can I make this vision possible?
>
>
>
Not with sharks as we know them.
You might manage something with dolphins. Not sharks.
But this idea (riding a sea creature) is extremely inefficient and unsafe.
Your intelligent creatures will build boats. Now the relative lack of land may make wood a scarcity, but your humans will presumably manage to figure out how to make alternative materials work. Hey, we build boats from metal and we've even built floating objects from concrete. What would you get on a shark for ?
Island cultures need reliable, dependable and predictable transport based on ships of some form to operate a trading system and allow for the exchange of people and idea. Sharks can't do this, and that means once someone developed a viable sea craft, it's game over for sharks and we can go back to eating sharks !
There is too much at stake for an island culture to depend on sharks for anything, except a meal or something we can make from their carcasses.
Humans needing help hunting ? We the ones that make other species extinct !
[Answer]
There a number of criteria necessary for an animal to be domesticated.
**1. Varied diet**
This one's okay. Bonnethead sharks are omnivores, and other carnivorous ones such as tiger sharks are highly opportunistic (I'm sure you've heard of the kinds of human rubbish they eat). Due to their opportunism, I'd say that many species of shark would certainly eat human scraps.
**2. Fast growth**
Uh-oh. As far as I know, sharks are quite slow-growing animals. From what I can remember, megamouths mature at 13, great whites at 26, and Greenland sharks at a staggering *150*. Then again, I had a friend who purchased a zebra shark, and it quintupled in length in a few months - however, zebra sharks aren't the stereotypical image of "shark".
**3. Willingness to breed in captivity**
Sharks, in general, do pretty lousily in captivity. Only a few species have been kept in aquaria for more than a year, and those are generally benthic species which I doubt you're after - small, pug-nosed things for the most part. While Georgia Aquarium has whale sharks, none of these were born in captivity and all were fished from the wild.
**4. Pleasant behavior towards humans**
I'd say that once sharks became accustomed to human presence, they'd eventually be fairly comfortable with us. They seem fine in things like shark dives, so consider this a yes.
**5. Calmness and "bravery" in human presence**
From what I've seen of people swimming with lemon sharks and the like, even man-eater species like tigers, they are in fact very curious, sometimes overly so.
**6. Flexible social hierarchy**
Sharks are, in general, highly solitary animals. Yes, hammerheads and others will school in great numbers, but there isn't really any kind of social interaction going on, much less a hierarchy. Further [research](https://www.sharksider.com/sharks-social/) shows that there is some degree of sociality in various shark species, but still - no hierarchy systems.
---
So, that's 3 yeses, and 3 nos - a 50% positive result. In that case, the truth is that I really don't know if sharks can be domesticated. My best guess would be no - at least not without some significant changes to their biology, which will have many side-effects. One thing that's for sure is that riding them is out of the question - it's just not practical.
So, from what I gather from your question, it seems like what you're looking for is a partnership between humans and a generally badass kind of marine animal. In that case, **I would suggest you have them domesticate orcas instead** - in my opinion, they're way cooler (they eat blue whales and great white sharks, form separate hunting cultures, are much bigger etc.), and exponentially easier to domesticate, being one of the most intelligent animals in the world.
[Answer]
## Sharks are not the best choice
Most likely, dolphins could be domesticated much easily
* Dolphins are much smarter and more communicable. They have enemy -
killer whales which are their closest relatives. Dolphins vs
[orca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale) is somewhat dogs vs wolfes.
* Dolphins are ofter hunting in packs and people could join to such
hunting. As with dogs, the goal is to get more fish more easily when
hunting together. They actively communicate each other while hunting
(and people make efforts to understand their language).
* Dolphins are mammamls and breath like human.
* If you choose bigger dolphins like killer whales then hunting on big creatures (like hunting to mammoth on land) could be an option.
## Riding on sharks looks like absurd
Most dog breeds were breeded not for riding on them. In fact, dog in harness is exception. The same for sharks/dolphins: they are more effective in chasing fish swarm to the human traps or nets. Sitting on them during hunting/war would get no advantage.
---
**Hunting together, people and sharks/dolphins could get more food that alone.** This is the main reason for domesticating such creatures like dogs.
**UPDATE**
I could suggest some ways to interact with sea creatures:
* Fishing.
1. People set up nets in some area of ocean and send signal of start hunting.
2. Sharks/dolphins find fish swarms and chase to nets. They could eat some fish while hunting but not so much because specific fish species could dodge from shark attacks.
3. People pull nets, collect fish and drop some eat to the assistants. Eat could be caught fish or something else which is precious meal for sharks.
* Hunting.
1. People set up harpoons and other equipment for whale hunting on boats.
2. ~~Sharks/dolphins~~ Orcas pack find whale somewhere in ocean and signal to the people where it is. Orcas are chasing whale to exausting, forcing to lift it up to the surface and directing to the people's boat.
3. People and orcas together kill the whale which is hard and dangerous even when combining efforts. Probably they hunting on fantasy creature which even more dangerous than whale.
4. Prey is divided between hunters. People get tons of food and raw materials. Orcas could eat delicious meat and probably receive something else that hard to find at sea but easy at land.
5. People feed orcas between hunts, probably treating them from some illnesses and protect from deep-water dangers.
Note that both options assume that people use boats/ships and acts on the sea surface, like people usually do.
[Answer]
You could take some hints from Cristina Zenato, often called "The Shark Whisperer".
I like these YouTube clips documenting her work (but there are more):
* [video 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG7JvwCXUgg)
* [video 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4m7Fw0GZxY)
The second video is esp. revealing about the way she became friends with the sharks: she slowly builds trust with them, esp. by bringing food for them; she reads them like people read their dogs; and she removes fishing hooks from the sharks, which earned her the friendship of some and made (?) others come with their hooks as well.
Overall, it does not seem much different from how humans built trust and friendships with other wild animals, incl. the case of Kevin "The Lion Whisperer" Richardson.
[Answer]
I don't think real-life sharks have that level of intelligence. But maybe I'm wrong or we can just assume that the sharks in your world do.
What do humans offer the sharks? Dogs became domesticated because humans offered them warmth by a fire, the protection of a pack when finding a dog pack might have been difficult, a steady source of food, etc. Love too, but that wasn't what drew them to humans.
But what do sharks get out of this deal? Aren't they better off just eating the humans? Or ignoring them? (Or getting out of the way of their spears)
Maybe the sharks really value certain prey but they can't get it very often. With the humans, they get it almost any time they want. That doesn't seem like enough though. Humans and sharks don't live together so there isn't that kind of benefit. But maybe humans can create coves where the sharks can rest and feel safe (safe from?? who are their predators? Killer whales who don't fit in the coves?). Or the humans farm fish the sharks love and feed them from it regularly.
I can see why the humans would be drawn to domesticate sharks in the ways you suggest. But you're going to have to find the motivations (should be multiple ones) that are going to convince the sharks. And to keep them from going wild again. If you don't find enticements then maybe your answer is entrapments. Either way, that's your answer.
[Answer]
Well I don't want to talk about sharks in specific. I really don't know much about them.
But I know something about training. I'm no dog trainer, ask them for special advices, but I can tell you the most common way to train an animal. And that's the method called 'bread and stick'. When your animal/victim does sth right you give them sth they like (bread), in your case meat. When they do sth wrong you hurt them (stick). In this case hurting might be a problem, because sharks wouldn't act so proud of that.
You can do that an you could train pretty much everything, even [humans](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy_mIEnnlF4).
Hope this helps :)
[Answer]
By elimination.
Suppose animal A is a better friend of humans than shark S. Then throw A into the pool together with S. Now A is no more and therefore S is a better friend of humans than A.
Rince and repeat.
Edit:
To answer to @Tyler S. Loeper and @F1Krazy's excellent comments, demands for clarification.
*One can reach the desired objective by expanding very little effort on the domestication part. As Pavlov established, feeding an animal is one, perhaps minimal, form of domestication.
Frankly, I wonder whether sharks even lend themselves to more involved forms of domestication*
I would like also to clarify my answer following @F1Krazy's comments. I intend for the actual slaughtering to be done by the shark itself, not the humans.
] |
[Question]
[
The popular image of a mermaid is a half-fish, half-human creature breathing fine above and below the surface. The only real-life analogy to this are the amphibians - frogs, toads and salamanders.
But here lies the snag. Mermaids are often portrayed as marine while there are no species of amphibians capable of breathing the salty seawater. In order for the mermaid to breathe easily in air and in seawater, we need to speculate a species of amphibian who evolves major measurements to still breathe fine in the air but also tolerate the saltiness of the sea. What changes would I need so that any amphibious animal can breathe both air and seawater?
*For the sake of this argument, don't bring up lungfish, mudskippers and tarpon, for although they do breathe air, the circumstances are very limited.*
[Answer]
**Gills and lungs are a lot like each other**, from a physiological point of view. They are highly vascularized, and have a large surface-to-volume ratio, so as to have as much gas exchange efficiency as possible.
Lungs work well for air because they allow ventilation through air pumping. Expand to pull oxygen-rich air in, contract to push oxygen-poor air out. This fails underwater because the latter is (approximately) seven hundred times as dense, and one hundred times as viscous as air. It is also practically incompressible. Pumping water in and out of a lung takes so much strength and energy that underwater breathing becomes inefficient, which is why we drown.
Gills, on the other hand, are adapted to the characteristics of water as a fluid. From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill):
>
> The density of the water prevents the gills from collapsing and lying on top of each other, which is what happens when a fish is taken out of water.
>
>
>
**How about giving your mermaid some kind of flexible-fluid lung?**
Let her have a throat system much like ours, but instead being a collection of air pockets, her lungs are hollow cavities. Inside these cavities there is a large set of gills. Let the mermaid also have one or more pair or slits on her sides, right under the lower ribs and connected to those lungs. These slits can vary in size, say from five to twelve inches in length according to your creature designing taste. They can also be located more frontally if you like.
When underwater, she breathes like a fish, just with a longer circuit for the water to flow through. She takes water from the mouth and nose, let it go through the gill/lung system ("gillung"?), then it is pumped out through the rib slits.
In order to breathe air, she first expels water through the rib slits, then she closes those slits. Now she can pump air in and out of her "gillungs" (I really like this neologism) just like a human. She just has to keep a little water in to keep her internal gills moist, so that they don't collapse over each other (this is actually how land crabs breath). She might evolve some bodily fluid, maybe some mucus, to make sure that her gills won't dry out fast.
This would be much to her advantage. Quoting Wikipedia again:
>
> In fresh water, the dissolved oxygen content is approximately 8 cm3/L compared to that of air which is 210 cm3/L.
>
>
>
For her to have a metabolic rate like that of a human, if she's only breathing water, she will have to rely on ram ventilation. That is, she will have to be constantly swimming to get enough oxygen, just like a shark. That would take a lot of energy. But the fact that she can breath air as well means she can go to the surface for an oxygen boost every now and then.
Add a very large concentration of myoglobinin to her muscles, and she would be able to keep that boost for long dives just like whales do. With the advantage that she won't drown if she spends too much time diving deep - she'll just revert to her slower metabolism until the next time she surfaces.
**Oh, and about salt...**
Just use the same solutions that nature has already found. A large tolerance for urea, like sharks; and super kidneys like those of cetaceans. This is actually the part that requires the least suspension of disbelief IMO.
[Answer]
# 1- A creature doesn't have to be able to breathe underwater to be successful in water
There are **many** examples of creatures which hold their breaths for so long that they *can* spend more time underwater than above it. Examples include whales, dolphins, turtles and hippopotamuses. Instead of giving your creature the ability to absorb oxygen underwater, you can simply give it large lungs and allow it's blood to absorb much higher concentrations of oxygen than it has, now.
# 2- Some turtles can absorb oxygen through their anuses
[Here is the reference to the statement above.](http://animalquestions.org/reptiles/turtles/can-turtles-breathe-underwater/) Your creature does not have to have its/their oxygen absorption organ at the back end of its body, but anywhere where you can afford to give it some large enough surface area (I suggest the abdomen area). Oxygen absorption through this way is a passive process, meaning that the creature does not have to consciously do anything to absorb oxygen. The process carries on by bodily functions carrying on by themselves (regulated by backbone, instead of brain).
# 3- Gills
Fish have gills and they are very effective in underwater breathing. You can use the same apparatus for your creature.
[Answer]
breathing basically comes down to gas exchange across a semipermeable membrane. Typically, this membrane has to remain moist to function properly, so above water, you are limited by keeping the entire creature moist (lungless salamanders, lots of inverts like flatworms) or keeping a moist membrane enclosed in a chamber within the body while the rest of the body has a barrier to loss of moisture (lungs of vertebrates, gills in cheek pouches of mudskippers, book lung of spiders, etc.).
This is a bit different from the salt vs fresh question. In water, semipermeable membranes are not only going to allow the movement of dissolved gases, but also of water, which is going to want to reach equilibrium with the water on the other side on the membrane. So if on one side we have a dense fluid and on the other side a less dense fluid, water is going to flow from the less dense side to the more dense side. The challenge of the organism is to balance this out so that it doesn't either pop from the water trying to dilute its internal fluid or dessicate as water is sucked out to equilibrate with the surrounding saltier sea.
In fish for example, in freshwater, they have to pump water out to keep the balance, so as water permeates in through the gills, the kidneys are pumping it out. Damage the kidneys and the fish gets dropsy and swells up like a pinecone. In marine fish, they have to drink water and them filter out and excrete the excess salt. Both of these strategies work partially because fish aren't completely permeable across their whole body. Fluid and gas exchange is limited to small regions (gills, gut, lung or other modified organ in some species).
The other strategy is trying to match the density of fluid inside and out (osmoconforming) which is sort of what the crab-eating frog is doing by storing urea to make its internal fluid match the density of the saline water around it. Most marine inverts are osmoconformers to some extent.
All this is a little bit off topic and a gross simplification, but just wanted to elaborate a little on why some critters are limited to either freshwater or saltwater. It isn't specifically linked to breathing air or underwater, but both do involve exchange across membranes so maybe there is something useful in briefly having this out.
[Answer]
I know I'm breaking your rule from the start but I think air breathing fish are informative and any answer is going to involve the same basics that they share with amphibians: absorbing air across a moist membrane. For the amphibians it is their skin, for the fish it is internal, cheeks/gills or primitive lung. I imagine this would be the most reasonable mechanism for a vertebrate like a mermaid: lungs in addition to gills or internal gills in a chamber that can hold water that can keep saturated with dissolved oxygen by gulping air when above the surface.
Alternately, look to arthropods. Plenty of crabs and crayfish are amphibious to varying degrees.
[Answer]
Amphibians' skin needs to stay moist as well as permeable. Therefore salt would enter the organism.
Source: <https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3isp06/why_are_there_no_saltwater_amphibians/>
My proposal is to either make them have the mentioned frog's ability to tolerate the salt water, or instead just not let them be amphibious creatures but instead allow them to hold their breaths for a very long time. Either by means of low-oxygen requirements, or by storing air or concentrated oxygen somewhere inside their bodies.
[Answer]
Basically steppingonants is right about copying the design of the crab gills so that they breathe in and out of the water. More explanation on this can be seen here.
<https://www.thoughtco.com/how-do-crabs-breathe-2291887>
There is, however, one catch about the breathing system: while the gill's outlet can be wide enough between the ribs, the nazal holes are still too tiny. Don't forget that oxygen dissolved in the water hovers around 1% compared to 21% in air.
<http://www.lakeaccess.org/russ/oxygen.htm>
You should alter the inlet location to accommodate bigger water inlets. Maybe two openings atop the shoulders, between the top chest rib and the back rib? The diaphragm can still fulfill its action. The inlets and outlets open and close in alternation and allow flow in one direction. Just like the crabs, the openings shut outside water to retain humidity and they breathe through their nose. They must eject excess water when taking the first breath of air.
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the crab-eating frog has some tolerance for saltwater, it has specialised kidneys and skin to cope with the salt.
I'm not sure why you're resistant to look at the lungfish, I would have thought it would be the best example of something working close to how a mermaid with gills and lungs would in theory.
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I asked a similar question, and it was pertaining to the biology of one of my characters. For her gills to not stick together on land, they secrete this film that also keeps them moist, and so her lungs don't fill up with water, there would be some sort of hydraulic system that would take excess fluid out of the lungs, and shunt it along with waste particles, through the gills. And a similar system could work for your creatures who can live both on land and in water.
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So, based my other question here, [concerning dragons](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9862/tame-and-sovereign-dragons-the-opinions-of-the-sovereign-dragons), one thing that came to mind, and was brought up often was that a dragon knight system with 1 guy on 1 dragon would lead to the guy not doing very much at all, as the dragon would do all of the fighting, killing and flying.
So, I thought, what if you put more than 1 guy on that 1 dragon then. So, the idea is that a dragon could wear some sort of harness jacket thing that allows for these dragoons to strap themselves onto the dragon. The dragon would then fly into enemy formations, blasting it with fire, than the dragoons can then detach themselves from the dragon and fight on foot.
Most of the notes and details one might need to answer should be in the above referenced question, but if there are anything extra, feel free to ask.
However, there are some amendments I would want to make, most notably the effectiveness of other armies against dragons. Dragons are still able to move through groups of archers and/or mages fire, but may not survive prolonged fire from large groups of people. Additionally, it is not so easy for dragons to be able to completely blast away entire battle groups as well, either due to needing to recharge their fire breath, magic or some other reason.
Other notes would be that not all dragons are the same size, with young ones being horse size at best, and the elder ones akin to flying cathedrals. There are even older ones, which can be the size of mountain ranges, but let's just say they are always just sleeping, so no need to write about them. Anyways, the smaller horse sized dragons would only be able to hold one rider, but a barn sized dragon may be able to hold more.
To clarify the question,
* Would Dragon Dragoons, which are to say, troops who arrive in a fight with a dragon, who then dismount the dragon to fight on foot, be effective?
* I also do not mind answers which want to also talk about cost-effectiveness.
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So what you're talking about here is the military concept of [Combined Arms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_arms).
The idea is that you combine disparate military groups into a single higher-order unit, with the benefit being that each group "type" brings different strengths and weaknesses.
So to answer your question:
>
> Would Dragon Dragoons, which are to say, troops who arrive in a fight with a dragon, who then dismount the dragon to fight on foot, be effective?
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>
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They would be effective if any of the below are true:
1. Dragoons cover a weakness of the dragon. Like you said - your dragons need time to recharge, and can't take sustained fire. Properly armored troops can provide them relief to recharge, and can interrupt/stop concentrated attacks by charging those mages/archers - hard to shoot a fireball when you need to worry about a sword going at your face.
2. Dragoons are necessary. For example, consider city fighting. A pure-dragon force could be effective in a city, but you wouldn't want to see the property damage bill. A dragoon/dragon combined force can clear buildings and take ground without that damage, and the dragon can sit back and provide fire support.
3. If Dragoons and Dragons are synergistic. This is a scenario where combined, they have capabilities that wouldn't be possible alone. In a modern army, think of troops + artillery - having someone on the ground to feed you coordinates makes artillery incredibly more effective, and troops being able to call down artillery fire makes them more effective. Off-hand I can't think of a way to do this with dragons though.
So what you'd probably do is some combination of the above. Smaller dragons would act as your scouts/reconnaissance/stealth (special forces) teams. Bigger dragons are fire support and/or troop transport.
**Alternatively:**
Another off-the-wall idea I had - Dragons are, mythically, usually vulnerable mostly in 1-2 spots. So maybe you hit the eyes, or that one place on their breast that scarred and didn't heal right, and they ignore everything else. So what if you put armor over your dragon's vulnerable spots - including the eyes - and during the fight, your Dragoons "control" the dragon by sending them signals? Where to move, where to breath, flying, etc. Think "how to train your dragon".
Of course that just moves the vulnerable point to the tiny Dragoons, so you'd probably want multiple people on top, with some as backups. But overall you're still probably ahead, because losing a Dragon is orders of magnitude more costly than losing a single dragoon.
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# Overview
In the classical typology, you could think of dragons as Heavy Cavalry when operating on their own. This doesn't necessarily have much to do with horses, but rather it means that they are most useful as shock troops, using momentum to disperse enemy formations.
They also have very high mobility, and so can be used as Light Cavalry, pursuing the routed enemy troops. However, they share a couple of disadvantages with cavalry, namely:
* You can't very well use a dragon as a garrison.
* They are not very good at defence; if you let them get surrounded by a mob of enemy archers, they will either have to fly away or die a death of a thousand cuts.
* They can't be used for urban warfare (unless you want to just set the city on fire and level it, but that could destroy things you might have wanted to keep) or in difficult terrain, although the definition of difficult terrain is different for dragons and for cavalry. They probably won't be able to see what's going on under the forest canopy, in narrow gorges or anywhere there's overhead cover.
Additionally, compared to a squadron of Horse, a dragon can only be in one place at a time, so it might not be able to pursue an enemy that simply decides to flee in all directions.
# Options
The classical definition of *dragoons* is *horse-mounted heavy infantry*. They would ride somewhere on their horses, then dismount and fight as heavy infantry normally would. If you did just that, and took, say, spearmen for a mediaeval equivalent, you could have *dragon-mounted heavy infantry*.
As mentioned in Dan's answer, you could use them in some combined arms tactic; e.g. have the dragon drop your infantrymen, have them form a line and advance against a similar formation of the enemy, only having the dragon use its fire-breath on either the enemy line of battle or their archers before the lines meet. This would amplify the effectiveness of both kinds of troops, and allow them to succesfully engage the enemy in greater numbers than they could separately.
You could also have the infantrymen garrison a (possibly makeshift) fortification and use the advantage of air-support (and effective counter-artillery) to defend a strategic spot, while the dragon could retire to a covered courtyard to rest.
You could also try assaulting a city by having the dragon create a wall breach (either by fire-breath or just by dropping rocks) and then storming the breach, and continuing the fighting inside. This city assault would be much more effective than the traditional way, because you can just fly in and attack immediately, without having to wait for siege engines to be built or hauled in, and giving the enemy very little notice.
# Alternative uses
If we abstract the definition of *dragoon* a bit, we could also try mounting other kinds of troops on dragonback.
Archers might come to mind, but I'd be disinclined to try that; they won't do much more damage than the dragon itself on foot, and it would be extremely difficult to fire accurately from dragonback.
So, you could use light infantry. They could penetrate forests and other terrains with overhead cover, and try to drive the enemy out from under it, where the dragon could incinerate them. Having a dragon around would also probably discourage enemy heavy infantry from forming up, so you light infantry could move and advance with impunity in open terrain (if no cavalry is present or if dragons spook horses).
If you're really into high mobility and can manage the technical difficulties, you could try strapping horses onto a dragon and have him transport a unit of light cavalry. They could seek isolated battalion-size units of heavy infantry, have the dragon attack them to break their formation and then use both the dragon and the cavalry in pursuit, for maximum casualties.
# Conclusion
Depending on your setting and what kind of troops (and training for them) you have available, using a dragon as a transport will significantly broaden your tactical options. You could have a unit of either heavy foot, light foot, dual-trained troops (though these would be considered "elite" and therefore rare and expensive) or even cavalry transported on dragonback, and deployed tactically for best effect. If you can manage it logistically, dragon-mounted dragoons are definitely a viable option.
By the way, this has sort-of been explored in literature; Naomi Novik's [Temeraire series](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temeraire_%28series%29) describes dragon combat in the Napoleonic era. Some dragons do have breath capabilities, and these are used primarily as shock troops (or against ships, which is strategically crucial in the setting), the others mostly use direct physical attacks against ground troops or other dragons, but also have a platoon of riflemen on their backs. Because dragons are bonded with their captains, mid-air boarding is also a common tactic. Applications of dragons as strategic transport are also explored in the series.
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The easy answer is to see dragons basically as planes.
With planes you can:
* do recon,
* move stuff around,
* bomb something on the ground,
* attack other planes.
You can adapt that to dragons:
* recon: good with small dragons, you'll probably want the dragoon to have a telescope? Or something to write what the dragon sees? Or a way to transmit it to someone at HQ (telepathy, radio, flame signals...)
* move stuff around:
+ it can be soldiers so as to ambush soomeone (similar to para or gliders).
+ it can be food to sustain the army
+ it can be offensive or defensive equipment
* bombing and attacking other planes/dragons: that's what dragons are good at. If you want to reinforce those, you can always make it carry something: to make it more offensive, you add archers, spell-casters, bombs, ballistas... You can also add more defense by adding healers, armor,...
Two things worth noting:
* Even with enormous dragons it will be hard to move big armies because you then have to feed your soldiers.
* Dragons have to eat. Do they carry there food? Hunt? Go back to base? Carry someone to hunt for them?
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I think you're approaching this from the wrong perspective. I think the dragon riders wouldn't be much use in the actual battle. Instead, I see them as a crew full time supporting the dragon.
* Healers heal the dragons wounds and keep its energy high.
* Wardens keep defensive shields to protect the dragon and her crew.
* Sorcerers burn up incoming projectiles and provide cover fire for the dragon.
* Telepaths relay communications to the dragon and the crew, and act as a kind of captain-on-deck.
I think if you think of the dragon as a big ship with a support staff it becomes a lot more efficient.
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**My first instinct is to use the dragon/dragoon team as an anti-fortification tactic**.
**A dragon's might is great for penetrating the walls of a city or fort, but after this its size becomes a huge liability**. It can't fight in the city without causing considerable damage to the buildings (and possibly injuring itself on them), while those same buildings provide a multitude of nests for enemy fire. Especially in your setting, where dragons can't take sustained fire, the dragon's size makes it a sitting duck.
This is where a dragon/dragoon team might prove useful. **The dragon uses its might to blast/tear an opening in the city's outer wall. Then the dragoons detach to fight inside the city, where the dragon would have trouble fighting**. The dragon, meanwhile, escapes to safety, possibly to pick up another dragoon team and then make another run at the walls.
**What makes this different from plain old catapults is that you can't safely keep troops close to a point where the catapult is about to fire**: flying debris would cause a lot of damage, and if the catapult's margin of error happens to land the shot straight in the middle of your troops, that's a disaster. This means there's a necessary time delay between the point when the catapult's strike lands and the time when the fighters can enter the city, and during this time delay, the defender could prepare something to counter them. A dragon/dragoon team reduces this delay dramatically: **the dragon's own body protects the dragoons from being harmed by its strike, so they can be *right there* to enter the city as soon as the strike lands**. There's almost no time delay at all, and so the dragoons become much harder to counter.
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I was thinking that a dragon carrying archers would be reasonably effective, they would be able to protect the dragon a little while it is recharging or while it is grounded.
The other would be for larger dragons to move troops to needed locations in a battle field to help shore up failing lines or protect against flanking maneuvers. They could fly ahead and drop soldiers at choke points, say two or three dragons leap frog company to a narrow valley ahead of the army to dig in and hold it until the rest can catch up and reinforce them.
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My first thought was to put archers on the dragon, but they move so fast and in so many directions. It would be much worse then trying to shoot from horseback, unless the dragon is calling back periods of steady time.
Dragon Dragoons seem like a good idea, but dropping them off would create an opportunity to ambush the dragon on the ground. Dragons are so fast in the air you don't want to spend much time in contact. Much like calvary, hit and run. Dropping them off in strategic areas outside of area of engagement would work.
The use I like is the idea of troops being dropped inside the opponent's fortification via feather fall (ring or spell). Obviously these are going to be your elite shock troups, if you are going to use magic. You get DnD paratroopers without the low altitude deployment problem. Extraction gets tricky without high level magic though.
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We tend to think of Dragons as massively armored, so infantry with them would have no role. What if they were not so armored, and could be vulnerable to puncture wounds from lances and spearmen. Assume the back is armored enough to deflect archery when shot up into the air in "arrow shower" mode.
So if you land a dragon, a platoon of spearmen could take him out. Or archers could shoot low at spots. Lancer knights, easy kill.
Now add dragoons to your dragons. They make a spear wall to hold off knights and spearmen. The dragon(s) lob breath weapons onto the attackers like artillery, protected like cannon are in our world. You have a potent mix of firepower and defense that can beat any opponent of equal size or even larger size if in a good defensive position. And it can move at high speed with dragon power.
This is a lot like the English longbow armies of the 100 Years war, with dragons subbing in for longbowmen. It would have similar vulnerabilities too - the French did beat the longbow armies eventually, just not in big battles.
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That would be Air Assault troops... on dragons.
It doesn't really matter how technically practical it would be -- the main limiting factor would be the physical abilities of the dragons, and you can invent any sort of dragon awesomeness you want out of handwavium. Since creatures of that density and size flying in an atmosphere the density of ours is already hand-wave material, this point is moot.
The idea is totally badass, regardless the aerodynamic impossibilities involved (since when has that stopped any audience from liking *dragons*?). The real question is whether you can weave a good game or story around this idea, or more probably shoehorn it into an existing story or game idea you have without it accidentally stealing the spotlight.
Remember: Never let your story become a pawn to an external idea, even a very cool one.
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The other answers have covered the main points, so I think there is a need to look at the [Required Secondary Powers](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RequiredSecondaryPowers) regarding wind in flight.
A flying dragon will be rather fast, while probably not as fast as a fighter jet, they will be significantly faster than the fastest horse. This will necessitate some kind of wind protection.
As this [XKCD comic](https://what-if.xkcd.com/66/) shows, it is impossible to stand unanchored on the dragon as long as it is flying above 200km/h. If your dragon can fly faster than that, the soldiers must be strapped securely onto the dragon (probably with wind-protection equipment as well). This significantly complicates boarding actions, since boarders will simply be wind-blasted off the dragon unless they use grappling hooks or the like to anchor themselves to the dragons with each single step that they take.
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To answer this, I'll make some assumptions:
1 - Battles work pretty much the same, but with dragons. So there won't be too many cases of battles taking place underground or in terrain where the dragon can't get at people.
2 - Anti-dragon weaponry exists, but is small in manpower. For example, ballistae or a few wizards, with some guards.
In such situations, I think it would be a great idea for the dragon to deal with the anti-dragon threat immediately. However, due to the nature of the anti-dragon (that is, it's good at killing dragons), you'll want to send someone else to deal with it. That's what your dragoons can do: the dragon drops them off behind the enemy infantry and somewhat close to the anti-dragon, and they keep the dragon safe as it does what it does best. After taking down the heavy artillery and magic users, if the dragoons haven't been killed or fought off, they can go after enemy archers or flank the enemy infantry; basically, they continue to wreak havoc, forcing the enemy to split up and deal with them.
At this point, your dragoons are probably all going to get murdered, so you should either make them expendable, not use them to their full effectiveness, or have the dragon come pick them up again. That last option is probably the least likely, as you're going to want to get the most usefulness out of your dragon as possible, so keeping it fighting is paramount. I'd make the comparison to ODSTs in the Halo universe, but I imagine there's a more historical precedent for dropping units behind enemy lines to almost certain doom.
The kind of tactic I would avoid using is having the dragon fight alongside the dragoons. That would be like having your cavalry fighting alongside your infantry; your dragon would be slower, less effective, and more easily killed. Its best option is to drop off its cargo as quickly as possible, then get back to flying fast and killing faster.
EDIT: Let's say assumption #1 is false, and battles are only fought in situations where dragons are not effective (forests, canyons, etc). In these situations, I imagine the transport role would be much more useful, and instead of going off to fight afterwards the dragon would return to camp and pick up another squad of dragoons. These dragoons will probably have to be specially trained/equipped to get around whatever obstacles there are, otherwise they'll be just as ineffective as the dragon. Specifically, they may have to rappel from the dragon and/or climb down to the ground.
If assumption #2 is false, either the dragon wrecks the enemy army and doesn't need dragoons, or the first squad isn't enough and the dragon might need to go pick up another one.
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The only idea I haven't seen mentioned is the flying aircraft carrier. Imagine the dragon lifting a few soldiers with gliders strapped to their backs. At altitude, it releases the archers and they rain death from above. The archers may need to be in 2-man gliders with a pilot/bomber and archer. If the dragon(s) could release the gliders from behind enemy lines, they could cause a lot of havoc, but with the disadvantage that they have to land behind enemy lines or fly over the lines to reach friendly ground. Even dropped from friendly airspace, the gliders would have the benefit of gravity and elevation while shooting/bombing. In this mode, the dragon becomes a glorified elevator which substitutes for a nearby hill/mountain (which may not be present at the battlefield).
If each dragon only had a few gliders to worry about, it could release them at high altitude (where they could start with bombing), let them glide down to some flight floor (where they can snipe with bows), and then pick them up again in mid-air, to bring them back up to the flight ceiling. In between, it could strafe enemy lines and do its normal dragon-thing. The gliders would be a force multiplier for the dragon's flying ability, to potentially devastating effect.
In the same way, dragons could act as long-range siege artillery by lifting battering rams made out of giant logs and stubby glider wings (and, of course, an iron ram head). Since dragons are not necessarily experts at ballistics and aerodynamics, you would ideally want the ram to be guided on the way down (so the dragon can drop it from very high and far away, which provides both safety to the dragon and lots of kinetic energy for a big boom). Some elite pilots could ride the ram down, using basic flight controls, and jump off at the last minute, deploying their personal gliders for a safe landing. If you drop it from high enough, a battering ram will have enough energy to blow through not just the main gate, but pretty much any reinforced structure made of stone, so you could blow a hole through any large part of the outer wall that is easy to aim at. Of course, you still have to deal with the moat, but you don't need a roof on the ram to defend against elevated attacks. Also, the ram should be moving fast enough close to impact that it is nearly impossible to hit with arrows, so the pilots should be mostly safe (except for the fact that they are riding an inert missile!).
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Just a bit of background: one of my favorite zombie causers is from the Dead Rising video game series. In it, the undead are reanimated by a wasp-like insect that lays eggs in a corpse (I think. It's been a bit). I always thought that was a cool gimmick if nothing else, but something wondrous happened in the third entry in the franchise. A variant of zombie was introduced that was covered in hives of stinging wasps. I thought that was an amazing visual and a great idea.
With that in mind, I've been trying to think about a wasp hive and zombie symbiotic relationship. From the wasps point of view, zombies are free food. Zombies just don't care about wasps. However, I can't think of an actual reason why wasps would put their nests inside a walking corpse that's prone to lunging at living humans.
**What benefits would a species of wasp-like insects have to receive so that they make hives in walking-corpse-style zombies?**
For the framework of this question, the zombie is a rotting corpse that's being animated by malevolent spirits. It can be intentionally created, but have a nasty tendency to occur naturally on "cursed land". The point is that long term evolution/adaptation on the part of the wasp is possible here.
Also, I'm going to check the box that says only humans can become zombies. That makes this hypothetical setting less awesome, but closes the lid on what would otherwise be a big can of worms.
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Because it's a viable ecological niche, of course. The wasps are an evolutionary development of the Ichneumonoid wasps <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichneumonoidea> which lay their eggs in living hosts, which the young then consume when they hatch.
For the wasps to become a hive species is an obvious evolutionary step. The hive controls the host ("zombie") so that it moves around to new food sources. The zombie lunges at other humans so that the wasps can form a new colony in the human. It's their form of reproduction.
Note that under this rationale the zombie isn't initially a rotting corpse. The wasps must parasitize a living human. The human eventually becomes something akin to a rotting corpse as the wasp larvae consume it from within. Which is part of the reason why the wasp hive is driven to find new hosts: eventually enough of the zombie is consumed that it just disintegrates.
PS: Having the wasps infect living humans gets around a lot of suspension-of-disbelief problems (IMHO, anyway) that come up when you try to reanimate corpses. I mean, unless your corpse is really fresh, decay has set in, so muscles and nerves don't work any more. Using living hosts just combines things that already exist in nature - the wasps, the zombie fungus, insects that lay eggs in humans...
PPS: And from today's news, it seems that parasitic wasps have been around for some time: <https://www.livescience.com/63456-parasite-wasp-fossil-pupae.html>
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jamesqf's answer is really nice I'd add just one other option to that; the wasps may also be getting a ride *somewhere* rather than just to the next food source. If the outside environment is hostile, like a city or a desert or similar, somewhere that water and vegetation are scarce and nonhuman hosts/prey are absent, then using humans as shelter and transport to a more hospitable location makes good sense. The human body is mechanically very good for moving through a wide variety of terrestrial environments and has a reasonable internal volume that can be taken over for breeding/sheltering without compromising the muscular structures needed for motion.
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# Are you "traditional"?
I'm not sure how much change to the concept of zombies you will accept. I'm saying "current" because it can change: Compare "running" zombies, which apparently [have been used quite early](https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/69551/what-was-the-first-movie-to-feature-fast-moving-zombies), but have been popularized by 28 days later to a point where nobody would consider that out of the ordinary anymore.
# The Idea
What if on zombification, there's a short period where your zombie's flesh - or better, only certain body parts - "melts" onto things? So, a guy gets zombified, it is attracted to the noise/movement of a wasp hive, attacks it and from then on it "sticks" to the zombie.
The concept is more a quick idea right now and needs to be worked out a bit, but a small period that determines a zombies "job" opens up a lot of other possibilites, too.
# Some possiblities
Just at the top of my head, going with the "attracted by sound" reason, I can think of some interesting variations: Think of a lawnmower zombie. Think of a jackhammer zombie. Think of beeping alarm clock zombie - which at first sounds a bit ridiculous, but not seeing any zombie and only hearing an alarm clock getting nearer is some good horror. You can even go for some comical relief with boombox zombie.
And apart from the "job assignment", you don't need a lot of fantasy to explain certain story events with it. Again, top of my head, what about a zombie plugging a sewage system, or some machinery?
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Time travel works...just invented, by you. The tests prove it!
After many conversations and significant planning, your [epidemiologist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology) significant other has approved your plans for time travel, forward or backwards. You are both satisfied that if you do [bring back some dread disease](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/22207/how-do-i-manage-disease-risk-while-time-traveling), the only person who will die is you; not everyone else.
However, as a time traveler, you're a strong student of history and are aware that ideas can be just as infectious as biological pathogens. For example, sending fully formed Marxist ideas back to the end of feudalism in the 1500's would have a profound effect on the history of Europe. Likewise, bringing an old but forgotten idea forward can have similarly profound effects.
As much as possible, you'd like to be able to rejoin society after your travels but worry about bringing some contagious idea with you when you come back. **How does this time traveler handle the risks of being infected with a contagious idea then spreading it to his fellow humans on return to his own time?**
The same disclaimer applies: you don't have to worry about the Grandfather Paradox or causality or any of the other nasty time travel problems. Physical security of the time machine itself is also taken care of, so no worries of theft or breaking & entering. The time machine also includes a 99% accurate universal translator that permits bidirectional communication between you and whoever you're talking to (if you don't have this translator then you don't stand much chance of getting infected, eh?).
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Memes don't exist in a vacuum. Like a bacteria or a virus they need the right host to settle in. For instance when I play Rick Astley's 1987 hit song [Never Gonna Give You Up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) to my 90 year old grandmother, she remarks "What a nice song." without any of the groans and grumbles associated with being [rickrolled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling).
Since as a time traveler, lacking cultural context, you're probably not the ideal host for most memes. Now it is possible that an ideal translator would translate the speech acts in such a way that the context is perfectly translated as well. If your translator is 99% accurate it's probably not preserving context well enough.\*
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\* *The importance of cultural context in communication is quite well demonstrated in [Darmok](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok), the 102nd episode of [Star Trek the Next Generation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)*
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A "contagious idea" seems like a strange way of saying "a good idea".
1. You go to some far-away place. (Another planet, another time, another culture).
2. You hear about some idea you think is
awesome.
3. You come home and tell everyone about it. They think it's
awesome too.
4. It's widely adopted.
5. Hooray!
Normally, learning new ideas and philosophies is encouraged, unless you explicitly want people to stick to some fixed belief system... then you would keep them away from knowledge. But in your case, I think the "contagious idea" is one that **only seems good**, but will probably have some dire consequences in the future?
You can always check up on that with your time machine. "Woah guys, virology is tricky." "Turns out that the aliens aren't friendly, humans are just delicious." "The kool-aid was poison! Go figure!" etc.
If that interferes with the "no paradox" rule, then you could have a council you need to report to after each trip. Psychologists who specialize in helping people who were trapped in cults, scientists who can evaluate the danger of new discoveries, historians specializing in different forms of government, and so forth. A filter of experts.
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This really is just another version of the grandfather paradox; if you can't go back in the past and kill your own grandfather, then you can't (by extension) go into the future and bring back an idea that changes the future.
New and dangerous ideas are introduced to society all the time; the only difference is that the time that they're introduced is called the 'present', and we see the present change and unfold before us as we travel through time in a forward direction at 1x 'speed'. So, we know that we can change the future with our ideas, but we're doing it with a single stake in the ground; we know everything from the past up to this point, but we know nothing about the future.
If killing your grandfather can't happen, then you can't introduce Marxism to peasants in the Middle Ages; that's changing the past even more than killing your grandfather, so simply won't work (it might even BE killing your grandfather if you obliterate the conditions that led to his birth in the first place).
BUT - if you go to the future and pick up an idea, you can't bring it back and introduce it for the very same reason. If you do, then it's always happened. This is because all the people in the future you've visited all have grandfathers, and introducing this idea could introduce changes to the future you've just visited, including potentially causing those people's non-existence for the same reason that you can't change the past.
Another way of putting this; if you can visit the future as well as the past, and paradoxes can't exist, then that means that the future is already written. That means that whatever you do, you can't change it just like you can't change the past.
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### Brainwash- *ahem* Re-Education
You are a genius (obviously - how else would you have constructed this perfect time-travel scenario?) so it should be easy for you to encapsulate your current self, namely in the form of your regular thought processes and the amount of ideas, in a special automated training program.
You need a machine.
Humans might get infected. But if you build a machine that is able to interact with you (think [ELIZA](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA), but better) you can safely test yourself for contagious ideas.
To make this fool-proof, you should allow your machine to hypnotize you and then ask you about what you learned on your adventures. If hypnotizing does not work, drugs might be helpful.
The program should then proceed to help you bury the dangerous new ideas that you encountered under a layer of other thoughts - pain springs to mind. Electroshock-therapy in combination with hypnosis should prevent you from accidentally spreading your ideas.
Remember to bury the ideas veeeeeeery deep!
What's a little torture if you can be sure that you won't harm humanity through contagious ideas?
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For 99.99% of the cases, meme containment will be automatic. As long as you're traveling to a time period where easy access to information isn't readily available, the majority of the people aren't going to have the means to propagate your meme - thus it dies on the vine, as it were.
In other cases, the context of the meme won't make sense to someone without the context - they will infer you're just an outsider speaking about things they don't understand or don't care about. Who cares if you 'Rick-rolled' the King. Is that even a bad thing? What is this 'Rick-Roll' you speak of? Is it edible?
So, for the very small subset of cases where a change would actually have some sort of effect, you have three categories of how that change would affect the timeline.
In the first, we make the assumption that time is either somewhat self-repairing as in most changes are 'smoothed' out to fix mistakes... OR....
Changes in time propagate up the timeline, making the future-past you remember change as you make them; meaning you'll remember your past as if you'd already made the change you just made.
OR... you're creating another universe based on the changes you're making now, meaning the new universe was always the way you just changed it and your old universe never had you changing the past to begin with - because it already happened and never had you visiting there.
Of those three choices, I would believe either A or B to be the most likely. And I personally prefer the A scenario; meaning the past will somewhat correct itself of any anomalies you introduce anyway.
Thus, to answer your question, I don't think the meme containment is something you need to really be worried about. Most things will be handled on their own. The best way to ensure this is to make sure of the following: Bring back nothing that's out of period, minimize contact with the time-period natives, don't have random philosophical conversations with the few people of the period that might understand the deeper implications of your remarks.
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You might want to watch **Dr. Who** as he time travels all the time.
If you get an idea, first jump 50 or so years into the future and use research materials at libraries or internet or etc to see how the idea turns out.
1. If it has a negative effect, then you won't spread it.
2. If it has a neutral effect or unknown effect jump back in the TARDIS and try again in 50 more years.
3. If there is no mention of it, the idea was probably replaced with a better idea.
4. If it has a positive effect, then spreading it might be ok.
The key is to be like a wild life observer who documents but does not interfere. Don't talk about religious, political, or etc topics that might get you in trouble. Try the weather and generic things.
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**Dogmatic bullheaded zealotry.**
I am interested in time travel only to spread the true faith, which possesses my every thought. I see the world through the lens of this faith which distorts all things to match my preconceptions. I am supremely confident in the correctness of my ideas and the irrelevance of any other which does not match.
These ideological blinders ensure I am safe from new ideas or different ideas, which I interpret as actually being the same as my own ideas if I like them or some sort of pathetic aberration if I do not.
In fact, the whole reason for my travels is to proselytize and spread my own faith through history. I am confident in my ability to infect many. No; infect ALL. I must just get to them before (and after) my enemies do.
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The premise is flawed.
This is not a real 'infection'. It's about the time traveler getting a new idea. As such, the solution is not to spread *bad ideas*. Given that you are both the one concerned about this and the one doing the time travel, you can fix this your self either by not telling anyone of your time about that (not ideal, though), or ensuring before communicating anything that it is indeed a good idea. Even if your *old-you* would think badly about it, the new one is expected to have, increased, that same knowledge, and thus be able to a better decision. Traveling opens your mind :)
If these were different people, I see how it could be a problem, though. Our gracious government may not be keen on a time-traveler discovering that a few centuries ago democracy actually worked acceptably, and spreading such disturbing idea amongst our loyal citizens…
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**TD;DR -- Don't worry 'bout it**
Remember, another phrase for memetic infection is "liking the idea".
As others have commented, your own upbringing will inoculate you from many ideas which are too outre for your current worldview to assimilate. You'll experience an "ick factor" when someone suggests something your birth culture finds repellent. Imagine you go check out the Aztec Empire ... they are unlikely to convince you that people **must** make human sacrifices lest the Sun fail to rise.
You are in more danger if you go back to the past of your own civilization (I'm assuming you are not Aztec descended here, mind). Their ideas will resonate harder, because those assumptions are lurking in your own meme-pool already.
Could be you are impressed with the fervent faith of your ancestors in their villages, and outraged that pilgrims to various shrines in the Middle East are being mistreated.
So you come back, screaming **"Deus Vult"** every ten minutes. You rally support, assemble a huge army, sail across the ocean and disembark in the Holy Land, ready to kick some Fatimid Caliphate heinie. Imagine your chagrin when an irritated JDF colonel grates out that the Fatimids haven't bothered anyone since, oh I dunno, 1171 AD, and can you please show your tourist visas?
Which is to say, your native time culture is *also* inoculated against ideas which are too far away from what they're used to. Only the ideas that mesh with what's already there will catch on. And if they do, that's not a bad thing.
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Hypnosis could be used to reset the time traveler's mind to its previous state, especially if the hypnotic suggestion was inserted before the start of the journey.
The hypnotist speaks, *"You will forget everything which happens between now and the moment when you hear this little brass bell ring.*
Then you get in the time machine and wiz away. Moments later you reappear with a wild gleam in your eye and powerful words about to spill out from your fevered mind.
bing-a-ling-a-ling!
That is how a hypnotist saved the world!
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# Extending This Idea Into A Multi-Layered Air-Lock For Ideas...
Before each time travel journey, the traveler, a medical doctor and 3 interrogators (a psychologist, a physicist and a historian) are all hypnotized as described above. The time traveler then goes on the journey. Upon his return, he is locked in a room with the doctor who conducts a detailed medical exam then monitors the traveler during a multi-week quarantine. During the quarantine, each of the interrogators will (from their individual quarantine cells) take turns debriefing the traveler using a hardwired and isolated telephone connection. At the end of the quarantine, the hypnotist and a team of additional psychiatrists will evaluate each of the interrogators, the doctor and the traveler. If any aberrant becomes evident, the bell will be rung and the interrogators notes will be burned. If not, they all get to keep their memories and anything which was learned during the journey.
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In a story set in the near future where robots perform the majority of farming (due to population growth and agribusiness efficiencies), what might still be farmed by humans? Assume no radical AI breakthroughs. The produce could be niche -- something that becomes a luxury since supply is limited compared to mass-produced products.
While many rightly point out the main value in human-farmed produce may be as a premium product, I am interested in something that could not be efficiently farmed by robots. The society depicted in the narrative will be efficiency-focused and lacking creativity, so it seems less likely they'll care about "hand picked". In fact, they may distrust it.
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# There won't be anything that *can't* be farmed by robots.
However, there may be some things that are not simply because some people are luddites.
## Automate Everything
The the most recent holdouts preventing complete automation of farming [were the fruits and vegetables that were meant to go to the grocery store](http://www.businessinsider.com/robots-being-developed-to-automate-farm-labor-2013-7) rather than processed. The ones that had to look pretty.
The automation of farming has been [progressing rapidly in the last couple of decades](http://www.wired.com/2012/12/ff-robots-will-take-our-jobs/) and the only thing keeping humans from actually doing the work on farms is the availability of inexpensive labor and the relative infancy of the technology. All the bugs aren't worked out yet, [so the robots need babysitters](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/farming-with-robotics-automation-and-sensors/).
Any remaining food items that aren't automated with either have their growing process altered (grow indoors with grow lights in controlled settings) or will use more humanoid robots to duplicate the tasks of humans. Though I can't think of or find any such holdouts.
## The Luddites
There will always be a selection of foods that will continue to be farmed exclusively by humans, and they'll advertise it too, similar to "hand crafted" items which can be easily mass produced. Humans may maintain a sense of quality for food farmed by another human.
## Banning the Luddites
The human farmed food fad in the age of automation may quickly fade or even become illegal as it becomes clear that the only remaining source of [produce related salmonella outbreaks](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19580447) comes from human run farms. Robots don't have to poop*[Citation Needed]*, but if they did, they would be programmed to [always wash their manipulating appendages before handling the food](http://www.cdc.gov/nczved/divisions/dfbmd/diseases/salmonellosis/#catch).
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Much like the 'organic' and 'locally sourced' movement of today, there may be a market for human-farmed produce in such a future. I can see trendy eateries bragging that they feature the highest quality, freshest *hand-picked* organic produce in the city. Or perhaps supermarkets significantly marking up hand-picked produce, turning it into something of a conspicuous consumption item for wealthy urbanites.
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Robotic farm machinery will probably be complimented by genetically engineered plants which ripen at predictable intervals, have fruit or edible portions which are relatively uniform in size and texture and are robust enough to survive mechanized handling.
While cheap and nutritious, it is also about as appealing as Spam to eat.
Human farmers will have the important job of raising the ancestral crops which contain the original germ lines used to build the genetically engineered plants. The heritage farmers and farms also provide "boutique" food items for the wealthy, who would rather eat an "Empire" apple than a "Gamma-5" apple, and their heritage crops are regularly sampled to change up the genetically engineered fruit and vegetables so tastes and textures will also change in the market from time to time.
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Machinery is already used for farming, as noted by other answers. But, as pointed out by [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/21442/28), some things are too delicate, such as:
* [Saffron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffron), which consists of the stigmas (only) from the flowers of a certain type of crocus. You might be able to automate that, but it's a delicate operation -- saffron threads are small, thin, and delicate.
* Grapes for [ice wine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_wine), which today have to be harvested by hand and quickly. I asked about this on a winery tour some years back, and was told that automated pickers ruin too many of the grapes and you're already dealing with a small, volatile crop so you can't afford to waste any.
Both saffron and ice wine are relative luxuries, so your idea of niche markets isn't far off.
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Most farming today is done with human-operated machinery. At least in western countries it is.
What isn't is probably going too delicate or fragile to be mechanically handled - requiring human finesse to handle properly.
Robotification(a word I've just invented) still requires a lot of mechanical handling. That's a good starting point for what can - and can't - replaced with robot farmers.
Examples:
* Florists will still be in business. Nobody likes smashed or bruised flowers. There's also the aesthetic aspect to it; machine-learning techniques are good at generalising and producing things that people consider *pleasing* but arranging a bouquet of flowers might be beyond a computer.
* Farming in mountainous areas like parts of the Middle-East where it's impossible to get machinery (robotic or otherwise) in. This is really only applicable to farming livestock; goats, etc.
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I have a hard time imagining a produce plant that wouldn't be better farmed by a robot, given the time and resources to engineer a robot suited for that specific purpose.
So either there'd have to be a crop so rare yet also challenging to harvest that designing a specific robot wouldn't be worth the time and money. Ultra-fresh cinnamon shavings?
Or the alternative is a marketing angle, where people in the future valued human-hand harvested products over "mass produced" robot-harvested products. Say, the wealthy go to the future Whole Foods and buy "Human Artisinal" oranges picked by flesh, not metal.
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I know it's not produce, but I think vanilla would still be harvested by humans. The cultivation of vanilla is fairly labor intensive since it requires hand-pollination and, considering how it is so widely used today, I think any potentially game-changing AI advancements on the horizon would already be known.
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My first guess was vanilla, but since that one is already covered, here are some other ideas:
## Illegal plants (like marijuana)
I'm sure that when you think about illegal activities you'd think that robots are your best friends, but there are a couple of reasons why it might not be true:
1. Robots will want power, and you will already be draining more than your fair share from the network. The more power you use, the more you stand out, so someone may come by and start asking questions. It already happens: <http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20120129/PC1602/301299979> and the more robots you have, the bigger the risk
2. You have to get them somewhere. You also need someone to maintain them in good condition. It would be probably be easy for government goons to follow all transactions involving new robots, and most transactions involving second-hand robots. Buying several such robots without having anything bigger than a garden (officially, of course) will once again draw attention to yourself.
3. NSA spying. How hard would it be for spy agencies to secretly install some tracking device in every robot ever produced? Probably easy, assuming they don't do that already. Your new friend will lead the police right to your doorstep.
4. Records. Everything the robot will do, probably is going to be recorded (openly or secretly). In both cases you probably won't be able to ensure, that the machine won't be a walking pile of evidence against you.
5. Robots don't have feelings. The can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. They just want to do what they programming tells them to do. You can make a human shut up one way or the other (dead men tell no tales), but with a robot you can never be sure.
Yes, it's hard to find humans who can be trusted, but with robots it's outright impossible.
## Amish food
I think this is obvious - everything the Amish eat, will be produced by humans.
Also we can add to this category all the people, who believe, that nothing tastes like a fruit from a tree watered with your own blood, sweat and tears, from your own garden.
## Decorative plants
Many plants have dual purpose - they both produce food and look pretty. Cherry tree is a good example. They will need a lot of human attention during their entire lifetime.
For the first couple of years they will be grown on a farm. Surely, some automation will help, but unless there will be a human to oversee whether they look pretty, it will be hard to sell them.
Once they are sold and planted in someone's garden, there will probably be little to no automation - robots are expensive and without economics of scale there will be no reason to buy them. Especially, that you need a meatbag anyway to make sure, that it still looks pretty.
And yes, it counts as food - as stated above, some people just prefer things they grew themselves.
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As population grows, jobs have to be found for all those people. Either that, or there is a permant welfare transfer to unemployed masses. More healthy for the society to *give* them *jobs*.
That is where [comparative advantage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage) comes in (see also my answer to [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/16807/can-humans-interact-meaningfully-with-the-economy-when-robots-are-better-at-ever/16812#16812) question).
* Assume that there is an almost infinite amount of work which **can** be done. New smartphones for everybody, streets with fewer potholes, more teachers in school, rehabilitation of endangered biotopes, and also food production.
* Then decide how this amount of work is divided between people and robots. The idea is that people are only *paid to do nothing* as a last resort. Would you have people in the factories and robots in the fields, or robots in the factories and people in the fields? With near-future technology, the superiority of robots in a factory will be greater than the superiority in the fields, because the factory is a more predictable workplace. (Comparative advantage doesn't ask who is better at any one job, compares who is "more better" where.)
* If wages are dictated purely by marked mechanisms, humans won't earn much. Not in the factories and not in the fields.
* Of course farm work in the hot sun is hard and boring. Many people would rather work in a climate-controlled factory. But there are others who prefer to be outdoors.
**Now to your question.** You wrote that automated agribusiness, coupled with overpopulation, has put farmers out of work. Assume that they refuse to conveniently die as they're frozen out of mainstream economy, and that they don't get enough dole to make a comfortable living.
Some of those unemployed might start [urban farming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture#Oakland) to supplement their diet. They are much less effective than agrirobots, but they don't have the option to sell their work and buy industrial food, and they have plenty of time on their hands.
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In short:
# **ROBOTS**
Farmers (people that knows a lot about farming) will be needed to supervise and define the production/programming of these 'farming robots'. They will be also needed to value their work and check the crops (well, even that could be passed to robots...).
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We are already using robots to farm. John Deere has self driving combines, and other machinery that effectively automate the production of corn, wheat and other crops that man operated machinery already cultivate/harvest. The remaining crops and practices are grove harvesting and picking of fruits and vegetables that are hand picked. When vision/recognition and coordination 'skills' are properly adapted to picking then the question only becomes one of economics. That point is only years if only months away. Another aspect of farming is the adaption of robotics to the pollination of plants in the event that the honey bee becomes extinct.
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In addition to Thucydides' answer about heritage crops and premium products, and Darth Hunterix's about illegal activities, humans, while not necessarily handling the whole process by themselves, would always be the best experts on what is appealing to humans.
So, beyond maintaining a shadow of that idea in the robots' programming and specialized hardware, only we would be suitable for the task of maintaining/selecting desirable traits. The unique scent of a certain apple cultivar, the balance of sweetness and bitterness, the effect of hydroponics on subtle qualities too difficult to quantify.
Of course, being a software engineer, I can imagine any of these things, quantifiable or not, being taught to a machine via neural networks, etc. Even trends could be predicted, while introducing no new technologies - merely making existing ones, like spectroscopy, more affordable due to mass production.
And yet, we should never allow the process to be fully automated. I wouldn't trust a machine to judge an change it wasn't programmed to assess as desirable or not.
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Today semi automatic farms already exists where systems take care of the plant and humans are only needed to harvest the vegetable and plant new seeds.
We already have the technology to do both of those things automatically, and maybe some people already have such a system in their gardens but it's not something that will take over the world anytime soon.
Simply because food and agriculture are like religions, they are incredibly resistant to change even when the dogmantic belief is old and inefficient.
Although some modern farms have started opening their minds and using fully automated vehicles in their farms, they still need people.
But you can see it everywhere that people praise tradition and "genuinity" over efficiency.
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I predict that wassabi would still be harvested by humans, because it grows along natural mountain streams and cannot be grown in fields or hydroponics labs. Creating an robot and AI that could climb through that enviroment and search for wassabi would fail any cost benefit analysis. Continuing to send people to collect it manually would be way easier since there was never that much of it in the first place.
Generally speaking, other rare and boutique ingredients like that might still be harvested by hand. They would also be extremely valuable, given that the population has grown, but the natural environment that can viably produce them has actually decreased.
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I imagine that fruit-picking (or berry-picking) would still be done by humans. Without a radical advance in AI, our farming machines may not be able to adequately handle the complex tasks of spotting fruits hidden amongst leaves and branches, and picking or cutting off those fruits while minimizing damage to the rest of the plant.
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Is it possible for a planet to be heated and illuminated by a black hole due to [Hawking radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation) at the same intensity as by a star?
What mass and size should a black hole have to produce the same amount of radiation as a star? How long it can be in such a state? What will be the black hole's size and the size of the habitable zone around it? Can a planet orbit this black hole without being ripped apart by tidal forces?
**Essentially, can a planet orbit stably in a black hole's habitable zone?**
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This scenario is quite problematic for two main reasons: evaporation and peak wavelength.
# The black hole's lifetime is too short
We can make a [rough estimate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation#A_crude_analytic_estimate) of the properties of the Hawking radiation coming from the black hole. First, let's start with the luminosity. Since $L\propto M^{-2}$, where $L$ is luminosity and $M$ is the mass of the black hole, it turns out that
$$L=9.01\times10^{-29}\left(\frac{M}{M\_{\odot}}\right)^{-2}\text{ Watts}=2.34\times10^{-55}\left(\frac{M}{M\_{\odot}}\right)^{-2}L\_{\odot}$$
where $M\_{\odot}$ and $L\_{\odot}$ are the mass and luminosity of the Sun. You need a very low-mass black hole to produce a significant amount of light. In fact, for a black hole to produce one solar luminosity worth of power, its mass must be about 960 kg. The big problem? Such a tiny black hole would evaporate in about 75 nanoseconds (and even during that time, the amount of optical light is' producing will be small - see below). You can prolong its lifetime by increasing its mass - the evaporation timescale is $\tau\propto M^3$ - but this will in turn decrease its luminosity, and so for the flux to be enough to make a planet habitable, you need to have you planet be closer to the black hole, which could be dangerous if the black hole is actively accreting matter.
# Lots of gamma rays, no visible light
The other major issue is that the peak wavelength of the radiation won't be in the visible band. A black hole's temperature is inversely proportional to its mass, and its peak wavelength $\lambda\_p$ is inversely proportional to its temperature. We then have the relation
$$\lambda\_p=5.87\times10^{12}\left(\frac{M}{M\_{\odot}}\right)\text{ nm}$$
and for our tiny, 960-kg black hole, the peak would be far, far, into the gamma ray portion of the spectrum - not great for life. For comparison, visible light has a wavelength of about 300-700 nm, and you'd need a black hole about 1% the mass of the Moon to produce optical Hawking radiation.
# How about accretion?
Others have talked about the possibility of [energy from infalling matter in the black hole's accretion disk](http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/%7Egarret/teaching/lecture7-2012.pdf). Let's think about this a bit. There's a relationship between the maximum allowed luminosity - the *Eddington limit* - and the black hole's mass:
$$L\_{\text{Edd}}=1.26\times10^{31}\left(\frac{M}{M\_{\odot}}\right)\text{ Watts}^{-1}=3.37\times10^4\left(\frac{M}{M\_{\odot}}\right)L\_{\odot}$$
Is this significant? Well, yes, definitely. But there are problems:
* A $1M\_{\odot}$ black hole accreting at an efficiency of $\epsilon=0.1$ (fairly typical) would accrete a $1M\_{\odot}$ accretion disk in about 45 million years, not enough time for life to evolve.
* That accretion disk would be hot, producing more high-energy radiation.
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From Hawking radiation? No.
The Hawking radiation emitted is inversely proportional to the black hole's size. To make the black hole glow with enough light to be as bright as a star from Hawking radiation alone, it would need to be very small.
The problem with very small black holes is they also have very short lifetimes due to the Hawking radiation robbing them of energy, and thus mass ($E=mc^2$ after all). These small black holes eventually have a runaway of Hawking radiation and explode. This is the ultimate fate of all black holes in our universe, but on very large time scales.
As other answers have mentioned, a black hole that can emit photons in the optical EM range will have a mass of a small fraction of the Moon (~1%), and live for a very long time (~$10^{40}$ years). However, in order to emit such relatively high energy photons for such a long time, a black hole this size must burn VERY, VERY slowly. The SI unit for delivery of energy is the watt, and is roughly the same watt as a common household lightbulb.
1% of lunar mass is around 7e20 kg, and this would have an emitted power of ~7.3e-10 watts. Such a black hole would still be far too weak to warm any planets in orbit. The received flux of the planet Earth is, for reference, is around 1000 watts/m2, and this is an infinitesimal fraction of the Sun's total power output of 3.8e26 watts. This measure is called irradiance, and essentially tells you how many photons are passing through any given area at any given time.
If we assume the black hole is emitting photons at 700nm (a reddish color that is good for photosynthesis) at this wattage, it will emit 2.3 billion photons per second (per the Planck-Einstein relation and the definition of the watt as a joule-per-second). This may sound like a lot, but a 100 watt incandescent lightbulb is emitting $10^{32}$ photons per second, so your black hole is going to be extremely dim.
Irradiance is subject to the inverse-square law, so as you move away from the source, the received energy drops by the square of the distance. If your starting power is 1, and you double the distance, you now get 1/2 the power, triple the distance you get 1/9 the power, etc... Since your black hole is already only emitting less than a nanowatt, it only gets worse from there. Even if your black hole sits on the surface of your planet, it won't be able to warm the surrounding area, much less the entire planet.
However, it *is* possible for a planet in a black hole system to be illuminated, but only if there is a source of gas. Gas falling into a black hole can form an accretion disk, where the speed of the orbiting gas can release radiation through Bremsstrahlung and friction. This is why, for example, we were able to take the picture of M87\*. What we were imaging was not the black hole itself, nor its Hawking radiation, but the light off of its accretion disk.
Unfortunately, the accretion disk needs to be replenished, so you will need a source of gas for it. In addition, the presence of this source of gas is likely to make orbits around your black hole unstable, which is not good news for your planet.
However, it is not *impossible* from a scientific standpoint, just less probable, and rather unlikely, that your planet will stay in a stable position long enough for life to evolve into anything interesting.
Keep in mind as well, that most black holes form as a result of supernovae, meaning that any planets around the star that explodes will be sterilized and probably vaporized by the creation of the black hole in the first place.
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[HDE 226868's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/151629/66717) covers the main points, but there is an additional way the environment around a black hole could heat a planet.
If the planet is close enough to the black hole that it experiences significant time dilation then the planet could get warmed by blueshifted cosmic background radiation. In order for this to work the black hole would need to have a high spin parameter, so that the innermost stable orbit is close enough to the black hole. You'd also need to have a supermassive black hole in order to have sufficiently weak tidal forces that the planet does not get ripped apart.
See the paper by Opatrný et al. (2016) "[Life under a black sun](https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.02897)" for more details. They calculate that the cosmic background radiation would heat Miller's planet in the film *Interstellar* to around 890°C, without taking the additional radiation from the accretion disc into account. As they note:
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> Thus, the tidal waves observed on the planet might be, e.g., of melted aluminum. Moreover, the astronauts would be grilled by extreme-UV radiation.
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If you're not dead set on it being Hawking radiation, you might want to look into [quasars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar). Basically, imagine a blackhole that is gobbling what's around it, and the whole thing radiating humongous amounts of energy in the process:
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> The brightest quasar in the sky is 3C 273 in the constellation of Virgo. It has an average apparent magnitude of 12.8 (bright enough to be seen through a medium-size amateur telescope), but it has an absolute magnitude of −26.7. From a distance of about 33 light-years, this object would shine in the sky about as brightly as our sun. This quasar's luminosity is, therefore, about 4 trillion (4 × 1012) times that of the Sun, or about 100 times that of the total light of giant galaxies like the Milky Way.
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To put 33 light-years in context, Alpha Centauri is a bit over 4 light-years away from the Sun.
Anyway, with a bit of handwaving, it seems like you could imagine some earth-sized planet floating in deep space. Perhaps a galaxy crashed into another galaxy, resulting in the planet getting ejected out of its original star's vicinity. A quasar ignited when the two galaxies' cores crashed into one another, and the starless planet is now getting showered by visible light.
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### Historical background
In discussions about European medieval archery, there is a lot of emphasis on the english longbow, and the physique and training required to field an archer of that caliber. The stereotypical English longbowman must have the strength to draw a 150lb bow, have trained from adolescence as an archer, and even have their very skeleton deformed over time by their dedication to the weapon.
Asian communities have their own stereotypes. Because of historical examples and depictions of fat samurai or generals, there is a narrative that if you want to pull a strong bow you must be fat to have the muscle you need. Some modern archers like Nu-Sensei have even deliberately mimicked this traditional build.
I'm wondering if those depictions are really the *only* way to have a realistic military archer. English Longbowmen are a radical archetype of archers, and I'm guessing that throughout history, there would be archers in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Americas with a more friendly pull weight on their war bows (around 100 pounds), and thus didn't require the immense strength and build. Historical examples of mounted archers, and archers with recurve bows, had pull weights as light as 40-50 pounds. As for the prolonged training, there must have been cases of conscripts, hunters with experience with hunting bows, and that sort of thing, to obviate the need for intense training.
There are examples of real female archer warriors in history, especially in Asia and Japan, such as the [Onna-Bugeisha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onna-musha). There are also many women who [practice traditional archery](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dc6Bi8dUfFmg&psig=AOvVaw2-GgTf2zkTXN4-ZGHn7f_D&ust=1644774711282000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAwQjhxqFwoTCMCUhN7e-vUCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAT) for either hobby or hunting, such as [Anna Sokólska](https://archery360.com/2017/04/05/horseback-archery-strength-courage-precision-full-gallop/), a mounted archery champion. The competition bow's draw weight is only 40 lbs.
What I'm struggling to determine and find references for is what kind of build a female combat archer would need to have to be part of a practical and realistic fighting force, and how little training you can get away with for an archer.
### My setting
My historical fiction setting is Poland in the 1400s, and the character I'm focusing on is the adolescent daughter of a forester. She's practiced bow-hunting since childhood. She's also trained as a hunter and forester like her brothers. I would like her to use a recurve bow with a <100lb draw weight, potentially swapping to a lighter one when she's on horseback. When a war breaks out, she becomes a Robinhood-like figure, using her bow and ambush tactics against the enemy. Her opposition mainly consists of mercenaries, who are equipped with brigandine armor and open sallet helms. She's also training other girls to form a band of partisans.
### My question
I want to know if this a plausible background and scenario, and, if so, get an idea of what the physique and training of the archers would look like. Could it match the trope of slender elven or human female archers, or would that build preclude them being a real threat to armored opponents? Would a few months training time be enough for my protagonist to prepare a band of untrained girls to be archers?
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# Sociology aside, this is a realistic scenario
(or at least as realistic as Robin Hood)
In this answer, I'm setting aside the fact that Poland in the 1400s would not be a conducive sociological environment for this type of thing, since your character's backstory presupposes that she's grown up in a very non-traditional manner.
First, I'll suggest a setting and mode of operation for these archers, and then expand on why I believe it's plausible given the constraints of the situation.
### The setting
Winter. A forest in the foothills of a frozen mountain range, either the Sudetes or the Carpathian. The daily temperature rarely strays higher than ten degrees below freezing. The forest is thick, and the snowcover is thick enough to bury a man to the waist in the deeper drifts.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fy4lh.jpg)
(This isn't strictly necessary, but it will make for a dramatic setting and adds an element of danger from nature itself, so I am going to go with it. Much of what is below applies anyways.)
### Tactics
Like you suggested, your archers are going to be using *ambush* tactics. Your protagonist is the daughter of a forester, and is fighting enemy troops in woods she's explored since she was a little girl. Her main tactics for combat are going to be ambush attacks on sentries or opportunistic attacks on lone messengers and small groups of enemies, firing arrows from within tree canopies, and fleeing on snowshoes, skis, or through the trees.
**They will have light bows.** 50lbs? Nah. Their bows (your protagonist aside) should be 30lbs, max. That's the [sweet](http://www.bestrecurvebowguide.com/recurve-bow-draw-weight-chart-for-choosing-drawing-weight/) [spot](https://1source.basspro.com/news-tips/archery/5039/bow-buyers-guide-women-and-youth) [draw weight](https://www.huntersfriend.com/compound-bow-fitting-draw-length-draw-weight-help-guide.html) for small-framed women. [It's](https://forums.bowsite.com/tf/regional/thread.cfm?threadid=210343&state=AZ) [enough](https://www.archerytalk.com/threads/will-30-pounds-kill-a-deer.1036227/) [to](https://wildernesstoday.com/recurve-bow-draw-weights/) [hunt](https://getrecurvebow.com/30-lb-recurve-bow-kill/) [deer](https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/thirty-pound-bow-for-white-tail-deer.296004/), (though heavier draw weights are preferred) and will easily kill or maim humans.
A lighter bow cuts the training time by a *lot*, and while a 50lb bow may be stronger, it's not necessary, either for range, or kill potential. For distance, if there are 30m of open, unobstructed space between them and their target, *they are too exposed to be safe*. Most of their kills should happen from an elevated position, at a range of 10-20m, in dense parts of the forest. They should not be trying to punch through armor, they should be aiming at any unarmored area. An arrow in the eye or throat will kill you just fine...
But an arrow in the thigh is great too. They don't actually *want* to kill their enemies, necessarily. A dead enemy is good, of course... but a wounded enemy who takes four weeks to die of a gangrenous infection in his leg from an arrowhead smeared in feces is *better*.
Most importantly, combat is only a fraction of what they'll do, since the best way to survive a fight is to **not be in one**.
They'll dig punji pits and troupe de loups on roads the enemy uses, hidden under the cover of snow. They'll sabotage trail markings and steal supplies. They'll goad hounds to howl all night, so garrisons or camped troops get no rest. They'll sabotage bridges across frozen streams, so the timbers snap under the weight of twenty armored soldiers, crashing through the ice, soaking them, and leaving them to freeze to death. They'll find out enemy positions and encampments, and pass that information (by proxies, likely) to any formal military opposition in the area. They'll warn villages of approaching soldiers, and help in denying their enemy the ability to feed off the land. Also, at night, they'll steal, kill, and, if possible, eat horses. (but don't put that in the book. People don't like animal death).
The land itself will be trying to kill these invaders. The girls are just helping out.
### Gender discrepancies
For the tactics that your guerrillas are using, gender really isn't going to be a limitation. The main points of comparison are going to be:
* **Endurance**. The ability to keep going day after day under harsh conditions. Women match (or sometimes exceed) men at this. Not in marathons, but in [ultra-marathons](https://www.insider.com/women-are-faster-long-distance-runners-estrogen-2020-1).
* **Climbing**. Your girls are going to be climbing trees, rocky ridges, and walls. In climbing, women are [not at a significant disadvantage](https://audreysathleticadventures.com/why-are-women-so-good-at-rock-climbing-femme-fitale-2-2/) with men. I can't find any stats on tree climbing, but I imagine that would apply even more here, since they are significantly lighter.
* **Riding**. Women are comparable horse-riders to men. Hell, the Riders of Rohan were mostly women in New Zealand. (Though I recognize that modern hobby equestrianism isn't equivalent)
* **Shooting**. I'm specifying *shooting* before archery because the most important thing here is *accuracy*, not poundage. In shooting at the short ranges that forest combat will have here, (10m) [women beat men.](https://www.espn.com/shooting/story/_/id/31828521/10m-air-rifle-sport-tokyo-olympics-where-women-outgun-men)
* **Archery**. Men regularly beat women in archery competitions by a significant enough margin that they don't compete against each other (mostly)... but that margin is still very small, often less than 5% in points (and certain [world records](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_archery) are equal)
* **Cold endurance**. There is some (limited, disputed) evidence that in long-term *cold* endurance, women beat men. (Though in short term and in frostbite resistance, not so much). Whether this is true in the mean, in this case, is less relevant that whether it's true in extreme cases. [Chloe McCardel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlo%C3%AB_McCardel) has swum across the English channel **44** times (the most of any human in history). The record for most (though not fastest) there-and-back-again swims across the English channel is also held by a woman, Cindy Nicholas, at 5. At least when it comes to dedicated acts of madness combined with cold temperatures, women certainly hold their own. A winter-long murder spree in a frozen forest certainly qualifies.
### Training
For our protagonist, we take as given that she is a proficient archer. The question is, how quickly can her recruits pick it up?
The fact that we are setting our targets at 10-20m is *huge*. With a decent bow, (maybe she's also a very good bowyer?) I'm fairly confident that a good archer with a deep understanding of the weapon could teach a teenager to consistently put >90% of their arrows into a medium sized target at 10m in ***two to three hours***. That was my experience when I learned, and some googling around shows that it's not an [uncommon](https://www.quora.com/How-much-training-does-it-take-before-people-can-hit-bullseyes-in-archery) [number](https://www.quora.com/How-long-would-it-take-me-to-learn-how-to-shoot-a-bow-I-have-never-picked-a-bow-up-before?top_ans=82369379), and some are optimistic it could be done in an hour. (Maybe I was an especially poor student).
A month of practice should be more than enough for them to get >50% bullseye hits at that range, and if their target is a 10cm wide unprotected face... here is an unfortunate mercenary's face plastered on a 50cm target.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gFEYq.jpg)
That center bullseye is 5cm across —just double the width of your eyeball.
### Appearance
They are certainly not going to be *fat*, because that simply wasn't a thing people other than nobles really got to be. Especially in winter, and especially in Eastern Europe, and especially during wartime.
They are going to be thin. They are going to be filthy. Their skin will be rough, their faces windburned, their eyes hollow. Some will be missing fingers and toes.
Something a lot like this. Complete with the skeleton trophies.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cQCnj.jpg)
Three Russian women sit behind a table piled with human remains, taken in the Volga region during the 1921-1922 famine.
Taken from the Russian government archives, the Peter Struve collection, box 25.
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# Women often fought in wars.
There's lots of historical records of women fighting in wars, and hunting. The norm was that women didn't fight in pitched battles far from home because women tend to have more trouble lugging heavy weights on long marches than men, but that's no real bar to doing such in a home forest where you can forage from the land and don't need to carry heavy stuff around or march long distances.
Women weren't suicidal. It was really shitty to have a town invaded by an enemy army most of the time, with rape, assault, murder, and enslavement being routine. They would help defend their homes with lighter weapons.
# You only need heavy bows if you're going up against armour at range.
Good armour can block lighter bows, and so you need heavier bows if you're up against armoured people. This is especially important at long ranges because you're mostly attacking the chest since it's the biggest target and it kills people, and the chest is easy to cover in plate or chain.
If you're ambushing people you can avoid more armoured enemies, and get close, and use poisoned weapons to try and hurt them. Poison isn't that useful for the battlefield unless you have some especially potent stuff nearby, but for hit and run it's great because you can run away and wait hours or days for them to die.
# They wouldn't have a great physique for it.
A couple of months of fairly irregular workouts isn't enough to massively augment their bodies. They'll have whatever shapes they had when they started, with them having a bit more muscle and being a bit more lean. English archers had to work a lifetime to get their physique.
[Answer]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onna-musha>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XnlGnm.jpg)
>
> Onna-Musha... is a term referring to female warriors in pre-modern
> Japan.These women engaged in battle alongside samurai men mainly in
> times of need. They were members of the bushi (samurai) class in
> feudal Japan and were trained in the use of weapons to protect their
> household, family, and honour in times of war.
>
>
>
Hangaku Gozen (depicted) was one of these; a member of the samurai class and a military leader in 1201.
---
You could have someone like this: a woman raised with military training who has somehow become unattached and so is willing to train your girls. If they are to operate as a paramilitary unit it would be helpful to have someone who knows something about tactics and maybe your dishonored lady samurai could be that.
Maybe the lady samurai is pregnant but unmarried. Rather than commit suicide, she chooses baby over family and so leaves her home and lives off the land. Thus it is your band of girls finds her and takes her in.
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Ways to bypass upper body strength requirement for a bow:
Time advantage. Attacks at night for example. This way you can get closer to your opponent and weaker bow is fine too. Good chance to have a surprise effect as well. High risk of distance being too close and being defested by the melee weapons.
Local superiority. For example through horseback riding. Being able to concentrate your forces on a part of the territory where opponent cant collect his forces as quickly. Any transport or teleportation or even sneaky movement can do the same.
Better metalurgy. Heat treatment of the arrow's pointy part to be able to penetrate an armor better.
Better poisons. Archers used bucket of feces for their arrows, to make sure infection will kill theit opponent, but it is a rather slow process that takes days and is not helpful in a non-siege battle. Having a quickly acting poison is a significant advantage.
Formation. If your troops cant practice as much, they can just shoot at once from a formation, to make sure that the cloud of artows will hit someone. Not so much about upper body strength, but about learning time, that is also extreme for a bow.
Territory advantage. For example forest ambush. Being prepared and catching opponent off guard as he moves out of formation in an unknown to him territory.
Exploding arrows. Probably impractical unless very good gunpowder and chaped charve is developed, which is unlikely. Still, added weight would require a lot of upper body strength for sufficient range. Shaped charge allows to penetrate almost any armor and the target behind, but requires modern eqlosives, black powder is not enough. And theory behind this tech is also very non intuitive. Probably time traveler could pull this off, having info about proper explosives, shaped charge and initiators at once. All of which are needed and didnt exist back then.
Altitude advantage. Cliff, tree, castle, all accelerate the arrow as it falls. This can compensate for lower initial speed, especially if other party tries to shoot up.
Higher firing rate. There was some interesting examples of sort-of-automatic crossbow in China. Same tech can be used for a bow too. If you can make lots of cheap arrows, and let your troops waste all of them, you can achieve better military strength just through this. Especislly important as reduction of learning time.
Bow related accessories. Thumb ring, 2 finger glove, bow's counter weight, recursive bow, all could give an advantage in your case.
Going extreme. Bow can be used with your whole body, using legs to hold the bow and arms to hold the tether. This achieves extreme range, much more so than a longbow. It is impractical because how slow it is to reload and because special bow is needed and lackluster precision. But if you manage to build a whole new tactic around this feature, why not.
Diplomacy. You can always make other groups fight each other, so that you dont have to fight. This is what wins the war, and what women could be good at.
Anyway, bowwoman looks will still make todays average guy jelous. And extremely long learning is required. Especially for long range or horseback. Reduced learning time if formation, ambush, accessories are used.
Poisons, metallurgy, explosives, diplomacy, night attacks, likely require societal level change, and are unlikely for a lone adventurer.
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The crossbow was a complicated weapon, and you’d have to explain how these women get and maintain them. But, especially with poisoned bolts, it was considered an especially-suitable weapon for a woman in China and some other places, and they can be used while mounted. (Although I don’t believe the repeating crossbow had made it to Poland by the early 1400s.) The loading mechanism can help someone with low upper-body strength get good pull on the bolt.
The main disadvantage is the long reload time, but a pair of women on a horse could probably hit and run with them.
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The problem we have today when looking at bows is that it's largely driven by myth, fantasy novels and Hollywood nonsense.
In 1400s Poland it would have been fairly unusual for somebody to have a recurve bow as recurve bows generally don't last long in that kind of climate. A noble might be willing to pay for something that wouldn't last, but a poor hunter would never buy something like that for his daughter. There is also absolutely no way that this hunter's daughter would have the knowledge or the expensive tooling to create additional recurve bows for the rest of her merry band. If they're using bows, then they're using straight bows.
We have what I call the "Legolas effect." People have this idea that archers were just running around firing off arrows like machine guns and every arrow would either magically pierce through armor or mysteriously find some point where the was no armor. That's not how it worked in real life.
You are not going to have success using a weak bow and hoping to pick off armored soldiers by hitting their unarmored spots. How do we know this? Because when armies were still using bows, none of them viewed that as a rational strategy.
If you're going to use bows against armored enemies you need something with at least a chance of getting through that armor. Despite what Hollywood movies show, bows had a LOT of trouble against people wearing armor. It's almost like there was a reason people spend huge sums of money for the privilege of carrying around a lot of extra weight.
The problem with heavy bows is that they take a LOT of both energy and upper body strength to use. That is something that a band of rag tag women rebels hiding out in the woods would have trouble with. To highlight the difficulties there, let's look at the English longbowmen that were mentioned here. There are detailed, existing accounts of battles those bowmen fought, and the one that jumps mind here ( and I forget the author ) is one which detailed how effective the archers were after only a single day of marching. Only 1 in 10 of the English long bowmen could fully draw their bow, less than half could draw their bow to 50%. That's from life long archers after only a single day of hard living. These female rebels would be living that life for months or years, they would be half starved and lacking the natural upper body strength advantage those men have. They would struggle even more.
For these women to actually have any chance they couldn't be some small, thin things. The thing elven cliche would not only have been unable to actually use the weapon effectively but likely would have been unable to survive the Polish winter living in exile in the forest. So, this dream of having a band of porn star looking archers probably isn't realistic. You're probably going to need something in line with Brienne of Tarth.
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An addendum to other answers, concentrating on her recruits:
They're orphans and outcasts, some widows. They're a close-knit band of women who have to look after themselves because society won't - at least not without unacceptable terms. They live on the margins of society and already have to hunt to survive. Not the prestigious deer, but small game. So they can already use and make a light bow, and conceal a snare. What they need to learn is how to fight.
If that's not stereotypical enough, they also keep the forest lore, knowing the plants that heal, and the plants that poison.
But for your imagery, they'll be small. Even intermittently poor nutrition will reduce stature, and they'll be skinny and lean. That doesn't mean weak, just no surplus on them. They'll probably carry the scars of old injuries, and other signs of a hard life
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150lbs or as opera translates to 68.04kg isn't anything that requires ''immense'' strength.
I believe any women who has the strength needed to work the land and grow some crops, or to lift up a baby, or to chop down some wood to start a fire and cook a meal.... any woman like that has enough strength to exert 68.04kg of forces by pulling with their scapulae and pushing with the other shoulder.
Longbowmen were not bodybuilders nor strongmen.
While it may seem that visually someone is pulling 68.04kg with one single arm, which can still be impressive anyway but not requiring of elite strength regardless... this isn't even the case since the archer is not doing a one arm row similar to gym exercises, they are actually using both arms to pull the string away from the bow. This makes the act of shooting a longbow viable for any individual who has some basic level of fitness. And most medieval women did have more than a basic level of fitness.
] |
[Question]
[
Many organizations today have identity cards, and use passwords and multi-factor authentication to authenticate and authorize people. If there's trouble, things can be done: Identity cards can be replaced with new serial numbers; passwords can be changed; digital certificates revoked; keys and locks changed.
If your organization can travel in time, most of these methods break down. If my password is compromised and a malicious actor can travel in time, then revoking it from 'now' doesn't help, and ensuring that password is never issued just means that password2 is compromised instead. You also can't ask someone to look over the access logs and verify it was all them, because it might be them, it just might not have happened to them yet.
On top of that, changing anything when one of your own is out of sync with you, means that they could return and give the incorrect passphrase, or have the wrong key, or simply return at a point you're not expecting them to.
How would you reliably identify a person who's a part of your organization, assuming there are too many people to simply memorize?
The best I've come up with so far is that each person on each journey gets a unique code. Whenever they return, they can be connected to a specific trip. It does mean that all the codes would have to be determined in advance, though, and still suffers from problems if the list of codes is compromised.
[Answer]
The problem with time travel is that it leads to paradoxes. You will have to decide in your story or game setting how you deal with it. How about this:
1. Time traveler A1 wants to identify himself to time traveler B1. He goes up to B1, **invents** a password from scratch, and says it.
2. In the after-action debriefing, A1 tells that to his superior, A2. A2 determines the superior of B1, call him B2. If A2 knows B2 personally, go to step 3, otherwise A2's boss A3 talks to B2's boss, B3.
3. A2 tells B2 that A1 will use a certain password to identify himself to B1 on a certain date, and also how A1 was disguised on the mission.
4. B2 **travels back in time** and briefs B1 that an agent will come, with a certain password and disguise.
The only way this would break down is if the mission fails and A1 never reports back, but in that case why waste resources to help him?
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**Another scenario:**
1. Time Traveler A1 needs to identify himself to time traveler B1. A1 opens the sealed envelope for this mission and finds a note from B1, "trust this guy."
2. A1 hands the note to B1. B1 reads it, recognizes his own signature, and then immediately burns the flash paper.
3. B1 writes a new note on flash paper, puts it into an envelope, and puts that into an outer envelope labeled "for A1's mission." During his next status report to his superior B2, he hands the envelope over.
4. The envelope is carried forward in time to the time travel mission control, where it is stored securely until A1 gets briefed for his mission.
[Answer]
## Low Tech Solution
There's a Spanish Language show called "The Ministry of Time" (El Ministerio Del Tiempo) that handles this question.
The agency is pretty broad and had been running since around the twelfth century. Each time period manages their agents: so the 1950s ministry deals with 1950s agents, in a manner analogous to field offices. The present (whenever that is) is the ultimate decision-making authority. Message tubes, time-travelling e-mail, and time-travelling phone allow field offices to communicate with the home office in the present. The future is not yet set. They rely on memory and paperwork to know which agents are theirs, what missions they are on, and what those agents have done in the past. As you have pointed out, higher-tech solutions are as vulnerable to time as paper.
The time travel mechanism in this setting does not effect people currently travelling in time. Agents go home every night (unless on a mission) to their own time, unless something (like being too famous) makes staying in their own time difficult. In this manner, and protected from time-travels effects during the working day, you have a good reality-check as each agent can report anomalies when they get home, with reporters spread pretty well across both geography and time.
It's a porous system, and the show has dealt with the consequences of that porousness, but by and large it works and seems credible.
## High Tech Solution
DC's Legends of Tomorrow (season #1) takes an alternative solution. The preferred time period, where the agency's home office is located, is the end of time. Time is already as the agency would prefer it, and they possess a supercomputer sufficiently powerful to detect if suddenly a new history would be more optimal (which would probably be a sign that something has changed).
Ships are tracked using something like transponders, but individual agents are not. This method also is very porous, but also seems to largely get the job done. There is also a problem where changes that are "better" (however that is decided) are promoted to the new baseline, without any soul-searching about it.
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# A radioactive clock to detect tampering with mission timelines
An agent goes out on a mission, and is given a certain timeline for how long he can be gone. The agent might be given 8 hours of agent-time to do what he is assigned to do. By strictly enforcing this agent-time, you can help guard against unusual events in the timeline.
Each member of the time team is given a radioactive clock built into a chip. This clock will contain an isotope that decays over time. The chip will be inserted into the agent. The activity of the isotope and its decay emissions will give you an exact time of how long it has been since the card was issued. By varying the isotope, you can vary the time limit. If a mission is only authorized for one day, then give an isotope with a 5 hour half-life. Measurements of the resulting decay will be accurate to the minute. If the mission is authorized for a week of travel time, then the isotope should have a 40 hour half-life, and time measurements will be accurate to ~10 minutes.
Obviously, choose an isotope that isn't going to kill the user. Anything that $\beta$ decays (i.e. electron emission) can be placed in a very thin conductive metal case in the chip to protect the holder from radiation. For example, [Gallium-73](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_gallium) $\beta$ decays with a 4.9 hour half-life for short missions; [Scandium-48](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_scandium) $\beta$ decays in 44 hours for longer missions. Elements on the lower end of the atomic mass spectrum don't tend to emit high energy gammas, so there are plenty of mostly benign atomic species.
# How to make the clocks
Basically, you have to isolate a sufficient amount of a certain isotope in order to make each clock for the mission. The equipment to perform this is pricey; but, one purchase, it just costs a high electric bill to run. Choose the isotope you want to synthesize and determine what you need to bombard with neutrons to get it. Load the stable material you need to bombard into a [spallation facility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spallation#Spallation_facilities), then bombard it with neutrons.
For example, to make Gallium-73, you would bombard Gallium-71 ( a stable isotope with 40% abundance) with neutrons until some atoms pick up two extra neutrons. Gallium-72 has a 14 hour half-life, so many of the intermediary products would survive to pick up a second neutron. Then you use the [isotope separation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_separation) technique best suited to whatever element you are working with to concentrate your once isotope.
Obviously, with a 5 hour half-life on some of the clocks, you don't have much time, so the Time Agency is going to need to have the clock production facility on site. The minute that a 1 gram sample is embedded in a chip, that chip needs to be embedded in an agent and the agent sent on their mission.
# How this helps you
What this gives you is a way to determine how long the person spent while time travelling. They can re-appear at the very same instant that they were gone, but the id card will give you a foolproof way to determine the time elapsed for that person. If some crazy time hijinks involved the agent spending a year of time (from the agent's perspective) stuff, the id card will tell you that.
By inserting the chip into the agent, you can ensure that the same agent came back.
This method should be used in addition to other methods, namely, biometrics and encrypted passcodes. But while encrypted passcodes can be cheated through time travel, and while biometrics could be foiled by the same person from a different timeline, the inserted chip will ensure this is the same agent and that he spent the amount of time he said he did while travelling.
[Answer]
>
> How would you reliably identify a person who's a part of your organization, assuming there are too many people to simply memorize?
>
>
>
* Fingerprints
* Iris scan
* DNA
All of the above are uniquely linked to an individual, time invariant and can hardly be counterfeited.
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This answer is heavily influenced by [Public Key Cryptography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography)
All time travelers agree on a secret prime number X. When two time travelers meet they can used some simple division to tell if the other person is in the secret society.
**The Algorithm**
Time traveler 1 picks some random number called number1, and ask for Time Travel 2 to answer divide number1 by X and tell him the remainder (it's important he doesn't tell him the actual answer)
Time Travel 2 picks another random number, and challenges Time Traveler 1 to give the remainder of this new number divided by X
If both of them know X, they can easily validate the other one's knowledge without explicitly saying X. Anyone overhearing the conversation, even with the ability to time travel will not be able to reuse the answer, as it will change each time the question is asked.
>
> What if someone gets Time Traveler 3 drunk and gets the secret number X out of them? You Ask.
>
>
>
**A Way To Further Protect The Time Travel Council Members**
Use Carbon-Dating to ensure the Time Traveler has visited HQ recently. HQ has a large collection of hard-to-replicate trinkets all set to the same Carbon-Dated time. Use these as a way to track how long each time traveler has been away from HQ. If they haven't visited HQ in the last month (by carbon-dated time) then don't trust them.
**But the guy who learned X is now able to masquerade as a member of the Time Council**
Yep, he is, but this is the more mundane problem of people leaking passwords. Even in non-time traveling secret societies, I'd imagine the members have to meet regularly, and determine the new passwords.
**By using a secret number and a remainder, there is no way anyone overhearing a conversation would be able to travel back in time, and preemptively use it. It won't protect you from loose lips.**
**EDIT**
Several astute commenters pointed out that cryptography uses the fact it would take billions of years to guess the number as protection against attacks (which the time traveler has since they can just jump 1 billion years in the future).
One way to at least make this harder would be to use secret number X as a starting point, then come up with an algorithm based on the calendar date (i.e. multiply X by month then divide by day). Now the Time Council has to know a secret number and a secret algorithm.
By adding this algorithm, no single observation of Time Council members would be enough to determine X. The attacker would have to observe several meetings, which would take "real time" in the attacker's world.
By pairing this with an expiring trinket system (see above), you could effectively limit the guessing power of the attacker.
Still, nothing protects you from a disgruntled time traveler simply publishing the secret.
[Answer]
**Authorization is granted to those who possess the secret knowledge.
The secret knowledge is itself the authorization.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/O7mD7.jpg)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZSRKNw-lTE>
<http://www.witchcraftandwitches.com/related_rosicrucianism.html>
>
> According to the 18th Century secret society called the "Golden and
> Rosy Cross", the Rosicrucian Order was created in the year AD 46 when
> an Alexandrian Gnostic sage named Ormus and his six followers were
> converted by one of Jesus' disciples, Mark. From this conversion,
> Rosicrucianism was supposedly born, by purifying Egyptian mysteries
> with the new higher teachings of early Christianity, and they adopted
> the symbol of a red cross surmounted by a rose.
>
>
>
Your time travelers are part of a secret society. To understand time travel and the responsibilities, they first must master the secret knowledge which the society exists to protect. It is not trivial. These secrets cover time travel and much more besides. One who understands these secrets can travel in time (among other things), and this knowledge compels those who have it to act in accordance with the precepts of the society.
If one forgets the secrets because of age or illness, one also loses the ability to travel in time.
[Answer]
The reality is that you can't develop a time travel identification system to solve these problems independent of your story's particular time travel methodology. The two must be intertwined because your identification system is designed to solve problems particular to your time travel methodology. The rules you need to support for a Novikov Self-Consistency Principle based world are very different from those required to support a Heinlein style Time Corps, and are very different from those you would want in a Primer style time travel scheme.
The best answer in all cases comes from Heinlein's short story, *All You Zombies*. If you can't find a copy, I recommend at least watching the movie *Predestination*, which is a reasonably 1:1 movie rendition of it. It contains probably the most brutal example of how hard it is to ID a time traveler, but it also contains the best rule: **don't depend on your ability to ID people. If you don't need to know who they are, it doesn't matter if you know or not.** Consider the question of rank. Who is the higher ranking time traveler?
>
> I woke the duty sergeant, showed my I. D., told the sergeant to
> bed my companion down with a happy pill and recruit him in the morning. The sergeant looked sour, but rank
> is rank, regardless of era; he did what I said—thinking, no doubt, that the next time we met he might be the
> colonel and I the sergeant. Which can happen in our corps.
>
>
>
Neither the main character nor the sergeant are dependent on the real truth of who is higher ranking. They simply live a life which is acceptable based on the time they are in. For them, a piece of paper showing that one has higher rank at this particular moment is sufficient.
[Answer]
At any given point in Alice's subjective time, she's used her password a finite number of times. If Eve's stolen the password, Alice can review all the times she's used that password and will ever use that password, ensure that they're all her in her subjective past, then stop using that password. So long as Bob has a list of all the passwords she'll ever use, she can still authenticate.
Use asymmetric keys instead of a shared password, and this is both simple and secure. If time is immutable then you only need check once, and if time is mutable then you'll only need to take action if Alice spots an invalidated password of hers being used after (from her perspective) she's made sure that all the uses of it were past-her.
With this system in play, you can use conventional authentication in a temporally complex environment.
[Answer]
Travel back as far as is possible, and set up secret satellite network where it won't be detected, designed to operate unobtrusively for thousands of years (or more)
When you want to authenticate with a potential fellow agent, you both get out your biometric **P**ersonal **A**uthentication **S**uper **S**ecret **P**asscode & **O**rders **R**eceiver/**T**ransmitter devices, trigger the log-in, and show them to each other. Your PASSPORTs identify each other, exchange encoded credentials - then connect to the satellite network to verify.
The satellites communicate with the agent's own-time to confirm that each agent is who they say they are by matching the biometric keys, and check that both agents are meeting each other at the same chronospacial coordinates to prevent spoofing. The results are then sent back to the Agents' PASSPORTS, which will both chime to confirm a meeting, AND provide a list of events that each Agent has experienced in their personal timeline that other either Has or Has Not.
(These **S**ynchronised **P**ersonal **O**verview of **I**ndividual **L**ife-**E**vent **R**ecords not only ensure that Agents do not accidentally pollute each other's future timelines, but allow them to catch up on and discuss events that they have both observed as having already occurred - the opportunity to discuss future events with relative freedom is important for the stress levels and mental health of our Agents.)
As a bonus, the satellite network provides a discreet and secure method of global and temporal communication for agents.
If your login requires that you provide a passcode too, then you have 4-factor security: You need to **know something** (the passcode), you need to **have something** (your PASSPORT), you need to **be something** (for the Biometrics to match), and you need to **be somewhen** (for the paired handshake with the other Agent)
[Answer]
A lot of the solutions proposed here work until you have to **revoke the agent's access across time**. Therefore you need something that ties to the age of the agent, and can't just be stolen or faked. Kingledion mention degrading clocks, I propose **Biometrics**. (They can be combined as well)
Specifically some type of **behavioral biometrics**. Keystroke dynamics work well and can be done in the background without the agent's knowledge. They just type a passphrase.
In short, keystroke biometrics works because people have millisecond differences between key-down and key-up, as well as key-up and key-down for the next key. Which is enough to reliably identify someone. Especially for a passphrase, which is mostly muscle memory, it is practically impossible for a person to reliably learn and imitate the pattern of a passphrase. (A machine can, if you need to circumvent it...)
While biological biometrics (fingerprint, iris, etc.) are more or less fixed, behavioral biometrics (typing pattern, gait, etc.) can change over time. That is, as the agent ages. It is therefore irrelevant if the agent travel back in time, as he will still be older, and his typing pattern will correspond to an older agent. It works as follows.
* Agent is given a password upon joining, and agency secretly record his typing pattern as he authorise himself in various systems.
* Agency add agent's updated pattern in their time-independent-database when he logs in to the systems after each mission.
* The agency would give the agent a new password after n missions, which is common practice anyway.
* When password is changed, the agent will update his passphrases in multiple systems, giving agency both a pattern for the old password at the time of change, and the new password.
* New password already have a fixed initial pattern as agent has typed it a dozen times to change his password. 2 times during change, 1 during login with new password. Then repeated for multiple systems.
When the agent goes rogue, you simply invalidate his latest pattern. All previous patterns are still valid, because it is not feasible for the agent to change his typing pattern for any of the previous passwords to match the valid patterns. He also wouldn't know that there is a pattern to typing it. Which means any younger agent will be unaffected for all points in time, and the older agent is detected at all points in time.
You're still gonna face paradoxes such as older agent convincing younger agent to go rogue, or kill his younger self, but that's an issue with all time travel.
[Answer]
You cannot simply time travel from space-time A to space-time B you first have to time travel to the check-in-space-time C inside the headquarters, where time travelers have to check-in in real time. That means that every time traveler can time travel it's self **only towards** the check-in-space-time. When time-travelers arrive there, they arrive in a queue that is in continuous time and are served in sequence. After he/she is checked and everything is ok, then he/is sent to it's original destination.
If someones access is revoked for any reason, it is communicated to the check-in-space-time where it takes effect immediately. Then, if this person arrives in the check-in-space-time after the access revocation, he/she will be checked if he/she is the person before or after the access revocation, since they would know which space-time you are coming from, and handled accordingly.
With some proper bureaucracy and planning, access tokens and passwords can be very effective since you can really manage your agents to not have overlapping timelines and go rogue very easily.
] |
[Question]
[
*This question has been rewritten to incorporate all clarifications.*
On Earth, half the planet is illuminated at any time (let's ignore eclipses). Axial tilt lets day lengths vary, but over the course of a year, every location is illuminated half the time.
It's easy to make a planet where, over a year, everywhere is illuminated more than half the time. Use a binary star.
But is there a naturally occurring, stable solar system that satisfies the more restrictive requirement that the planet is *always* more than half illuminated?
In the general case, if it orbits one star of a binary, there will be a point in its orbit where the other star passes behind the one the planet orbits. If it orbits both stars, there will likewise be a point where all three are in a line. And note that, even if the planet's orbit is inclined relative to the plane containing the stars' orbits, a collinear situation is still possible... barring some resonance that prevents it.
Constraints:
Note that I'm only talking about solar system geometry. Cloud cover means you can't see the sun all the time (though light gets through). Atmospheric refraction and diffraction extend visible light onto the 'night' side; this gets extreme with a dense atmosphere like Venus. I know this, so I'm not asking for answers involving that. All solutions must work for a vacuum world. My purpose is to explore the geometry of solar systems.
The planet must satisfy **both** of "At any time, >50% of the surface is illuminated" and "At any location, illuminated >50% of the year."
Approximate scale of the effect: Let's say that "more than half" means at least 195/360 of the surface (IE, an extra hour in an Earth day). It must also be light providing meaningful illumination, not just technically visible. Let's say that said area is illuminated to a level at least 1/40 of (should it be "the brightest illumination it receives" or "the brightest illumination Earth receives"?).
Before asking this question, I thought of a Trojan planet of a binary star. I then saw a figure of a minimum mass ratio of 25 for two bodies to generate stable L4/L5 points. With stars, luminosity is roughly proportional to mass to the 3.5 power. This means one star must be at least 78000 times brighter than the other, and the planet is equidistant from them. Given that full moonlight on Earth is about 1/400000 of full sunlight, this is hardly better, nowhere near enough to count as "day". That's why I asked the question.
[Answer]
You can have a binary star, and the planet in a Trojan position in the same orbit as the smaller of the two stars.
Basically, the two stars describe one side of an equilateral triangle, and the planet occupies the third vertex, in either L4 or L5 position.
One such configuration is presented [here](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/On-the-Possibility-of-Habitable-Trojan-Planets-in-Schwarz-Funk/292ff83a2b4c6f1ea3632312264af51e5ecfafc2) (figure 2, on the right).
Wikipedia gives [stability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_(celestial_body)#Stability) requirements as "m1 > 100 m2 > 10,000 m3" so you'd need a large F-star as m1, and a small red-yellow dwarf as m2. This also requires a large orbital radius for habitability.
This configuration is not long lived enough for life to originate on the world, though. For that you'd need a smaller, colder, longer-lived main star (for example a Sun-type G star), and then you'd need a very small brown dwarf which, at a distance of some 8-10 light-minutes, wouldn't probably supply much of a daylight.
But if you don't require habitability, this would get you four hours of main daylight, eight hours of "reinforced" daylight, four hours of "secondary" daylight and eight hours of "night" every 24-hour day (thanks to @ltmauve for pointing this out).
# A simpler setup
Again a large star, and a secondary smaller star. This time, though, the planet orbits around the smaller star, inside its gravitational well. The limits on the stars' sizes and luminosities are now more relaxed.
We need two additional constraints: the secondary star's ecliptic is not coplanar with its orbit. Ideally they are perpendicular (so there are only two syzygy points where the daylight period might be 50% of the rotation period); and the secondary star's revolution period is an odd multiple of the planetary revolution period, so that at syzygies, when the three bodies are aligned, the planet is always in the middle and actually gets a 24-"hours" day (the two "daylights" are not overlapping).
I'll try and run some simulation after New Year's Eve ;-D to check whether this setup does indeed work - I might well have missed something obvious.
[Answer]
When you have a large geostationary moon that reflects enough sunlight to extend the day it should be possible. To increase the day time significantly.
## Earth Example:
Formulas:
* $\alpha\_z$ = $\frac{v^2}{r}$ which is the same as: $\alpha\_z = \frac{4\pi^2}{T^2}$
* $F = G\frac{m\_1 m\_2}{r^2}$
$\alpha\_z$ is the centripetal acceleration it has to be the same as $F$ from the second formula which is the gravitational force.
T is the time it takes for your object to complete one orbit in the case of earth about 24 hours or 86400 seconds.
$r$ is the distance between the two objects.
$m\_1$ and $m\_2$ are the masses of your moon and planet.
$G$ is the gravitational constant.
$v$ is the speed of your orbiting object relative to in this case earth.
In our case we get about 0,0000000052885 for $\alpha\_z$
For the second formula you leave the mass of the moon out because it cancels out with the first formula where you originally also have to adjust for the mass of the moon but you use it in both formulas so you can ignore it completely.
If we plug this value for F in the second formula and switch the equation around to give us r we get $r^2 = G\frac{m\_1 m\_2}{F}$ and a value of 7.537137 × 10^22 we have to take the square root of it as it is $r^2$ and so we land at 2.74538468 × 10^11 meters which tells us that in our case it would not work because the moon would be to far away to reflect enough light onto your planet. So you would have to tweak your system if you want this solution to work.
The things you could tweak to make it possible are:
1. You could make the moon lighter
2. Let the Planet rotate much faster around it self
3. decrease the mass of the planet
Also you could place the planet between two stars in such a way that both stars pull on the planet with the same force which leads to a cancellation of gravitational forces but you would have constant day and no seasons. Hope this helps.
[Answer]
The star is usually much larger than the planet, and there is diffraction, so any planet is *always* more than half illuminated. ;-) *Significantly* more than half, no, imo.
*Except* ... if you put the orbit of the planet perpendicular to the plane in which the two binaries circumvent each other. It'll probably be tricky to stabilise such an orbit, which needs to be synced up to make sure the three objects really never line up.
An astrophysicist could probably tell us if there is a "natural" resonance which would drive a planet into such an orbit, and keep it there.
[Answer]
Imagine a planet with an advanced civilization. It has launched many mirrors into space, to illuminate (part) of the planets dark side. You can tweak the amount of mirrors and increase the average length of the day to fit your story.
[Answer]
**Pyramid planet.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/h0wS3.jpg)
With one light source and a spherical planet, I could not think of a way to illuminate more than half. It's a sphere thing. But if you can use shapes other than a sphere it is easy. The (tidally locked) pyramid planet keeps its apex point at its sun, and each of the triangular faces stays in the light. You could have it rotate around the axis down through the apex. The square side stays in the dark.
Other tidally locked elongated shapes would also keep their elongated faces in the light and the base in the dark.
---
OK. Tidal locking not allowed. I will borrow my answer from
[Why is my Dark World so dark?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/134136/why-is-my-dark-world-so-dark/134236#134236)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eQf4C.jpg)
>
> This world is a disc, turning on its axis. It stays with its edge
> facing its sun. On the ground, the sun is always moving along the
> horizon, never setting, never rising, never stopping. Sunlight is
> always redshifted and oblique. Shadows are long.
>
>
>
There is sunrise and sunset on the edges of the disc. The edge is a minuscule fraction of the disc.
[Answer]
If the planet is not required to be habitable for humans or to have advanced lifeforms or any lifeforms, the answer is simple.
Make the star a star which has left the main sequence and swelled up to a red giant stage.
Such a star could have expanded until it almost reached the orbit of the planet. If it reached the planet's orbit the drag of the star's gases would cause the planet to spiral down into the star.
In such a situation light emitted from the edges of the star as viewed from the planet could reach the planet far into the side facing away from the star.
But the increase in stellar a radiation and thus in the planetary temperature as the star became a red dwarf would have wiped out any preexisting native life on the planet. Of course a sufficiently advanced civilization could have terraformed the planet and introduced lifeforms from other worlds and/or made it habitable for humans.
If the planet has to be naturally habitable for humans and/or have advanced native lifeforms the problem is more complex.
The star could be made a red dwarf or main sequence star instead of a red giant. All red stars, giants or dwarfs, have low surface temperatures and thus emit less energy per unit of surface.
So in order to have a surface temperature equal to that of Earth, a planet would have to orbit the red star close enough that the star appears several times as large in the planet's sky as the Sun does in Earth's sky. And that will help the light from the sun to reach more than half of the planet's surface.
Of course the fainter the star, the closer the planet would have to be to it in order to have an Earth-like surface temperature, and the greater the proportion of the Planet's surface that would be illuminated by the star at any one moment. Thus it is desirable for the star to be a very, very faint red dwarf for as much as possible of the planet to illuminated at any one time.
But for that the happen the planet would have to obit so close to the red dwarf star that the planet would probably become tidally locked to the star so that one side always faced the star and the other side always faced away from the star.
But that would fail the original question.
Thus the planet would have to be saved from being tidally locked to its star by being tidally locked to some other astronomical body. If the planet was actually a giant, Earth sized moon of a gas giant planet orbiting close to a red dwarf star, the planet/giant moon would become tidally locked to the gas giant planet instead of to the star.
And the gas giant planet could appear several times larger in the sky of its planetary-sized moon than the red dwarf star appears. Meaning that the light from the gas giant planet planet could cover even more of the planetary sized moon than the light from the star.
What light from the gas giant planet? Possibly light from countless lightning strikes in its atmosphere ever second.
And certainly light from the red dwarf star reflected from the planet, just as sunlight is reflected from the Moon onto Earth. But probably many times as bright as a full moon on Earth.
So if the planet sized moon orbits the gas giant planet in the same plane that the gas giant planet orbits the red dwarf star, there will be a moment in the orbit of the moon when it is directly between the red dwarf star and the gas giant planet and will be casting a shadow on a tiny part of the gas giant planet. And the rest of the gas giant planet will be reflecting light in all directions, and some of that light will illuminate the side of the moon facing away from the star.
In that moment every part of the moon will be illuminated by the red dwarf star or the gas giant planet, and some parts will be illuminated by both.
The closer the moon is to that part of its orbit, the greater the proportion of its surface that will be illuminated, and the farther the moon if from that part of its orbit, the smaller the proportion of it is surface that will be illuminated.
When the planet sized moon is about 90 degrees from the line between the star and the gas giant planet, somewhat more than half of the moon will be illuminated by the the star and somewhat more than half of the moon will be illuminated by the gas giant planet. About one quarter of the moon will get light from both the star and the planet, one quarter will get light from only the star, one quarter will get light only from the planet, and one quarter or less will get no light.
And when the moon is more than 90 degrees from the line between the star and gas giant planet the proportion of the moon's surface that is illuminated will get smaller and smaller. When the moon is exactly 180 degrees from the line between the star and the planet it will receive light only from the star. But since the star is assumed to be a red main sequence star that the moon and planet have to be very close to in order to have Earth like surface temperature, it should have several times the angular diameter of the sun as seen from Earth and thus should illuminate a bit more than half the surface of the moon.
Would the moon be eclipsed by the planet one time every orbit, when it is 180 degrees from the star? Yes, if the moon orbits the planet in exactly the same orbital plane as the planet orbits the star.
The moon should orbit the gas giant planet in the equatorial plane of the gas giant planet. The equatorial plane of the gas giant planet should be tilted to a greater or lesser degree relative to the orbital plane of the gas giant planet around the star. It is perfectly possible for a moon of a gas giant planet to never be eclipsed by its planet, if its planet has a high enough axial tilt.
And I am not sure if brief eclipses, lasting hours at most, would count as violating the original question.
If the moon is tidally locked to the gas giant planet, one half of that moon would always face the gas giant planet and would always be illuminated by light reflected from the planet, as well as being illuminated by the star for more than half the time.
One half of the moon would always face away from the gas giant planet, and except for the section closest to the gas giant planet, would never be illuminated by the gas giant planet. And that half would be illuminated by the star somewhat more than half the time.
There have been a lot of other questions about habitable moons of gas giant planets in the habitable zones of stars, and it is a good idea to refer to those questions and answers to see if they have any useful information, as I state in my answer to this question:
[How long will it take to discover they live on a moon and not on a planet?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/125617/how-long-will-it-take-to-discover-they-live-on-a-moon-and-not-on-a-planet/125653#125653)[1](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/125617/how-long-will-it-take-to-discover-they-live-on-a-moon-and-not-on-a-planet/125653#125653)
And I gave links to two earlier questions about habitable exomoons.
The article "Exomoon Habitability Constrained by Illumination and Tidal heating" by Rene Heller and Roy Barnes Astrobiology, January 2013, discusses factors affecting the habitability of exomoons.
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3549631/>
Note that it states that a moon can not have a stable orbit unless the orbital period or year of the planet is more than 9 times the orbital period or month of the moon.
So if your moon has an orbital period of 0.75 to 15.0 earth days, for example, the planet must have an orbital period of at least 6.75 to 135 days.
The planets of the star TRAPPIST-1 that orbit in the habitable zone hare years of 4.05 to 12.4 days, so it is certailnly posible for a planet and it s moon in the habitable zone of red dwarf to have orbital periods of the necessary length.
<http://How%20long%20will%20it%20take%20to%20discover%20they%20live%20on%20a%20moon%20and%20not%20on%20a%20planet>?
[Answer]
Yes. Admittedly an engineered system answer:
Central object: A black hole. This must be rotating in the plane of the system so the deadly jets never get anywhere near the planet.
Around it, a ring of 6 (or more) stellar objects.
Case A: The planet orbits between the black hole and the stars. In this case if all the stars are burning you have perpetual sun, if you want night most of them must be dead (white dwarf or neutron star.)
Case B: The planet orbits outside the ring of stars. At this point you have more than half light but it's not perpetual.
So long as the black hole is sufficiently more massive than the stars (I don't know the required ratio) this is stable.
[Answer]
Not in the ways you expect, but there is a loophole.
First let's consider the issue of it being day on more than half of the planet always. This is impossible with a single star system and an ellipsoidal planet. If you elongate the planet enough perhaps you could get more than half the planet facing the star at some point in its rotation. However, if you consider an oval in a 2D view then when the short side is facing the star at most only half of the planet is facing the star and likely much less than half if you elongate in any meaningful way (enough to make the long side significantly greater than 50% of the surface area).
Now let's try a different approach with a single star system. Maybe it just needs to be day for more than half of a rotation cycle. Ok well then let's consider a point A. When A is on the side facing the sun the planet slows down. Then when it facing away the planet speeds up in rotation. This works, right? No, this still fails because now point A' which is the point on the opposite side of the planet will have long nights and short days.
This means that short of making the sun send light in a larger band and somehow curve around the planet this is impossible. However, light travels along the geodesics of the surface of space-time which bends according to mass. This means that light can only curve according to mass. Furthermore according to one of Einstein's most famous thought experiments light will bend under gravity as if you were in a box accelerating upwards at the rate of gravitational acceleration. What this means is that light can only bend further around the planet if something either reflects it to the other side of the planet (however this would be side dependent) or something lifts the light around the planet. This might be possible if your planet has significantly large rings. Another possibility is that your planet has naturally low enough gravity such that the light actually curves to the other side of the planet. These are doable but it would a simple cop out, imo and pretty lackluster.
I'm done bashing other potential methods so I'll now I'll just move on to how I think you can do it your scenario. Just before I continue I should explain why I'm considering only one planet and one star. It's because in certain orientations a binary star system is equivalent to a single star system in terms of the propagation of light. I mean technically one star will cause the other stars light to curve which might in turn allow it to bend around the planet, but that would be impossible for me to claim one way or the other, and it wouldn't be satisfying.
Now here's a simple loophole.
**Your planet has literal oceans of glass.**
It is literally that simple. The sunlight can't get *around* the planet, so just make the planet transparent periodically. Enough locations and in size so that the light bleeds through past the one half of the planet and other to the other side. Crystals may also work better. If done properly it shouldn't affect life significantly. After all, sand *is* pretty much the same as glass. Sure it's not livable in those areas for the most part but there could be small rivers and islands or things that are adapted to such extreme conditions. Plus, the requirement here wasn't that things be able to live on this thing in particular. It's a bonus I imagine but the large glass sections are simply assumed to be unlivable.
Now you might ask me what will happen when people or things damage the surface thereby lowering it's transparency. Sure, by all means let's go drain the entire atlantic ocean such that water can no longer evaporate and cause hurricanes. Do you get the point? The sunlight shining through it is on a grand scale. It's not going to be prevented by chipping away a volume equivalent to a square block surrounding the entirety of Manhattan island all the way from bedrock to the top of the empire state building let alone whatever humans or animals might damage. Perhaps if someone strikes the glass with a nuclear bomb it might have an effect, but at that point we're dealing with planetary level changes here and in that situation I'd say that anyone doing that would be really stupid as causing the glass to crack to that large of a degree would risk magma leeching out from under the surface and if the damage were significant enough might expect a super volcano to form. In fact, I'm going to go ask a question about that.
tl;dr if the planet has large regions of glass all the way to the mantle or seafloor then it's likely you'll get the desired result.
[Answer]
## Does a "forever" day count?
The moon has a few peaks of eternal light, and it has been theorized that Mercury [may have them too](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_of_eternal_light#On_Mercury). While the rest of the planet experiences solar days (lasting 176 Earth days each), the north pole has [areas in perpetual shadow](https://www.space.com/38274-mercury-has-surprisingly-icy-north-pole.html), so it would stand to reason that the south pole experiences the opposite phenomenon.
For the lunar examples given in the linked article, the peaks don't all experience daylight 100% of the time. However, some experience daylight for more than 50% of their year, which could be simplified to longer days than nights, on average, in perpetuity. While this is specific to a satellite rather than a planet, I don't see why similar effects could not occur on a planetary scale, given the right combination of axis, orbit, and craters.
[Answer]
A possibility (also at the end of LSami's answer) might be a binary system with a suitable 3D configuration of the orbits.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kG24N.gif)
Imagine a 3D coordinate system with the $x$-axis pointing right, the $y$-axis pointing up, and the $z$-axis pointing at the viewer. We have a central yellow star (sitting at the origin in the animation, but it really should orbit the center of mass also), a red dwarf slowly orbiting the bigger component of the binary system in the $xy$-plane. And, finally, a planet (the blue dot), orbiting about the red dwarf in a plane parallel to $xz$-plane (i.e. one that has the $y$-axis as its normal). The animation tries to give a top-down view of the motion
The points:
* Unless the smaller star is close to the $x$-axis, it will not eclipse the bigger star, because the bigger star is not on the plane of the orbit of the planet.
* When the smaller star is very close to the $x$-axis, it may eclipse the bigger star, but if we synchronize the periods we can arrange the planet to always be either above or below the $xy$-plane at those instants, when the small star crosses the $x$-axis.
* When the dwarf is near the $y$-axis, 3/4 of the planet bathes in starlight. The ratio goes close to 1/2 in those years, where the bigger star is closer to the plane of the planet's orbit, and even then only for a single season (one season the planet will be nearly between the stars and be fully lit).
The caveats:
* I suck at celestial mechanics, but I suspect the long term stability of this set up may be in doubt. At least the ratio of orbital periods likely needs to be quite high, may be something like one hundred (if not thousands) of "planet years" per a single orbit of the red dwarf about the bigger star.
* Also, gravity of the bigger star may make the plane of the planet's orbit rotate over time.
* Also, if the ratio of periods is 1000:1, then the above synchronization idea doesn't help very much. The planet will reach the $xy$-plane, at points when the red dwarf has moved only very little off the $x$-axis. At those points the dwarf may almost eclipse the bigges star, resulting in something like only $50.001$ per cent of the panet having a semblance of a day. (in the animation the ratio of those periods is 10:1)
* But, those close to 50-50 days are few and far between. It might make for an occasion for the culture living on the planet!
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# A synopsis of a paper
So the standard reference here would be Siegfried Eggl's *Habitability of Planets in Binary Star Systems* and his general conclusions are that binary star systems
1. Support predominantly two kinds of stable reasonable orbits: ones where a planet orbits both stars as if they were one, and ones where a planet orbits one star but is perturbed by the other, and
2. Can indeed have habitable zones in either configuration, but
3. The presence of the second star perturbing a planet's orbit can draw it temporarily out of the habitable zone, requiring atmospheric inertia to keep it habitable for that part of the year until it comes back to proper temperatures.
On a positive note based on the calculations here it does seem like two Sol-mass stars co-orbiting a common center at a distance of 10 AU (ten times the distance the Earth is from the Sun) can indeed sustain a planet orbiting one of them somewhere between 0.95-1.55 AU away from the one star, as long as the two stars do not co-orbit with an eccentricity greater than 0.2-0.3 or so.
# A binary star system with some inclination
So you are gonna need a brighter star, probably something off of the main sequence.
The issue is that you want some orbit of some Sun-like star at something like 1AU or so, but you want that Sun to be part of a binary system where the other star is maybe 10AU or more away. Since the brightness of a light bulb decreases with the square of its distance from you, if you want both stars to be approximately equal in the sky, this one star needs to be maybe 100+ times brighter than the Sun. Looking at the [Hertzsprung-Russell diagram](http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/hr.html) makes this very easy to see, but there is a noticeable "gap" between the very blue and the yellow-orange-red side: the main sequence stars would be really really blue and that's really really bad, because the more blue light you have the more ionizing radiation you get from the star. So you would have to go off the main sequence, to a red giant star. These do not have to be too dramatically red and can have surface temperatures (hence colors) similar to an incandescent light bulb; maybe a good (not-too-massive not-too-bright) giant to model the giant around would be [Arcturus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcturus), 25 times larger in radius than our Sun, 170 times as bright if you're at the same distance from it, roughly the color of an incandescent light bulb. At 10 times further away it would only visually appear to have 2.5 times the radius of the main star, and though we might have to shrink both stars a little to get the temperatures down a bit, it shouldn't be too bad. Importantly, Arcturus is still about one solar mass in size.
Each star illuminates half of a planet but as another answer points out, putting the orbit of the planet off-axis with some past collision might mean that the suns never eclipse each other, and so during the most "day/night" part of the year they might still be separated by, say, 10 degrees of the sky, causing 190 degrees of planet to be illuminated at once. But the more dramatic feature is that there would be a season where the sun rises just around when the giant sets, and vice versa, meaning that you have a very constant half-illumination for the entire day across nearly the whole planet, with some "South Pole" still having a day/night cycle but the "North Pole" not seeing either star set. So the seasons themselves would be quite interesting to work out here, and also the weather (our weather is dominated by the fact that our equator is approximately lined up with our orbit leading to a warm equator and cold poles; not clear how that transfers over and it depends in part on how the tilt lines up with the two other orbits). Since there is also an orbit of the stars about each other, there would also be a regular exchange between which pole had the day/night cycles and which one did not; this could change over a 100-year cycle or so, maybe.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rJxM5.jpg)
# Use a protoplanetary disk
According to [this paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.06000.pdf), the accretion luminosity of [YLW 16B](https://www.iflscience.com/space/astronomers-use-light-echo-measure-size-stars-disk/) is somewhere between 0.31 and 0.64 times the luminosity of the star. (A different protoplanetary disk is shown in the link above, but you get the idea)
Your planet orbits in a gap in the disk, seeing only a portion of it, but from very close by, so it seems just as bright as from space. (Inverse square law: the less of the disk you see, the bigger it is. This is the same reason why a bush doesn't get dimmer if you walk up to it) The result should be a band of daylight all through the night.
Protoplanetary disks are not four star accommodations - Earth's experience in that regard is termed the *Hadean* - but your planet is a vacuum world, baked crust over a frozen core and mantle. While fairly large objects frequently crash into it, they don't cause global extinction events by striking gypsum or ocean or atmosphere. Your inhabitants, if any, have long since learned to live many miles beneath the surface, though their current situation is bound to bring out some science expeditions.
Your planet orbited another star up to the red giant phase, encountered another planet during migration and was ejected from its home system. Blundering into the early protoplanetary disk of a nearby star, it was slowed down by interactions with the diffuse matter of the disk, and gradually came closer to orbiting in the plane of the system. There are still meaningful seasons because of remaining obliquity. The planet passes through a gap where the star is largely concealed then venturing out where the full glory of the disk and star become fully apparent.
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If the planes's self rotation period is equal to the around-the-star period then always one side of the planet faces the star constantly, like the moon and the earth.
Additionally if the planet is an irregular shape, for example, like a cone shape that one side is "flatter" than the other side yields one side area is larger than the other side. When the large-area side faces to the star, the planet have longer daylight than the night.
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Firstly, given a single light source at sufficient distance that light can be treated as parallel beams, together with a spherical planet and no other reflecting object, the answer is clearly 'No' since only half the planet is illuminated at any time.
Given more than two sources of light, or reflections, we are into three-body problem so long term predictions are generally out which means that you need to decide how long you want the system to remain stable for.
I can't give all conditions you want at a single point in time ('significantly' over 50% illuminated and day longer than night, but I can give each on a single planet.
Consider a non-rotating planet with respect to fixed stars (implausible in the long term due to tidal effects but it could be 'stable' for many human lifetimes) which was in a highly eccentric orbit around a large star. Then, during periapsis (closest approach), over one face would be illuminated but day length would be comparatively short because the orbital speed would be high.
During apoapsis, the opposite face of the planet would be illuminated although because of the distance, only slightly over one hemisphere in total. However the orbital speed is slower at apoapsis so the day on that face would be longer than the night.
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Assume that a magician has the ability to create both flames and ice. His Muggle (for the lack of a better word) friend is wounded and is bleeding profusely. Traditionally, in most fantasy books where modern technology does not exist, cauterization would be used to seal that wound. However, I know that realistically cauterization is a contentious method of stanching blood flow. Since this magician can manipulate ice as well, would sealing a wound with a sheet of ice over the wound be preferable to searing the wound with fire? Assume that the magician can reinforce the ice sheet at any time. I should also mention that I do not mean for the ice to be a permanent solution—just a method to prevent the friend from bleeding out on the spot.
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**Both are useful in different ways.**
**Ice:** Ice will not staunch the bleeding in any meaningful way unless you were to actually freeze the tissue/blood.
But this is a terrible idea as the cells in your body are primarily...water. Water does what when it freezes? Right, it expands. When your body freezes the cells literally burst. This is what we of course call 'frostbite.' Once they thaw you have simply exacerbated the wound and as you can't heal while frozen there is no way to remedy the situation.
**So in short, trying to use ice to staunch a wound with either do nothing or make things worse.**
On the positive side ice can be used to clean the wound before it is sealed (although it may not be totally necessary...which Ill get to on fire). It can also be used to treat swelling after the fact which even though very simple could help save a fair number of lives.
**Fire:** Its going to hurt like crazy and it is less ideal than...you know stitches, but of the two options, fire is the only thing that will allow you [staunch the wound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauterization) in your scenario.
In short you burn flesh to seal things up. We know from history that it works and was used for a long long time before medicine became a practice and came up with better options.
One piece of misinformation is the idea that the process of cauterizing a wound sterilized it and kept infection at bay. While partially true, as fire will certainly kill bacteria, the process actually makes the tissue more prone and friendly to bacteria.
---
**Best process.**
* Use fire to cauterize the wound. You could optionally clean it with ice water before hand...this *might* help...but frankly...if you are cauterizing to save a life...
* Once the wound is cauterized wrap it and keep it as clean as possible
* Ice the wound to keep swelling down. You should generally (with the exception of run away fever) never apply ice directly to the wound. Putting cloth or something in between is best. Ice can potentially save limbs...things can burst if swelling gets out of hand. Also never underestimate the value of clean drinking water when healing.
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Fire, most definitely. Cauterization works because the vessels are literally fused shut. The blood has a barrier to stop against. Tissue is destroyed, but will heal again in most cases; even if by painful skin grafts.
Ice would constrict the vessels and slow the bleeding but it would not stop. The warm blood against the ice would just constantly melt the ice and you'd end up with a wet bloody mess. In a cold environment, this would end up killing the "patient" faster.
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Medially speaking, neither is enough on their own, even together.
* Fire can cauterise but it has to be targeted. This "profuse" bleeding sounds deep. Unless you can target it, your magician is just going to toast the patient. The bleeding thing needs to be found and fixed, wound packed, held together and covered.
* Cold ice can help with vasoconstriction. You're not trying to freeze the wound, just make it cold so all the blood vessels in the immediate area limit the amount of blood they're sending through. Won't help with a profuse bleed (certainly not if arterial pressure) but will help with surface wounds and bruises.
But it's probably just going to kill them quicker if they're already in circulatory shock. Which they probably are. Ice when they're stable, maybe.
With some medical training and sterile equipment your wizard might be able to save a life. Without that they can just make ice cream and hotdogs (so they're not totally useless).
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like most posts above I would have said Fire would be best but then remembered that using modern medicine that **ICE** might actually be better:
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/8024991/Patients-to-be-frozen-into-state-of-suspended-animation-for-surgery.html>
This allows doctors to cool down patients to around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, putting them in a coma for 60 or 90 minutes, when they may have bled out in minutes otherwise. Although I don't know the particulars (like how much transfusion blood this requires), it seems there could be more value in very select situations where said mage would be better off using some very controlled ice magic over the quicker burn it now approach.
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Why not both? I'm going to take some liberties here. You magician's abilities have progressed at the same pace, instead of one developing later on his/her magical journey of discovery.
With that in mind, your magician would be proficient to the same degree in both schools of magic. Now, in your 'wounded muggle' situation, depending on where the muggle was injured he could approach its in different way. Personally, 'I' would use 'my' ice ability to lower the core temp of the muggle, not in a dangerous way, but as the body is chilled the blood loss should slow. Then depending on where the injury is 'I' would use my fire ability to cauterize the wound.
The other approach would be if your magician had medical training as well. He/she could use his/her magical abilities to speed up medical treatment. He/she could channel a block of ice, then use fire to shape the ice into implements. Obviously the medical tools are made of ice and they would numb the area in question. With the tools he/she would be able to perform field triage and save the Muggle's life. The ability to move around without medical implements then make them when they are needed.
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My first question, be kind please! :)
I'm thinking about an organization like COBRA from the G.I. Joe comics. For those unfamiliar, COBRA is a nationless terrorist organization bent on world domination.
In the comics, there isn't really much deep thought put into their existence. They're just there to be a foil for the G.I. Joe team to defeat and sell lots of toys to children. Many of the leaders and "agents" of COBRA obviously come from various nations, but COBRA itself is a borderless entity. They have a VAST pool of resources like money, weapons, military tech, training & research facilities all over the globe, secret R&D projects into future tech, a standing army of tens of thousands of foot soldiers, tanks, planes, submarines and specialists...yet they remain mostly unheard of to the general population of the world, and even the people who do know about their existence know very little else.
Obviously there are friendly countries that harbour/hide/protect them to an extent, but what would this organization give them in return?
I'm looking for a plausible explanation to how such an organization could come into being in today's real world and stay (mostly) hidden.
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No such organization could come into existence without the intelligence agencies and governments of the world being aware.
Housing, feeding, clothing, training, and arming ***tens of thousands*** of soldiers is not a trivial task. The space, and resources required to do this would cripple some countries, never mind a nameless organization looking to remain utterly anonymous.
You would need a front under which to buy these training facilities, sign arms contracts, get permission to operate in certain countries, etc.
In other words, welcome to the **[Atlas Corporation](http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/Atlas_Corporation)**. (From [Call of Duty](http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Advanced_Warfare))
# Private Military Contractors
Use your illicit funds (which of course you've laundered) to start a private military corporation (PMC). Your original start-up location should be some corrupt little country where few questions will be asked, however you will have to register in the US, Europe, and other places in order to operate internationally.
## Buy, Hire, Train
Now that you have a ***legitimate reason*** to hire troops, buy military supplies, weapons (in quantity), etc. start doing so.
Set up training operations in different countries. Build up your facilities. Maybe publicly buy or partner up with weapons manufacturers and researchers.
Be prepared for plenty of healthy interest from various spy agencies.
## Build a Front
Hire "regular" mercenaries (for US Marines, British SAS, French Commandos, etc.) as your "public image troops". Send them out on fully legitimate contracts for various governments: hunt down terrorists, protect VIP's, rescue hostages, etc.
This will build your reputation as an above-board, profitable heavy hitter, and distract attention from your true operations.
## Behind the Scenes
Some of your bases of operations should be open only to those loyal to your true goals. The "regular" troops would not mingle much with your true believers, or only those who know to maintain absolute secrecy.
No one would be promoted past a certain level who does not share your views and objectives. Those to whom the secret is revealed and reject it should be killed in such a way that it all looks accidental - experimental weapon malfunction, a training exercise, a terrorist attack, etc.
## Buildup
Take advantage of the anti-military feelings sweeping the world. There are so many conflicts which the public is against sending more troops into - offer your services, and do a solid job. Use your shadowy powers of manipulation and intimidation to keep any negative news regarding your actions in those conflicts from leaking to the public.
The governments of the world will find it quite convenient to turn to you rather than send in their own troops to fight/die (which would fuel public opinion against them).
You can fabricate your own terrorist threats and conflicts (you invent something like ISIS), and then become "heroes" defeating them.
Of course many spy agencies will be suspicious, but I trust that you will be able to manipulate or distract them as required.
Use your massive profits to build yet more military bases, buy even more equipment, and research new and terrifying weapons.
## Global Take-Over
When the governments of the world have relaxed and become unintentionally dependent on you, ***strike***.
Launch massive terror campaigns around the globe, then convince everyone that a world-wide deployment of your elite troops will put an end to the situation.
At that point it's all over but the mass executions.
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Perhaps not the answer but maybe we could name some organizations in real world which could be compared to COBRA
Gladio and other secret stay-behind armies of NATO
Many used to conduct attacks against their own people to persuade public opinion for certain actions (Strategy of tension) - Years of Lead as an example. Remained in absolute secrecy throughout cold war.
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I would agree with @Jim2B. A good example is "Atlas Corporation" in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. They are a private military corporation that is able to secure military contracts, similar to Blackwater in the US today.
Eventually, Atlas Corp gets deeply involved in multiple wars and secretly starts pursuing its own agenda. In the game, the reason for their rise is an unstoppable terrorist organization, which cripples most nations; thus leading to their rise. But, an even crazier plot twist would be: Atlas Corporation was behind the rise of this terrorist organization and it was all a much bigger plan towards world domination.
Pretty insane to even think about.
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In my opinion it would be easiest to achieve if the organization included a legitimate front-end connected loosely and clandestinely with the secret organization on the back-end.
The members/employees of the front-end organization would have no knowledge of the true purpose of the entire organization or its association with the secret terrorist organization on the back-end.
The front-end could be a giant megacorporation but it might be even better for it to be the government of a powerful country (think of the resources that it could divert!).
In point of fact, consider all the "secret" 3 letter organizations in the US (or other) government whose operation is secret. Create another such organization or subvert an existing one for your purposes. Since these organizations tend to be compartmentalized (one isn't permitted to know what another is doing), this mode of operation might make keeping your secret organization's purpose and operations even easier.
I suggest keeping very tight reins on the operations of your secret organization. The more it operates, the more clues it leaves, the more opportunities the world's population has of figuring it out. So as much as possible allow the front-end organization to achieve intermediate legitimate goals of your secret organization. Only employ the secret organization to achieve a goal when it would be obvious to the front-end organization that the ultimate goals were nefarious.
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How would you distinguish this from the U.S. government? It has a lot of secret operations, it has organized street gangs doing "civil forfeiture", it tortures, uses illegal eavesdropping devices, maintains secret courts not subject to the law of the land, generally has a dim view towards the country's Constitution and ideals, builds large computing centers in a scale not commensurate with legal operations, maintains a blackmailing scheme instead of due legal process ("plea deals"), subverts elections ("popular" vs "electoral" votes anybody, let alone all of the voting machine scandals), kills thousands of people yearly without due process, incarcerates people for decades without due process, openly allows bribes to govern political decisions, does not accept the jurisdiction of the International Court in The Hague, let's armies attack without declaring a state of war...
What does it take to pass into the category your question is aiming at? Any decisive qualitative or quantitative criterion you want to see met?
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Take advantage of an existing country. Quietly insert your own people into the politics and through bribery, blackmail, intimidation, assassination, fraud, etc. Have them rise to the correct positions of power, where they are able to take control of the military and the military's decision-making processes.
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Of course it could. It clearly did, most of a generation ago…
I don't follow GI Joe but which part of your description of Cobra doesn't fit Al Qaeda, and to a lesser extent the Taliban and then Boko Haram, among others?
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A familiar trope that is sadly very much in line with reality is that if they have sufficient money, influence, manpower and cunning to begin with, they could begin by seizing control of the many (and large) areas of the planet that other people with money and influence tend not to think about very much. They could, for example, deal with/infiltrate/ultimately control the hundreds of little terrorist groups we probably haven't heard of. They could operate in any or all of the countries that westerners can't name and tend to lump together as our vague concept of "Africa". The only thing they would have to be careful of is not interfering with (and thus attracting the attention of) all the other powerful developed-world interest groups that are operating under more or less the same general principles right now, i.e. don't interfere with the supply of minerals to US corporations, recruit too many sweatshop labourers, or pirate any essential shipping routes.
Think what had to happen for you to hear about Al Qaeda; now as long as our shadowy organisation doesn't do something like that, they're free to control the Afghan heroin trade, the South and Central American cocaine industries, any number of diamond and rare earth mines, and oil fields; think of the manpower they could muster simply by feeding and housing the millions of desperate people in any number of different places, or by creating an ideology that spoke to the even larger number of people with a great deal to be angry about and very little to lose.
The best part about this strategy is that if any one of their proxy groups or individual operatives were to attract attention, it would be trivial to cut them loose, and let people's prejudices lead them to assume "those people" are "naturally like that". Anyone who suggested there was a monolithic organisation arming hundreds of unconnected terrorist groups and drug cartels, inventing new religious sects, and working in accordance with a colossal master plan would be dismissed as totally demented. Meanwhile, when the world powers responded by crushing the little people who got caught holding the rocket launchers, burning their fields, bombing their villages, and so on, they would only be exacerbating the desperate, unjust and anarchic conditions that made the developing/underdeveloped world ripe for their taking in the first place...
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° establish an international organization (league) of nations, the primary control of said league would reside in the richest and most powerful member nations, and more specifically in the richest and most powerful citizens or possibly corporations of the primary member nations.
° This arrangement would be legitimate for a clandestine "inner sanctum", yet in appearance only for others, and the real purpose would be to arrange agreeable circumstances in which to manipulate the target nation, or nations.
° a medium in wich foreign policies and political influences could be used to steer the target nation into a desired and pressured conformity that would permit control of the target nation's course and would also "allow" control over the top levels of government. That government in turn affecting the necessary alterations and changes themselves in their own levels of administration throughout said country, so that appearances remain legitimate before the sight of the common citizens and infiltration is not discovered (at first). This is often accomplished by various tactical manipulations, and could include some of the following....intentional economic destabilization, political espionage, false peace processes, implied possibility of threat, demands for change by factions within the society, or the ever popular global sanctions.
° The unaware public would not be made aware of this condition of international "influence" on their homeland, and would be behind the curtain (so to speak) on the real issues at hand. The public having been convinced of the absolute necessities of this league to their country's, as well as the world's countries well being, this through billions of dollars of public relations effects over a large amount of years. This also the effect of many changes being implemented in their society, that were perceived by themselves to be random, or self improvements, an obvious evolution directed (it would appear) by their own course, yet in truth would be the policies being put in place by the league or the entities within the leage that want to overthrow, or maneuver the target country.
° The policies having redesigned (right in plain sight of the people) the infrastructures of their country, government, constitution, and culture over an extended period of many years, and in strategic increments to align the target country with the intended outcome set by complicit parties within the inner sanctum of the league and their "assets within the target government".
° over prolonged years of "membership" the target country's policies and infrastructures would be steered to the desired outcome, the national identity that was necessary for them to defend against foreign threat or takeover would be eventually changed into an international identity that holds no loyalties to an "outdated" republic.
A republic that has been reinvented by it's infiltrators and their conspirators within it, and as older generations of people age out, the new generations rise to power with none of the essentials of sovereignty or independence.
They eventually after a few generations will not even know what they lost, and policies once that were foreign.....now are their new masters.
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Information is power, science goes were the data is, so if you were able to collect a large amount of information on humans- this would effectively privatize neuro-science and psychology.
You would be able to subtile manipulate them, guide them into outcomes you prefer. It wouldnt be perceptable, just alot more emotions, alot more gambling of the humand reward system, strange movements that form and disperse, driven purely by emotiona flukes. The threat is not immediatly obvious, after all its just a oily film over reality, but as soon as you would become a threat- a wild mob would appear out of nowhere to lynch you for "treason against the people/ " and you would vannish from the world.
Such a organisation if it would hack the species, would do strange this with said species. For example would you see "Calibrate & Control" motions, where political movements are formed and aimed at something, just to see if the model of control still holds up.
The people inside the organisation would just do their job, silenced by the NDA, and unable even to percieve the political goals beyond "making money". You could have terrorists, without them knowing about that.
Even funnier, you could have a terrorist organisation without a "head" - since we
are living in times were software, aka "smart" contracts can lead a company.
I cant imagine how a battle between such meta-beeings would look like, pupettering civilisations into apocalyptic showdowns over nothing.
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## Use What is Already There
Throughout the world, governments maintain secrete operations military units designed to operate off the books and with minimal public exposure. They are very well trained and protected by their respective governments from scrutiny, even by said governments. These units are fed, armed, trained, and quartered entirely off of existing black budgets that very few people have the authority to even question. Since these operatives have to work in such secrecy, there is a lot of assumed trust and loyalty between the people operating these special units and those carrying out the missions. So, what your terrorist organization focuses on is circumventing the chain of command and/or budgets of these secrete operations units. All over the world you have generals, senators, and other people of power in your back pocket pulling the strings, and all the fodder underneath doing the actual terrorist attacks are real-for-true patriots believing that they are serving their countries when they are really serving this global alliance of tyrants.
Want to raid an American weapons factory, send one of your Mexican units. Want to steal some Russian Nukes, send one of your North Korean units. You can't necessarily convince any given unit to attack whatever target you want, but you can spin each unit's narrative such that each unit thinks they are doing things for their country.
But, you can take this one step further. When you isolate a person from all other opinions, you have a lot of power to control over how their perspective will change over time. Normally military mantras and training are meant to inspire devotion to one's nation and weed out "civilian" thoughts that would make you a less ideal soldier. But, these mantras can be subtly changed to shift devotion to the idea of a better world rather than to your country. So, that when the time comes to solidify your global power, these operatives are already primed to serve a global order which better reflects the ideals you've been cramming down their mouths for the past 5 years than their actual governments which they originally signed up for.
The reason you can keep your organization secrete is because every time one of your operations is discovered, it is always blamed as an official operation by their respective government which everyone already expects said government to disavow.
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diplomatic processes, economic manupulation,
economic incentives and or sanctions, cultural and educational reforms, artificial peace processes, religious infultration, military intimidation, executive orders, clandestine international agreements,
or simply put, united nations signitory legislative compliance.
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I've been working on a procedural map generator that draws cities and towns on continents and islands and I've gotten to the point where I'd like to add lists of structures to the settlements.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KIMrD.jpg)
I know my simulation isn't accurate to how these systems naturally develop but I have to find a balance between a realistic simulation and keeping things moving along both in development and performance.
Here's how the logic progresses:
1. *Draw the world.* Continents, islands, oceans, lakes. Add rivers. Add biomes (forests, mountains, grassland, tundras).
2. *Add cities on confluences and coasts* a reasonable distance from each other. Draw roads between the cities.
3. *Sprinkle in towns.* Market towns on road crossings, mining towns, salt towns, and stone quarries in mountains, logging towns in forests, and fishing towns in secluded havens.
4. *Determine regions* by filling in the land around a city. If the number of towns in a region doesn't make sense (big region = more towns) add a single additional logging or fishing town.
Each Region ends up containing one city and several towns, usually of different town types. In the game I'd like to make with this, AI and human players conquer regions usually by capturing the city. This grants them control over the whole region, so a region will always only have one ruler. A region receives effects from the structures within their contained cities and towns. Variables like food, happiness, growth, and wealth are calculated across the entire region.
***Setting is High/Late Middle Ages***
Now I'd like to add a "possible structures" list (building chains) to each city and town type. My planned building chains look like this (with simplified effects):
**City or Town**: Both cities and towns can contain these structures
1. Mill: food multiplier
2. Farm: +food
3. Brewery: +happiness +growth
4. Castle: +defense
5. Church: +happiness +culture
6. Industry: +growth +wealth
7. Well: +sanitation +happiness
**City**: Only cities can contain these structures
1. Large Castle (upgraded from Castle): +defense
2. Fortifications: +defense
3. Theatre: +happiness +culture
4. Library: +happiness +culture +research
5. Market: +growth +wealth
6. Barracks
7. Range
8. Stable
9. Siege Workshop
**Infrastructure**: Region upgrades
1. Roads: +movement
**Town**: Any town
1. Guardhouse: +defense
**Salt Town**
1. Salt Works: +salt
2. Salt Trade: +wealth +growth
**Mining Town**
1. Iron Mine: +iron
2. Iron Trade: +wealth +growth
**Quarry Town**
1. Quarry: +iron
2. Stone Trade: +wealth +growth
**Market Town**
1. Market: +wealth +growth
2. Inn: +happiness
**Harbor Town**
1. Fishery: +growth +food
2. Military Harbor
3. Trade Port: +growth +wealth
**Logging Town**
1. Hunting Lodge: +food +wealth
2. Woodcutter: +wood
Are any of these buildings unnecessary or redundant? Are any crucial buildings missing? Feel free to suggest additional town types, too.
Try the demo for yourself: <http://olinkirk.land/realms/>
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## Your biggest oversights: Monasteries, blacksmiths, a little out of place history, potentially a university (one, maybe two, total on the continent).
**Hamlet:** collection of farm cottages, might have a blacksmith
**Village:** Church, blacksmith, tavern
**Town:** Market, church, coaching inn, taverns, blacksmith, various other trades
**City:** Market, cathedral, inns, taverns, all trades
**Castles** as you like, largely wherever you like. Put them guarding harbours and mountain passes primarily rather than simply around habitations, the requirements are different.
Prior to the industrial age/age of exploration, there were no dedicated industrial towns as farming required most of the manpower and hence most towns were dedicated to farming and the market. A town might have a quarry, it certainly would if it had a castle, but it wouldn't be dedicated to it. The same goes for mining.
Wood is an everyone everywhere operation, you need wood, you cut or gather wood, you go on with your life. Loggers might have a camp in a forest for naval ship building but it wouldn't be a permanent town.
Mills can appear in anything from a hamlet upwards, they're mostly about where a suitable power source can be found, whether wind, water or tide.
Salt and spices came from far away. Fishing is probably the only industry other than farming that could dominate a town. Efficiency in food production is not a thing until you're approaching the industrial age, the single largest industry in any region is food.
The first big brewers were the monasteries, otherwise every inn, tavern, free house or other similar premises probably brewed their own. As did every farmer, farm worker or otherwise. Brewing beer or cider is a very simple process.
Industry was largely "cottage industry" as in literally happening in every cottage in the village. Stage theatres, are just starting to be built, though travelling groups of players are more likely to be found. Libraries are really special, the chances of encountering one outside a monastery are approximately 0.
Barracks suffered a lull between the Roman Empire and the 18thC, mostly due to the lack of permanent standing armies. Castles primarily fulfill this role.
Outside cities, roads were primitive at best, it's a bad time for such large scale infrastructure. Any roads you do encounter are probably turnpikes, expect to pay a fee to travel.
A siege workshop is either the local blacksmith or entirely a game mechanic. The same is true of a range, it's a modern concept, people would have practiced their archery on the village green or in the woods. The idea of creating a safe space for such activities is entirely novel, however game mechanics have to be allowed for one way or another.
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Since you are speaking about the Early Middle ages, I assume you mean the period before the 12th century. In this case a lot of your structures seem to be quite anachronistic.
There would be no theaters, universities or libraries. As have been told before, a lot of separate military structures like barracks, stables and ranges also do not make sense for Early Middle ages. I think, the better solution for game mechanics would be to use castles (or [burhs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burh)) and monasteries as military and culturo-economic hubs with chains of upgrade and improvement for them (like you would be able to build school and scriptorium structures as upgrades to your monastery, but not separately).
In general, the biggest problem I see here is that strategic games often rely on resource management and long production chains. Early middle ages on the other hand had quite underdeveloped infrastructure and low population, so they tended to keep production chains as short as necessary. Say, if you need to build a viking-style knarr ship, it may be easier to establish a temporary logging camp, gather necessary pine and oak, build the ship on the beach near the forest and launch it there, instead of building a shipyard and transporting timber to it.
The question of industry is a complicated one. On one hand, speaking about the short supply chains, a single homestead would be able to support itself in a 'closed loop', so to say - farming, raising sheep and cows, producing enough food for homestead itself plus some surplus, making its own homespun for clothes and rawhide for footwear. On the other hand, being able to buy fabric, leather, tools and luxury items like ornaments and jewelry (beads, brass pins and brooches, etc.) was a nice break from it. So there were dedicated craftsmen in early middle ages like shoemakers or blacksmiths. Towns often existed precisely as trade and industry hubs - see, for example, the [description](http://www.historyofyork.org.uk/themes/viking-industry-and-trade) of 10-11th century York. So a town can be treated as an industrial hub, where building additional craftsman will increase drain on food and corresponding resources, but also will give some boosts to nearby villages and hamlets. (Say, building one more shoemaker in town increases drain on leather and food resources, but boosts happiness for surrounding hamlets where people can now buy better quality shoes).
UPD:
As you shifted the period inspiration from early to high/late middle ages, here are some more structures you can have:
Cities: bathhouse, university, different industries\*
Monastery: hospital, scriptorium, school
Additionally, both cities and monasteries can have watermills not for grain, but as power nodes for industries. Functionally, you can power a sawmill, a wool fullery, a blacksmith trip hammer with a water wheel. I do not know, how better to do it mechanically, though, since I do not understand, how much detail does your model have.
\*industries will diversify strongly - blacksmith, swordsmith and armourer are very different professions by 15th century. Maybe instead of treating them as separate *structures*, you are better off speaking about the *guilds* present in the city. Speaking or ironworking, a smallish town would have knifemakers guild and blacksmiths guild, giving you tools and simple weapons, but a bigger city would have swordmakers and armourers guilds, that would give a fine quality arms and armor.
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I miss infrastructure related to animal husbandry. Pastures usually took larger area than farms, as they are less labor-intensive - even to such extent that late medieval Europe got largely deforested to make place for extensive pastures. Then there are mixed landscapes such as [silvopastures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvopasture). And swine can graze in forests.
Many fish ponds were built in medieval times.
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The period you describe is well within the [Malthusian trap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_trap).
Within the trap, increased population leads to lower standards of living. Increased productivity leads to increased population instead of higher standards of living (for most).
Food, the primary product, isn't limited by farmers as much as it is by arable land. An excess of farmers results in starving farmers, or less surplus for non-farmers. Starving farmers may attempt to settle lands, join a war to become a soldier and hopefully improve their fortune, try to enter a craft, etc.
Crafts may tend towards guilds -- as the population is limited by arable land, there are only so many jobs for blacksmiths or shoe makers. They'll want to reserve those jobs for their own kids most of the time. If anyone could become a shoe maker, then the shoe maker's kids would starve, as the population excess of farmers would flood the market.
As a non-guild farmer you'll still want to make your own shoes and shoe your own horses or tools, as the experts may be too expensive for a poor farmer. Someone who owns the farming land, on the other hand, may want to use experts.
Land split between all children leads to impoverishment as generations pass unless productivity keeps up. Land passed to the eldest leads to a constant surplus of younger siblings for monastery work or war, or willing to pay a guild for the right to apprentice if you are wealthy enough.
Trade is *expensive*. The rocket equation applies to all muscle-based transportation; suppose it takes 100 kCalories to carry 1 kg X distance. 1 kg of sugar is 4000 kCal; so every X distance you are consuming 2.5% of your kCal in transportation costs.
So for each transportation link, you'll want to pay attention to the kCal per kg per km along it.
High quality roads reduce it, as does water based transport (poling, going down stream, or using animals on the shore to pull). Ocean sail-based transport is also kCal efficient; you just need to feed the sailors (and repair the craft).
Food quickly becomes impractical to transport, especially off rivers. On rivers, preserved food can move around a bit (pickles and cheeses), but even then I'd expect most preserved food to be used later in the same year.
Luxuries ship better, as does salt. The Tin trade crossed Europe going back to ancient times.
In short, what I'd do is rotate your economy to be based off the kCal. Population will expand until malnutrition at a given kCal level hits, then level off. Plagues will cause your Population to plummet, which may result in a kCal income dip, but much less than the Population dip would indicate.
Preserving food has a cost, but is needed as you don't get new food at all times. All forms of preserved food will rot, sometimes faster than others. Famine triggered by Blight is always a possibility. Little ice ages, where the climate dips colder, will cause your kCal income to plummet.
Specie is going to be rare. Your wealth won't be usually measured in it; at best it can be used for trade, but trade as mentioned is expensive. Economies won't run on it.
Having a "sink" for excess population in each "class" of people will matter. Monasteries where you are celibate can help prevent starvation. Regularly rounding up troops for warfare is also a way to deal with excess population, and can even deal with excess nobility, but having the economy to feed and gear those soldiers may be challenging.
---
Of interest it getting out of the trap.
The first nation to do it with the Netherlands. A while later the British Isles started it.
Excess wealth, like the Renaissance, is also a way out for some people. Trade using boats and caravans, forming a bottleneck between two areas with distinct resources. The population will still be limited by the food you produce mostly, but with Specie will mean you can do things like buy refined goods (weapons) and go and use them on other people.
A black death will trigger a massive increase in living standards for people, which can also trigger population transfer to cities and more commerce. When there are too many people, convincing already-starving farmers to sell food is hard (and requires oppression usually, which is expensive). When there are Calories to spread around, selling them horses, horse shoes, plows, leather shoes, etc becomes more a more viable way of getting food from them.
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>
> Draw roads between the cities.
>
>
>
And therein lies a real problem with your design. Roads were generally very poor quality until at least the 17th century. People could walk them or drive animals along them, carts could transport small amounts of light goods, and carriages could (with some discomfort!) transport rich people and a small quantity of their possessions. They did not provide significant transport infrastructure around a country though. Mainly they just served as a marker that you were going in the right direction, not actually as an easier way to walk than the land around.
If you wanted to transport any goods for any distance, the only realistic method was by water. Rivers and coasts were how everything got around a region. If you didn't have access to waterways, you were essentially cut off from all significant trade.
For your purposes, you may want to consider roads to be better than they historically were, but you really should make waterways much more significant. Trade routes are absolutely going to follow waterways, and any road-based trade routes will only be short hops from a "hub" city on a waterway. If you're applying weightings to decide where to put towns, all cities will be on coasts or rivers, all logging/quarry/market towns will be on coasts or rivers (and harbours, of course!), and there should be a very strong weighting against any other town existing any distance from a coast or river.
Movement of soldiers will typically be quicker along roads than regular country, because they're walking. Rivers probably won't speed them up, but they can move very much more quickly along the coast in ships.
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You need to think in terms of "source" and "delivery/consumer." Your source provides a raw or produced material + jobs. Your delivery produces an *effect* (like happiness) + jobs. Whether or not the jobs (and the detail) are important depends on how complex your economy will be.
* Breweries (beer) -> Pub, restaurant, tavern
* Winery (wine) -> Pub, restaurant, tavern
* Distillery (whisky, spirits) -> Pub, restaurant, tavern
* Marshes (peat -> fuel) -> Market
* Marshes (peat -> fertilizer) -> Farms (increased productivity) -> Market
* Forests (wood -> fuel) -> Market
* Forests (wood -> construction) -> Market
* Quarry (stone) -> Castle (improves roads, fortification, etc.)
* Quarry (iron) -> Market
* Quarry (copper) -> Mint (increased economy)
* Quarry (silver) -> Mint (increased economy)
* Quarry (gold) -> Mint (increased economy)
* Stable (horses) -> Farms (increased productivity) -> Market
* Judiciary/courthouse (law and order)
* Tanner (leather) -> Barracks (improved armor)
* Smokehouse (food preservation) -> Market (improves food supply)
* Well (water) -> Market
* Fletcher (flying weapons: arrows, spears) -> Barracks (increased attack)
* Guild house (increases productivity of identified merchant/worker type)
* Clothier/bootmaker
*Rats... I'm out of time. Cheers.*
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**All of the above plus:**
I feel "industry" is too simple: I would made a distinction between three industries:
* Industries that refine materials: a mill (grain > flour), smelteries(metal>ingots), butcheries (cattle > meat and skins), tanneries(raw skins>leather). These industries tend to be near the production, so you will find mills near fields, ironworks near mines, tanneries near butcheries, and butcheries near population centers.
* Industries that produce necessities: blacksmiths, basketmakers... these will be found in any population center larger than a hamlet (a hamlet will either self-manufacture the necessities or will trade them for the produce).
* Industries that produce luxury items: fine clothes, shoes, jewelry... those industries will only be found in larger cities that can sustain gentry, nobles and aristocrats. I would include any kind of refined product here, including military related as armors and swords.
I haven't included a cloth mill in the list because save for the richest (in european context, in other contexts it may vary), all families crafted the cloths for themselves. It was usually an exclusively female occupation and did take a lot of time. So while clothiers existed, they were usually only for nobles and the rich.
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[
By "short period of time", I'm referring to the timeframe of weeks to months (not days or hours). For example: at the start of one day the land is flat, but after a few weeks or months there is a mountain there instead. Another example: the land is at first joined together, but after a few weeks or months it is now separate islands.
Ideally I'd like to avoid "A Wizard Did It" type explanations (which is what I currently have), instead having something plausible for how mass changing of terrain of landscapes could occur.
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You could imagine a few things:
* water rising could separate a continent into islands; you'd explain it by
+ extreme tidal increase, possibly explained by a planet closing in
+ huge quantities of ice melting, possibly from increased heat
* intense tectonic activity (combined volcanism and earthquakes) has the ability to create mountains (volcans), strips of ground (solidified lava), rifts (between tectonic plates)...
* tsunami and other extreme natural events can cause massive changes in not so solid ground (swamps, dunes...)
* meteor showers (if for example the planet is going through an asteroid belt) can cause on impact sites major changes as well as trigger the other things described above.
I'm sure there are more explanations to be found ;-)
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Some changes would be hard some would be easy. Many broad change categories could have many equally plausible reasons. To go over your specific examples (and a few others):
* Plain to Mountain: Is very easy: A prime real world example is the Mexican volcano of 1943 - Paricutin; it started as a crack in a farmer's corn field and within a year was almost 400 meters tall. So not quite a matter of weeks but speeding that up a bit would still be totally plausible. Mountain range is somewhat less likely but you could easily have multiple volcanoes erupting in close proximity (which is not actually implausible).
* Hilly area to Separate Islands: Permanent/long term is possible with an earthquake - or even a landslide - adjusting the path of a river to form a lake around them and thereby separating them. Short term options include a landslide as well or a favourite: the beaver damn that gives out upstream.
* Peninsula to Island(s): Earthquake is a great explanation, distant tsunami good, even a strong storm could take out a thin section of the peninsula thereby forming an island just off the coast.
As you can see from those examples, reasons are fairly easy to find for most changes. *Fast* plausible reasons may be slightly harder to find but still definitely can find them. Tectonic activity is generally good for high speed as are meteorite strikes and storms. The trick to maintaining believability is knowing what follows what. So you could have, for example: a rogue comet hits the planet, thereby melting polar icecaps and readjusting coast lines.
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**Your landscape is microscopic.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJDoG.png)
<https://www.michaeloliveristudio.com/fullscreen-page/comp-iwmnzsof/ae780a63-dfd0-46b1-8be3-19dee9700a04/15/%3Fi%3D15%26p%3DmainPage%26s%3Dstyle-iwnyacvc>
On this scale, things change fast. Windblown dust becomes a mountain. Fungal activity melts everything into a field of spores, which then desiccate into a cracked wasteland. Then rain washes it all away. Crystals form and push their way up into towering spires. The footprint of a passing squirrel opens deep gullies.
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## Breaking down:
Relativity easy, as gravity always drags things down. Erosion is a force without bounds and wind can really do a number on things.
**Storms and tides:** for a country next to the sea, the sea itself gives and takes. Storms with very high tides can change the landscape in days. Never mind if you give it weeks. What was a few hills next to the sea becomes a few island. Worse if you already start with a river delta. See the [great flood of 1953](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953).
**Earth quakes:** are a big changer of scenery in a lot of places. Almost every thing can be moved this way and building need a special way of building to be able to cope with it. See [Lisbon Earthquake of 1755](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake).
**Glaciers:** could be seen as a subset of water, and normally move to slow, but they do make a big impact on the country side. Maybe a runaway glacier?
**Epic Floods:** If a natural barrier brakes and a low land area get flooded you can change fast from a hilly country to islands. For a big one see: [Zanclean flood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood).
## Building up:
Building is harder then breaking down, and tends to lake longer. We humans can do a lot in little time.
**Humans:** On this planet we change things the way we think things are better. Sometimes correctly, sometimes wrongly.
**Sand Stormes:** If you live near a sand desert or dunes, with strong winds that sand will not stay in place. Not sure if is fast enough for your needs.
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Another example (perhaps better for the OP) is the sudden draining of Lake Bonneville (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Bonneville> ), the remains of which are the present day Great Salt Lake & smaller lakes in the area. It lost the top 300 ft (100 m) or so in much less than a year. So one month you have lakefront property, then suddenly you have mud flats.
You could even design a reverse system if you play with geography a bit. On your continental divide is a Lake Missoula analog, which drains east because the westward drainage is blocked by ice. On the west is a closed, dry basin like the present-day Salt Lake basin. The ice tongue ruptures, and within weeks your dry plain is covered by hundreds of feet of water.
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Pertinent questions are: do you want the changes to be a total surprise, and do you want the area to be relatively small (such as between two towns 20 miles apart)?
In either case, you're in trouble. There are means both to add and subtract altitude, but they both involve a lot of generalized energy which is hard to miss if applied over a short time.
Mountains can be created in two ways: volcanic eruption and thrust faulting. Volcanic eruptions can provide fairly rapid mountain building, but this is accompanied by earthquakes and major emissions of ash and/or nasty fumes. Thrust faulting (such as created the Rocky mountains) produces even worse earthquakes than volcanos do.
At the other end, floods can make major changes in landscapes, the most massive event known in the US being the creation of the [Channeled Scablands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_Scablands). This produces quite distinctive landscape features, and the limited existence of such features is very strong evidence that the Biblical Deluge did not happen. But again, you're talking about really massive incidents, and such things would be noticed locally.
More in line with what I think you're after, rivers do change course spontaneously, and this can occur without too much fuss. Oxbows can short-circuit in a matter of days, producing new islands. At fairly large intervals (say, a thousand years) you can get a really major change in river course as a river "falls off" its delta. As a matter of fact, the Mississippi river is overdue, and only massive efforts by the Corps of Engineers have [prevented the Atchafalaya River from leaving New Orleans cut off from the river](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_River_Control_Structure).
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meteors, coronal mass ejection at a planet with no atmoshpere, massive floods (for example look up channeled scablands, WA(created in moments by a flash flood)) massive landslides. overheating of the core causing softer crust and faster convection in the mantle accelerating tectonic movement incredibly. also hotspots create land somewhat quickly, like hawaii and the aleutian islands
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[
I've worked a couple of Habitat for Humanity mass builds where entire houses go from a poured foundation to complete in the course of a few days, and whole neighborhoods are built in a week. There's a video made a few years back where they finished a whole house in a day, including pouring and setting the foundation, using some magic cement from the US Corps of Engineers. Then this week, someone asked [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/71423/how-to-hide-ocean-fleet-construction-at-dawn-of-industrial-age) on WorldBuilding SE and one of the answers mentioned "[Sunomata Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunomata_Castle)", a fortress in Japan that was, according to legend, built overnight.
In China, in 2015, a construction company built a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days. Here's [the 1.5 minute time-lapse video](https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/apr/30/china-build-57-storey-skyscraper-19-days-timelapse-video).
Those are real-world examples. Fiction is full of buildings raised from nothing, whether by machines in anime or Superman's Fortress of Solitude raised by kryptonite crystal. And so, I would like to know...
**What is the largest building that we could build in the modern world overnight?** I'm looking for tallest first, with largest footprint as the tiebreaker. I'm pretty sure we can clear-cut and put up walls for a pretty huge area very fast, but the height is the interesting challenge because of the foundation issues.
**You're free to use any pre-built materials you want in your answers, but the ground you're building on is [a virgin empty plain, like west Texas](http://www.fasttrackteaching.com/ffap/Unit_2_Westward/Texas_empty.JPG).** No support services, no prepared ground, but also no trees to have to worry about clearing out. No roads or shipping lanes, but assume your staging area is just over the horizon (about 20 miles away). This building is supposed to spring up out of no where.
**You have from sunset to sunrise on the [longest night of the year] nope: make that 12 hours.** Bonus points if you leave enough time before sunrise to clean up all the construction equipment and clear the area, but that's not required. Just the building. EDIT: Damn worldbuilder technicalities of polar night. :-) You have 12 hours.
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Easy: build a [radio-tower type structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_masts_and_towers). These are essentially lightweight prefab structures that you tack together and keep straight vertically by guywires. Short radio towers are normally built in a few days, and towers in general are some of the tallest buildings in the world.
The bottleneck is pouring the foundation, but as other answers have noted, quick-setting concrete or shallow, wide foundations are tractable workarounds. It's also worth noting that the tower assembly can be completed partially (or if it's short enough, completely) in parallel with the foundation--and if you build on a rocky outcropping, you might be able to forgo a concrete foundation entirely.
**Very rough estimate: I'd be very surprised if a 50 m (17 storey) tower couldn't be constructed in 12 hrs, and I'd expect with exceptional planning and some engineering, a 200 m (67 storey) tower could possibly be constructed in 12hrs.**
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I'm going to assume a shell of a building with no frills on the inside. I'm also going to assume a bit of pre-engineering of the basic structure. Im' no architect, so you'll get the layman's ideas here. You get exterior walls, basic floors, and stairs to go from level to level. I'm thinking you might be able to get something 4 stories tall. Assuming unlimited manpower and equipment. your footprint can be about as big as you want.
I'm capping out the structure at 4 stories for the following reason: You need a foundation that will set very fast and with something that will run the entire height of the building. There is a 2 part epoxy called pole-crete used by utility companies to erect power poles. These poles are driven 6 feet into the ground and the surrounding hole is filled with the expanding foam epoxy. It expands and set in about an hour enough for a lineman to get up to the top and start running line (rough estimate). Anything you do is going to put lateral stress on each of these poles. The higher you go, the greater the stress on your foundation footings until the entire structure is up and bound together.
Again, I'm no architect, but I have a feeling that your one night condition means that this becomes the limiting factor to consider. You don't have time to build a more solid foundation. You might be able to stretch things a bit with sections of structure steel that only add height as each floor is completed and cross supporting structures are in place, but I don't think you can realistically get much more than that and have your structure last past the first thunderstorm.
If you want exotic, you could get a pretty substantial geodesic dome up very fast. That would get you a big circular building without the need of interior support columns. I can imagine a 60' high, 120'diameter shell going up on a west texas night. You even get a little bonus because your foundations don't get as much stress.
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This would really be a matter of transport. We can do away with all of the nasty 'setting of concrete' business by just going pyramid-shaped. And given pretty much unlimited preparations just over the horizon, why not just build the entire thing there and move it? [Some pretty big buildings have been moved before](http://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/heaviest-building-moved4.htm), and I don't really see a reason you can't just stuff more wheels under a building other than having to move the wheels out from under again. But, if you just put in struts where the wheels were, that shouldn't be too big of an issue either.
Now the biggest factor limiting the height is the weight of the structure. You can get some pretty impressive [scaffolding structures](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/69/9f/de/699fdeaedcbe6fa82f7b2adcd3a7101c.jpg) that wouldn't weigh too much, and if wooden (or other very light) panels qualify as floors and walls, I guess you can easily get a 10+ storey building rolled over in 12 hours, given some custom all-terrain transport.
It should also be possible to airlift in some fairly impressive structures, The [helicopter with the most lift power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-26) can lift about 20 tonnes. If you've got some super light-weight materials, this should be quite a few floors (somehow there's not that much info on 'weight per floor' for buildings). Now you'll need to assemble these parts into a building, and judging from construction videos, it looks like it takes roughly an hour for a large crew and a crane to properly stack two prefab building parts on top of each other. Still sticking with the pyramid shape to avoid pouring any concrete that has to settle.
So, given 12 hours, enough helicopters to airlift all the parts, and a bunch of cranes, you can stack up to 10 or so 20 ton prefab parts into a building. So your max height will be 10 times the height of the 20 ton prefab pieces.
With a few more days you can do this:
<https://www.wired.com/2012/09/broad-sustainable-building-instant-skyscraper/>
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## It's all in the staging
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q74Tb.png)
[src](https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2398136060)
Consider the usual way these big, fast projects are done: "10 miles of track laid in one day", that skyscraper, freakishly fast railroad bridge replacements (wait til morning Amtrak, replace 800' bridge, let evening Amtrak through). These **absolutely depend** on advance *placement* of those materials, and lots of *advance site prep*. These quick builds are generally stunts, and everything they'll need from modules to tools is already on the site.
If you can't do advance site prep, it'll help to at least reconnoiter the site so you're working from a really good site map. That said, Seabees can do site prep pretty fast. *Trouble is, this is linear:* first you must reach the site with the prep equipment, then prep, then start to build. *Tick tick tock.*
## *Fly sections in* requires cutting-edge tech
You need either favorable wind, or helicopters that are really good at automated [dynamic positioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_positioning). \*Another answer proposed delivering the modules to the vicinity and also having a crane. Problems: setting up the crane is still a critical path; helicopters don't play nice with cranes; a safe distance will mean a big messy laydown area.
So the answer is **the helicopter *is* the crane**. Build the modules out of ultralight materials - spare no expense. That way you can haul more building per pass. Then you have embedded radio-tech (i.e. Bluetooth) in the modules that talks to the heli-crane about positioning. The automation is to keep the humans out of it, because when humans are involved, [Desert One](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Claw) happens.
Upside: nothing touches the ground except the building and site-prep team. Their gear can be landed inside the building's footprint, and a space in the first floor can be dropped over the construction gear.
If you're able to do all this, you may also be able to revive the old super-helicopter designs like the [Mil Mi-12.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_V-12)
Each module dangles 4 cables (or 2 U-shapes). As the module gets near, workers in the module below (which has an open ceiling) grab each cable and feed it into a pre-installed winch. The winches, talking to each other and the positioning tech, *drag the new module down, helicopter and all*. The helicopter's up-lift keep cables taut so the module comes down square. Once the module is locked in, the helicopter slacks its cables, drops load, and goes to get the next module.
Keep in mind, this is not what engineers do. They think carefully, and take the time needed to be safe. Speed has to be engineered into the design and the robotics.
## Haul Road to Hell
You want to go overland? OK. You have a logistics train to get all the materiél to the site. This sounds easy until you mention **no roads**.
Here's the gotcha with that. If the area is at all civilized and there are no roads between towns 20 miles apart... *there'll be a reason for that* like a wide river, deep canyon, or truck-eating swamp in the way. **Obviously, terrain has everything to do with how you solve this.**
So you get your Seabees out there and build the road. The combat engineering isn't necessarily a problem... but this is all happening *inside* your 20-mile limit, so does it happen "on the clock"? Combat engineers can move pretty fast, but that really depends on terrain and you could find yourself unable to build the *road* inside 12 hours let alone the building.
There are two ways this can go sideways. First, you can hit complications building the road, and have *the entire project* run down the clock because it can't get to the site to *start*. It might be worth having 2-3 separate Seabee batallions working redundantly on parallel roads, so you can zig-zag if needed.
Second, you can have a similar, critical problem on the onsite construction.
**All of these delays stack.** Like how the *Empire Builder* is always hours late. A 56-hour train run just faces too many chances for a grade crossing accident, traffic delay etc. French TGV runs are on time because their runs are *short*.
Erection is straightforward, just have the usual jacking crane in the middle of the building and abandon it rather than replace it with elevator shafts.
Alternately, jack the building instead of the crane, using Hulcher bulldozers or built-in jacks to lift the entire extant structure while new floors get slid into the bottom. Let down onto them, latch them in, then jack *them* for the next floor. Faster and less messy.
## *Burners* come closest
Every year, Burning Man attendees roll in with their crazy structures and plop them down on the virgin Blackrock desert. They are prefabbed (forget about getting any time on machines at TechShop in the month prior), modularized, put on vehicles, dragged in, and set up.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eOFDE.jpg)
*2013. The saucer is 120 feet across.*
[src](http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2015/08/20/bugs-swarm-site-upcoming-burning-man-festival.html)
[more](https://www.google.com/search?q=burning%20man&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi61-6rnZvSAhUH0YMKHWPFDc4Q_AUICCgB&biw=1144&bih=1087)
How long? Well for Burning Man official structures (you know, like the *Man* himself), a week or so. But for some attendees it is pretty much overnight, and if the bigger projects were pressed, they too could get it done in 12 hours.
This is done by geek kids, for fun. Imagine what an advanced military could do.
## Fly the building there.
This assumes your building's purpose can be accomplished in a reasonably large airplane or starship. **It can look like a building**; nobody needs to know the first few floors are nothing but elevator lobby and engines.You build the building at leisure. You only need to land *once*; consider *The 100*, where certain former spaceships landed roughly, but continued in service as a building/fortress.
## Or just drive it!
Perhaps stretching your *meaning*... but we build the building, at our leisure, back at the staging area. The first 3 floors are [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pTbsl.jpg)
[source: NASA](https://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-350/ch-6-2.html)
On Construction Day, the building is already finished. We start driving whilst the combat engineers sprint ahead of us, blazing the road. At 2.0 MPH, we get there with 2 hours to spare. Since there's **only one vehicle passage**, there's more time for the combat engineers to tidy up/coverup the obvious haul road, and they don't have anything else to do. The huge tracks can be hidden by fold-down covers.
Obviously this doesn't work with a canyon or swamp, but for a wide flat river like the Platte with good rock beneath it, it might be just the ticket.
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I'm actually willing to bet that you can get about 5-6 stories. With [new dome inflation methods](http://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/news/news_detail/article/8816/) you can get domes theoretically up to 50m in diameter, and while not a perfect hemisphere, probably reaches above four stories (a full hemisphere would be about eight stories), and could easily be constructed in 12 hours given unlimited material and manpower. You might have some foundation problems though, but I think after a bit of settling you would probably be okay. Especially if you could just set it on top of more concrete- you could use fast setting stuff (brand name is quikrete) and probably be fine for a while. It wouldn't have incredible stability or easy access, but you'd have a "building".
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To expand on one of @Swier's ideas, create a hover~~-craft~~-building. There were [some ideas of suspending buildings during earthquakes on a cushion of air with fans and a skirt](https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/03/01/0152236/japan-creates-earthquake-proof-levitating-house-system) Well, I know what that is, it is a hovercraft.
Obviously you have to scale up to support a larger building. [The sears tower weights 222,500 tons](http://www.willistower.com/history-and-facts) and has a ground footprint of 225x225, or 7.3M square inches. Thus you need to have a pressure of 61PSI. That is...a little high. Obviously the solution is to make the base bigger. Making the base 6644 feet square (44M square feet) yields a much more comfortable .2PSI--I'll assume that such a base can be constructed that transfers the tower weight evenly over the entire area.
Instead of (or in addition to) using a traditional skirt, you can use a solid reactive skirt that raises or lowers slats to a few mm of the ground. If you need to go over a tree or something, then ignore the tree and the inertia of the skyscraper will shave the tree right off (assuming strong slats). Maximum slat height would be the maximum delta height between the front/back/left/right corners over the desired course. But just like a normal hovercraft, you can go right over water. Actually, with an airlock approach (multiple skirts on the leading and trailing edges) you could even go over the odd house--raise the outer skirt until you cover the house, then lower the outer skirt and inflate. Then raise the inner skirt and the house will be just fine.
The last problem is keeping the building upright. Also easy. Just get some huge gyros going and mount the thrust fans at the center of gravity (or anyway have the aggregate thrust axis match the center of gravity since you wouldn't want a single thrust point).
Not very stealthy the other party is deaf and lacks a tactile sense--if they do you can just pop your building up in the middle of town, maybe. If you construct the base of the building on a jig that has the same ground profile and contour of the target location, then you can just sit it right down and be done. 1450 ft (plus base height) in 12 hours--I'll assume the building can get a running start to cross the starting line 20 miles out and the bow-side could be studded with JATO rockets to slow down. Probably you could cover more than 20 miles--perhaps even the ~50 miles needed to hide the initial building of the structure--in 12 hours. 4.2MPH initial velocity should do it.
For another idea, SpaceX has shown that they can land a 150ft "building" on pretty much any flat surface within minutes. A little more engineering work could increase landing gear size and reactiveness (to not need level ground and to not need ultra-hard ground). Probably the biggest problem would be the flames and blast pressure which could dig a hole that the landing gear couldn't react to. Fortunately, we can fully prep beforehand including a laser ground map so we could have pre-formed jigsaw pieces of ceramic tiles with different heights with precise destination locations to form a level heat resistant landing pad. With helecopter deployment and a lightweight jig to help guide the pieces in place, I bet from choppers crossing the starting line (20 miles out) to MECO after landing can be done in under 20 minutes (though the last men on the ground putting the pad together better wear their asbestos long underwear since the rocket will be launched prior to the pad being complete) with a 10% chance of success (and lower chance of zero fatalities). Use parallel construction to get sufficient reliability. Given 12 hours, you can probably get normal SpaceX reliability with normal SpaceX risk of death.
Another non-stealthy construction technique. But much cheaper than the first one.
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If you look at a container port or a large container ship you will have a fair idea ....
There is no difficulty with building accommodation modules in a factory elsewhere and connecting them rapidly on a development site. How rapid is rapidly, depends on the economic justification for hurrying. Above a certain speed the necessary logistics will cost more and disrupt the surrounding community more. Speed will also worsen any snafus. So why rush?
The greater problem is the infrastructure. The building will need electricity, water, and sewerage services. Unless it is a replacement for some similar-sized former development, the visible part of the development cannot happen until infrastructures are in place. This takes longer than "foundations" (which are almost unnecessary if you are building on hard bedrock). You will also need cranes and other heavy construction equipment delivered to the site and prepared. Oh, and a workforce who know what to do.
I've often heard it asked, what are the builders wasting their time on between bulldozing the grass and trees, and starting to build the houses? Infrastructure (and foundations) is the answer. (wet weather can bring such work to a complete halt. You can't build the drains you need while you really need the drains!)
I have watched a modular student accommodation building grow at about a storey per week-end. Week-days, no visible work was happening. It was an inner city site and the traffic disruption caused by lorries delivering modules on weekdays would have been quite horrendous. So they didn't.
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"[The tower of Babylon](http://www.conxtech.com/projects/the-portable-tower/)" was erected in Black Rock City, NV during Burning Man festival 2008.
It is 10 floors, 100ft tall.
It was erected in 3.5 days with only one crane and 5 construction workers.
It was built on the virgin land of Black Rock desert and was disassembled ~week later in 1.5 days, leaving no trace behind.
I assume that with additional resources this very building could be built faster, and similar building of the same technology could be bigger.
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On Earth humanity has taken the dominant role (excluding dolphins and mice of course). We know of conflicts in pre-history where our ancestors have overtaken other species and slowly wiped them out.
What circumstances would allow two (or more) species to evolve on a planet side by side? What could have happened differently to allow Neanderthal man and our ancestors to survive and thrive to the present day?
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There are a lot of different factors that could apply here, and in most cases it could well be a combination of factors that come together to give this result.
Here are a selection of possible reasons though:
**Geography**
The two cultures evolve on different continents. Sea travel has not advanced to the point that either is capable of invading the other but they do have some contact (for example occasional adventurers, shipwreck victims, or trading vessels may cross the sea).
**Morality**
One is stronger than the other but has developed a "modern" moral standpoint where they do not attack the weaker species.
**Habitat incompatibility**
The two species live in very different areas. For example one is aquatic, one land based. Or one is adapted for cold climate and the other for hot.
There would be areas where they meet and trade but the main drivers of conflict wouldn't apply as they use different resources.
**MAD**
The two species have managed to hold on and develop to the point where both have atomic weapons and a tense stand-off has developed.
**Religion**
One worships the other as gods/saints/deities/etc.
**Positive Inter-dependency**
The two species are somehow biologically important to each other, for example there is a stage in the life-cycle of one where it is dependent on another and both species benefit from the arrangement.
**Parasitism**
One could even be a parasite on the other, for example sentient cuckoos/changelings that exist hidden within the host's society and use it to raise their young.
**Slavery**
The classic case would be a stronger but less bright species and a more intelligent species. Any other unique ability such as flight could also lead to the same situation though.
One species enslaves the other and uses them to provide the ability they don't have.
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There are several parts which must be considered which (i have to speculate) would promote the evolution of two (or more) sentient, reasonably intellegent, native species in a single environment (planet but the same arguements could work for localized regions, exotic environments, or collections of planets).
## Creation of Two Advanced Species
Intellegence has, most likely, only evolved once on planet earth since it came into existance. We have never found another species with advanced intellegence. I, therefore, infer that the probability of an intellegent species evolving independantly at any given time is low. If there are two specied evolving in parellel, however, this must happen.
**Pure Chance** While low, there is a finite chance that a planet where intellent species can evolve in two indepentent environments, two or more will evolve independently around the same time. I would expect that if this were to happen, they would be at vastly different social and technological levels when first contact is made.
**Common Cause** A species evolves to fill a niche. If that niche which requires intellegence forms around the same time such that two species attempt to fill it, it is possible they would both become more intellegent while striving for the same goal. This would lead to competition increasing the chance for one species to die, but more on that later. While one would expect simular creatures (common ancestors) to fit the niche well, they could feasibly be vastly different.
**Interspecies Interactions Promoting Evolution** Two intellent species could feasibly form if the existance of one promotes the evolution of the other. War, for example, has advanced humanity more than I think we would like to admit. Both species could evolve
with regard to intellectual capacity in response to competition (violent or otherwise) between them. Evolution of defensive and offensive characteristics evolve in response to other species. As long as one doesn't kill of the other, they may advance the species that way. They could also peacefully promote intellectual growth. In billions of years, one could speculate that mice could evolve to be significantly more intellent in order to make use of our refuse or dogs/cats in order to keep us happy. By the time they reached a level of sapience, we would likely recognize the change and promote it as long as we saw it as cute/valuable/non-threatening. Those are, of course, far from the only possible examples.
**Divergence** Finally, two species are very likely to form intellegence at the same time if they separate into two groups and then continue to evolve. This is why we actually do see different races and did see Neanderthals. If two groups become isolated either by physical separation (distance, different living conditions, etc) or just refuse to reproductively interact (due to disease, classes, social stigma, etc), exchange of genes between the groups will cease and, eventually, could lead to the formation of two different species. The reasons why they may separate could be the same ones that cause them not to interbreed into one species again.
## Non-Destruction of Two Advanced Species
There aren't any Neanderthals anymore. They no longer exist for two reasons: We killed them and took their niches and we sleep with them until they were now part of us. If one species kills off them other completely, of course they cannot both become dominant species on a single planet as one will be dead. If one incompassionately outcompetes the other in every area, the other will die off as he will have no niche in which to survive. Finally, if all members interbreed regularity, the results after millions of years will be just one species with a broader gene pool. I think that is how I would want to go.
Basically, you would find yourself trying to come up with a reason they would not interbreed and would not kill each other.
**Environmental Separation** The most common, likely, is physical separation. If both species live in different environments (geographical, one is in trees the other in oceans, etc). This would prevent war and breeding. The other answer covers that significantly.
**Social Separation** While it is hard to believe it could exist for millions of years the same, if there is some reason on group will not interact (love or hate) with the other despite being in the same locality. This could be classism (one is a slave/subordinant race), pacts (stay away from me and I will stay away from you), or unamorous non-violent relationships (do you really want to sleep with an ogre or ewok?)
**Incompetitive Incompatibile Biological Differences** Even if you would breed with an ogre could you? Their biology is likely completely different and will likely not result in children. Likely the biology of one species may not promote violent competeition or violence. I won't kill you if you spray me with poison as you die. I will not need to kill you even if I am starving if I can't eat you or chokeberries and you only each chokeberries.
**Economicish Variables** Finally, this can mostly be described as a cost benefite anaylsis over millions of years and (potentially) billions of players. If there is never a reason or benefit for either species to kill or breed with each other, they won't (on a species ending genocidal scale). If mermaids trade us sushi for grass but look like blobfish I don't think we would kill or breed them out of existance intentionally. We may, however, cause war by accidental/inconsiderent pollution.
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The real barrier to having two sentient species at the same time, especially two with the same mental capacity, is deep time.
Deep Time is a concept of Stephen J. Goulds wherein he notes that studying paleontology gives one a sense of time as a vast space in which we occupy just a tiny fraction.
Multicellular life evolved 1 billion years ago. Mammals and birds supplanted Dinosaurs 65 million years ago or 6.5% of total time of multicellular life. The genus Homo Sapiens first appeared 4 million years ago or 0.4% of the span of multicellular life. Actually Homo Sapiens Sapiens (modern humans) evolved just 100,000 years ago at most or 0.01% of the total span.
What are the odds that two wholly related species would evolve in parallel on the same planet at the same time? Even if they were just 1% off from each other in time, they would miss the other entirely.
The best scenario would be to have separate but related species springing from common semi-sentient ancestor. They were geographically isolated, preferably in significantly different environments and therefore developed into separate distinct species.
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Interesting question, with thought provoking answers. Both Kain and Tim B provide some good pointers for world building.
I would just like to add that as far as humans go, **over the last one million years we have had more than one species of humans walking the planet.**
Props to TechZed's answer regarding deep time. Two truly different intelligent species would need a good back story. But that's part of the fun :)
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The species must be different enough to take the ecological niches so non overlapping that they would not compete significantly with each other. For instance, they must be adapted to the climate conditions so different, that area occupied by another species would not look more attractive than Antarctica for us.
Species with similar niches do not co exist. One is always slightly stronger and pushes another out. This is true for all species, so should be true for thinking species as well. The only exception is if the environment has some stable variations, say humans would be stronger in summer and neanderthals in winter (probably was not the case).
Geographical separation may work for some time, but as civilization evolves it soon takes over the whole planet even with rather primitive means of transportation.
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I'm creating a city of about 200 000 people in a nation equivalent to a modern western nation, like Germany, France or the United States.
Strong economy and a calm society, but still a conspicuous underclass.
The nations government is about to realize an unconditional basic income to overcome poverty. Politics just perceived that the question is not if the nation could afford a unconditional basic income, but if it could afford poverty.
*(Please do not go to deep into a political discussion, this will not be the point of my question.)*
The income is enough to cover the most basic needs of anyone who is registered in the register of residents. No one has to worry about enough to eat, or frostbite in winter.
Even if one lives a really spartan life, it won't be enough to save more than a few 100$ per year. A saver would have to save several decades just to buy a car which most others could buy after some months of work. The "I'll never have to work again" is viable, if one does not want to have any fun in his life.
I assume that the unpleasant jobs of today would be better paid, as no one would work as a charlady if the salary is not noticeable higher than the basic income. So when no one applies for this jobs, the wages rise. If jobs are still paid so low, they are not needed.
So my question is:
**What kind of influence would a basic income have to the society on the level of a city, not the nation?**
My thoughts so far:
* Changes in nearby cities also will take influence and other way round.
* Will everything noticeable on a national scale, also occur on a city's scale?
* Depending if it's leading to better social harmony or disaffection, would it be "safer" on the streets in general?
Edit: More specific version of the question: What change would occur only on city-level and what change would NOT occur on city-level even if it occurred on national level?
[Answer]
**City vs Nation**
Since this is implemented at the national level, it seems to me that whatever happens in the nation at large will also happen at the lower level. This might vary if the city has a high concentration of high-end (say tech) jobs (you would not see much change), or if contrarily, it's a big slum with unpleasant jobs (most people would stop working and those that stay would want a lot more money).
**This is actually going to happen**
Realistically, I think some sort of basic guaranteed income is unavoidably in the future of western societies, since it's more efficient for most people than having a massive administrative bureaucracy to handle welfare. So I'd expect to see this before mid-century around the world.
**Fewer jobs, better paid**
Now, the obvious direct implications will be economic: A lot of things will become more expensive, and a lot of things will become (more) automated. In reality, I'd expect a basic guaranteed income to be implemented in response to high and persistent unemployment, especially youth unemployment, so the job displacement might predate the law.
**(Parasitic) Leisure Class**
Now, presumably many people would choose to spend all their lives online playing games, watching pornography, replying to questions on stack-exchange, partying or doing haven-knows-what, so the pool of available labor will likely decrease somewhat. Now these were presumably unmotivated and rather marginal workers to begin with (since more ambitious people would not be satisfied with a basic income), but there would be an economic loss at first. A vast class of people would just consume and never produce anything besides waste. Many might travel to other cities just for seasonal activities (carnivals, oktoberfests, mardi gras, etc) or other festivals. We'll come back to the sociological implications of this later.
**The Body Economic**
Presumably, as jobs become scarcer, and literally unnecessary for survival, those who still are able and choose to have a job would presumably gain some non-financial reward from being employed, in terms of peer prestige (at least among those who also have jobs). By contrast, members of the leisurely class might instead respond by considering these workers "idiots", "squares" or "dorks." YOLO, man, and all that.
**More risk-taking**
Moving to a new city, starting over, taking career risks would all be more common, since there is a safety net in place. So I'd expect greater entrepreneurialism and more labor mobility.
**Addicts and mentally ill problem**
Another important consideration to keep in mind is the behavior of addicts and the mentally ill. Simply providing an addict or a mentally ill person with money 'for rent and food' does not mean the money will be spent for rent and food. So you might still have homeless and hungry people.
**Sociological implications**
Marx famously noted that man is a working animal. By this (to explain it anachronistically) he meant that having a sense of doing useful work is an essential part of a human's Maslowian self-fulfillment. By providing a basic income you resolve the issue of alienation of labor (at least in part), but you potentially deny an avenue of self-fulfillment. Contrary to the rosy views of today, not everyone can be an artist or a craftsman (most people are lousy artists and have two left hands as far as craftsmanship is concerned), since those activities require an audience, which will still be a scarce resource. So how will people find self-fulfillment? Hard to say, but I'd guess in addictive virtual worlds and through volunteering.
[Answer]
## Financing
Financing a city level basic income is going to be more complicated than financing a national one. Some things that a nation can do that a city can't:
* Print its own currency.
* Borrow against the ability to print its own currency.
* Tax all citizens rather than just those resident within its borders.
The issue with borrowing isn't that a nation can borrow money for basic financing but that it can use the money as bridge financing for slower economic times. In other words, the city is likely to have to cut back on its basic income payments at the exact time when they are most needed. A nation can borrow for a few years to keep payments flowing but a city often can't.
If taxes are increased to pay for basic income, it provides an incentive to move somewhere else. This can be difficult at the national level. You have to move away from your job, find another country that will allow you to immigrate, move away from family and friends, etc. At the city level, this can follow an existing pattern: suburbanization.
Because taxes are increased, jobs have to pay higher wages. This encourages employers to move out of the city. This won't work for everything. For example, government jobs can't move. But a large retailer might well move just outside city limits so as to take advantage of the lower wages. A manufacturer certainly. It's hard to move something like a port, but traffic can be diverted from one port to another. The impact on new business is important too.
All this matters because a city can tax people who live there or work there but not those who move. A nation can tax citizens, even if they move outside the nation. A city can't tax people who both live and work elsewhere.
In general, proposals that work at the city level either need a specific source of financing, e.g. sale of mineral rights, or national support.
## Safety
Well, we could look at what has happened in existing areas where income has been supported, for example, housing projects. Are housing projects more or less safe? Anyone who's ever helped with distribution to the poor can tell you that many people resent charity. With basic income, they'll likely resent that it is not more. Obviously, that's the result of the greed of those who pay for the system.
## Immigration
With a nation, it can be difficult to move into the nation. With a city, it's easier. In particular, cities almost always have suburbs next to them where people commute to and from the city for work. Interstate commutes are more difficult and less common. I would guess that this is even more true for countries, even those like Switzerland and Germany. Jobs usually don't exist right at the border between countries. They quite often exist close enough to the borders of cities since cities are smaller. Simply, it is more feasible to move to a city for basic income than it is for a country.
## Risk-taking
Implemented at the city level, this will decrease many ways of taking risk. Note that if you move out of the city, you lose your basic income. So it's harder for someone on basic income to leave. It can increase other forms of risk-taking though. There's less reason to worry about giving up your job locally to do something else locally. There's also less reason to worry about something like gambling.
In fact, it favors really big gambles. You may not want to take little gambles as taxes could reduce your winnings. But a truly huge gamble may be worth it. Particularly if you can move before the tax bill comes due so that you can get the lower taxes from outside the basic income zone. It also favors illegal gambling, as that can avoid the tax penalty altogether. Of course, illegal gambling would also make sense in a national system whereas moving before taking one's winnings probably would not.
## Inflation
This can't cause general inflation, as a city can't print its own money. This can however move inflation. In particular, things on which the poor spend money may become more expensive.
## Class Warfare
This is unlikely to have much impact on class warfare. The Haves will continue to look down on the Have Nots and the Have Nots will continue to resent the Haves. It may express itself differently on the part of the Have Nots, as they wonder why the Haves bother to work when they could just get basic income.
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I assume you are asking for suggestions what aspects you need to consider when designing such world.
This **minimal basic income needed for basic spartan life would be very different in different parts of any country** - because climate is different. In Hawaii, you can live in tent on a beach year-long (and have more resources for food and fun), in Minnesota - living in tent during winter would be less fun. So if basic income would be established, people would move to such hospitable places and life with basic income there - would be "working" people allow that? Would be some areas of Hawaii reserved **as a ghetto for "basic income" people,** and others, more desirable, for paid tourists?
If basic income covers cheap 1-bedroom rental, I can again save (and have more fun) by living in car/van/RV on public lands for free, and move with the climate. So would **government provided me with money for housing, or free housing without me having a choice where do I live?** Can I travel for summer in Colorado/Montana and winter in Arizona/Florida?
There is currently such traveling "tribe" in USA - retired [snowbirds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowbird_%28people%29), almost a million strong, and almost invisible because they spend winter in public lands and cheap campgrounds in the West. They do live on fixed income. They do volunteer a lot - like volunteer camp manager and/or bathroom cleaner few hours per week for free camping permit.
So even in such economy with basic income provided, **people would barter their skills and services for other services they need,** even without money being involved.
Another problem is how to deal with people arbitraging cost of living differences between countries (and not regions inside same country). **Will your basic income follow you if you live in different country?** Thailand on $1000 per month is better than New York City. Should your spending of basic income be creating income for taxpayers who pay the tax to support your basic income? Or income for Thailand hotel/entertainment industry?
Another aspect: possibly service providers would differentiate if they provide services for "basic income" people, who are extremely sensitive to price, and would accept lesser quality and worse service experience ("Walmart model"), or more upscale, with substantially higher profit margin. Would there be mixed shopping malls? Or would they be separated?
Big part of econonic interactions are about [signaling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_%28economics%29) - I think that extravagant dresses evolve as [conspicuous consumption](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption) to **visually separate "haves" from "have nots".** If so, criminal gangs would steal such clothing items, and/or create fake counterfeit.
Would police spent resources providing protection to "have nots" who by definition do NOT pay their salary? Would "equal protection" still apply? And if involved with any crime, **how a jury of your peers will be defined?** If some "have not" steals clothing item from a "have" person, would offender will by judged by:
* (1) 100% "have nots", his peers?
* (2) 100% "haves", peers of the victim?
* (3) haves and have nots mixed, as they are represented in national averages? Or as in local city, which might be substantially different in cities with warmer climate?
If someone works for a salary and pays taxes (a "have"), **how long this status will last when such person retire to live off basic income?** Would rules be different for disabled person, who cannot work? What about partially disabled? Naturalized immigrant?
Nice can of worms. Good question.
Basic income for no work is unlikely to happen: it clearly separates community to "makers" and "takers". I am aware that with productivity increase and automation, amount of work available will decrease. More probable are:
* work programs (build roads in National Parks) for people who cannot find profitable employment
* job sharing (two people can share one job, if they can live basic spartan life off half the salary)
* early retirement. Work 10 years and live as unemployed off of savings for 10 (and travel/play music/improv comedy on corner as you wish). later, or when bored, you can come back to work and earn more.
* earned income tax credit - which you get only if you have some income.
In each of these situation, you still **"earned" your leisure time,** government control of resources is much less (no forced "free housing"), and **market drives allocation of resources,** not a government agency.
More and more question are popping up. **What about taxes and voting rights?** Would "have nots" or "takers" keep voting rights? Maybe "haves" would be willing to provide basic income, if receivers they give up voting rights? On maybe "have nots" can vote only in local elections (keeping local issues under more control of "have nots"), but not national - if that is price? If receivers of basic income keep national voting rights, are they in majority? And if so, can they tax heavily "haves", cooking the goose which lays golden eggs?
**Draft during military conflict:** will be basic income receivers drafted preferentially? Or volunteering for military service counts as job: and if so, would be "have nots" eligible to send other people to war?
**What about price and taxes on real estate?** If you can inherit house in desirable destination, not have to pay taxes on it, and live without effort, what can newly rich "have" trade you for desirable house? So from POV of a "have" such situation would be highly unequal. People who inherited desirable properties can keep them forever, and who did not, will never get any, regardless of the new wealth they accumulated. That would be interesting to see.
[Answer]
More a sociology observation. To quote Arthur Clarke on the novel 3001
...in theory all class distinctions had vanished, there were a few thousand super-citizens. George Orwell had been right; some would always be **more equal than others**.
You will still have elites. The intelligent specialists. The person who has friends and contacts among the elites etc. The talented artists. Forming powerful clicques or cabals is something humans do whatever their culture is.
Oh George Orwell's full quote is "**All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"**
Also worth considering a clicque is a group of people who share a common interests. So you will always have groups of people who will "rise to the top". They won't necessarily act superior but their opinions will be highly regarded.
[Answer]
Because this "system" already exists at both the national and local level a few facts can be extrapolated:
1. Large groups of non-working "families" will live in one household or one building. This offsets the rent and food costs and leaves a pool of money available for leisure activities for the "family".
2. The economy at both the local and national level will not perceive the impact of paying for this system due to the extra pool of money being spent immediately back into the economy.
3. If the "system" is paying youth as well, this will encourage the non-working to breed more. (To increase the available pool of money to the "family") This will have educational impacts. This can also have the impact of passing on non-working values to subsequent generations.
4. The social impact of "the system" will be immense. Income of any kind is largely never enough. This is currently a human plight of both the working and non-working. Across the nation people will live to their means. When an unconditional income becomes not enough, the social impact will be some of the following:
a. resentment
b. crime
c. a need for more police and subsequently more arrests of the non-working
a b & c will be compounded by both a sense of entitlement and utter lack of impetus, the unintended outcomes of "paying" non-working individuals.
A sense of self perceived prejudice against those in the "system" will initially be the direct result of their own resentment, and not necessarily the direct result of classism. Since the prejudice will "feel real" (unaware of the causal relationship between resentment and prejudice), a frustration will be felt by both the working and the non-working regarding the issue of prejudice. This frustration can lead to actual prejudice, causing a cycle of hatred.
Not including the physically or mentally disabled, the choice to work or not work will be largely self imposed, making any oppression also self imposed and "self" perceived. This chosen oppression will lead to resentment, in turn leading to frustration and hatred.
"Which came first the chicken or the egg?" is a question of prejudice and oppression that will never be asked or debated by either the working or non-working. In the end, it won't matter, prejudice and oppression will both eventually be a real problem.
Largely "the system" will fail for the same reason it is failing currently in reality; resentment.
[Answer]
>
> I assume that the unpleasant jobs of today would be better paid, as no one would work as a charlady if the salary is not noticeable higher than the basic income.
>
>
>
Basic income is the idea that the sum is payed to every citizen whether or not they have a job. As a result any additional income that the person makes helps them.
A low basic income makes it easier for citizens to take low paying jobs because they don't lose any of the government support the moment they take a job.
Otherwise I don't think that German society would change that much if the job center would stop to pressure people to seek jobs and simply transfers Hartz IV money without asking about the amount of tried job applications.
It likely would need to be a higher amount of money to discourage people from low status jobs.
[Answer]
Some points to consider:
**Does the society have a minimum wage law?** In theory, the basic unconditional income should undermine the argument that a minimum wage is necessary for people to afford a minimum standard of living.
**What is the highest marginal tax rate** (including the effect of reduced benefits as income increases)? In theory, the basic unconditional income should eliminate the need to reduce benefits as income increases. The marginal tax rate should then be a function of (aggregate amount of basic income plus amount spent on other government expenses) divided by (aggregate taxable income).
Does the basic unconditional income **reduce or eliminate the need for other government welfare programs?** (Such as government-sponsored healthcare, old-folks pensions, food stamps, *et cetera*.)
Does the basic unconditional income cost so much that **the government reduces what it spends on other services?** (Such as police, fire protection, ambulances, emergency medical services, education, courts, jails, prisons, military training, military bases, fighting wars, *et cetera*.)
**Is voting restricted?** to non-immigrants? to members of a particular class? to people who pay more in taxes than they receive from the basic unconditional income program? to military veterans? to people who have not been convicted of certain crimes?
If nobody will ever starve, **what incentive is there to educate children?** Will uneducated children form dangerous street gangs?
If nobody will ever starve, **what incentive is there to get married** and stay married? Will children without fathers form dangerous street gangs?
If nobody needs to go to school or work, **will most people be bored?**
**Can cities impose immigration restrictions?** How can they enforce them?
**What are the standards for success?** Are there public prizes or honors for achievements?
**Are there restrictions on the number of children** a person or family can have? How are they enforced?
[Answer]
Is the value of the basic income determined nationally or locally? If it is the former, then some of the impact will depend on your city's ranking in the national cost-of-living league table. The higher you are, the more likely you are to lose population. The losses are unlikely to be large in the short term for an "average" city, as social ties will still operate, but there will be a tendency for the young to move "downmarket". Over time the "have-not" population may shrink. If the city has very high income levels (think of London as an example) the effect will be much more pronounced.
If the basic income is set in relation to local costs, this mechanism will not operate.
[Answer]
BLS needs to have more surplus, discretionary money. Paying for internet (if you want them to have telephone / communications) and to play games. Paying for drugs. Paying for beer. If you can pay for entertainment, you can choose an austere, ascetic and frugal lifestyle and save and invest money.
If you don't have enough to pay for those things on BLS, and there are no job opportunities, then there will be massive crime. Without those, you're basically describing a wall-less prison situation. Especially as you automate away the low-end jobs, the ones that the most talentless and useless of society need. Expect crime or revolt.
No havenot will be able to keep nice, inherited property. Taxes in places that have taxes, or upkeep in places without - will eventually drag them down. Same if trying to sell access to it - since only the haves will have extra money to drop on tourism, and havenot will not have the nicest place.
Upset in banking industry. Can't get loans, unless you have a job. No spare money to save = means no bank accounts, either.
How is medical handled? Wide variance in needs. Drugs will get siphoned off, from legit needs for recreation.
Food: are you going to let them select their own food? If so, expect more obesity and health problems, as the cheaper food is worse for you (and you seem to be going after punishing people who're on BLS - so they won't be able to afford better). Choose to eat nice, or to not and remaining difference can allow you to save more than a few hundred in a year. If you control the food, and are keeping people hungry (or not fat) - so they can't choose to save the surplus money, expect obesity to be the mark of the haves, who're the only ones who can afford to overeat (your healthy food),
Clothing: same issues. People can save money if they control their own clothing budgets (choose to wear nice, or to not). If they don't have enough, they won't be warm enough in the winter, or can choose to go nude.
If you leave them no other affordable entertainment, expect a lot of sport-fucking. With all that entails. STDs, kids, etc. If you regulate this, expect revolt. Or, figure out your enforcement costs, since you're making a prison. Cheaper to put them all in cells.
Library use == way up.
Not much art for havenots - art requires tools (can be sold off or stolen for drug money), and materials. You might get drawing, as long as this is not becoming a paperless, digital society. Havenots don't get cameras, nor electronic devices. No money for service plans, and cost of devices without service plans are hundreds of dollars. So no digital art, and only long-hand writing, unless computers/typewriters in your libraries.
Same for musical instruments. Down to singing, rapping, and beatboxing.
Storytelling.
Demagoguery, and fun political bullshit. Assuming you don't disenfranchise the havenots. Rabble-rousing and revolt if you do take away the vote.
How do havenots pay for school? No way to advance your skills or career if you can't save up money to pay for school. If you've made school free (in such a society), expect it to be of low-quality. It is, after all, now just a form of entertainment to the bored masses. Not conducive to learning. And, why go to school? You'll get BLS anyways. Haves will get more out of school, even if you outlaw private schools. They can hire tutors, they can get better school supplies, they'll have more and better access to computers to do their schoolwork with. Etc. You will *have* to outlaw private schools, or the haves will just flee to them - like is happening now. The haves can afford to hire the most effective, and best teachers for their own schools or their own private use. Same with better equipment, heating and lighting, quiet classrooms, nice design elements (beautiful, restful surroundings), low student to teacher ratios, etc, etc.
The list goes on.
] |
[Question]
[
In my fantasy world I want fantastically large trees, particularly in the height category. The tallest trees on earth grow just over 100 meters tall. Why can't they get taller? What circumstances would allow a tree to grow taller?
Currently I'm growing my trees in micro-gravity, in a sterile environment with no diseases to kill the trees, and with little to no wind to knock them over. How tall could my trees get? What else do I need to take into account if I want my trees to grow to several kilometers in height?
[Answer]
[Water movement](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v428/n6985/full/nature02417.html) appears to be one of the big limiting factors in tree growth. It appears on earth that 120-130m is about the maximum height of a tree. It gets harder and harder to get water up to the top.
So the easier thing to solve would be a smaller gravity. The other would be for a stronger 'pump' action maybe a symbiotic microbe that helps move the water up. Or maybe the tree has reservoirs to collect rain water, though those voids would make the tree susceptible to breaking.
After that then it is a matter of having enough nutrients to continue feeding such a giant, as well as a base to support it. The larger a tree the greater the forces are for wind (longer lever) etc.
Lesser gravity would also help reduce problems with the squared-cubed law...
Oh, and I'm not sure how well they'd do in micro-gravity, Some gravity would be better, Mars or the Moon (WAG-IMO)
[Answer]
I think a lot could be learned from the way very tall trees make it work here on earth.
Scientists are making some pretty interesting discoveries about how the redwoods are reaching their impressive heights. [It appears that the redwoods are collecting water from the top and the bottom](http://articles.latimes.com/2002/sep/01/news/adme-redwoods1) by drinking water from the ground as well as from the canopy.
>
> Some redwoods have lived since the days of Jesus Christ. With time,
> their immense, complex canopies trap needles, dust and seeds, creating
> peaty soil mats a yard thick and as big as a bus that grow plants,
> sustain animals and absorb water hundreds of feet above the ground.
>
>
> "Eventually, you get this huge sponge that builds up," said Steve
> Sillett, a Humboldt State professor who began studying the phenomena
> in redwoods in 1996. "During most of the year, it's an aquatic
> environment up there" fed by rain and fog.
>
>
> He's discovered mollusks, crustaceans and other animals ordinarily
> found in stream beds -- even the wandering salamander, which lacks
> lungs and must stay moist to absorb oxygen through its skin.
>
>
> Like trees in the Pacific Northwest and other temperate rain forests
> and cloud forests, the redwoods sprout canopy roots from their
> branches that Sillett believes take in water and nutrients from the
> hidden gardens.
>
>
>
Effectively the trees create their own little gardens high up in the canopy and sprout [canopy roots or adventitious roots](http://academic.evergreen.edu/n/nadkarnn/cv/pdfs_science/Canopy_Roots_Science_1981.pdf) to collect water and nutrients.
Another path or even a combined approach might be the use of [aerial roots:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root#Specialized_roots)
>
> Aerial roots: roots entirely above the ground, such as in ivy (Hedera)
> or in epiphytic orchids. Many aerial roots, are used to receive water
> and nutrient intake directly from the air - from fogs, dew or humidity
> in the air.
>
>
>
Scaling this up to kilometers may be a bit of a stretch, but it does solve the water issue.
---
Just had a thought on a way to potentially work around the kilometer issue...
What if your trees were partially [petrified](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrified_wood)? As in the inner core of the trees turned to stone by absorbing minerals from the soil. You may think this would mean that your trees would have to be millions of years old, but that [may not necessarily be the case:](http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/petrified-wood-info.htm)
>
> The rate of petrifaction is not exactly known. In some cases it may be
> fairly rapid. For example, mine timbers have been partly petrified
> after a few years' exposure to mineral-laden water. Most petrified
> wood was formed long ago. For instance, stone logs in Petrified Forest
> National Park, Arizona, are of the Triassic Period and more than
> 160,000,000 years old.
>
>
>
Again this is probably stretching a little far, but it may give your trees the added strength they need to grow to the heights your looking for.
---
Another option may be to have your trees form an interconnected network, like [The Great Banyan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Banyan) having branches roots and trunks interconnected may offer some really significant strength advantages.
"[Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden - Howrah 2011-01-08 9724](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acharya_Jagadish_Chandra_Bose_Indian_Botanic_Garden_-_Howrah_2011-01-08_9724.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Acharya_Jagadish_Chandra_Bose_Indian_Botanic_Garden_-_Howrah_2011-01-08_9724.JPG)" by [Biswarup Ganguly](//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gangulybiswarup "User:Gangulybiswarup") - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via [Wikimedia Commons](//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/).
[Answer]
[The Long Cosmos](https://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/book/the-long-cosmos/) by Pratchett/Baxter actually contains chapters (+/- ch 40) where hero climbs a miles high tree in a "forest" of such gargantuan trees.
Trees on that world evolved to embed hydrogen gas in their wood/structure, so their wood is nearly weightless. These trees also use hydrogen gas - filled structures to transport water upward.
Needless to say, fire has rather spectacular consequences on this world.
] |
[Question]
[
An alien artwork carelessly flung out into space (most likely an [Assiti Shard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assiti_Shards_series#Assiti_Shard)) strikes Earth, with the following effect: **all live humans present on Earth at the time have their bodies duplicated.**
* Each of the duplicated pair is conscious\* and certain it is the original.
* Each of the duplicated pair is somehow aware of the existence of the double at a gut level.
* Each member of the pair seems to only require half the food they used to eat, (or one half could eat for both), so it is probably a phasing-type-phenomenon going on.
* The memories and experiences of the two versions are synchronized every 387 minutes and 17 seconds (in an experiential flash that is reportedly as vivid as the experience itself, if greatly sped up).
*(EDIT:)*
* The duplicates both appear wearing a perfect replica of the original's clothes and other personal items at a survivable location that appears to be otherwise random, but at least 128 centimeters radially from where the original was located.
*(EDIT 2:)*
* If one of the duplicates dies, as some people quickly found out, the surviving duplicate feels an immediate experiential flash and starts to suffer from a lingering feeling of absence with varying degrees of intensity, ranging from mild to utterly crippling. Food requirements return to normal, as the phasing appears to cease.
**How does society react? I'm most interested in a) the immediate reaction and b) long term adjustments for individual households.** Does everyone take on two jobs, or do you send your other self on a permanent vacation? Would people try to kill their doubles?
\*If the original was conscious. Fetuses and brain-dead people are duplicated too, the former inside their also duplicated mothers.
[Answer]
# Direct aftermath
First, I will assume that your aliens were friendly enough to avoid a huge chaos: no one is left in flying planes or on crash-landing areas. No one in cars, or in cars way, etc. Ships might be avoided for the same reason. So no one died in the event henceforth known as *Duplication*. Everyone has now a copy of him/herself separated seemingly randomly from a few centimeters away to the other side of the world.
I think the immediate questions would be (in general) along the lines of
* What happened? I had this strange feeling that something happened, and I can't explain it.
* Where am I? I was there, and now I'm here... wherever that "here" may be.
* Is it only me?1 Looking around, people's faces seem as puzzled, so whatever happened seemed to have affected everyone around me, until...
# Before the first sync
I realised that there are some clones/copies/Doppelgänger/duplicata/whatever, I don't know how to put a name on it. How that happens depend on different cases. It might be that strange gut feeling I was having. Maybe, I witness two identical persons staring at each other where there were only one before. Maybe I am facing at myself without any mirror.
The reactions of most people would follow the usual steps
1. **Shock** like "what?!", "who are you?" and the like. People would stand frozen on the spot. Those with no double to be seen will continue to look around to search for more cases or simply stare at how those react.
2. **Denial** In particular, those facing their clone in public, we'll tend to deny the existence of their clones. "You're not real", etc. Those who don't see their clones will deny the strange feeling that they have.
3. **Anger** if the clone can't be denied, it can surely be killed. So fight might broke out at that point, with both clones fighting in a way or another. Some will be killed. Also to be heard at that stage are the like of "How made that?" "Who is responsible?", military, government officials, police, banks, etc. may be attacked at that point, for taking the blame.
4. **Bargain** Since it is hard to find a culprit, and the police members seem to be equally affected, then it might be a better idea to bargain. For those who aren't sure of their clone yet might consider saying: "Ok, to whoever did that, I see what you did there. I'll be a good boy, and you don't do it to me." The others will try to negotiate a turn back.
5. **Depression** As some comments on previous answers show, there would be some depression part: "All secrents are left out of control: someone else knows them. For sure s/he is going to reveal it to everyone!" "I'll never be alone." "How are we to continue on living?" or maybe some more psychological issues. What happened to me? This person is going to kill me for sure, etc. Suicides may happen at this stage. This is an event too large to bare for a lot of people.
6. **Acceptance** The acceptance of the whole thing will greatly differ from individuals to individuals as well as their own situation in the face of the *Duplication*. People facing their own clone, assuming they did not kill them or themselves in the previous stages, may kind of accept it as the appearance of a yet unkown twin brother. Those without clone in sight, might either follow their gut and assume that they too have a clone somewhere. And others might just ignore that feeling, and assume that for whatever reasons, some people got cloned.
It should be noted that news coverage would be highly disrupted as the people presenting them are themselves walking through the above steps, and futhermore aren't all at their workplace. Internet might be an interesting sources of news though, but not all have means to check it, transported far from home without even a phone in your pocket.
# After the first sync
And then it came: "*The First Sync*". Also the called *The Shock*. Yes you were teleported somewhere else, yes some people, maybe you, yourself had twi brother or sister appearning out of nowere, otherwise you might have that strange feeling you, were cloned as well, but are just enable to see the clone. But on the whole, you were kept yourself. But then... a flash, and strange thoughts and memories start to appear in your brains. Scenes you cannot have seen yourself. Thoughts that are somewhat familiar but aren't exactly your own.
This will produce a lot of anxiety to everyone. By that time not all arrived at the acceptance step before. Therfore the reaction will depend on many factors, but we can explain a few cases.
* You accepted that, due to the *Duplication*, you have a twin just facing you. Somehow you always wanted to have a twin brother to see how that felt like. And after the *Shock*, foreign thoughts and memories came to you. But you can quite easily identify that those are from the other you facing yourself. So it is not only a cloning, you are linked to that person in front of you. No secret to keep from him/her, but none kept from you neither. That kind of a relief, if s/he were to spill your secrets, you'll know. You don't know how that happened, but there might be something to take from that.
* "Who am I, what am I doing?" were the thoughts that were haunting your mind before the *Shock*. And those strange depressing ideas seemed to have sprung from that flash. This is much more than you can take. Better end it there than living through that pain and anxiety.
* You accepted that somehow the *Duplication* created double of some people, but in yourself you have a feeling that you, too, have a double. But you are not sure. You sure can't seem to see him around. But then another flash. This time, it was shorter. But on the other hand, it was most stressing. But after the initial surprise, you realise that the new memories must come from that other you. Where could he be?
Slowly each will walk down the steps, and it will somehow be established that the *Duplication* created a double of each and everyone, and that some events may syncrhonise the thoughts. As the concept starts to spread, the second sync came in, which confirm the theory and established the fact that the synchronisation is something they will live by from now on.
# The first month
The first month is the time of experiment. A great many people died due to fear, anxiety or psychological stress. I don't have any source for it, but we could assume that 10-30% of humanity died in the first days after the *Duplication*. Sometimes, only one of the double did, but at other times, both of them.
Nevertheless, the surviving ones are trying to re-establish a new life. Some are experimenting to see the limits of that strange effect. The synchronisation time is established with a great precision, so that people start to be expecting it. Some are travelling, looking for their doubles. Some engage in more frivolous experiments (foursome sex being one of them).
The lowered need for food per individual is found. So is the fact that somehow the food taken by one can be used by the other. Scientists start to study the communication between the two doubles, the sync process, the *Duplication*, etc.
Some young try to kill one double during a sync to experience death to the surviving double.
Some rules are established:
* Humans have become more efficient machines. Even those whose double have disappeared only need half food income as they had before.
* Thoughts, memories and ideas are synchronised every 387minutes and 17seconds.
* Physiological attributes (food, sleep, etc.) are also syncrhonised at the same time.
* Physical and biological events are not synchronised: the death of one double does not provoke the death of another, as stated in another answer, a cut will scar only one double. And consequently, a woman getting pregnant does not imply that her double will be as well.
It is a bit too early to tell, but it seems to indicate that the *Duplication* was a single event, and not a continuous. Namely the next generations won't have doubles (unless the event occurs again).
# Society acceptance and evolution
The initial chaos is slowly brought under control. And people have gone back to work, the whole society is slowly going back to "normal", trying as best as possible to accomodate for the new individuals.
**Legal**
Politicians and lawyers will jump on scientific conclusions to produce some laws. Without covering the extend of all the laws, the humans are considered more like a moral person (like a company), which happens to be physically presented with two bodies. Due to the uniqueness of the moral person, everyone is responsible for the actions of his or her double. That might not be the best, but that was the easiest for most cases. Generally individuals are replaced by moral person.
**Family and Relationships**
The new laws have a strong incident on the family. Mariage is a contract between moral person, meaning that you are considered married to the same wife as your double. And you are also consider the father of your double's children. Affairs are exploding: you can be faithful and have an affair at the same time. And so can your wife. Non-married relationships becomes complex: A1 is with B1, when B2 is with C1 and C2 and A2 are together (when A, B, and C represents moral persons, and 1 and 2 their physical doubles). And it can get worst than that. The number of open relationships also increases due to the possibility of multiple relationships with synchronised minds. This creates resentment towards the laws, but conservatives refuse point blank to change it and some progressists also point out that the next generation will differ and that one should account for that. Nevertheless the traditionaly family view crumbles.
**Work and Economy**
Most people work because they need. Meaning, they work to get money to pay the rent/mortgage, for the food, etc. Food consumption does not increase, even worse, it has decreased due to the high mortality of the aftermath of the *Duplication*. Housing per moral person has increased, the amout of space is higher, regardless whether they choose to live together or not. Transportation, clothing, etc. costs all increase. However due to the increase of work force, the wages tend to be reduced. But nevertheless, few really work the typical 80 hours a week, most setting themselves to 55-60 hours per week. Different individual organise differently. Some work in shifts: one after the other for half a work day, some set that only one work on a precise day and the other relax, sleep, take care the house, or just enjoy free time (e.g. travel). Among those there are some who never changed turned, those who change everyday, or every month, etc.
**Spiritual**
Slowly, all the consequences of the *Duplication* are known. But the cause remains a mystery that continues to elude the scientists. The emotional stress of sharing a mind with what appears a foreigner lead many to what can be called a renewed *Spiritual Spring*. People go back to the usual religions, but new ones appear and gain some popularity. Those are often centered around a mythology which explain why (one of) the god(s) created the *Duplication*, and the message it meant.
---
I knew it would be long, but I didn't expect to be that long. I tried to limit to some points in each part only, but I think you can fill the blanks by yourself.
Thanks to all those who bore with me until this line :-)
1: Of course for people being alone, that step would limited, and they might have to move to identify the extend of that event. They may see their clone even before seeing anyone else.
[Answer]
There will be a lot of death and destruction unless cars, planes, etc. are handwaved into safety - there would be a lot of vehicles that suddenly did not have anyone controlling them. I'm going to assume that the event prevents vehicular mayhem and just focus on the human reaction.
Also, you should consider whether or not you want to have chaos caused by prisoners and being duplicated outside of their prison. My answer is already long enough without exploring that aspect.
## Immediately after the split:
The first thing that everyone notices is being moved at least 1.28 meters. That's going to be sufficiently disorienting to give everyone (or at least those who are awake) pause and wonder what in the world happened. Then comes the realization that you suddenly have a duplicate. Those who are not within sight of their dup will wonder if they're going crazy - moving without remembering it and then suddenly feeling like you're got a dup would definitely seem like you're having a mental breakdown or something.
Those who are within sight of their dup are going to have a wide range of reactions - in the first second your mental processes will be the same, but they will start to diverge immediately. You are not standing in the same place as your dup, nor are you looking at exactly the same things. This should be enough of a difference in stimuli to cause you and your dup to be able to not completely mimic each other. The first few things you say might be in unison, but all it takes is one thought of "he's closer to the chair than I am" to break the synchronization.
Deaths and injuries in the first few moments will depend a great deal on how you and your dup are located and oriented, but I don't think that as many people will die in the first few minutes as you may think. People are confused and disoriented, not angry. There will be some people who end up having a quick-draw with their dup and shoot each other, and in some of these cases both will die. There will also be cases of only one dying, and cases of both surviving.
When the dups don't pop into existence facing each other, the asymmetry will be enough to prevent one from immediately killing the other. If you are able to pull a gun or other weapon on your dup first, you're not going to immediately kill them - you're going to grill them for answers about what in the world is going on. It's not going to take too long before you realize that they're just as in-the-dark about the situation as you are.
However, I've only described what is going to happen to people who happen to be alone. If you're in public, you're going to notice everyone being equally disoriented. You'll see some people who now have dups and see that both copies are equally disoriented. It will be easy to figure out that everyone has been duplicated, and it's not some alien invasion trying to replace people or something.
## Before the first sync
It won't take long before it's common knowledge that this has happened everywhere. Flip on a TV, and they'll be talking about it on every channel. Check the internet, and everyone will be talking about it. Society comes to a temporary halt as everyone is still trying to figure out why in the world this happened and how to deal with it. People are still weirded out by their duplicates, though some will have come to accept the new reality.
People with twins are barely going to flinch. They will wonder why in the world they now have additional twins, but they're used to the general experience.
Usually you'd expect people to start blaming each other, such as (in the US) republicans and democrats claiming the other party is somehow responsible for an event. However, this is improbable on a scale that I don't think blaming will happen too much. The claims that do fly around will be along the lines of being a punishment of God or (accurate in this case) caused by aliens.
People are going to talk with their dups about how to get as close as possible to the previous normal. High-risk activities, such as driving a car, won't be possible until a person is at least somewhat comfortable with their dup - you wouldn't want to let your dup drive in case they might try to steal the car, but you wouldn't want to go with them in case they try to crash the car. As people become more and more comfortable with the existence of their dup, they'll be better able to get on with their life.
## The first sync
Everyone is again disoriented - they don't know it's coming, and they've never had 6 hours worth of experiences given to them in a short period of time. This disorientation has the potential to cause quite a few deaths due to car accidents, etc., even if the sync is instantaneous.
Everyone rushes to TVs, the internet, whatever to see if this also happened to everyone. By this point, some people have also noticed the reduced need for food and water. The idea of each person and their dup actually somehow being one person in two bodies has been discussed, at least briefly, on TV and the internet, but that theory starts to gain more and more traction.
The sharing of experiences is going to help a lot towards everyone becoming comfortable with their dup. Knowing that they've been just as worried about you will be very comforting. Society is really starting to get back to normal as fewer and fewer people are still paralyzed by the uncertainty their dup causes.
## Long term
With each passing sync, everyone comes to feel more and more like they and their dup are only a single person. Many people will stop referring their dup as someone else and start referring to them as their other body.
Legal definitions could be all over the map all over the map (see what I did there?). There's no reason why every country would (or even should) define it identically. Some options for legal definitions:
1. A person and their dup are two different people. There would be a lot of complications with this, particularly in developed countries. For example, you would not be allowed to work for one company while your dup works for a competitor.
2. A person and their dup are a single person. In some places this will include things like working limits - if the previous limit was a 40-hour work week, the new limit is still 40 hours, but is now combined for you and your dup.
3. A person and their dup are one person with two bodies. I think this is what will effectively be the case in most places because it is the most flexible. This allows for laws to be updated sensibly - a work limit could be 40 hours per body.
Whatever the situation, people are going to try to take advantage of the system. For example, it would be much easier to take advantage of exchange rates - if food is 100x cheaper in India, your other body could go live there and make your food bill negligible.
Schools will take advantage of the synching to teach at twice the speed. As the first single-bodied generation reaches school age, for one year the cutoff will be double- vs. single-bodied rather than age. There will still be accommodations for the single-bodied - some people will lose their second body due to disease or accidents.
There are going to be a lot of salary renegotiations. In some cases salaries will increase but won't double because your needs as a double-bodied person are proportionally less. In some cases salaries will double because you are able to do twice as much work. I think there could also be cases where salaries would more than double - as a programmer, I consider it entirely possible that pair programming with myself could more than double my productivity.
The ability to experience a vacation while still attending work is going to improve many people's quality of life. Which body takes the vacation is going to depend on which one needs it more physically.
The biggest change will be an awareness of when the next 387 minute 17 second period will end. You will avoid anything dangerous right around then to avoid being fatally distracted by the sync.
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I suspect that just like humanity itself, humans will react in a wide variety of ways. As HDE pointed out, some will try to kill each other. Some will ignore each other as much as possible, and some will get along.
Me, I figure if there's a phasing duplicate of myself, then in reality we're really still the same person (it seems logical). So I don't care about secrets - I already know my own. Which means this alien artifact basically effectively doubled my lifespan while giving me copious amounts of free time, since I don't need to work two jobs. So, niiiice.
Now, things I'd do. First, **work**:
I don't think it makes sense to just have one person work all the time. Instead, do a 24/16 split - #1 would do Mon-Wed, #2 would do Thu-Fri. Then #1 would do Mon-Tue, and #2 would do Wed-Fri. That way they'd trade off, while getting long, long weekends all the time. You could alternate weeks instead, it's really immaterial how you split it.
Note that #1 and #2 are arbitrary distinctions, as indicated by a coin toss.
Occasionally you'd break this up for vacations. For example, #1 could go on a month-long vacation hiking out west, while #2 works. Then they could trade off the next month.
**Personal life** would be second. The biggest immediate benefit I see is that torturous public gatherings get cut in half (can you tell I'm an introvert?). So you only have to go to half as many family gatherings.
The massively increased freetime means that hobbies will tend to explode, as people are now able to dedicate a ton more time to them.
**Other** things:
1. This will create massive legal issues. I'm not sure how that would resolve out, it really depends on the exact crimes that cause the precedents.
2. If this continues for new children conceived after the fact, eventually society will make significant long-term adjustments. If it's just a one-time thing, our generation will be weird, but eventually humanity will get back to normal.
3. The porn industry will absolutely go *nuts*. No pun intended.
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**Original answer**
If I'm reading this correctly, every 387 minutes (and 17 seconds), both doppelgängers gain the same memories and experiences. They each learn what the other has been doing, seeing and thinking. Every 387 minutes (and 17 seconds), they become the same. Then things go back to normal (as it were).
The experience of syncing won't be as weird as the aftermath. When the sync is complete, you'll have the realization that somebody else knows all about you and what you've been doing.
I don't know about you, but I'd be scared silly.
The information is out there. You can't control what happens to that knowledge. You'll know all that your doppelgänger does with that knowledge, but after s/he shares that information with somebody else, it's out of your hands. The whole world could know it.
If you've got somebody spying on you, you'll want them to stop, right? You don't want other people knowing about your computer passwords, or love life (!), or interactions with friends. Sooner or later, everybody will think about trying to kill their doppelgänger, because there will be a constant reminder of his/her existence.
The planning will have to be quick; otherwise, the doppelgänger will know about it (within a bit over six hours). You rush, hurry, not stopping to think. You eventually reach your doppelgänger and prepare to execute your plan . . .
What happens next will be a life-changing experience. I like to think that most of us would stop and have a moment of compassion. After all, the other person might feel the same way about you! For most folks, there might begin some sort of metaphorical dialogue between the two doppelgängers - a rapport, if you will. There are endless possibilities, because everyone is different.
It all comes down to that moment before the strike, because I'm pretty sure that, eventually, everyone will be driven to that point.
**Revised addendum**
The real takeaway from the above is that most people will realize that there's no easy solution to this with violence. There has to be a deeper solution.
I suspect that, long term, research will be done on removing the connection between both individuals. That might make things easier psychologically.
Short term, people may accept that they're stuck with an exact duplicate of themselves, but may choose to attempt to forget about it by separating. Sure, every ~6.5 hours they'll be reminded of it, but it's much easier if you're not living together.
Here are some things I would find helpful about the scenario that I would take advantage of (my choice, by the way, would be to stay with my doppelgänger):
* If I ever get lost, I know that somebody else will discover where I am within ~6.5 hours
* If I miss a meeting, appointment, etc., my doppelgänger might be able to go to it for me
* We can learn twice as much at the same time, possibly necessitating a shorter school day
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> How does society react?
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Like I said, there's a chance that some people will want to separate from their doppelgängers. However, I suspect that some ground rules will be made:
* Something must be done to distinguish the two. [AndyD273's idea](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/21759/everyone-now-has-two-bodies-what-do-you-do#comment55868_21764) about a physical cut might be the best way. Perhaps more subtler ways (e.g. implanted chips) would be discovered and implemented.
* Society must decide if the two are the same person or not, with all the legal implications that go along with it. The possibility of testifying in court against yourself would be interesting; it might or might not be breaking the 5th Amendment (self-incrimination).
* . . . ?
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In the [Peter F Hamilton Commonwealth series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga) there is a character that has "gone multiple", which means 1 mind with 20 bodies.
The big differences are that his was a conscious decision, and this wouldn't be, and his was synced in real time, while this is synced about 3 times a day.
So, if I could go multiple, I'd keep one body working my full time job, and the other body would possibly work freelance/part time and the rest of the time spend time with family and getting the projects done that I never have time for.
And I'd have someone to play co-op video games with.
Also, they would take turns sleeping, so that I'd never have to go fully to sleep again.
Some people might go nuts and try to kill their other self, but because of the syncing of experiences to keep differences from emerging, the majority wouldn't be able to tell which was the "real" them, and would learn to appreciate it.
The part that would raise the most debate would be in regards to relationships. If I'm having sex, and also working in the yard, is one me going to get jealous?
After the next sync it'll stop being a problem, but some people might not see it that way.
**Edit:** I would totally give myself a massage!
My wife says I give good massages, but she doesn't have the hand strength to get the knots out.
**Edit 2:** When I say "one would work full time" I do not mean one of them would be the designated worker. Just that I would decide which of me would go to work based on different factors, mostly alertness. The first think I'd do is figure out how to stagger the sleep schedules so that one of me is awake around the clock. I get my best work done after midnight, but it makes work the next day tough. If one could get to sleep at a reasonable hour, then other could stay up doing things, and go to sleep after one has gone to work. the next day they could switch, or not, depending on how the day went.
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## Aftermath
I think something that most have failed to notice is this part here:
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> The duplicates both appear wearing a perfect replica of the original's clothes and other personal items at **a survivable location that appears to be otherwise random**, but at least 128 centimeters radially from where the original was located.
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This description is a bit ambiguous. Clearly outer space, Mariana's Trench, and the inside of volcanoes are not survivable locations, but what about the middle of the ocean, on top of a mountain with lower than average oxygen, little food, and no easy way to get down (not to mention the cold), or the middle of a desert? These are immediately survivable, but not indefinitely survivable. For the sake of simplicity, I will assume we are being sent to some "habitable location," which Wikipedia claims to be 59% of the land surface1. I find it interesting that most people are discussing the possibility of being harmed in an automobile accident, but only about 1.5% of the possible spawn areas is *urban* (note, not just roads)2. Statistically speaking, we would expect people to have a fairly even population distribution across the Earth, obviously with some areas being more or less densely populated than others. The total area of the spawn sites is 87874600 kilometers2. With a current world population of almost 7.3 billion (essentially 14.6 post-Duplication) there are about 6000 meters2 per body, or about an acre and a half.
Thus, most people will have someone else nearby, but not right nearby. The odds that you and your duplicate are even in the same "country" (if those still exist, what with all the leaders, policemen, and mailmen being randomly teleported somewhere else) are not good. Communication with those around you won't be as easy as you might think. Even if you speak the most common language (Chinese), only about 1/5 can understand you4. English speakers can only expect to be understood by 1/9 of those around them. Even without the duplication, your first priorities would be finding a sustainable, clean water source, food, and/or urban structures (pre-made shelter!) Other people will be flocking here as well, so you're more likely to find people you can communicate with. Once people group together in cities and/or form sustainable communities, people who speak a common language (one with more than 50 million or so speakers) are likely to find at least one other person to communicate with, and over time people are likely to group up into linguistically unified communities, and then eventually the languages of the groups would become similar to each other's as they had to interact, or yield to the most common one (as happened with English in colonial America). People who spoke an uncommon language would likely be forced to learn a more common one (not as impossible as you might think when you don't have the option to just revert back to your native tongue!)
Of course, up 'til now I haven't even hardly answered the actual question, and I can't really contribute much more than what others have already said. I think I have, however, pointed out something that is important. There would be more of an immediate emphasis on survival in the impending anarchy than perhaps on this strange feeling that you have a doppelganger. People would be wary at first, but eventually decide to break into houses to steal food and supplies. As societies were formed and languages united, a new government would form, possibly one that used the old governmental buildings, maybe not. People would have to find farms and try to cultivate the unfamiliar crops so that they could eat as the food available in cities dwindled. A lot of people would probably starve, although the ability of an individual to find food is effectively doubled by the special rule that you share food. Thankfully, people who had smartphones/backpacks with laptops could use them until the Internet potentially stopped working. This would allow for people to learn (almost exclusively through free hotspots/hacked wiFi) that there had been a globalized random teleportation and that a lot of people seemed to share their odd sensation that they had a duplicate out there somewhere. Since your duplicate would also have a phone, (s)he could potentially communicate with you (post on your Facebook wall, e-mail, etc.) if they thought to do so and had Internet available.
So basically, there would be a scramble for survival and information. Violence would probably increase, as people with guns would likely be less inhibited by the oddity and confusion of everything.
## The First Sync
And then, your weird feeling that you have a twin is made even weirder by the sensation that you are gaining all the memories of someone else's most recent 6.5 hours. Unless your dupe happened to look in a mirror at some point you may not even realize it was you. You probably would, though, because you would hear their thoughts during this time and realize it sounded and reasoned a lot like your thoughts do. After the instantaneous transmission of several hours of memories, you would likely be very confused. You would discuss the occurrence with the other speakers of your language and potentially learn that everyone else had experienced what seemed to be the memories of someone else who seemed to be them.
## Next Few Syncs
After a while, you would come to expect the syncs, although this isn't as easy as it might seem, considering they occur 4 hours, 38 minutes, and 9 seconds later every day. You would learn to communicate with them in an odd way: Since they receive all of your thoughts from the last 6.5 hours, you can think to them the way you could to someone who could read your mind. Of course, this allows for limited back and forth. It's more like writing a letter than IM. You could, however, use this technique to learn about who this other person was in relation to you and also to create strategies. By now you will have realized that you don't feel as hungry as you should, or sometimes as sleepy as you should (I'm going to assume that if something as substantial as appetite can be linked, sleepiness likely is as well). You and your doppelganger may determine that your appetites are linked, potentially allowing you to strategize on allocation of resources (food v. weapons or something else).
## Long-term
I mentioned in the aftermath section that people would be stealing food from abandoned houses and whatnot because there would be no order or anything. In the short term we would expect services like electricity and water to fail because of lack of action by the people who were supposed to run them, but eventually someone with the necessary skills would come along, potentially with other people (s)he could convince to join him/her and take control of the service. This would allow the individual the ability to charge others for it. This could easily happen with something like an oil rig where a small group would take control of it, trade some of the oil for weapons and then be able to defend it from invaders. I think similar situations would eventually allow people to make use of factories and other such industrialized things, so that gradually technology would be restored to previous levels, except essentially everything would be run by different people from before who didn't necessarily know exactly how to work everything or the necessary safety precautions. Trade and communication between different areas would be greatly hindered until technology picked up quite a bit, potentially allowing for different languages to develop in different areas.
After a while, you may decide you want to meet your dupe. You learned long ago where (s)he lives because of the various signs around town you saw in his/her/your(?) memories, but the time it would probably take to get there would discourage you, at least until technology had been restored to a reasonable level. Once you could reasonably travel to the continent where they lived, would you? What would be the benefit? Personally, I would be much more concerned with finding my family, which would basically only be possible once we were both connected to the Internet.
## TL;DR: If this really happened, the fact that you got someone else's memories synced to your brain once every 6.5 hours would be almost superfluous.
Sources:
1: [Earth#Habitability](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth#Habitability)
2: [What percentage of Earth's land is used for infrastructure like roads, buildings, all pavement, etc.?](http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Earths-land-is-used-for-infrastructure-like-roads-buildings-all-pavement-etc)
3: [Population Clock](http://www.census.gov/popclock/)
4: [List of languages by total number of speakers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers)
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Assuming most people embrace this and don't destroy their society or themselves... (*I know I would be freaked out at first, but would prefer to be able to experience twice as much of life as before*)
The amount of manpower available has just doubled. One resource which suddenly seems very cheap proportionally is food and water. However, there are a number of other resources to think about.
**Residential Spaces and Infrastructure** - Both clones will want their own living spaces. Some may not be able to afford it at first, but it is likely going to be desired. Housing costs are going to go up. Each clone will prefer having their own car, and there will be a sudden increase of street traffic, but it will take time for street infrastructure to catch up.
**Jobs** - You now have twice as many available workers, but not twice as many companies. Some markets will double in demand (*Both clones will want their own personal property, such as cell phones*), but others won't (*Food, since that is stated, but also potentially some jobs such as some Federal Government positions*). There is going to be little to no support to employ these amounts of people immediately, resulting in a doubling of demand for material goods and services with little increase of supply, meaning costs are going to go up while there is a massive flood of new companies and new jobs being created to satisfy the increased demands. Once everything balances out, I am betting that there will not be two people sharing one job - but rather both will be working their own job similar to today.
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A major aspect that people are missing is **differentiation**. People will continue their train of thought beyond syncing, meaning that moods will persist. Husbands, wives, and friends will all become convinced that the two people are different. Injuries will further add to this differentiation. Laws will need to be enacted to allow people to divorce or marry only one of the pair.
All of this will lead to a **most people considering their partner a twin, and not another body *despite the fact that they share memories***. Governments will likely attach random numbers to the end of people's names, and people will adopt nicknames to differentiate themselves among friends. Some may fight over names, others will not.
Laziness will spread. We only have to eat half as much, but learning (which is very valuable in today's world) can be pricey. If you are attending school and your partner sits at home and plays video games all day, you are going to feel ripped off, especially if he goes and obtains a job with his new-found knowledge.
While there will be some cooperating pairs (those who both use their time wisely, share money, items, relationships), the majority of pairs will not cooperate, and will learn to ignore their pair. While there will be an increase in global knowledge, and some unique jobs that require both pairs (secret communication), I actually believe that the end result will be very similar to what we have today, as everybody who acted in self-interest before, will continue that way, and those more altruistic will simply act altruistic to their pair as well.
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Narcissists are going to love this world. Lots of controversy over the first Self-marriage.
Marriages might be strained if one dupe gets into a relationship with someone else. Meanwhile almost everyone in a relationship gets to experience 3-somes and 4-somes.
Anyone with a dead dupe is going to be at a significant disadvantage, they can now only work half as many hours but they still need as much food as before.
Kidnapping takes on another grim aspects. Capture one dupe and leave the other home and every 6 hours they get an update of horrible memories until the ransom is paid.
Physicist are going to get excited about the information and energy transmission from a distance and try putting dupes in distant shielded locations.
A mission to mars or the moon becomes much easier. No need to carry food. Does a dupe even need to breath oxygen? One stays home and eats while the other builds the base on mars.
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[Question]
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Twenty years ago, in year 2029, World War III happened. Everyone nuked everybody else. More specifically, India and Pakistan nuked each other, the US, England, and France fired everything they had at Iran, Russia, and China, and those countries responded in kind. Iran, who had developed nukes in secret, also launched a nuke at Israel, who responded by nuking all of their neighbors, who had declared war on them in the confusion. North Korea fired a single nuclear missile, but it crashed into the ocean and sank without detonating.
In addition, most countries that didn't have nukes, but were aligned with the nuclear nations contributed their conventional armies to the war as well. Many of these countries were then nuked. Major cities, of course, were the first targets, but fallout was blown by the wind and poisoned much of the surrounding areas. The fallout from thousands of nuclear explosions also entered the atmosphere and ocean, spreading in predictable patters with the currents and tides.
Nobody wins this sort of war, of course, but surely someone somewhere has survived. There are over seven *billion* people on Earth, and, assuming they aren't all poisoned by fallout, some of them must be in places that are at least somewhat sheltered from a global nuclear war. After counting deaths from radioactive fallout and climate imbalances in the years after the war, how many people have survived, and where are the survivors?
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Projecting worldwide from [this document](http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/projected-us-casualties-and-destruction.pdf), we can estimate that under a billion people would die as a direct result of the weapons or the fallout. The current arsenals are just too small, and even with full-scale buildups for the next 15 years, it's hard to imagine even a return to peak cold war levels.
It's even unclear whether a full-blown nuclear winter would indeed ensue. There would certainly be massive amounts of dust and soot pushed into the stratosphere, both from the initial blasts and from the massive raging fires that would follow them. Those would lead to short term cooling, but it's unclear that that would be enough to trigger a full nuclear winter as the anti-nuclear scientists (with an understandable and commendable interest in furthering their pro-peace agenda) would have had us believe.
However, the disruptions to the world economy, health facilities and food supply chains would prove far deadlier. With most of the population in the developed world dependent on continuing food supplies, such large scale devastation could bring down supply chains and cause starvation in many areas.
Nonetheless, people are resourceful, especially when hungry, and the survivors would be quick to adapt and, in many cases, rally around the flag rather than decay into mini warlord estates.
All in all, I can't imagine more than a third of the world population being wiped out by a total, all-out nuclear exchange. Unless we bring in anti-matter devices, that is...
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I would first point out that a completely accurate number is probably impossible. There are too many different kinds of nukes, too many possible locations, and too many possible variables (wind patterns, weather changes, etc) to really give you a great number.
[Check out this fun little calculator](http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/) for a good indication of casualties and deaths. It gives you a listing of all possible explosive types, all possible locations, and even calculates fallout in a radius from the site.
That said, there are a few places to note that will "safe" in regards to direct blasts, and will have minimal fallout damage to worry about:
**Arctic and Antarctic Outposts**
[This site](http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/can_you_live_in_antarctica.php) says that between 1-4000 people live on Antarctica during the year varying from season to season. There is no reason to suspect that any country would target scientific research bases to nuke, so these individuals would survive. Same goes for the Arctic. However, these individuals may end up being stranded and cut off from being able to leave the arctic and may die anyway.
**Bunkers turned Residences**
With the current doomsday mindset in 2015, it doesn't take any great stretch of the imagination to assume that many more wealthy individuals will take advantage of purchasing sheltered real estate. I can't guesstimate the exact number, but it could be upwards of 500+ people, as we have no exact numbers on how many bunkers exist and how many are being turned into residences.
**Underground Facilities**
Search results for this are overwhelmingly conspiracy theorists claiming there are thousands upon thousands of underground facilities so that they can "cull" the outside population at will. However, there are legitimate military facilities, [as well as scientific ones](https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=500072), such as those studying the earth's crust, volcanologists, and drill sites, which would be secure from initial explosion, though the occupants within would probably suffer fallout damage once they left the facility.
**Rural Areas**
Nuclear attacks will target military installations first, followed by centers of government, followed by population centers. It's true that the death toll from these areas will number in the billions. However, according to [The World Bank](http://data.worldbank.org/topic/agriculture-and-rural-development), almost 70% of the world's population lives in rural areas. These areas will not be targeted directly by blasts, but will likely suffer the effects of fallout.
**3rd World Countries and Conflict Zones**
Countries denoted by the UN to be 3rd World Countries, or disputed areas that are technically not countries at all, will not have nuclear capabilities. It is possible that nuclear capable countries MIGHT target these areas, especially if they are disputed, but the truth is most of the rest of the world will ignore these. [Statistics say](http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats) that the residences of 3rd world countries number almost 3 billion.
All in all, you could be looking at anywhere from a few hundred million survivors to a shockingly high 3 billion. Deaths in the first few months will be staggering, but it's important to note that the real threat is radiation poisoning, which will end up killing a huge chunk of survivors if they aren't careful. However, you do have the benefit of most of the survivors living in rural agricultural zones. As long as nuclear winter and radiation do not poison the soil they will be able to continue to subsist off the land. Not that this is part of your question, but should be noted in the ultimate death toll.
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I had started writing a novel on that theme but then quit it in the middle. When we talk about an exhaustive (no weapons are left unfired), the outcome is more disastrous than you would expect it to be ...
# The Subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh)
Pakistan would be wiped out of existence with 80% population dead. India would lose nearly 30% of its population in the first wave, but the collapse of government, electricity and gas systems destruction, factories and production units would be rendered dysfunctional. Health services would be primarily overcrowded and then completely destroyed as hysterical people raid hospitals and steal medicines. With winds the fallout would be propagated to far flung areas too. Considering the high poverty and low education rates of Indian suburbs, the deaths in the 2nd phase would be most frightening and horrific. After 1 year, nearly 50% of the population would be dead. After 3 years, only ~5% would survive. These too, would be ghosts of their former self. Ghastly, psychologically destroyed, scared, hysterical and cannibalistic.
# China
Considering that most of the missiles coming to China would be American, and then considering the vast area and population of this country, there are major chances of more survivals here. With all major cities wiped out and government collapsed, the survivors would be found in high altitude rural regions (Shaolin and Wudan mountains) and the Tibetan plateau. The Chinese have an amazing level of unity and discipline, so there are major chances that functional local units would survive together. With lots of game and soil available for agriculture, China would have ~10% survivors after 3 years. However a central government would be missing and China would be thrown back to warring period.
# Russia
Same as China, but considering its even larger area and **much** smaller population, there would be considerable more survivors here.
# USA
There would be a surprisingly high number of survivors here, considering how many people are already stockpiled and ready for such a catastrophy. However, with all cities razed or evaporated, the survivors would mainly be found in rural areas. I cannot say how many people would die in the first phase (considering USA's missile defense program and whatnot) but the second phase would be horrible. Every survivor would be at daggers drawn against every other survivor. Small groups of coordinating survivors might exist, but after a period of 3 years, most of the survivors would have killed each other, instead of having died of war.
# Canada
Initially, a lot of survivors, considering almost no country would bomb this town. But the 2nd phase effects and the results of massive conventional weapons bombing would be immense. Fallout carried by winds, the (functional) death of USA and the lack of food imports would cause large scale casualties. Furthermore, fallout would be condensing in this country in the form of arctic snowfall and rains. Most of the deaths would be in 2nd phase. These people would die a slow death of hunger and the gradual exhaustion of health services. Almost all of the population would be wiped out after 5 years, except those where climate is warm enough to allow sustainable agriculture.
# Australia And New Zealand
Considering how detached they stay from controversial politics, probably nobody would be interested in nuking these pacifists. If these countries go *in-fighting* however, that is a different story. Even in this case, at most 40% of the population would be erased, with the remainders having enough soil for agriculture and game for hunting. These folks would survive fine, I would say, unless a few "stray missiles" find themselves landed on these lands and detonating.
# The Arabian Peninsula
These lot would take the wrath of an infuriated israel and having only fat, clumsy sheikhs and nothing else (except oil wells) in their regions, they would be quick to die of hunger and government collapse. With no import of food, it would be scary to see the fat sheikhs in their lofty palaces, surrounded by gold, dying of hunger ...
# Islands
All islands with large enough area and small enough population for sustainable agriculture would survive. However, the islands mainly depending on seafood would die a slow, horrible death as they eat infected seafood and get infected themselves.
# Africa And South America
Now this is where things start getting interesting! With no country interested in bombing these ghettos, the deaths would all result of conventional warfare. If all countries invade each other with all force, most of the armies would be wiped out and there would be a large number of civilian casualties. But once the warring factions are rubbed out of existence, the survivors would actually thrive. What with extremely fertile land and what with plenty of game, Africa would become the paradise for survivors and all survivors of the globe would dream of reaching this place. I would dare say 80% of African population would survive ... unless somebody out there gets sadistic and flies a few shots at South Africa, in which case fallout would be dispersed continent-wide, through winds and rains.
South America would survive too. Considering that they have immensely fertile soil, very cooperative peoples, lots of game and nobody would be interested in nuking these folks.
# Aggregate
There would be survivors everywhere. However, with no electricity, gas or production lines running, they would be pushed to a lifestyle at least 500 years ago, if not pre-civilization times. In-fighting between survivors for food and medicines would be common in all areas where government has collapsed. Third world people would be affected mostly due to lack of supplies while 1st world citizens would be psychologically crippled due to the destruction of their high-end lifestyle and low survivor instincts. Islands, Australia and most notably, Africa would be survivor heavens where humanity and civilization might survive.
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The 2029 timeframe makes this difficult to answer.
* Consider the concept of [virtual nuclear arsenals](http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq7-5.html) -- if the global situation deteriorates, many industrialized countries could decide to go nuclear.
* If Iran becomes a nuclear power, Saudi Arabia might want to respond in kind. Can they? They got plenty of money. Who is next?
That being said, the US and Russia have reduced their arsenals [well below cold-war levels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_START). What you describe sounds as if the southern hemisphere will get off lightly, including South America, Africa, and Australia. Things to worry about are:
* [Climate effects of nuclear war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#2007_study_on_global_nuclear_war).
* Fallout and toxic effects.
* Secondary effects from the disruption of interconnected industry.
My *guesstimate* is millions to hundreds of millions of survivors.
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A lot of this comes down to how bad the nuclear winter would be.
There's no doubt billions would survive the war itself. I would also expect billions to die in the chaos that follows--with the infrastructure busted people are pretty much thrown back onto local resources--but we live in such an integrated world that that is basically impossible. Consider my own location: If it's summer it's basically impossible for me to get to any location with any meaningful food production under my own power. If the roads won't pass vehicles that's it. (And that's not counting the fact that trying to haul enough water to survive the trip would just get me attacked anyway.)
What really matters is what's left to rebuild with. If the skies are black you have total crop failure & loss of livestock. There won't be a lot left to loot (expect the cities to burn), soon you'll reach a state where only the preppers have food--and they won't be able to hold onto it against the starving masses.
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In the US's stockpile of nuclear weapons the amount of radiation released directly by the bombs has become quite small. If detonated carefully it's estimate that 800-1000 detonations might lead to a world wide increase of cancer of about 1 person per year - nuclear bombs do not need to be *dirty*. However, I imagine that in this scenario we can assume at least one party would try to maximize damage by making the detonations as dirty as possible. They would do this by detonating the bombs close to the ground to increase the amount of fallout.
Several people mentioned that military targets will likely be the first struck. I'd like to refine that a bit:
* Opposing military *nuclear* capabilities will be the first struck
along with command, control, communications, and intelligence
gathering (this includes civilian governments) for the nuclear forces.
* After attempting to wipe out the opposing country's nuclear second
strike capabilities, they will likely switch to conventional military
forces AND war fighting capabilities - such as manufacturing.
* If the opposing country is able to launch a retaliatory strike and
you have nuclear weapons which survive it, then you may switch to civilian
population centers.
Meaning if you live in a city that makes warships or jet engines, you'll be toast whether they get to the population centers or not.
People living in rural areas do not need the population centers as much as the population centers need the rural areas (at least they don't need them as urgently). I imagine many of the rural survivors will do "ok" for several years. The problem of course is that generally speaking population centers also tend to be manufacturing centers. As things wear out, people in rural areas won't have the ability to replace their technological goods.
People in population centers who survive will be the most likely to suffer and die. since the destruction of so much infrastructure will likely stop the transportation of essentials like food and water to them. People who live in areas which can't normally support large numbers people (such as Southern California & Arizona) will also be at tremendous risk.
People in rural areas that are *near* such locations could also be at risk as the starving swarms of city dwellers spread out and attempt to get what they need. I generally guess that locations within a 3 day hike of a major city should expect casualties in excess of 50% due to starvation, exposure, and thirst (depending upon season, weather, and other factors).
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I think the real answer is that no one knows.
Exactly where would bombs be targeted? Would they be concentrated on military targets or would one or more participants be trying to maximize civilian casualties? Would one side or another succeed in preventing an enemy from delivering its weapons, for example by bombing missile bases before they can launch, intercepting missiles in flight (SDI, etc), or through sabotage?
How reliable are the world's nuclear weapons? How many missiles would blow up on the launch pad, fail to detonate on the target, etc? Is that a tiny percentage or would it be a lot? I read once -- don't have a citation on this -- that the U.S. has NEVER successfully launched a missile from a missile silo. Because launching from a silo would destroy the silo, and they're too expensive to destroy for a test.
Only 2 atom bombs have ever been used in actual war, so there's little empirical evidence to go on. (Not that I'm saying that I wish there was more empirical evidence!) Almost all we have is theory and extrapolation. That's all well and good, but real life experience routinely shows that such theoretical predictions are often wrong. That's why scientists do experiments rather than constructing a computer simulation and then declaring the question closed.
For example, after the Chernobyl nuclear accident -- and I'm not saying that that was a nuclear explosion, just that it was empirical evidence on the effects of release of radioactivity -- after Chernobyl many were predicting that there would be huge numbers of dead, horrible mutations, etc, with some serious estimates running in the millions. I remember at the time experts appearing on the U.S. media discussing how long until the "radiation cloud" reached the U.S. and what we could do to protect ourselves. The actual casualty count ended up 31 direct deaths, perhaps as much as 6000 indirect deaths from radioactive contamination. And that last is disputed and hard to prove either way. The reality is that we did not see millions of people falling over dead. Scientists are studying statistics looking for anomalies.
Will there really be a "nuclear winter"? How many cancers, etc, will be caused by fallout? How much damage will there be to the ability of the ecosystem to produce crops? There's lot of theory and speculation but little hard evidence.
Clearly there would be massive casualties in places actually targeted by nuclear missiles. If major cities are targeted, the immediate casualties would surely be at least tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions.
Some number of people will retreat to well-stocked bomb shelters. Unless the effects literally destroy the world -- all life is wiped out and the Earth is totally poisoned -- they'll wait out the worst and then emerge to rebuild. I don't know if anyone has statistics on the capacity of such bomb shelters. There are a fair number of "survivalists" in the U.S. who live in remote areas and have built shelters and stocked them with supplies. (Most people laugh at them now as a bunch of crazies, but when the bombs start falling, who'll be laughing then, huh?)
(I read an article a while back on how the U.S. government has shelters for government officials so essential services can be resumed as quickly as possible. One of the agencies listed as having space in these shelters was the Consumer Products Safety Commission. And I wondered: would that really be a priority after a nuclear war? Like, the country has been wiped out. Tens or hundreds of millions are dead. The survivors crawl out of the shelters and attempt to rebuild. Someone tries to repair a damaged tractor so he can get some food production going. And immediately an inspector from the Consumer Products Safety Commission shows up. Do these parts that you made out of scrap metal meet U.S. government standards? Do they conform to the original manufacturer's specifications? Do you have a certificate from an authorized testing lab showing that this equipment has been de-radiated? No? I'm sorry, sir, we cannot allow you to operate such unsafe machinery.)
People living in rural areas, and especially in remote areas, will likely survive. Someone mentioned people at Antarctic research stations as likely survivors. Same could be said for people in northern Canada, most of South America and Africa, Pacific Islands, etc. I'm hard pressed to think of a scenario where anyone is going to fire a nuclear missile at Rwanda or Tuvalu.
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I think that as a large-scale global nuclear war starts to develop, many or the majority of the military commanders in operational control will refuse to fire. They have children and grandchildren. They have long and well-informed study of the real effects, both primary and secondary, of a nuclear conflict.
Humans form local communities much faster and more easily, with more commitment than they do city-states or nations. These communities will pool knowledge of all kinds to enhance survival, even in the individualistic U.S.A. In fact, I think that will occur most probably and powerfully in the United States and similar countries, since they currently have a more well-developed sense of individual empowerment, patriotism and manifest destiny than any other people in the world, even in these latter days. Do not rely on their mass media to gauge the character of the citizens of the United States since it is controlled by very few and the very biased. Get to know the people themselves and then make an assessment.
I think that the survival rate in other developed countries will be similar, but I think that the recovery back to a technological society will be much faster for the USA then anywhere else. This is also partially due to the increasingly high level of survival preparedness in America due not to nuclear fears but to fears of a Nazi police state or to economic debt collapse. And they will still have their weapons intact which will not decrease, but increase the likelihood of restoration of local law in the earliest days after the war.
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Ice is strange, in that the solid form is less dense than the liquid water it freezes from. This causes Ice to float on top of the water.
How would our planet earth be different if something changed this property of Ice so that it became significantly denser than water. Dense enough to sink to the bottom.
Would the poles freeze up completely?
How would the climate and life be affected?
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If ice did not float, [Snowball Earth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth) would have had a bigger effect on life ( when after great oxygenation it was not enough CO2 in the atmosphere to keep Earth warm enough and, according to some theories, the entire surface of Earth was covered by ice.) But it is quite possible that **life could survive anyway around underwater volcanoes and in areas of increased salinity** (saltier water freezes at lower temperature).
Maybe it was not 100% ice covered, maybe there were gaps (slushball earth) and after great extinction some lifeforms would have survived, but you are taking chances with lowering the chance of evolving more complex life forms. We know that [Tardigrade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade) can survive freezing and the vacuum of space, more complex life is separate question.
Even with today's climate, if ice sunk to the ocean bottom (where it is colder, and summer warmth is harder to get). **Such ice would not melt for millennia, creating perma-ice (similar to permafrost).** Life would be possible only in shallow layer of water between perma-ice and surface. This layer would be very cold, cooled from the bottom by perma-ice.
As a result, oil fields would not form, or if formed, they would be between layers of perma-ice. Same with other geological forms created from sediments of sea bottoms, like chalk, limestone, sandstone. These will be mixed with perma-ice. Possibly limestome would never form, because pressure to created it would heat and melt ice layers.
Such ice frozen under pressure transforms to hexagonal columns. Very pretty. Columns can be separated intact - ice shatters on impact into hexagonal columns.
After compressed in bigger depth, or uplifted by geological processes above sea level, ice would melt and layer above would collapse. Would create very different geology on such planet.
Interesting effects on such planet:
* No tsunami after earthquake, because liquid ocean is shallow.
* More volcanoes, because more water (perma-ice) would be subducted in subduction zones in continental drift.
* Frequent smaller tsunami, when mixed layers of ice and sediment crack.
* Bigger changes in weather between summer and winter, because temperature stabilizing effect of oceans would be substantially decreased (less volume of water).
* Interesting effects with near-ocean volcanoes like Hawaii and Iceland. Or underwater volcanoes, melting perma-ice and messing up geologic layers, creating more tsunamis.
* **Warm ocean currents would melt underwater canyons in perma-ice.** Would have interesting effects on oceans, especially as continental drift would move such canyons.
* **such canyons in perma-ice would have surprising ways to focus tsunami.** After thinking about it, tsunamis on such planet would be frequent and more localized, more focused, because energy of tsunami would dissipate less (wave would travel down the canyon with little decrease in devastating power or dispersion).
* These canyons would have similar effect like bends in river delta: instead of sediments, layers of ice higher than the "banks" of "canyons" would be deposited by tsunamis, and quickly frozen, creating "walls" between polders where water in summer would be fresh melt (little salt), but darker bottom because of sediments. Those polders would be **freshwater lakes on perma-ice** (not on dry land).
* Liquid parts of oceans would by much saltier because salt "freezes out" from ice.
* It is quite possible that **in some areas closer to poles, salt would centralize in few areas, creating very salty lakes (which would not freeze even in winter,** warming them up because of accumulation of glaciers in Arctic (2 miles thick above sea level like Antarctic), sea level in tropical areas would be much lower (some 100-300 meter less) because all that water would be solid in thick polar glaciers. Glaciers would extend much farther from poles, and climate would be colder (more sun energy would be reflected back to space).
* ice reflects more sun energy than water, positive feedback). Effect in Arctic Ocean would be perma-ice all the way to the surface, even way above sea level in tropics, with occasional **very salty lakes high in the perma-ice/glacier mountains.** So perma-ice would be like solid land, supporting glaciers and salt lakes (with possibly addition of layers of dust brought by winds).
* In snowball phase of Earth, oceans would freeze completely (bottom to top in winter) except near underwater volcanoes. As a result: **Life would adapt to to survive occasional freezing,** and be able to continue after thawing.
* Re @Taemyr comment about lover albedo of ice. As @David Richerby correctly notes, if ice fell to bottom, if cold lasts long enough, body of water would freeze bottom to top. Then, even during summer it might not melt all the way to the bottom (ice being protected by cold water on top of it), and ice would accumulate until frozen solid bottom to top. Not good for complex life.
* **Effect on plant life on continents would be minimal.** Seasons would be more pronounced, but plants can handle that. **So coal should be possible - and also industrial revolution**.
* **Such adaptation to survive many freeze/thaw cycles would be boost for slower-than-light travel**.
* So if advanced life and space-faring civilization could develop on such planet, they would have great advantage in space travel.
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I have a hard time answering this question because I'm stuck on how to make ice not float. Are we looking to rework the laws of physics themselves, or a work around within physics to justify it?
The easiest way to make this happen would be to assume a world where water was not the most common liquid. However, the question of "how would the world develop if some other liquid was the building block of life instead of water" would be far more important then this one.
Thus lets assume that were talking about water. The easiest way to keep ice from floating would be to decrease the density of water by contaminating it.
Going with this approach you would also have significantly lowered the freezing point of water. Thus there would be far less ice being formed to begin with. When the ice did begin to be produced it would sink down, allowing more ice to form. Presumably the temperature of water below the surface would be lower then above the surface, so the ice would continue to sink. As it sunk pressure on the ice would increase, which would further encourage it to freeze. The ice would not unfreeze easily at this point!
Thus, despite the freezing point of ice being much lower in these oceans, I imagine you would have huge frozen patches of ice in the ocean. Since once the ice sank the pressure and increasingly lower temperature would conspire to keep it sunk. I imagine that in fact most of the ocean would be frozen this way, only the very top of the ocean, where sunlight penetrates enough to keep temperature's above freezing, would be liquid. Luckily since the actual freezing point of water would presumably be much lower the ocean would never freeze entirely. Even during winter It would be too warm near the poles for water to freeze.
edit:
To add to this ice would be formed under the surface instead of at the surface of water. As of now in a perfectly clean lake that is frozen over will have a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius at the bottom. This is because 4°C is the temperature at which water is the most dense, after this point good old hydrogen bonds kick in and make colder water start to float back to the surface( quick tip, if your in chemistry class and asked why water does something funny assume it's hydrogen bonds, your ace every test). Thus the temperature of even huge bodies of water are pretty well regulated, no matter how deep you go your not getting colder then 4°C. Without this principle the water below the surface will be much MUCH colder since there is no source of heat and nothing to encourage the warm water above to sink lower.
This also means that water will 'churn' less, warm water won't naturally be pulled down further into the ocean. This probably means less oxygen in the depths, I imagine part of the oxygen that low is transferred from warm water on the surface sinking. I don't know how significant this effect is, probably minor compared to the effect plankton has. It's a moot point though, since water won't get nearly as deep before ice forms.
You would also have Ice poles, locations where the temperature of water is regularly lower then freezing where you have a solid 'pole' of ice from surface all the way to the ground. These poles would expand out radially until they reach a point where the average temperature is warm enough that surface water doesn't freeze. Then ice will slowly drop as you expand further out, from being on the surface to being 1 inch below to 3 inches below surface to 10, etc. etc. A slow steady drop as you expand radially out from the ice poles.
At warmer areas your have most of your ocean frozen. Those parts close enough to sunlight, and thus heat, will stay liquid water. I'm not sure how far you will have to go below the surface before you start hitting ice. I'm too lazy to do the math. However, I don't think it will be too deep. Lakes will probably be ice-free during the summer, but once you get deeper then your average lakes that ice will form due to lack of heat from sunlight. Your ocean life will be far less common.
Small lakes will freeze entirely during the winter, but perhaps not large ones. The water itself works like a huge heat sink, storing large amounts of heat. It takes time for that much heat to be expelled. And it takes a significant amount of heat to freeze water into ice to begin with. Thus large lakes may only 'mostly freeze' because the temperature warms up before the lake has had time to freeze over properly. To give an example of this concept, in reverse, imagine a pile of snow created by a snow plow. After it warms up above freezing snow will start to melt, but the snow in the snow pile could take a week or more to melt in full despite it being above freezing because the snow insulates itself. The same principle, in reverse, means it would take quite awhile for lakes to freeze. When the do freeze they would freeze from the bottom up, so large lakes would still stay liquid for most or all of winter.
However, any pond that is small enough to freeze over entirely will kill most animal life, though I stress most. Currently fish and other lake animals live underneath the ice where it's still liquid, the liquid ice on the top prevents the rest from freezing by insulating it so well. With the entire lake frozen it would seem that all creatures would die, but frankly that doesn't give evolution enough credit. Instead we would have fish that lay eggs that can survive freezing and which hatch after the lake thaws, fish that can live in shallow 'mostly frozen' lakes by hibernating, all kinds of ingenious evolutionary tactics to survive. Still, I would expect far less diversity in such ponds.
If you want a better analysis on the effects of this I would really encourage you to ask here: <https://what-if.xkcd.com/> This is exactly the sort of question he answers, and he will do a far better job then I would :).
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## In our universe ice is less dense than water
* Warm water is less dense than cold water and so will rise above it. The surface of the sea is usually warmer than the deep ocean. Warmth is exported upwards, and cold downwards. If this process continued unchecked, the sea would be uninhabitable.
* However, this doesn't happen because ice is bizarrely less dense than water. This is because of its very unusual crystalline structure and so ice floats on water, even warm water.
* Because ice is less dense than water, the deep oceans can never freeze, even below zero degrees because to freeze they would have to expand and the pressure prevents this.
* Any ice that forms will float to the surface and be melted by the sun.
## In an alternative universe where ice is more dense than water
Two things:
* Ice would sink, and so would not be melted by the sun or rising warm water. Barring some heat source, the ocean would fill up with ice from the bottom up.
* Ice would occupy less volume, so increasing pressure would raise the freezing point of water. The deep oceans would be permanently frozen, just as the core of Jupiter is frozen, not because it's cold, but because the pressure is so intense.
Depending on other souces of heat (geothermal, solar, etc), it's possible the entire sea might freeze from the bottom up.
Alternaltely you might end up with a thin layer of warm liquid ocean a few hundred meters thick atop a giant ice sheet with mountains of ice rising at the poles.
Neither option would be good for us humans.
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Currently here in the north we are aware of lakes turning over, this happens because water gets denser as it cools to a certain point (according to google 4C or 39.2F) then it starts getting less dense. So when water cools to 39 degrees it sinks and the warmer (or cooler) water rises. Other than having currents in the water and helping move oxygen down and nutrients back up I don't remember what else it does. But the Oxygen I think helps the fish survive the winter with the Ice on top. The Ice would sink evening out the temperature of the water all the way to the bottom of the lake. Lakes would freeze from the shore out to the center from the bottom up. Likely making it easier to freeze a lake out, since right now the as the Ice forms is slows the process of freezing more water, like putting a cover on a pot of water, to slow the escape of heat. Small lakes in the north might freeze through and take most of the short summer to thaw back out.
However, if ice sank I would have to question the speed at which it would melt? There are two things to think of here. 1 the average ground temperature about 5-6 ft. down is I think 52 degrees F. so the ice that settles will likely slowly melt.
You also have pressure, currently normal ice melts under pressure, there are several different kinds of ice that are created [under pressure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice#Phases), I would expect large parts of the ocean bottom would be covered with these different types of ice to some unknown depth. Currents might dig them deeper in places.
This I can see would have a large impact on our eco-systems. If it was a sudden change and not something we've always had it would be devastating to the entire planet. The north pole ice cap would sink and be open for trade. Everything under the Ice cap would likely die, except maybe for some micro organisms.
The sinking of the Ice cap would cause a huge tidal wave out then back in. but being denser than the water it would collapse in is size and likely end up even LOWERing the ocean levels (by just a little bit). Ocean currents would be completely messed up, and all the doom and gloom that is predicted by the melting of ice caps and stopping the currents will come about. A very large part of the planets Oxygen is produced by plankton in the ocean and this could be severely disrupted. Seriously endangering the planet with not enough CO2 -> O2 production. Quite possibly leading to global warming and most of the issues related to that.
My conclusion, it would not be good at all.
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Ice is less dense than water because its crystalline lattice is kept together by hydrogen bonds.
At about 4°C hydrogen bonds begin to form, even if they're not stable before freezing and thus water molecules start to form bigger (and unstable) aggregates that will later give rise to ice crystals.
Hydrogen bonds are so basic in (almost) all chemical processes within cells that *nothing* would work without them: DNA helices would not pair, protein chains would not bend the way they do, "respiratory chains" in mitochondria wouldn't work, etc. In short: life as we know it wouldn't be possible.
Note: I know You asked a different question, but you cannot separate cause from effect.
Note2: In case it was not clear, the answer to the question is: "a world where ice is heavier than water would not have any life as we know it (among other things)." I added the answer because I felt this is a relevant difference that was not included in other answers.
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First of all, water does contract as it freezes at very high pressures, well above the critical point. If we say that water behaves in this way at a standard atmospheric pressure, then bodies of water would freeze from the bottom up.
To determine the behavior of oceans, we would also have to take into account the effects of high pressure. The melting temperature of all substances with a denser solid than liquid phase increases with increasing pressure; think of the substance as being squeezed into its denser state. Just how much the melting temperature would increase would depend on how much denser the ice is than the water, but assuming that at 1 atmosphere it has a melting temperature of 0C and that temperature increases with pressure at the same rate that it decreases with pressure in our universe, you could have room temperature ice about 2-3 kilometers down; the depth of the liquid portion of the ocean would depend on temperature and salinity, but even for very warm water would probably not extend below 5-6 kilometers (which is a fairly typical depth for an ocean).
In cold areas it could of course freeze all the way to the top. There would probably be a layer at the ice-water interface that melts and refreezes seasonally or with changing currents; below that the ice would essentially behave as a mineral with a hexagonal crystal structure, thermal conductivity and hardness well within the typical range for minerals, and the peculiar property that it melts if you bring it to the surface. Since you would effectively take away convection and radiation as heat transport mechanisms, temperature gradients within seafloor ice would be conduction dominated and it would increase in temperature with depth just like rock does; despite no sunlight penetrating to the lower ice layers, it would be quite warm, just as rock at depth is warm or even hot.
Underground reservoirs of water would behave in a similar way, acting as mineral veins instead of a fluid. Mining through ice would present interesting problems, as it would revert to a liquid state as soon as you relieved pressure by digging down to it (not all at once probably, because of latent heat, but that would also make it very cold).
In terms of overall climate, a world like this would probably have greater seasonal temperature swings because of shallower oceans, but not by a huge amount. I expect the geology would be quite different, with water acting as a structural element below a certain depth and anything dependent on marine biology, such as chalk and oil, being deposited in ice rather than seafloor mud.
You'd get all kinds of other quirky effects; one of the reasons ice is so slippery is because a thin layer melts when you step on it, but of course this wouldn't happen if it freezes harder with pressure, so you might get better traction on ice. Of course, if you're going to change the nature of water anyway, you may as well mess with any of the properties I cited and get completely different results.
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As worldbuilders, we routinely tweak our unwitting human victims to new environments, new abilities, and new dangers. So far, we've [accelerated the natural healing rate](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4312/if-accelerated-natural-healing-were-to-occur-what-would-happen-to-the-human-bod), [opened new doorways](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/15236/phasing-superhero), and [given the ability to manipulate anything](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/magic).
We've tweaked the human species so it can survive in [heavier](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/20088/what-effects-would-changing-the-weight-of-air-have-on-flora-fauna), [bloodier](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10469/could-humans-breathe-on-a-planet-that-had-a-liquid-hemoglobin-or-some-artificia), and [thinner](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/6447/if-our-atmosphere-was-much-thinner-half-as-thin-than-we-have-now-how-would-ani) atmospheres, among countless [others](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/atmosphere).
Despite all these changes, we still consider these tweaked humans to *be* humans. But are they really? How many or how drastic of a change can we introduce to a subset of the human species before the lay-human no longer identifies the victims of our imaginations as members of their own species?
Is there a defining limit that, on one side, declares the subset to still be human and, on the other side, a whole new species? If so, what is it?
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From a purely biological perspective, an offshoot of H. Sapiens is a distinct species when the two groups can no longer interbreed. A species can also be defined as the largest possible gene pool under a [given set of circumstances](http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_41).
From a psychological perspective, it's a bit fuzzier. "What does it mean to be human" is certainly one of the oldest questions that humans have asked and it continues on today. However, I think that psychologically a lay-human can identify another human based on certain characteristics of physical form or life experience. If a living thing fails to meet these criteria, it may be classified as "inhuman" or a creepy "something else".
Note that these norms are based on fairly open and accepting definition of what makes something human. There have been plenty of times in history where a particular group of people is defined as not-human then oppressed/slaughtered, for example, the German classification of the Jews as not human and therefore worthy of slaughter.
**Physical form**
The body needs to look something like this or the female equivalent along the path from baby to elderly. Missing limbs is okay because a human being can still live if it's missing an arm. However, missing a head while maintaining the ability to move is distinctly inhuman.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9hA1p.jpg)
**Physical weakness**
An individual who does not behave in the way that humans do, in terms of endurance, strength or (in)destructability can be classified as not human. The further outside the bounds of normal characteristics an individual goes, the less human they become. Being very weak does not preclude classification as human since there are many very weak humans.
**Mental weakness**
It's a common thing to hear "...all too human..." when a character in a book makes a huge mistake or succumbs to a typical human frailty such as despair, madness, anger, or fear. Something that looks like a human but does not display any of these these emotional/mental characteristics doesn't usually qualify. Example: Super soldiers who fear nothing and feel no pain at slaughtering other humans could qualify as "not human".
**Comparable Intelligence**
Society is pretty accepting over very low intelligence to normal to even high intelligence but extremely high intelligence has an alienating quality that precludes definition as human.
**Mortality**
In [Bicentennial Man](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0182789/), a robot slowly gains more and more human traits over the course of his 200 year life. All his organs and body become biologically based with the exception of his positronic brain. For the better part of his life he lobbies to be accepted as human but the global society continually denies him that designation until he permits himself to die. With that act of mortality he places himself within the bounds of human mortality.
If you can't die, you aren't human.
**Progression through Life Stages**
An individual who doesn't have a childhood because they were created in adult form could be considered kind-of human but kind-of not. It would depend on the specifics of the story to determine how "kind-of not" the individual may be. The movie, "[The Curious Case of Benjamin Button](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421715/)" where Benjamin Button is born as an old man and ages backwards might satisfy the "not human" definition because his life is so radically different than anyone else's. Terminating a life before reaching a particular life stage is not enough to preclude defining an individual as human.
If there are substantial deviations from the normal characteristics in any of these categories, an individual or group could easily be classified as "not human".
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What is considered Human is a scientific *or* philosophical question. I am going to argue that in the context of WorldBuilding, the philosophical answer is going to have more influence for the world than the scientific answer.
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My answer: **To be considered Human, the life-form in question must be considered "one of us" at a societal or group level,** where "the group" is the group of humans making the categorization.
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If that sounds extremely vague, that's because it is. It is the only definition which is *always* accurate. Right now, if an alien arrived on Earth looking like a completely normal homo sapien - would most people instantly classify it as human? - In my opinion, I think it's most likely that it would have to be studied before it was accepted as "human".
This seems to indicate that *our* world currently would first look at the scientific question of humanity - which other answers have covered well. I believe this is because of our past - of excluding groups because of beliefs - which was undeniably overcome primarily because of science.
But in a world of our creation, the humans in our world are the "group", and thus, they decide what is "Human". We are able to suspend our belief somewhat on behalf of this other group - allowing us to imagine humans with gills, wings or whatever which science would rule out as being "human", but there comes a point where our suspension breaks. Usually this is at a point where we are no longer able to relate to that group at all. In other words, that other "group" is not one which we could imagine ourselves being a part of as humans.
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Take for example, the X-Men. In these comics/movies, there are humans who have evolved to have special abilities. There are four different groups, with two different viewpoints:
* "Normal" humans - with the viewpoint that "special" humans are mutants, therefore not human, and a danger to real humans. They would like mutants to be excluded from normal society, possibly even all killed.
* "Normal" humans - with the viewpoint that "special" humans are still human.
* "Special" humans - with the viewpoint that they are even better than "normal" humans. They exclude themselves from the normal "human" group. In a way, they consider themselves *more human* than the regular humans, because they are the future of humans.
* "Special" humans - with the viewpoint that they are humans just like any normal person. This is the group that is followed as the "heroes", so it is interesting that it is the viewpoint that most readers/watchers would agree with, since we don't see a lot of examples of outspoken "normal" humans on their side.
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The problem with the term human is that it currently represents a broad class of individuals that have a large number of traits in common. If I ask you to describe a human, you might say it’s a bipedal, intelligent, aerobic mammal with a certain body configuration. There are a million traits you could pick from that all humans share. But if you take away any of those traits, is what you have really no longer a human? If someone has no limbs are they no longer human? If someone is intellectually disabled are they no longer human? If someone is covered in hair are they no longer human? Of course not, all 3 of those cases exist. But if I point at a limbless, thoughtless, hairy blob on the ground, and I ask if that is a human, how do you answer?
Our definition of human works currently because the entire spectrum of possible organisms does not exist. There aren’t any edge cases of human-chimpanzee hybrids that anyone has to decide whether or not they are human. Once you consider the entire spectrum of possible creations it becomes obvious that no single attribute is capable of distinguishing between human and non-human. Of course that doesn’t mean people won’t still have opinions on what is human and what is not human, they just aren’t going to follow a formal definition, nor are people likely to agree upon it. The definition of human in a world of genetic engineering will be an entirely subjective one.
So the answer is simply that it depends on the society and the individuals. Today’s society would likely be split on whether a chimpanzee with enhanced intelligence is human. Hundreds of years ago such a creature would likely be considered non-human and hundreds of years from now such a creature may be considered more human than most. Every society and every individual within those societies will have different ideas about what is human and what isn’t. There's no single answer.
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This has a close resemblance to Theseus' paradox or the Ship of Theseus.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus>
As most other answers have pointed out, the point at which an object is defined as something entirely new is fuzzy. More so in the case of what it means to be human. From a psychological standpoint the line is extremely fuzzy. However, you have asked for the defining limit on a species basis i.e. from a biological standpoint.
Let's first look at this from another angle.
1) We have tinkered with the DNA of a number of organisms (plant and animal) and created completely different entities.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_organism>
2) Through artificial selection new breeds of plants and animals have been created (See Artificial Speciation)
So the questions now are: do we consider Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) to be new species and do we consider new breeds created through artificial selection to be new species?
I've looked around a bit for the answer and most new GMOs are considered to be 'strains' while artificial speciation is in fact a method of creating new species. (Example: Domestic sheep [Ovis aries] no longer produce viable offspring with Ovis orientalis, one species from which they are descended)
If science can somehow get to the point of creating this reproductive isolation through genetic modification, that's when you have your answer.
To be technical though, that's when you'll get a species different from Homo Sapiens and belonging to the genus Homo.
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The rule of thumb is that as long as *it* can mate with another (definitely) human being, and produce a reproductive offspring, *it* belongs to the same species. *It* might look repealing, or even be physically incompatible; think of the diversity of dog breeds - they are still the same species.
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The line is blurry as any line can be. Science will provide one definition (or perhaps 5 or 10, if there is disagreement). Each religion will provide one. Many nations will provide their own. And on top of all of that, each individual person will have to come to grips with their own definition of "human."
Of these, the most agreed upon seems to be the "human spirit," which I define *very* loosely as "the deep down desire to do 'good,' where the definition of a 'deep down desire to do good' is specified by the observee." In our case with world building, the observer is the reader or watcher of our work. So thus the definition of the edge of humanity would be the point where our reader no longer feels the character has a deep down desire to do what they believe to be "good."
One powerful aspect of this is certainly "life." If you have a concept of life, and the humanoid demonstrates a desire to respect and help "life," even if it hurts things in the process, we tend to accept it as part of the human condition. Any creature which no longer values nor respects "life" is rapidly assigned to the bucket of "not-human" by the readers (although there is no particular reason why a character couldn't argue otherwise... its always interesting when human characters argue for the humanity of another)
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Now, taking out the cost to produce/collect it, assume somehow we perfected a formula or find a natural source (because that is currently very prohibitive), how feasible would be to use antimatter as a fuel source primarily for space-travel/exploration? Along with that, how much would you need to power a star ship - say, a FireFly class?
Could it be safely stored in any great quantity? It's not like if you get a little leak you can just go patch it quickly.
From [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter#Fuel):
>
> The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8$\times$1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass-energy equivalence formula, E = mc2), or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT – slightly less than the yield of the 27,000 kg Tsar Bomb, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated.
>
>
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The main problem with antimatter would be containment. You cannot simply put it into a normal container, because the normal container would be made of matter, and the antimatter would annihilate with it. So you need to find a way to keep the antimatter safely away from any matter in your ship. At the same time, you also need to allow it to safely be transported to the reaction place where a controlled annihilation with matter would happen.
The only way to contain and manipulate antimatter would be using fields. Assuming you don't have a special force field a la star trek, that would mean electromagnetic fields. Probably the antimatter would be held magnetically as a plasma, quite similarly to the hydrogen in a fusion reactor (the hot hydrogen gas in the fusion reactor also has to be kept away from the walls, although there it's because of its high temperature).
The [yearly world energy consumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption) is somewhere between 100 and 200 Petawatt-hours. Using your quoted number (A petawatt-hour is 3600 petajoules), to produce that energy, one would need about 4 to 8 metric tons of antimatter to fulfil the current world energy needs for a whole year. How much energy a ship would need of course depends on how fast the ship needs to go, how often it needs to accelerate/decelerate (non-accelerated flight is free), how efficient its engines are, and how often it can be refueled, but I think it is safe to assume that it will be significantly less than the current yearly world energy production. Thus I think even a single gram of antimatter should be more than enough; probably it would need just a few milligrams.
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I'll address storage of antimatter, because that is the one thing in your question humans have done successfully so far. While we may someday build an antimatter-based propulsion device, it's a ways off. Fortunately, storing antimatter is much easier to do.
Currently, the best way to store antimatter is a [Penning trap](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penning_trap). It uses a magnetic field and an electric field to store charged particles. The reason we need both is that a magnetic field or an electric field could not keep a particle in a stable position on its own thanks to a mathematical result know as [Earnshaw's theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnshaw%27s_theorem). Using both types of fields ends up giving us the required stability. This approach of course restricts us to using charged particles - protons and electrons, for example - but this isn't a significant problem, as these are the types of antimatter that are easiest to produce.
Unfortunately, Penning traps are used primarily to *store* antimatter, not to provide an annihilation chamber. When you bring the antimatter into contact with matter, you can't simply have it in the storage area. If it's in a small storage area, the energy released may destroy the Penning trap (or whatever else you're using). If it's in a large storage area, the explosion probably won't be near whichever end of the craft you designate the rear. Either way, the explosion won't be directed rearwards, as with a typical rocket.
The solution like this might be to accelerate the antimatter and matter *out* the end of the spaceship. [Particle accelerators](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_accelerator) do this via superconducting magnets. The problem is, these accelerators are incredibly large - the [Large Hadron Collider](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider) is 27 kilometers in circumference! Perhaps that would be tough to do on a small spaceship. To solve that issue, I would suggest using a small [ion engine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster) to accelerate the matter and antimatter. Have them accelerated perpendicular to each other and away from the ship, and you could direct the explosion towards the rear.
The idea isn't perfect; for instance, releasing any particles from the trap will lead to distortions in the shape of the fields, potentially breaking the structure required for stability. Since fuel will be needed on an essentially continuous basis, this could be a significant problem, as even small deviations from the desired configuration can grow over time. Fortunately, only small amounts need to be siphoned off at a time, as [celtschk's answer demonstrates that fuel consumption rates are low](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/602/627).
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[Annihilation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation) often produces light high energy particles (gamma quants, electrons, positrons, and neutrinos) that may not be very trivial to use. If you want to propel a spacecraft, they must be directed all the same way towards exhaust. If you want to cook your dinner, these high energy particles must pass they energy to the surrounding atoms somehow rather than just flying away.
This may work with some specially designed device, but may not be easy and some energy would probably be lost during conversion.
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The potential of the storage of antimatter is only just beyond our grasp, due to the fact that scientists at CERN have discovered an electromagnetic 'trap' to contain antimatter, however as said in previous comments it would be hard to propel a ship of any kind using it.
This is because Einstens theory (E=mc^) states that the energy of matter antimatter annihilation would be released two ways with photons, and so some energy would hit the ship, potentially doing damage and the rest of the energy being inneficient.
However if you could manipulate the antimatter to send the energy in concentrated blasts into the ship using some kind of deflector shield then it could possibly propel the ship.
There is also the possibility of designing a 100% efficient hadron collider that directs the end product of antimatter towards the rear of the ship- therefore solving the question of storing it as a fuel. You never know- in the early 1900's no one thought it would be possible to go to the moon, and they did due to technological advancements in 1969.
There is also the possibility of using antimatter to replace fossil fuels as in 2008 only 368kg of antimatter was needed to fuel the world to to the fact that when it annihilates it releases 1.8x10^17j of energy and so it could potentially replace the worlds energy problem, if of course you build a 100% efficient collider and then no electricity would be wasted on the process as it is very costly; also if larger amounts of antimatter could be produced in the particle collision. I hope my answer was to standard and detailed!
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Imagine a ring where particles fly at high speed in circles, being contained magnetically, just like a particle acelerator... but with three modes: accelerating/stable/off.
Particles run continously in a rotation. When you need to use energy, you divert a single particle or more via a door towards the engine where it hits a target made of ordinary matter... This will generate photons that heat up a rankine cycle engine... Simple and effective...
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There is one problem with antimatter that makes this a problem for my games and fiction: YMMV.
Antimatter is extremely useful for energy-storage. If it were available I have no doubt that it would power space- and star-ships of all kinds.
The problem is that mankind seems willing to weaponize everything it can get its hands on. And antimatter is so very easy to convert into a weapon. Since the only way to contain antimatter (with our present theories) involves active magnetic and electric fields, all we need to do is to turn off the fields, and the antimatter reacts with the matter it comes into contact with, and pow!
I'm sure that if the engineers work on it, one could build a matter-antimatter bomb that would be a bit more dangerous (and smaller) than just breaching a standard containment unit, but that isn't necessary.
Other problems include incidental radiation when matter/anti-matter comes together in small quantities (in large quantities, the explosion is probably more worrisome).
In one story they used antimatter in visible amounts as a power source. I can't remember the name, but in this story the chance of a large explosion was low. Anytime matter hit the antimatter, it caused a small explosion, which blew most of the matter away. So it was like the anti-matter would slowly boil away, so no large explosion. However, in reality, even with this slow "boiling," I think the radiation would kill everybody around it.
This is why I avoid having large amounts of anti-matter around in my fictions. Sorry.
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Not usable as 'fuel' in the foreseeable future but eminently usable in **anti-matter initiated fusion**
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Imagine a world where a creationist situation holds: God (or an alien master species, if you prefer) created all the species you see in the world today, and there will never be any others.
Are there any real world, science based mechanisms that could prevent evolution, and allow this world to persist without speciation? I want to avoid continuous intervention by the creator.
This question was inspired by [Would there be evolution on a perfect world?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/26115/would-there-be-evolution-on-a-perfect-world)
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The simplest way would be to **prevent mutation** and modify sex (you do not *need* sex in the world, but if you *must*...) in such a way that, for example, the male contributes *nothing* except the initial stimulus (which makes this essentially parthenogenesis, and that's why sex, or better, *gender* is not mandatory - you always can have homosexual intercourse as a matter of course, as it happens with Eric Flint's gukuys in [*Mother of Demons*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_of_Demons)).
All individuals are XXY triploids, and inactivation of the Y chromosome happens "at random" (this allows any ratio of male to female, depending on the probability of inactivation). XXY genotypes have male phenotype, XXy genotypes are naturally female. This kind of genetic setup is perfectly possible and naturally occurs (except for the parthenogenetic reproduction twist) in humans, where [it is an anomaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome). But there's no reason for it to be.
All creatures would then be identical clones genetically, but could (and probably would) sport differences, even large ones, due to [epigenetic factors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics).
Also, depending on what the *cue* actually *is*, it might pose an interesting problem for birth control. Since all the needed machinery is self-contained in the female, sex for nonreproductive purposes could in effect be made impossible (meaning that *any* intercourse results in conception), or so awkward as to negate any recreational value, which might appeal to both deities and advanced aliens.
This removes most mutations due to recombination between different DNA sets.
As to how to prevent other kinds of mutation, the DNA helix gets routinely unwound and split in order to allow cell duplication. There already are enzymes that correct some common DNA replication errors. "All" that would be needed would be a super-enzyme, which we could call *[DNA-reed-solomonase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%E2%80%93Solomon_error_correction)* :-), capable of detecting errors and either repairing them if possibile, or otherwise triggering the [cellular self-destruct mechanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis).
Such an enzyme could never have evolved (naturally), but a sufficiently advanced alien Seeder species might not find it difficult to build it from scratch.
A possible side effect would be longevity, perhaps even immortality, and complete immunity to most forms of cancer, not unlike the aliens in Asimov's [Hostess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostess_%28short_story%29).
Another effect would be a strongly reduced capability for the species to cope with environmental changes through natural selection and random mutation. This might be no great problem for a technological civilization, but for 99.999% of Earth history, it would have been a sure ticket for racial extinction.
# Update: couldn't the repair mechanism itself fail?
(@Peteris's objection)
Yes, and on a cell-by-cell basis, it will often do just that.
But the "mechanism" is not a simple reasonably-soft-fail enzyme system such as *evolved* creatures possess. It is rather a *designed* computer program implemented with amino acids.
First of all it would have to fail in a *zygote*, otherwise the host would only get common cancer, and anyway the mutation would not get inherited.
Then, *by definition* the change would need to break the main cellular repair mechanism, and *the organism has no others*. God or our aliens never saw the need for them, and actually had a good reason not to provide them: we want defective cells to *die*.
So *this* pro-evolutionary change would actually be *counter*evolutionary, since it would expose the host to all kind of cellular damage against which it would have no resistance. Given the rate at which random mutations would occur and accumulate during its early development, it would be extremely unlikely that a mutated foetus could even come to term.
We (the aliens or god) can further improve our game in two ways. One: since the child is a genetic clone, we need no placental barrier. The foetus is inundated by the mother's enzyme in addition to its own. This has no effect on perfect replicas, but mutated children die stillborn.
Two: the planet itself could be abundant in any one of (or several) mutagenic compounds or phenomena (UV radiation, natural radioactivity...). Protected individuals get no cancer, while any unprotected individual will quickly develop several.
To have a mutation in the enzyme, a point mutation or even a series of point mutations would not be enough. We'd need for the enzyme to change in such a way that *some* further mutations will be permitted, while oncogenic ones will still get eliminated.
This is on the same scale of an English spell checker that somehow gets corrupted during the copy, but its SHA256 hash remains the same, *and* the resulting program turns out to not only still work but to have become a working *German* spell checker (I've heard this kind of hypothetical occurrence be referred to as a *Minerva mutation*, from the [Roman goddess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva) that was believed to have sprung, already adult and clad in armour, from Jupiter's head).
Chances of a Minerva event are in theory not zero, but I feel they're vanishingly small. This species' designers would have worried much more about the possibility of, say, a [Chicxulub impact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event).
# A closer look
This is a bit of a hen and egg problem, so let's see it in practice.
Our alien engineered DNA can be represented like this (actual order is not important):
```
[H][CHECK][ BODY ]
```
where BODY is the DNA required by the cell, CHECK is the DNA that codes the "compare to plan, then repair or kill" mechanism, and H is the "plan" hash.
The CHECK part translates into a very large molecule (megaDalton range) with [helicase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicase) capability, a sort of specialized polymerase. The molecule attaches to a DNA strand and "walks" through it generating a [hashing/correcting bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_bubble). At the end of the process it has calculated the DNA "hash" and compares it to its expected value; if the check fails, cellular death is triggered. At any one moment every DNA molecule in the body could be examined by up to a dozen such *correctases*.
A random mutation can then occur in one of three places:
* B mutation. This is the most likely, since the C (CHECK) part will probably be no more than 5% of the total DNA. Helicases and polymerases occupy around 1% of human DNA, and this engineered DNA is very likely to be much more compact. In percent, I think a 1:20 relation is a good ballpark figure. Anyway, a B mutation will be caught by the intact C molecule and either repaired or, if not possible, killed.
* H mutation. Enormously unlikely due to its small size, it will nonetheless happen than the H sequence mutates. When it happens, lots of corrupted C molecules are generated that will routinely misinterpret cellular DNA as corrupted itself, thereby behaving like a fast-acting cellular poison. The mutated cell will be the first to die, and will likely bring down several hundred of the nearby cells before the mistaken correctase is finally degraded. Something remotely similar happens, on a much larger scale, with some kinds of poison (e.g. that of some snakes or that of the [brown recluse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_recluse_spider) spider; if you google that, be aware that the images may be quite disturbing). However, the net result is that this kind of mutation can't be inherited.
* C (CHECK) mutation. This is more promising. There are several kinds of mutations which can affect the correctase molecule:
+ mutations that make it believe *any* DNA is always corrupt. Same as the H mutation case.
+ mutations that stop it working altogether (e.g. it can no longer bind to the DNA strand).
+ mutations that stop it from being lethal (either by stopping it from detecting changes, stopping it from initiating cellular death) but keep it working as a correcting enzyme.
But the main problem here, which would make it impossible as a natural occurrence, is that since every cell is routinely drenched in the correctase produced by itself *and its immediate neighbours*, any lessening in any one cell's correctase lethality would avail nothing. The cell would still be killed by its neighbours.
To survive, all cells must be mutated (or synthesized) in the same way, all at once or after being kept separate. Or you need to have a single cell with *no neighbours*. Even the zygote cell is not "alone", it is connected to the mother organism.
# "Life will find a way"
This is @MikeNichols' conclusion, and from the above scenario I would conclude that he's wrong... **except he's not**. He would be (of that I'm quite certain) if the organism existed alone, *in vacuo*. But no organism ever exists in an ecological vacuum (the closest approximation I'm aware of are Leo Frankowski's Mitchegai, [an eptalogy euthanised in 2004](http://heliologue.com/2010/06/08/kren-of-the-mitchegai-2/)).
And the correctase mechanism is **expensive** - it needs specialized machinery that has an operating as well as a replication cost. A sizeable organism would have no trouble in keeping up the whole show, but a *micro-organism* would be hard pressed to do the same. So our alien engineers may have stopped evolution *in higher organisms*, but they can't reasonably stop evolution *in microbes*. And as far as we know, without a (healthy) microscopic biota, life is not possible.
So we have a life pyramid where the top 10-15% is immune from evolution, and the lower organisms are free to evolve. While the middle layers may still be controllable by the 15% nobility, I suspect that a good 50% of the total planetary biomass would be logistically unreachable.
And let's not forget that this setup is the exact opposite of *biodiversity*. Sooner or later some pathogen will evolve that finds a suitable *pabulum* in those perfectly engineered, static, possibly unageing higher organisms, **and will kill them all**. Won't they develop genetic immunity? Well, any other *im*perfect organism very likely would. But the Creators made sure this couldn't happen...
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There are three features of a system that are both necessary and sufficient for evolution to occur. These are **heredity**, **variation**, and **selection**. Any system which has these 3 features will have evolution and any system lacking any of these 3 features will not have evolution.
**Variation** is the existence of meaningful differences between entities in the system.
**Heredity** is the capability of those differences to be inherited when an entity reproduces.
**Selection** is the influence of these heritable variations on the fitness of the entity.
In any system with these three features variations that confer a selective advantage will be inherited at a higher frequency, which will result in a change in frequency of the variations amongst the entities in the system.
In a system lacking variation there can be no differences between the entities and therefore no selection is possible. In a system lacking heredity the selection of some variants over others has no impact on the frequency of variations in the system. In a system lacking selection there can be change due to random chance, but there will be no productive change only random fluctuations.
I’ve intentionally used ambiguous language because these rules do not just apply to biological evolution, but to evolution in all possible dynamic systems.
To address the question directly, removing any of those features of the system will suffice to prevent evolution. If your organism doesn't pass on its mutations, or if it never mutates in the first place evolution will not be possible. One caveat is that even without selection, genetic drift will still occur. Simply due to random chance some variations will be favored over others and changes will gradually accumulate. Any reproductive isolation will therefore result in eventual divergence and speciation. This gradual, random change fits the formal definition of "evolution", but I don't think most people would really consider it as such.
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Sure. You'd need a new biological paradigm where children are randomized instead of combining traits from their parents.
For example, imagine if, when two humans have a child, it's basically a random human child with no direct relation to the mother or father. Your Creator figure would need to define the boundaries of randomness, while also preventing mutations.
This eliminates evolution because the fitness of a parent won't impact the fitness of a child.
A couple of notes:
Just eliminating mutations isn't sufficient to prevent evolution entirely, as species would still specialize based on fitness within their current genomes.
You would still see extinctions, and this would cause species to expand into areas they might not be optimized for. For example, say if a scavenger species went extinct. That opens up an ecological niche, and you would see a non-specialized species start to take advantage of that energy source. They wouldn't be good at it, of course, but it would still happen.
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There are a lot of people in the world who believe that God created this universe, and they also believe that God drove evolution. There are several sub-schools within this paradigm and this is no place to discuss them in detail.
There are a several possibilities for a world where creatures exist and evolution is absent. The first prerequisite is what you have already provided: that such a world has been created as-is by some supreme authority. The same supreme authority can change the rules of the game and make them unfavorable for evolution. It is quite simple. It is rather a thing of theology and philosophy than science.
The flaw in your reasoning is that you want the rules to stay the same, and yet the product to be different. You want the same scientific rules which apply on this world and yet you want evolution to not occur as it does here on earth. You cannot have both of them simultaneously. You will either have to let go of the laws, or you will have to allow the laws to take effect authoritatively and drive the processes as they drive on earth.
If you change the rules accordingly, you can get a static world. We are talking about a world where:
* Creatures do not compete within the same community, nor with other creatures. (That is, natural selection is off)
* Neither males, nor females have any favorite characteristics about the other gender so that an short giraffe would have as much chance of mating with a beautiful female as a tall, handsome giraffe. (Hence sexual selection is off)
* There is not the least random change in the dna of organisms at all. If there is any change in the dna of an organism, that organism instantly dies. (So there is no chance for mutations).
* Climatic conditions have no effect on animals and neither is any animal able to correspond accordingly to environmental changes. So that animals migrating from warmer to colder regions simply freeze to death, instead of undergoing any changes that help them survive there. (Thus phenotypical changes cannot occur)
With an ecosystem running the above mentioned rules, evolution would not occur.
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I think its possible to conceive of an all powerful creator that can design a non sapient species which can propagate itself without evolution as long as the creator is able to hold all environmental constants constant, such that evolution to handle unexpected environmental situations is not required. This creator would have to be magical since I do not believe that such a creator could obey they laws of thermodynamics at all.
**So first answer: If you have a creator not bound by thermodynamics you might be in with a shot.**
So can a magical creator define a world in which there is no evolution but that otherwise obeys known laws?
**If you have sapient tool using species with free will** as part of this question then even if they cannot biologically evolve, the exercise of the creator is probably doomed as soon as the intelligent species are able to begin to craft their own destiny. This happens when:
* The passing on of stored knowledge becomes sufficiently reliable that newborns of the sapient species don't have to relearn everything from scratch. Writing, myths, language, stuff like that.
* The use of tools by the sapient species gives them a competitive advantage against the non tool using species which cannot evolve.
These two basic traits of a proto-technological species introduces variables that the creator cannot plan for at the outset. Social consciousness and culture - that accumulation of collective knowledge and patterns - can evolve similar to biological evolution. This is as bad for the creators designs as biological evolution.
**Second Answer: If you have sapients in the world then the creator would be forced to intervene at some point even if biological evolution is not operative, and to intervene increasingly often as the evolution of the sapients ceases to be biologically driven and is now cybernetic, technological and memetic.**
I think that what I have just said is exactly the cultural framework on which all our religions are based...
You'd have to take away the sapient's free will to make this work (which is essentially what Tolkein did with the Elves in Middle Earth, in order to ensure they would experience unchanging immortality and cultural stagnation).
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It would have to be a world that is very stable, since one of the benefits of evolution is adaptation to change. No adaptation, then if things die, most of the rest of the ecosystem will collapse.
Swallows primarily eat mosquito (at least in MN), and if the mosquito population was mostly eliminated, even if only for a season or two, the swallows might collapse or die out. This is an extremely simple example, however it is meant to prove a point. Making changes in one place causes stresses in another. So we go through a mini ice age or a hot spell, it changes the environment and what plants and animals can survive there. If they can't adapt they will die out. It happens all the time, and without evolution, nothing will evolve to fill in those gaps that are left.
So to even think about stopping evolution you need to stop change in the world. Or you need to have an organism that is infinitely mutable to handle living in any possible environment available.
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Record the genomic boundaries of the target species and devise technology to eradicate all deviation.
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**Clarification of the mechanism** by request, presuming this is a fictional or future worldbuild:
Some self-maintaining or self-replicating means (nanotech or biotech) exists to identify and eliminate all genetic deviation. This means might be administered willingly, e.g. to all females of a xenophobic or fervently religious species, or unwillingly, e.g. by a one-time intervention of an advanced foreign agent and resident in the atmosphere. The influence might be at conception, at birth, or prior to puberty. The mechanism itself might even be a genetic trait, provided it includes backup mechanisms which are highly resilient to coding errors. The mechanism might prevent conception, abort pregnancy, terminate life, or sterilize the "mutant".
All of the above scenarios meet the currently-stated OP requirements, as of this writing.
This easily defeats the target effect of evolution, since now the "fittest" are those that are unchanging. The correctly design mechanism would require deviation larger than that which evolution itself provides, to overcome.
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The answer is an emphatic No, for very basic reasons. This is a variation of @Youstaf's argument:
>
> "The flaw in your reasoning is that you want the rules to stay the
> same, and yet the product to be different."
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>
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The key issue is that evolution is not a theory or a scientific concept. It is, in a very principle way, another word for reality. It means that everything just flows and arranges itself, unattended, through spontaneous events (think atomic level) and interaction within the framework of space and time.
Your setup introduces a creator, or "god", which by definition is almighty; in the presence of a god anything is possible, including, for god's sake, no evolution, if you must. But it would mean that reality is not what we think it is but that instead "god" controls everything on a sub-atomic level and what we see are actually only Potemkin's villages. A Simulacron 3, a total Truman Show, a Matrix.
I understood your question differently: "God" sets up a stage (reality functioning as we understand it, plus some mechanism X to prevent evolution) and then retreats, letting things play out. With that premise, "evolution" (of species, the universe) of course continues to happen, despite all efforts -- just, possibly, locally, slower. But, for example, at some point our sun will burn out.
There is a last, perhaps even more fundamental issue, which resembles Richard Dawkins' god critique: Even if "god" manages to halt evolution on earth, and maybe in the galaxy, "god" and our reality are still part of a larger reality, i.e. part of a larger evolution. "God" will evolve, too! She might, for example, become bored and flush this reality down the drain, or be reprimanded by the ethics committee at her insititute and decide to let evolution, i.e. "reality", flow again.
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If you can do it, it will only work in the short term. No matter what precautions you take, chunks of genetic material will start reproducing and evolving outside your anti-evolutionary framework and become viruses. They will then wipe out all of your other species, since they can't evolve defences against the viruses.
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**Problem:** How do we allow inherited individual variation (eye colour, colour-blindness, etc.) without gradual change in the species as a whole?
**Solution 1: Strict mate selection**
For example, elephants will only mate with a partner that is sufficiently elephant-like. Also, they will only mate with partners that are clearly very selective about whom they mate with.
But what about mutations that change an elephant's conception of what classifies as an elephant? Well, perhaps those parts of the elephant's DNA are subject to very strict quality control (e.g. checksums).
**Solution 2: Species DNA**
In this case, all members of a species have identical DNA, and individual variations are inherited through other means (such as epigenetics). The DNA must be copied exactly for an embryo to form.
Of course in both of these solutions, the proportion of individuals with particular characteristics within a species may change (e.g. certain eye colours may become more common over time) but the species themselves will not drift.
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Evolution is a long process, but each step is based on a tiny mutation.
The mutation spreads in the genetic pool if it's a positive change for the specie, and a positive change can be :
* Life improved (finding or assimilating food/water, resist to heat/cold...)
* Death avoided or life last longer (protecting from predators by poison, hiding, defense strategies, resisting diseases...)
* Reproduction improved (Better looking for the partner, more childs...)
(If i forget something, please add in the comments)
To prevent evolution, **you could stop mutation.**
Sexual reproduction provoque mutation. Make all your creatures some clones and you will slow evolution down (even if it might not be stopped, even with parthenogenesis small mutation occurs)
Interspecies DNA exchanges cause mutation (bacteria and viruses in your body are currently playing with some of your cells DNA, yuck). Very hard to stop, but it is a God's work. Here is a totally imaginary biology. Make viruses and tiny life forms very stable, or their DNA code very different from the "big" creatures, or make each cell inpenetrable to other forms of life.
**If you don't want to change the whole world biology, try to make evolution unuseful**
Have a very stable environment. You don't want species to evolve, even a little bit, because the summer was very hot and dry and this year's young frogs resist a higher temperature.
Make your creatures' life a paradise. Evolution usually makes life longer and more secure. Without predators, less selection. Without diseases, less selection. With every creature equally healthy and beautiful, no partner selection (again with the clones).
The more humans make their life confortable, the less they evolve. They are no more selected by predators, diseases or disabilities. "Bad" genes do not disapear, "Good" ones do not offer a significant advantage on the number of childs to change the whole specie.
Make each kind of creatures very numerous. A tiny mutation is more likely to drown in the genetic pool of a very large group of creatures.
*Bonus : now you have to find a way to keep a fair amount of creatures on your planet. Either they all die from age, or they live very long and have few children, for example ?*
**Conclusion** your god have a lot of work to do during the creation if he wants to relax later. Evolution is a lazy but effective solution. But if you really have a god's power, you could just create a kind of creatures that eat or kill everything that doesn't fit the plan. Like a robot with a database of all living creatures. If this chicken does have more than 1% difference with the registred DNA code "chicken", kill it.
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A world without evolution is going to be impossible if there is heredity and variation (as in the answer by Mike Nichols).
However this doesn't mean that your creationist forces can't be actively manipulating evolution to prevent speciation. You've just got to work out where this balancing selection is going to come from.
Speciation is generally caused by barriers to reproduction of any kind. For example two populations on different continents are likely to diverge as they can't meet to interbreed. To fix this your anti-evolution forces could be moving organisms between continents to maintain geneflow and homogeneity.
If you want to stop drift or selection within a population you could selectively remove (e.g. kill or sterilise) organisms that are distant from the population average in any trait. This helps both to remove variation and to select strongly against divergence.
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**No**
Here's why.
Mistakes get made and creatures change over time. Even living fossils like Coelacanth who from outward appearances still look the same as ever have had their DNA change over the millennia.
So get rid of DNA.
A world of replicating robots, some species are clever and make tools which gives them an advantage over others and they quickly wipe out other species. Other clever species start altering their behaviour to avoid getting killed by the tool using clever species. Can you say that these species haven't changed? Compare this to cicadas in the real world. Are the ones that come out every 17 years the same as the ones that do not?
So make em dumb, all they can do is replicate themselves exactly and die.
All is fine but every once in a while there are accidents where a bot gets damaged and every once in a while it's replication code gets damaged and now those bots have offspring that are built in some fasion that outcompetes the original ones for resources...
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You can't.
The reason you can't is the existence of domesticated breeds and the huge variation within those breeds. This *requires* all the organism side mechanisms for evolution to be in place. That leaves only the existence of fitness differences occurring in the interface of organism and environment as the final ingredient for evolution and there's no way of not having that without having a very different world.
You could have a created world without evolution but not with the creatures we see today in it.
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I admit my knowledge of evolution dates back to my school days (about 15 years ago) and seems theories have changed in the last year. But from what I recall evolution is something "random": one day an individual is born with a different (random) characteristic, due to the again random(ish) combination of its parents genetic material. If the new characteristic represents an advantage in the current environment the individual will survive and pass on its characteristic.
However, I started to think some of the changes are too advanced or intelligent to be just the result of a chance. A friend suggested that cell are intelligent enough to trigger the changes (according to him we alter our DNA during our life).
If this is actually the way evolution works, you may have your god creates all beings without this "intelligent adaptation" skill.
Keep "armless" mixes (change of traits due to mix of DNA materials, e.g. blond father + green-eyed mother = blond, green-eyed child) to avoid clonation, but remove adaptation changes (e.g. people move to colder area, skin cells "decide" to produce more/thicker hair).
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We have many medieval questions here, so I thought I would add yet another.
I have a city the approximate size of Paris with a technology level similar to that found in 1000's Western Europe. I have heard of sieges lasting for a [long time](http://listverse.com/2013/09/20/10-of-the-longest-sieges-in-history/) (21 years) but is there any reason that a city with an underground water source or some internal food source could not last for centuries?
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Medieval sieges had two components to them:
Starve them out. We're talking medieval technologies, so farming isn't anywhere what it is today...more land was needed to feed people. If there was an ability to gain food and water during a siege by the defender, this becomes a pretty useless tactic honestly. As an extension to this, there is little to prevent a sieging army to try to instill disease (dead cow corpses thrown over)...medieval medicine wasn't much and combination of starvation and disease always takes it's toll. This also includes weapons and ammunition...constant battle from the walls requires a lot of ammo after all. Lets not forget the resources required to repair and maintain the walls as well. This city needs more than just food and water...fuel and materials for ammo and repairs and new weapons etc. All are required and failing in any of them can let a besieging army take the city
Storm the castle. During the siege, the city walls are under constant bombardment. Trebuchets can hurl stones an incredible distance and although they aren't much one at a time, they do eventually wear walls and defenders down. Arrow fire can also slowly whittle down defenders...a wounded defender won't find the time to heal and poor food/water supplies often means a small wound becomes an infected death sentence. The slowly whittled down defenders only need to leave one opening and a opportunistic sieging army is in their city, let the storming begin! (The list link you provided had 2 good examples...Russians were sieging a monastery that had local support and constant resupply, but a traitor showed them a window they could enter and the monastery fell. The siege of Xiangyang ended after 6 years when a test shot from a trebuchet hit a stone bridge...bridge crumbled, nothing special, but the populace panicked and opened the gate in an attempt to flee. Mongols entered the now open gate. Pro-longed sieges were often a search for a single opportunity and it only takes one).
There is usually a balance that prevents long long term sieges...a large population is capable of fully defending the walls and keeping the invaders out, but consume more resources and shorten the time that they can hide behind walls. A smaller force will consume less resources and hold out for longer, but they risk not being able to defend the walls fully due to lack of man power.
The part that is hard to say is how inept your sieging army is...an army proficient in siege tactics, has the resources, and enough of an established supply chain to put up an aggressive siege should eventually be able to drop any defender. Launching diseased bodies (cows and people) into the city will spread disease (lack of food and water compounds this). Devices like the Lithobolos hurled a baseball sized stone...it's never intended to take down a wall, but 3 or 4 of these devices can make the defending army think twice about manning the walls (they pick off defending archers well). Add in some trebuchets to damage the infrastructure behind the wall, mass archers to kill anything the Lithbolos miss on the walls, and build a massive ass ramp to march over the wall with. Let disease take it's toll and the population suffer for a while, and march over the walls. Oh, and don't forget to poison the water sources entering the city as much as possible (dumping sewage upstream is another ugly tactic to cause disease).
You have to ask what the invading army is going to gain from taking the city. Is it valuable enough to dedicate the resources to fully take, or is it pointless (horrid cost to gain ratio) to fully capture and a simple blockade style siege effectively negates the enemy city and there is no need to go any further?
There's quite a few external factors to consider as well. Wars don't last centuries very often and resources are ultimately scarce. Can your besieging army maintain it's resources and position in the world for decades (most empires don't last as long as this siege)? Will it not be needed elsewhere? Will an ally or simply a power trying to maintain the balance of power try to lift the siege?
So you have two sides...I believe a properly equipped and motivated sieging army could take any city through a variety of methods. The Romans proved this true repeatedly, successfully taking cities using a combination of their vast resources and ingenious engineering skills. A less motivated/engineering savvy besieging army and a defender with near infinite resources could hold out for many decades and potentially forever.
Edit:
Just a side note...but the castles proximity to the sea and access to resupply via ship is a very consistent theme of the pro-longed sieges. It's actually somewhat hard to resupply via land...the weight of supplies involved and the travel distance over land limits what can be effectively resupplied. Via ship is different and a lot of supplies can come in just one ship load. Even if it is blockaded, a fleet can momentarily interupt the blockade, allow a bunch of supply ships through, and then flee (supply ships in this case get scuttled for the wood after they are unloaded)
2nd edit (Pavel's comment inspired):
The defending castles setup and positioning can make a difference here. If there was a natural terrain feature such as a body of water or mountain (perhaps the city is in a valley with two of it's side effectively defended by the terrain) then the number of defending soldiers required to fully man the walls drops. Less soldiers is less of a drain on the cities supplies and they will be able to last longer.
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Technically, I couldn't think of a reason why not. If no one needs to leave the city, and the invaders can't get in, and there is sufficient resources inside for everyone to survive, then it could go on indefinitely.
However, it is highly unlikely that it would. As in your example, saying that people who were born there were old enough to fight in the final battles, that would mean that they had never left the city. After a certain amount of time, there would be a young, fighting-age generation that had never seen outside of the city walls.
Eventually, there would be a rebellion within the city in order to gain the freedom to leave. Even if the rebellion is unsuccessful, the in-fighting would likely allow enough advantage for those conducting the siege to be able to exploit this weakness and invade the city.
Also, the people inside would not have *infinite* resources. Eventually, they would run out of stone to rebuild their walls, or metal to make weapons. This would again allow the invaders to take advantage of this weakness and overcome the defenses.
The people caught inside the siege would also not be happy about it. Eventually they will attempt to find a way out of it. If surrender is not an option, they would likely find another solution, whether that is through invention (trebuchet + parachute) or perseverance (tunneling through rock at a rate of 1m per year).
In addition, on the outside, whichever leadership had ordered the siege would eventually die. Even if their children, and their children's children continued the siege, eventually the leadership would not want to expend lives and resources of their country for a siege that they no longer understand why it is started.
Of course, all of these could possibly take decades or centuries to occur. So whilst there is nothing stopping this from happening, it is just a highly unlikely scenario.
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The trick is the size of the walls. It's really hard to make walls around thousands upon thousands of acres, and it turns out you need more acerage than you think.
Consider the real enemy of the sieged castle: population density. Usually the castle did not surround the entire kingdom, just the inner city. The farm land was usually on the outside. Once the gates are closed, the ability to produce new food becomes very limited due to lack of space.
If you do solve the food problem, other resources start to become important. You need a source of wood in the long run, meaning you need access to a forest. Your weapons will eventually fall out of repair, so you need a source of metals. Recycling can only get you so far.
One could argue that the Biosphere *is* such a castle, surrounded by the moat of space. But a large and complex castle it is.
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This is an interesting question but the premise has some flaws.
As others have mentioned resources are an issue. This is true for both the attackers AND the defenders.
**Defenders**
* Resources on the defenders side are extremely limited, and as others have mentioned, no decent sized city could be supported by its own agriculture for a long time during the medieval era...heck, it would be tough even today...agriculture takes up A LOT of space. The defenders would have to have some source of external supply, the most obvious choice here is a port that they can get occasional resupply from the sea...even if it isn't completely consistent.
**Attackers**
* The attackers have supply constraints as well, and a besieging army can starve just as easily (in some cases more easily) than a surrounded walled city. Try besieging a castle in the desert for example...where is the food for your besieging force for coming from? Same issue arises in the cold...where do you get fuel to keep people warm...and a whole host of other things to consider as well.
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Problems with extending the time...
Extremely protracted sieges are bad for both sides, anything longer than a season of stalemate and you are really just expending resources for no gain what-so-ever. In reality sieges will generally end in an assault...a stationary army is an army prone to being attacked, and rarely is there only one front in a war...keeping men sitting and not fighting hurts the war effort elsewhere.
But lets say for kicks both the defenders and the attackers have enough resources and are for some reason willing to let a siege drag on for what would literally be two to four medieval lifetimes... (100 years give or take).
The defenders would be captives...and that as another answer mentions could lead to internal revolt, I won't rehash that scenario, Mike did it well.
The attackers would eventually settle down roots and build. There is no way that humans stuck in one place for 100 years are not going to create permanent homes and farms. Essentially you end up with a ring of settlements around the settlement you were trying to capture. These men will also want to marry...they will have children...which could very well be villagers from the same group that are in the city under siege. In the end, after the first generation dies off, maintaining a siege is no longer really relevant if you are talking about a human on human conflict...
I could see a fantasy racially divided siege being maintained for much much longer...even then it doesn't make a ton of sense though. The most reasonable thing I can think of is a Gondor/Mordor type scenario where one nation acts as a 'wall' around another nation to keep it contained.
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As a follow up from [riding flying creatures to attack castles](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/186/how-would-the-existence-of-large-rideable-flying-creatures-have-changed-the-desi), let's assume that the practice is now so prevalent that a standard castle is no longer defensible.
How would the fundamental design of a medieval castle differ if it was designed downwards instead of upwards in order to counter fliers?
I'm trying to figure out what major changes might be made. I imagine that wastage, lighting, stabling and defense would all be impacted heavily. I suspect they would need to avoid flooding somehow.
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Underground fortifications are very defensible, far more so than any above-ground fortification. However, the main reason that they are rare is the time and expense in excavating them, amongst other reasons.
Assuming a medieval environment with flying mounts in common military use, underground fortifications make a lot of sense, and their added defensive value compensates for the additional expense and the other problems they have.
Most of us should be familiar with medieval surface castles, and there are plenty of internet resources describing them for those that don't, so I won't describe them here for the most part.
The first difference between underground and above-ground fortifications is their attackable area. A surface fort has a large attackable area, effectively the whole perimeter in most cases (including their upper aspect if there are flying mounts), whereas an underground fort has a very small attackable area, effectively only any openings in the ground.
Like a surface fort, an underground fort would have traditional architecture facilitating an active defense such as arrow slits, murder holes, portcullises and gates defending its openings to the surface. Gates and portcullises, rather than being wooden and hinged, could be stone and round, so that they would roll into place sideways. Proper design would prevent their simply being pushed inwards, and a gate could be made immensely thick, yet easy to roll from inside with the use of a lever, making battering a suicidal tactic. A gate can be locked by the simple expedient of placing a wedge behind it. Arrow slits would have the additional advantage that there should be no question of them being open to the sky, making plunging fire as a means of attacking an unmachiolated wall (a machiolated wall has wooden hoardings that make this tactic less effective) of a surface fort ineffective.
Given the lower attackable area of an underground fort, it could easily occupy a very large volume of a hilltop, and yet require a wartime garrison smaller than that required for a similar sized surface fort in *peacetime*.
Now, we get to problems. Underground forts have the same non-combat problems as any fort, i.e. supply of food and water, with the additional complication of requiring a [supply of air](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/459/75). While this can be achieved by simply cutting narrow tunnels to the surface, these ventilation ducts become potential avenues of attack in their own right. Since the fort is *underground* (that is its whole point), it is difficult - and should ultimately not be attempted - to deny an enemy access to the whole surface above the fort.
In some environments, such as dense woods, it may be possible to have concealed ventilation, and I would expect that many underground forts would have such. However, since an attacker could easily clear any such concealment by the expedient of arson, I would expect that there would be one, or more likely two, fortified ventilation duct headers. These would be basically a fortified chamber at the head of the open ventilation duct, accessible by a separate personnel tunnel. They would likely be designed to prevent the defenders of the vent header from egressing onto the surface for the simple reason that if the defenders cannot get *out*, attackers would have a far harder time getting *in*. The effect of a defended vent header would be that they could deny an enemy the ability to smoke the defenders out for as long as the header remains manned with active defenders.
Since the issue of ventilation would be so important in an underground fortification, it would not surprise me if a Sodium hydroxide [carbon dioxide scrubber](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_scrubber) was invented in the medieval period. It may not be known *what* such an item does to maintain air quality, just that it *does*, and Sodium hydroxide can have a secondary use as a particularly nasty substance to drop from a murder hole onto an attacking enemy. It also requires hydrated lime, which is easily made/regenerated by cooking limestone in a kiln to drive off the CO2, and hydrating it with water. A Carbon dioxide scrubber would greatly increase the amount of time the defenders of an underground fort could survive an attempt to smoke them out, by the simple expedient of closing the vents and activating the scrubber. This would mean that the limiting factor to survival would not be CO2 buildup, but oxygen supply, which typically lasts longer than the time for lethal levels of CO2 to build up in a confined space. With only a small number of defenders and a large internal volume, survival could be extended potentially to weeks in a completely sealed situation. Smoke scrubbers in the form of water-filled tubs through which outside air could be bubbled could allow reduced ventilation in a smoke-attack situation for quite some time, and water would also absorb a number of other potentially toxic substances that could be used in an attack. Water would naturally be on hand for purposes of drinking, even if there was a well (which is likely).
Another problem that an underground fort has is external visibility. In a surface fort, defense is achieved through high structures, which provide the bonus of being a good vantage point over the surrounding terrain. An underground fort would lack this natural advantage to some degree (depending on where it was built), but in situations where there was limited height advantage over the surrounding terrain, a single tower could be built, rather like a minaret, which would be relatively easily defended from ground and airborne attackers, and could be abandoned easily if attacked (by which point the defenders should be aware that they are under attack).
Since the arguments for location of an underground fort are similar to those for a surface fort (a high geographical feature), flooding is unlikely to be an issue, however drainage of waste products would be an issue, requiring somewhat better than historical medieval plumbing, but not impossible to achieve, since the Romans who predated the medieval period had already accomplished the necessary engineering.
[Derinkuyu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_Underground_City), [Kaymaklı](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaymakl%C4%B1_Underground_City) and [Özkonak](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96zkonak_Underground_City) underground cities in central Turkey, built around the 8th-7th century BC, could be considered early precursors to medieval structures such as I have described above.
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Building underground fortifications against flying enemies faces 3 major issues (in addition to the usual issues when a castle was besieged):
1. Bombardment.
If facing flying enemies conducting a siege, the carrying capacity and altitude of the attackers determines how large of a rock can be dropped on your fort and from how high.
Whatever is exposed will need to be able to withstand this bombardment, but that is not necessarily significant with proper construction.
2. Tunneling from above.
Miners breaching your walls is bad enough for a castle, but underground you can also have sappers attacking from right on top of you. You still need to maintain control of the land above and adjacent to your fort.
3. Ventilation.
Buildup of harmful gasses will be your enemy - maintaining good ventilation will be incredibly important. This is not hard to accomplish with ventilation shafts, but protecting those ventilation shafts may be very difficult if enemy sappers can be air-dropped on top of it.
Construction of a fortification which could withstand aerial assault would be incredibly expensive - these would be more regional citadels than small outlying posts. The best means I can think of would be to essentially create an artificial hill surrounded by a moat.
Clear a wide area somewhere stable (on rock would be preferable to minimize sinking, but having a spring or well inside would be a lifesaver), and begin by setting very thick internal walls (at least 5 feet of stone depending on the size of the hill you want, maybe go Roman and use concrete) to create corridors and rooms with arched ceilings. These ceilings can take copious amounts of dirt piled on top to harmlessly absorb the impact of dropped stones.
You would need three layers of exists - sewers, entry gates (air intakes), and chimney.
Sewer drainage is one of the reasons you wouldn't want to dig down, as you probably want some outflow of effluent (unless this is only inhabited during a siege, and even then throwing the effluent on the outside of your hill might be unpalatable for the occupants). You also don't want to go down or you might get lots of water leeching in through the walls. Outflows would need to be protected, but just multiple outflows too small to crawl through would probably suffice.
Your 'ground level' will need to have fortified gates, with plenty of arrow loops around the edges to fire at attackers, and these also operate at air intakes for your ventilation (if they try setting up fires to smoke you out, just close the doors to those rooms so there is no longer a draw through the gates or arrow loops). These vertical walls will be very resistant to rocks dropped from above - you are still vulnerable to trebuchet, but they might not ever be invented with flyers dropping rocks available, and smaller siege engines could be vulnerable to defender ballista.
On top of the walls, you have a soft mound of dirt which would easily absorb the impact of dropped rocks. At the top of this hill you would have at least three 'peaks'. These are walls with arrow loops to shoot any anyone who tries to land troops on the hill, as well as the cave-like openings to vent the central chimney. You need multiple so peaks so archers in each can defend the other from enemies landing and digging from above. This is still a vulnerable area and not much can be done about that - covering them in iron spikes and thorny bushes would certainly help, but over the months of a siege they can be bombarded and burnt.
The dirt cap protects you from dropped rocks, a large moat prevents outside tunneling, and archers from miners landing on the hill and digging from above. The pressure differential between the lower openings and the upper chimney should create a steady draw through your fort, providing plenty of ventilation.
If you want an added bonus, try to breed a small flock of birds (or miniature dragons depending on your world) which are highly territorial against other flying creatures. If they nest in the thorny brambles or in birdhouses in the sides of the peaks, and do a mass 'defend against the predator' flock attack against any large man-carrying creature which comes close to the hill, attackers would be restricted to very high altitude bombings which would be so inaccurate that their dropped rock might not even hit the hill at all (good luck precision bombing an arrow loop from the side).
Alternately, a rookery in the peaks to house their own intercepting rocs/dragons/pegasi/whatever would help there (and probably be popular from an offensive projection of force or scouting as well).
Living in the fort would be a bit dark, the only natural light coming through the arrow loops, so most of it will need to be lit with oil lamps or rushlight. I would imagine most living would be done out in the surrounding lands - even during a siege, a rooftop garden might be high enough to escape the slings and arrows of the ground troops while providing plenty of sunlight, with people retreating inside the giant bunker during an air raid.
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In a way i think it depends on how the fortification came into being. Was it designed to be a fortress-town by an architect under the orders of a rich person? In which case most areas will have a similar style with a strategic or militaristic layout, the fortifications in this likely carved into the rock itself.
Or did it build up naturally as township -> which may have started with a single underground path through the mountains that was part of a trade route, which then built up as people dug out dwellings along the route which then grew into a town, with fortifications later built for further defence.
Also (and i know this has been somewhat covered by other replies), think of the basic needs of the people living inside -> Air, Water, Food, Waste Management. Now, Air and Waste Management have been covered a bit by other people, but where do they get their food & water?
If built into a mountain, then streams of rainwater or meltwater will likely be the source - maybe with controllable aqueducts if the water is only available for a part of the year, a nearby river from the valley could be another source (but would be hard to bring up to the fortress, and might be a bit inaccessible when raided... unless there is an underground bit which can be accessed by a well...)
Food is another problem, do they get food from outside? in which case what do they trade for it? Is the land above and around the mountain farmed? in which case how do they keep large flying creatures from ransacking their land?
furthermore, on the subject of trade, where is the mountain located? is it near rivers where boats can bring materials from all around the land to be worked and resold or near the sea where fish and shells can be gathered and traded for other goods? Is it a strategic location along a trade route and therefore gains much of its food from taxing? - All of these can affect the architecture and style of the fortress
and okay, maybe this doesn't help answer your query... i kind of went on a tangent, and maybe focused more on the habitable aspect in a town/village kind of way then a fortress, but i hope this helps
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One issue that is important with underground architectural designs is that to allow access, in tunnel sited fortifications, (which was what I kind of assumed you're asking about) defenses can't be continuous. Where a castle can simply have a major wall in a direction where attacks are likely, thus forcing attackers onto less favourable approaches. In order to have an accessible fortress in an underground tunnel you have to have gates and thoroughfares right through your stronghold.
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Anime, Disney, and many, many other works feature human characters with ridiculously oversized eyes. This is usually just a stylistic choice, and had little to no effect on anything in-story or in-universe. What if it *did* have an effect?
Say that a real-world human was given eyes of the same proportion as the stylized ones you see in anime, Disney, etc: What would the physiological effects be? What would be gained, and what would be lost?
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It depends on how the eye is build exactly.
Horses have some of the largest eyes of land animals with up to 5cm in size (some squids have soccerball sized eyes but they have different light exposure). So size isnt the issue.
Hawks have similar size eyeballs as humans, but way larger pupils (<https://images.app.goo.gl/xf8cQcrU7QECDGgt8>). So overexposure isnt an immediate problem. However a larger pupil means you need a deeper eye for a sharp picture.
Aye ayes and other nocturnal creatures also use large eyes for their size in order to gather more light. Often complemented with a kind of mirror behind the fotosensitive cells to reflect the light and catch more with the cells. This is the reason why shining in the eyes of for example cats and dogs their eyes light up so weirdly.
If you go for nocturnal eyes the size can help them to see but not necessarily help them see sharply. If you go for sharp or hawk vision you have another problem: eyeball size. With eyes that big the rest of the organs in the head will have less space. This will limit the nose cavity and breathing, which will have to be moved lower in the head. This means that your mouth will be smaller and eating will be harder or your face needs to be longer. But that is nothing when you consider the brain. If you keep human dimensions their brain will be smaller, and their intelligence will suffer for it.
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I'm no biologist so I'll stay away from skull size, capturing more light or others physiological effects that L.Dutch and JBH already covered; instead I will focus on a more *psychological* aspect.
## Big eyes convey a lot of non-verbal communication
Big eyes in animation are a trope because "eyes are the mirror of the soul". This is the part of the body most of us notice first. Also, eyes are capable of conveying a lot of information for someone who can read it: envy, lies, fatigue, sadness... human have evolved to a point where we can *understand other's emotions without having even beginning to talk.*
My guess is that bigger, anime-style eyes, would be much more mobile and expressive. The average human eye has twelve muscles, and i'm not counting those for the eyelashes, etc. With eyes twice the size, these muscles could provide a lot more of expressions, from the most subtle wink to a full black-eyed pupil.
So, what's the use?
## Seduction/intimidation
Big eyes convey empathy. When you crave for something, be it a sexual partner or that fancy pair of shoes, your subconcious make your eyes widen, so you can capture more light and see better what caused this sudden urge. And, on the other side, it is known that dilated pupils are considered as more desirable traits when seeking for a mating partner.
But your eyes also widen more when in conflict. This is one of the answers of our body for an imminent fight-or-flee situation: we are *aware* there is danger and we are already seeking an exit. Showing big eyes with black dilated pupils at this point is telling your opponent: "I am ready to fight" and can be a factor of intimidation. This is why some animals sometimes show "[fake eyes](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141112-six-ways-animals-use-fake-eyes)", they serve as a way to *fool predators into thinking they are staring at the face of an even bigger creature*.
Long story short: your big-eyed humans may probably demonstrate more animal behavior, related to instinct, when it comes to seduction or intimidation, and may be able to read other people's emotions much more accurately, to the point it could even look like a form of telepathy.
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**Can eyes be something other than spherical?**
I don't have the anthropological expertise to know if there are any eyeballs in nature that aren't spherical. If nature can only make a spherical eyeball, then one of the consequences of a larger eye is less space for either (or both) the brain or the sinuses. It might also impact hearing as larger eyes might impact the auditory channels (although I believe this has a low chance of happening, unless the eyes are huge).
The result is a drop in breathing efficiency and mental capacity.
It also would require a wider skull (which might offset the two items I just mentioned). The closer together the eyes, the less valuable our 3D vision. Our brains use the data from the two eyes to "triangulate" objects in 3D space. Bigger eyes would mean wider spacing which would improve 3D acuity. And it would make our faces look much flatter. It would also increase the "blind spot" between our eyes as something approaches our noses (or, more specifically, the bridge of our nose). That would lower our ability to react to objects that might damage our eyesight or heads.
Pros:
* Better 3D acuity
Cons:
* Less space for the brain (less brain = bad)
* Less space for sinuses (harder to breathe and filter the atmosphere)
* Increases vulnerability.
**But, what if they could be elliptical?**
We can recover a lot of that lost space for the brain, etc, if we allow for elliptical and flattened eyes. But that has a terrible cost. Without the sphere, the "mathematics" of processing light become much more complex: and biologically that would most likely result in limitations. You also couldn't easily move the eyes with muscles, limiting the angular sweep the eyes can accommodate. So, you get the same pro, but pretty much the same number of cons, just different cons.
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There was a human species with big eyes - the Neanderthals: see <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2013.0168>
The effects may have been:
* can see in darker areas
* a larger part of the brain is used to process visual information
* which seems to have reduced the part dedicated to social interactions
+ so they were only comfortable in smaller groups
* and they are now extinct for some reason
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Apart from the apparent size, i'd like to also take into account the (lack of) apparent curvature. The cleanest approach to explaining the movement, curvature and size while staying within the eyes current among Vertebrata would be to suppose giant spherical eyes many times the radius of the head. As they would overlap both themselves and the space outside the head, this might seem far fetched, but i'll still run with it (They also might be one big eye presenting with two pupils out of two openings, but the frequently observed crossing of the eyes invalidates that solution).
Bigger eyes mean higher possible resolution (as we can cram more retinal cells in there; and higher light capture, so better possible night vision. If we let the receptor cells get bigger too (sacrificing our gain in spatial resolution) we'll be able to catch light of longer wavelength (NIR) more efficiently (This is not heat vision (unless you mean near-glowing-hot-heat vision)!). Higher radius also comes with higher rotational inertia, and even if the eye's muscles scale too, there will be loss in acceleration (all effects up to now dealt in area-dependent effects, and muscle force also scales as the area, thus the available moment scales as r cubed, while moment of inertia scales to the fifth power of r ), this loss will be severe - we can posit the absence of saccades in anime.
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If we wanted to get all the flexibility of anime eyes in the real world, we'd have to make them flat and squishy, with a display-like ability to change color, at least between black and white, and some muscles to change their size, aspect ratio and curvature. This would obviously mean compound eyes, where interferometry and the ability to focus a lot of the compounds in any direction (even relative to the changing eye geometry) could be used to even out the disadvantages (nearsightedness) insects have to deal with.
The change of color could be a sunglass like function - with white reflecting more light, and black letting more light in.
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Inspired by [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137585/what-if-earth-became-a-rogue-planet) and my comment on one of the answers.
If the earth were flung out of the solar system, it would rapidly become far too cold for any unprotected life to survive on the surface. Any remaining humans would have to live in pressurized and heated domes. However, if the earth was ejected from the solar system on a shallow enough trajectory, it's possible that governments or groups could put together such domes before the temperature dropped too severely. However, such domes need to be kept heated, oxygen needs to be provided, and food needs to be grown for long-term survival. Therefore, I nominate Iceland as the location most likely to support a long-term surviving colony. The reason for this is Iceland's reliance on geothermal power, just about the only power source likely to remain viable over the long-term as the earth drifts away from the sun. According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_Iceland), Iceland used 79.7PJ of geothermal power in 2004, which, if my math is right, gives them about 2.5GW. (If anyone manages to find more recent numbers, please comment and I'll add them).
**Given these facts, how likely is it that Iceland could maintain a colony of this type indefinitely, and how large is the maximum colony size that could be maintained?**
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# Iceland can hold out indefinitely
* It would take 2-3 months before the average temperature on the surface to be below zero (the reason for this is that the ocean has tremendous heat capacity, inland regions will fall much faster). That gives them a reasonable amount of time to prepare a living space. Iceland would have slightly more time due to the natural heating due to geothermal and their proximity to the ocean.
* Due to its molten core, the earth's surface will stabilize at an average temperature of -160 C on the surface. [David Stevenson, Caltech professor of planetary science](https://www.popsci.com/node/204957) This is not cold enough for the atmosphere to condense, so the need for pressurized domes is incorrect.
* It would take approximately two years to get down to this steady state temperature. And -160 C is not impossible for a human with appropriate equipment to survive and work on the surface.
* The best option for the Icelanders is to tunnel beneath the surface to maximize the benefits of the geothermal heating (without having to turn it into electricity). That way, they can use the electricity they produce for cultivating crops.
* As for how large this colony can be, it probably depends more on their digging speed (to produce adequate farmland area) than it does on actual energy constraints. Just because it produces that much geothermal energy doesn't mean that that is all the geothermal available to it as it expands.
* Food stockpiles will obviously give them more time to increase their living spaces before they have to depend on their own farming to sustain them. Additionally, if they have a submarine, then they will be able to operate limited fishing operations (and later mining for frozen fish), as the frozen surface of the ocean will insulate the water, keeping it liquid for many years.
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**Iceland is doomed.**
Sorry, but that's the way it is. Granting 2 to 3 months as a lead time to zero Celsius, that is simply not adequate time to prepare. Much has been said about digging shelter, but Iceland simply does not have deep soil which might make "digging" possible. Instead, we're talking about strip mining, and Iceland has no equipment suitable for the job. If we hand-wave that issue away, digging a hole is only the first step. Once you have a hole, you need to erect a structure which will support the overburden which will cover the structure, and that is a major undertaking. At the least, production of reinforced concrete (the best material for large structures of this type) will take weeks to months to organize - and if the refill process has not started shortly after the temperature drops below freezing it will not proceed at all. Frozen dirt is pretty much indistinguishable from solid rock for these purposes.
Deep mining techniques (boring/tunneling machines) won't work, either. On the one hand they are slow, and on the other hand, Iceland doesn't have any of that equipment, either.
But let's say that a certain amount of structure has been accomplished before the Big Freeze. Food production is now an issue, and either "normal" farming or hydroponics will require massive preparation. Keep in mind that, at this point, it has started to snow, and very heavily. This will continue until the oceans are frozen over, although the area of worst snowfall will gradually move south as more and more of the ocean freezes. Due to proximity to the north polar ice cap, things will get bad at exactly the wrong time, and moving equipment will be a nightmare.
And how will farming be lit? It's true that Iceland has a relatively large geothermal generating capacity, about 700 MW, but this is concentrated in two areas of Iceland, one the west and one to the north, and 70% of the power produced is used in aluminum processing, so the distribution lines to the rest of the country are much smaller than is necessary to allow full use of the capacity. Any use of the aluminum power will require construction of new substations, and that is not remotely a 2-3 month enterprise.
So the amount of habitable underground shelter is very limited. How sustainable is it?
The answer is, not. Food production is not sustainable. The geothermal generators will need spare parts and eventual (less than 50 years) replacement. Iceland does not have the industry required to produce such replacements, and there is simply no reason to project the existence of an alternate source.
And just in case some are thinking about fish as a food source: forget it. Within a few weeks to months the sunlight levels over any unfrozen water will be too small to support diatoms, which will cause a cascade of extinctions, with the largest carnivores dying off within a year.
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So, yesterday I found an invisibility cloak in my attic. It's got an instruction manual with it, and there it was mentioned that it is truly an invisibility cloak: it **bends the light (actually, all electromagnetic radiation)** around the wearer so that absolutely nothing can detect the wearer when looking at them.
Really nothing?
Of course, I tried it on. And from what I could see of myself in the mirror, I was really invisible. It didn't even have the slight lag my previous invisibility suit (a chamaeleon suit) had in imitating the surroundings.
Then I realized: If the suit is bending the light around me -- how come I am not blind when wearing the thing?
**My conclusion: It must let some photons through**, ideally only those that will hit my retina to produce a picture in my brain. Things look exactly the same, whether I am wearing the cloak or not, so it can't let only a partial amount through.
But then, those photons that hit my retina can't be bent around me anymore to show the original picture. They're gone in a photochemical reaction.
**So: what do I look like from behind?** Do I show:
* two floating black spots that are the size and orientation of my retinas?
* two floating red spots (same as above) since my retinas have got blood in them and so should look red and not black?
* An area around the height my eyes would be that is slightly darker than normal, but no black spots because of interference and light scattering? (i.e. surrounding photons make up for some of the lack of those my eyes absorb, but of course, cannot compensate for all of it)
* Or is the number of photons my eyes absorb so minimal that nothing can be detected at all?
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Human eyes are really, really good at adapting to various light levels. [Response is not linear.](http://www.telescope-optics.net/eye_intensity_response.htm) So first thing first, if your cloak only passes 10% of light to your eyes, in daylight conditions you will still see pretty well. That means you can pass 90% of light and still see.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/42uBD.png)
As seen on above image, some rays from one point might be blocked by your eye, but at the same time, some rays may hit *some* part of the retina of guy behind you. Thus, the dimming effect would be even lower. Smoothed on the edges. There would be no hard border. If you want to see it in real life, and have a camera with big front lens, cut a paper circle and put on lens. Then look thorough it. If circle is small, you will hardly see anything wrong with the image. Won't post picture, because, well, it would just look normal. Or paint a little dot with whiteboard marker (not permanent one!) on a window, and then look outside. Probably you wouldn't really notice it, unless you actively look for it.
Wit these two effects, I wouldn't bother putting any info in the manual. No point in making user nervous.
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It's almost certain the cloak does *not* cause the other observer to see
two floating spots the size and shape of your
retinas. Unless the other observer is standing with their nose inches behind your head, most of the light falling on your retinas comes from objects
to which your observer would have a direct line of sight even if you
were not wearing the cloak. The only photons that the cloak might need to
intercept (and not simply transmit around you) would be the ones that
would have struck your corneas in such a way as to pass through the
opening in the irises of your eyes.
Assuming the cloak passes *exactly* those photons to your eyes and bends
all others around you, the observer would see two perfectly black spots
(black being what you see in the absence of any photons) about the
size of the openings in your iris (but slightly larger, because the
corneas refract light into the openings).
But the cloak might take less than 1% of all the photons that would have
struck your face, and redirect them onto your corneas so that they produce
a correct image of the objects in front of you.
From the point of view of an observer behind you, there would be
a region about the size of your face in which the brightness of the scene
was between 99% and 100% of what it should be.
This would be hard to detect even with specialized equipment unless
things were arranged so that the equipment can predict exactly what the
brightness of each part of the scene *should* have been.
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**You would still be invisible!**
If you have ever heard of that, we got inside eyes a blind point, called [Macula of retina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macula_of_retina). This is a blind point, and we don't notice that in reality we are missing a point in the images we are seing, however there's a really simple test that allows to [detect that](https://braindecoder.com/post/how-find-and-shrink-eyes-blind-spots-1323127799).
The cloak could work in a similiar manner, light is bent in a way that the image is **slightly deformed in order to cover eyes**, this will reduce the luminosity of your "invisible shape" by really a tiny amount (what is the surface of eyes compared to total trasversal cloak surface? 0.5%?)
Of course **if someone is looking directly at your eyes** there is a slight chance he will see a small deformation around the eyes. However you should not really warry, most people is not able to recognize photo manipulations at all ^^.
The cloak would be really dark inside, apart the eye zone, and even the immediate bottom of the cloak would be really dark (otherwise you could be spotted from the above).
Also the cloak has a eye shut detector, when eyes are closed the light will stop passing through the cloak at all: making it really really dark and making you perfectly invisible.
Now you want to ask yourself if you really want all electro-magnetic waves to be blocked by your cloak:
* If you want to block heat dissipation, you would be invisible even to infrared vision, but the cloak will become quickly very hot inside
* If you want to allow heat dissipation, then you will be visibile to infrared scanners
* You could partially block certain waves so you would be partially invisible to infrared vision but still have a very hot wearing
* You could have ventilation that quickly replace air, in that case the noise becomes the biggest factor.
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Your manual is lying: It is not possible to build an invisibility cloak which is not detectable *and* allows the wearer to see. Especially it is not possible/not advisable to bent the whole EM spectrum.
A *passive cloak* means the wearer is in total darkness because all photons are bent around him. Even worse, the person feels hotter and hotter because thermal radiation cannot escape. If only a part of photons is bent, the cloak is detectable (perhaps not very good by human eyes, but still detectable). It also is detectable by phase changes (You know those transparent wobbling figures in hot air ? It can be made visible against background). If you are satisfied with Molot's answer, this is the way to go.
The only thing working would be an *active cloak*. This means it has an energy source and consists of an inner cloak which has emitters on the inside near the eyes showing the outside and allows heat transfer to the outer shell. The outer shell has high density transmitters and emitters at the outside which emit light at a point which is the exact computed composition of if the cloak would be perfectly invisible. This also allows to correct phase changes.
Even such a cloak would be visible in the IR range because you cannot hide thermal emissions without killing yourself. It can also be actively detected by firing strong light pulses (like a stroboscope) because no material can hold a linear response for strong inputs (Plain speak: You are overloading the cloak).
You can also combine both models: In "active" mode it works like my model, allowing you normal seeing without detecting your eyes, but it costs energy. In "passive" mode it works like Molot's model, bending light, but you can only see very dimly and it still allows detection for an attentive observer. For IR you must have something to vent off the heat, so if you include a nearly perfect switchable IR suppressor, you will only hold it out for a very short timeframe (sth in the minute range).
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There can be a fine weave mesh in the invisibility cloak that lets sufficient light through to the inside for its wearer to see what is in the surroundings. It can be that simple.
Unless there's a "magic" mechanism that creates a total immersion virtual reality for the wearer of the invisibility cloak that they can what is around them.
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Dude, you're asking about two dots the size (diameter) of earphone jacks. We don't see everything our eyes register - our brains 'wallpaper' much of our visual field with what we expect to be there. There's no reason why a magical cloak couldn't add back some light for the visible light our eyes stopped. There's no reason why it couldn't behave the same way as earphones with sound cancellation. Sure there'd be a lag, but on the scale of our response time (tenths of seconds or longer) there's plenty of time to recreate the necessary light "on the other side".
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qFAdH.jpg)
Probably something like this. If I didn't understand wrong.
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As recorded in Genesis 11:1-9, the ancients allegedly built a tower to the skies in a valley in Babylon (near present-day Baghdad), and God scattered them across the Earth as a punishment. According to the sources brought in [this question](https://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/21780/) and [this one](https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/81197/), both at Mi Yodeya, measurements of its height are given as 2.6 km, 5 km, 52.5 km, or 138.24 km, with widths being given as "203 bricks wide" for the 2.6 and 52.5 km versions and left unspecified for the others.
Given that the verses in Genesis describe this structure as being built from purely brick and mortar, is there any way that this story could have been plausible, working entirely within the realm of known science? Ignoring the plausibility of all humankind actually working together, or the amount of man-labor required, or anything like that.
Now, the one catch is that most of these sources lack any widths for the tower. Is it possible, given the strength of bricks and mortar at the time (Orthodox Judaism places this incident in 1996 AM, or 1765 BC) for towers of these varying heights to have been a reasonable width? In other words, is it possible to calculate the widths based on the height and strength, assuming that the tower could actually stand?
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I guess there are several questions to consider when trying to answer this.
## Could Ancient People Have Drawn Straight Lines Tens of Kilometers in Length?
The [Nazca lines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines) were up to 370 meters long, and could achieve surprisingly complex patterns. One of the hypotheses for how they did this was by drawing in a valley and having construction managers spotting from higher elevation.
## Could a Multi-Kilometer Structure be Kept Level?
Egyptians (almost a contemporary) had sight levels consisting of a plumb line and a triangle on a table. Look [here](https://www.cheops-pyramide.ch/khufu-pyramid/pyramid-alignment.html) for an example.
Wooden sticks, marked at a common desired height, with string run between them was the technique used to level the pyramid. The sticks were initially sighted with the sight level, and reviewed periodically by construction site managers.
Between the two base lengths given (2.6 km and 52.5 km), the curvature of the Earth would be between 2 and 53 meters. This curvature would foil the plumb lines, as gravity is curving with the Earth. However, the alignment and design of the pyramid also indicates that the curvature of the Earth was not unknown, and near [contemporaries had calculated the circumference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes), and thus radius, of the Earth accurately, so it would be possible for building site managers to pre-calculate the curvature and account for this 2 to 53 meter curvature that would happen at these very large dimensions.
## Are There Physical Limitations to Such a Large Height and Width?
There would be some side force, due to the curvature at the very largest dimensions. To calculate angle, get the arctan of the drop (53 meters) and half the base (26 km ~ 26,000 m) = 0.11 degrees. To find the percentage of all force that is transmitted as a side force, use the sine of this angle.
At the largest dimension (52.5 km) you mentioned, this side force would be about 0.19% of the weight is being transmitted as a moment trying to crack the structure apart.
Tensile strength of mud bricks (which is the type of strength that applies here) 1.5 MPa for mud bricks and 15 MPa for fired clay bricks (same as it's compressive strength). The density of mud brick is 1520 kg/m-cubed; for fired clay brick 2000 kg/m-cubed.
Geometery (whether this tower tapers as it gets higher or is straight up) plays a very important part in total load. For a straight up tower, the total pressure on the bottom tier is the density of your brick multiplied by the structure's height (in meters). P = rho \* g \* height \* 0.2% (the amount of load being transferred)
So, at what height would this set-up fail? 390 kilometers for fired clay brick; 52 kilometers for mud brick.
Also, since brick is not a solid piece, some of this pressure would be absorbed by the bricks shifting in the mortar. And the case mentioned was for a vertical tower - the load could be greatly reduced by tapering the structure as it rose to the top.
## How About Maximum Height?
The crushing strength of modern bricks are between 3.5 to 50 MPa. Mud bricks are 1.5 MPa and fired clay bricks are about 15 MPa. The equation, for a straight tower is still that the pressure on the bottom tier P = rho \* g \* h
For mud brick, the highest altitude before mud bricks start crumbling is 100 meters; for fired clay bricks 750 meters; for modern bricks 2.5 kilometers. This does not include a factor of safety - normally you'd cut these values by 4x to 5x for safety. Again, you could taper the structure to reach greater heights.
For comparsion, the ziggurat of Ur stands at 45 meters and the great pyramid stands at 139 meters.
## How High is High Enough?
Per [here](https://www.livestrong.com/article/458716-what-is-the-max-altitude-at-which-a-person-can-breathe/), altitude sickness begins to set in at 2,500 meters height. Also, per the same site, the highest altitude a human can reach without a compressed air supply is only 8,000 meters.
## How Much Height Can We Squeeze Out of Tapering?
The advantage of such an impossibly large base is that you can do a LOT of tapering. With the largest base of 52 km, reaching altitude sickness @ 2.5 km an extremely gentle 5 degree slope (an 85 degree taper). To reach the highest possible altitude for humans @ 8km is a not-terrible 17 degree slope (73 degree taper).
At such a shallow angle, you're not really building a structure (I guess you still are), but merely piling up a mountain. If you could effectively keep the pressure distributed, only 9% to 30% of the total force is being communicated down to the bottom layer. That would allow a height of 1,000 meters for mud brick; 4,400 meters for fired brick at a 10 degree incline; and 8 km for modern brick. You would still want a factor of safety for the structure. Then again, maybe not, because this thing is so shallow.
## Effects of Wind
Wind adds a small amount of pressure to the stack. The density of wind is 1.225 kg/cubic meter. A 60 mile per hour wind would add 440 Pascals, and this is without including the effects of the shallow slope.
## Breakdown Mode
At these very shallow slopes, the tower wouldn't fall down when it breaks. The failure mode would be more like erosion. Failure can be controlled the same way we control erosion with retention walls made of piled-up dirt, wood, or bronze.
So, I'm really surprised by this, but it's possible.
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[Question]
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I am considering a human-like species that has a consciously controlled womb- like organ. These beings would be able to gestate and give birth to any smallish creature that fitted their purpose. Naturally, matter doesn't appear out of nowhere; they have to ingest enough food in order to do this. The creatures they create might not be able to breed, or lack other features. This skill would need practice, and these beings would produce specially designed warriors, livestock, or other animals this way instead of breeding them. They could give birth to them in the form of young to minimize energy requirements. The system could also be used to directly create objects they required out of bone, skin, or fur. The system could even still function as a womb and allow them control over the bodily form of their babies.
In short is it possible for a creature to have a sort of all-purpose bio-fabricator, how might it come about and how would it be used? The closest real example I can think of is a queen bee producing worker bees. However, the worker bees are relatively similar in form to the queen, and the queen can't consciously alter the design. This is my first question.
EDIT:
This organ would work like a womb producing a baby except that the muscle, bone, skin getting placed/grown would be a conscious decision, not a biologically hard coded one.
So the person would be able to create a small "helper" creature which could find food or warn of danger, would obey simple instructions from the parent and would have a body plan suited to helping the person survive. Such "helper" organisms already exist, (bees) but their body plan is biologically hard coded.
EDIT 2:
Any talk of how this could be exist mention DNA editing capabilities. What if the system involved sacks of skin, muscle and bone cells in solution. A coagulating agent, and a trunk like appendage capable of squirting them out, in a manner similar to 3D bioprinters. This method doesn't need DNA to be designed, and all the control is muscular. it also doesn't need any cells to grow, so could be very fast.
[Answer]
If you include intelligent intervention in your definition of evolution, then your bio-fabricator could definitely "evolve".
Start with something similar to human evolution, a path that leads to a self-aware and intelligent species.
Now, in a manner similar to our embrace of the physical sciences, have this intelligent species embrace biological sciences. Have them start enhancing their bodies for different tasks and after a time, have them master genetics such that they can make those enhancements inheritable.
So far, what you have accomplished is comparable to our industrial revolution. Your biologically adaptive beings have not only developed their own version of tool-use, but they have industrialized the production of those tools using the reproductive capabilities of their own bodies.
The next "natural" step would be a biological equivalent to our computer revolution; converting their internal factories from hard-wired processes which generate only a single end-product, to a general purpose, programmable tool which produce a variety of solutions and end-products.
Your bio-fabricator is the "natural" result of an intelligent species mastering biological and genetic sciences, instead of our physical and electronic equivalents.
[Answer]
The feature you're asking for cannot reliably come about by evolution.
First off, to create all the organ systems of the animal, you require the elements and compounds that make up those organ systems of the organism you're creating. That's just a given. And because you're not processing and passing on those compounds through excretions out of your body, you're building up potentially toxic levels of those very same elements and compounds.
Second, I can think of no environment or situation where it would be biologically advantageous to have a component that is a factory for every type of creature. You also face a lot of problems like choking to death on bone, or becoming hypercalcemic or hyperphosphatemic because of raw calcium/phosphorus sitting and being absorbed in the host organism's blood.
You -could- have a factory that sits inside of a body, and the factory itself can be made by an intelligent species (on our planet, humans) and address all the problems with rejection. You could rewire a biological host to contain nanotechnology and barriers that stop raw elements from being absorbed in the body and leading to diseases or other problems.
However, at that point, why does it need to sit in the host?
You're better off conjuring an animal that creates offspring similar to it (asexually) or little slave organisms made by easy, accessible elements. I'm thinking of something like a jellyfish, which could conceivably be created in a host that isn't a jellyfish. Simplistic and elegant. Instead of creating any small creature, it can be very good at creating one, specific creature.
Perhaps your sapient species can get away with that. Something with a lot of water content and a realistic amount of compounds. I'm thinking a host that spits out bioluminescent jelly-like fireflies.
That would make for a great story.
[Answer]
It'd take some creativity, but I think it could happen. However, I'd like to make some tweaks. In particular, the direct construction of bone, skin, and fur is going to be very difficult to fit in with what a womb needs to do. Fortunately, I think there's a way to get a lot of those constructs more, well, traditionally.
Bone and skin and fur are typically created when stem cells differentiate into bone and skin and fur cells. From there, they grow according to how the body shapes them Managing this process is a beautiful art. The bones don't get grown from one side to the other, they expand from within, growing with the baby's body.
If we want to have a womb that can construct these things, we should probably tap into this powerful force. What if the creature could consciously communicate with the workers (cells running algorithms) making the baby grow, get information from it and then give instructions for how to shape things.
This would have obvious implications of permitting the construction of custom tailored creatures to work for your alien. It also is something that would require skill to master. Working in harmony with your little unborn creature is not easy. A poorly placed tumor growing a bone spike uninhibited could be fatal! It would also permit the construction of inanimate objects. Instead of the womb producing it directly, the creature would gestate a new baby helper who would be guided to produce the correct shape. Then, once it's completed, a conscious signal would tell the unborn creature to cease trying to be born, and release its resources to the parent (wow, that's a pretty delicate euphemism to try to write!). What would be left is whatever inanimate structure you wanted.
This could come up from any species whose conscious awareness of what they need to be as a species rises above their biological awareness. It would take some genetic manipulation, or perhaps some careful breeding, but eventually you could create a embryo similar to that of a bee in its ability to be many things. It would likely be used to generate very precise structures. It can't make things fast (generating a lot of bone fast is a very specialized activity), but it can make "the right thing." There would be a lot of gurus who specialize in having a mostly complete small creature stored away, ready to be specialized at a moments notice. These individuals would see magical, for it would appear they can gestate faster than others.
EDIT:
In response to your edit 2, "bioprinted" bone and skin and fur would be very ineffective. The fur might be effective (I don't know enough about the process we use to make hair), but bone in particular is *highly* dependent on structure. It is an ideal material to be grown slowly while subject to loads, because that helps the bone align its structure properly. Trying to grow it quickly in arbitrary printed shapes would make it very difficult to achieve bone's superior qualities.
This is why the modern biomedical printing community typically 3d prints the substrate, and then lets the tissue grow on it at the tissue's rate.
A bioprinter that can print bone like that would almost certainly never evolve. Nature is no where near that wasteful. It would optimize the material it prints with for the task. You would see printing done with compounds designed to be printed, not recycled concepts from cellular growth.
[Answer]
Thinking about all these implications is rather "icky" but here is my first answer ever in stack exchange.
As others have said I doubt if this sort of feature would arise from the randomness of natural processes. If these people where the product of extensive tinkering or genetic manipulation it 'might' be possible.
The provided processes of a host growing an organism of its choosing by manipulating the form during development seems a tad backwards. A "womb" is a safe nutrient providing environment for an organism to self-assemble based off its genetic structure. The host body may be key in some steps by providing resources or trigger hormones at key times but the organism itself is seeing to its own form.
What maybe possible is a being whom has a special set of reproductive organs that have the ability to manipulate the genetic structure of the organism. I suppose it would spit out a zygote at this point since it is asexually producing these divergent organisms, the host would then need to provide hormones or resources appropriate to the form they are producing.
"Growing a perfect killing machine?" "Code a humanoid form with simple brain structure and heavy musculature and dense bones: make sure you have lots of protein, calcium, and Cortisol in your womb." Then when the organism is viable enough eject it from the womb care for it; watch it grow into the killer you want it to be.
It seems there would be drawbacks to this approach.
* The host's base genetic structure is the starting point and it would seem until you are highly skilled at creating the code most "creations" would be tantamount to cloned children with minor differences. The time of gestation and rearing these creations would be long and undoubtedly emotional.
* The host's base genetic structure is the starting point and it would
seem until you are highly skilled at creating the code most
"creations" would be tantamount to cloned children with minor
differences. The time of gestation and rearing these creations would
be long and undoubtedly emotional.
* It also would appear that the "simple" forms of just bone or leather
(skin really) or fur (hairy skin) would be the most difficult to
achieve as the "purity" of just these structures would be hard to
code genetically (and have self assemble).
* Another potential pit fall would be if the manipulated code is too
different from the host, a natural rejection might occur causing the
host's immune system to remove the offending material.
Some of those problems and other moral and emotional ones wash off when you eliminate the idea of a womb all together and you have a more insect like approach.
Have the "Queen Mothers" use the genetic manipulation to create fertilized egg sacks that gestate and go through larval cycles where the "Queen" is only responsible for dropping the base material and letting the pupa do the rest "You know, throw them a couple of dead bodies to eat and in a few months BAM! full grown dragon clone baby thing."
[Answer]
I doubt something like that could be completely biological. Some manipulation could have happened implanting a [Molecular Assembler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_assembler) in a few individuals and overtime the two became more and more integrated. One could suppose these individuals lived for long time for that to happen and that they are very few to not lead to destruction of resources. At a certain level of integration they went on with self-replication, which would take place of regular reproduction due the small number of these individuals, and would be highly regulated. In replicated offspring the molecular assembler is so integrated that can be considered more of an organ than an implant and at that point you can bring in an evolution in the organ.
[Answer]
Consider the organism is in an environment such as "food web".
The birthing machine is isolated from the environ, similar to problems that have been considered on TedTalks such as producing Coral. Yes, you can make a coral incubator in which the progeny are protected from ingestion by species higher up the web and result in increased coral.
Biology is the science of Life, and that means genetic information, no way around that. To create a Lego Genetic machine would not be possible today.
Perhaps once you have organisms genetically sequenced with Next Gen sequencing technology, such as I saw on Documentary it is possible to sequence human genome now in 7.4 seconds (amazing considering the initial input of TIME)...
There is no getting around the egg/sperm problem other than creating "Dolly".
Interesting question of "Hybrids" being sterile...such a concept would eliminate the factor of FERTILITY and also factors such as Darwinian competition for survival.
If you are looking at making "Cocoon" like incubator for multiple species progeny there are too many factors to consider. Start with the fertilized egg of any species and look at the controlled variables necessary.
Perhaps you could start with the most simplistic cocoon and make a list of the required conditions, even that would be a feat.
Why not try to grow a human central nervous system in isolation that is absent body components...perhaps this "brain" could be made to survive floating about the International Space station for hundreds of years...floating around in an artificial environment of "sustainability"==nutrition AND a way of getting rid of "metabolites"==waste (such as what an artificial kidney would supply). This would require continual output and excrement--you could just dump the excrement into space...ha. Bye.
Still trying to couple human neurons to silicon (Didn't MIT build an "artificial eye" couples to the vision portion of the CNS? Who needs taste if the inputs are through artificial vessels? But then again these vessels are subject to "aging" by oxidation etc. You would need to be able to grow CNS tissue on an artificial scaffold which would provide nutrients couple with a filter for excretion...this would be a continuous "pump".
Solve this problem in SPACE and who needs the "food web" to provide food to a human mouth? Seems like the solution would be to somehow couple genetic information with directed nanotech.
Philosophical questions galore. What is life? They seem to have decided "end of life" is "absence of neuronal activity". It could therefore be derived by the science of LOGIC that the beginning of LIFE is neuronal activity==if humans are to decide this question at all. Following the definition above, human life would begin at the moment nanotechnology or the limits of what "humans" are capable of detecting as neuronal activity. As these limits progress to an earlier and earlier stage it is self-evident that LIFE will begin at "conception"...we just can't measure it yet. It is obviously self-evident that the time frame will become less and less.
This whole argument reminds me of the famous question by Aristotle " how many hairs does it take to make a beard?" Ha. We had a kid in 7th grade who let 5 hairs grow on his chin and we joked "nice beard". If it "looks like" a beard is it in fact a beard? Breeching the subjective vs objective. Then we had my "girlfriend" or wanna be girlfriend who was attracted to beards and she commented about "Joe"--what a "nice full beard he has"...I was not capable of this as my testosterone just wasn't there. Bye.
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[Question]
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**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
There is this fantasy in fiction that humans meet another species and figure out that it's intelligent. This usually happens with dragons, dolphins, aliens, collectively intelligent plancton...
But sentience could theoretically be so different from what humans experience.
Let's put aside the fact that even recognizing life might be complicated. Say tomorrow a group of scientists encounter in a previously unexplored part of the world (mountain top, ocean bottom, innermost forest) a small animal. How would they recognize that it is an intelligent sentient being assuming that it actually is?
Follow-up question (or prequel to this question): [What more than sentience do you need from a species for its intelligence to be recognizable by humans?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/14518/what-more-than-sentience-do-you-need-from-a-species-for-its-intelligence-to-be-r)
[Answer]
Besides all the moral relativism that permeates post-modernist philosophy shown on this topic, I will risk writing a more traditional, dialectics based answer.
## What is intelligence?
Well, lets do a dialectical analysis of evolution of life in our planet.
A mineral/chemical world is one where all the observable phenomena is the result of physical or chemical interaction between substances. Energy tends to fall and the entropy of the universe tends to grow. Biological life starts out of this chemical world because it is a superior form of chemistry. We might say that biological life makes a better use of chemical energy, hitchhiking the energy and the general increase in entropy of the universe towards its own perpetuation. Once life sets in, competition starts and results in a trait: to preserve itself, life evolves from more concrete, hardwired logic, towards abstract reasoning.
If two lifeforms are intermingled in a pattern of predation, or other form of competition, both will evolve due to limited resources. From chemical warfare of single cells, to group defense of multicellular organisms. As soon as a limit is reached a very "creative" adaptation sets in.
For example, when a cheetah hunts a thompson's gazelle, both evolve. Soon we reach a point where evolution is not possible anymore, and the genetic pool stabilizes. If a cheetah was to evolve indefinitely (in a specific niche that does not change) it would soon reach a point where adding muscle mass would decrease its speed. In other words, certain traits (in this case, speed) are limited by the composition (the chemical makeup) of normal life forms. If a cheetah was going to be faster, he would need to be made from much different chemicals, like iron bones, or something like that, which is much more costly to be used. The result is that this "impasse" is solved dialectically by a lateral operation. In the case of the primates, that lateral evolution was the increase of intelligence. Primates are not the utmost predators of nature. They are not stronger than lions, nor faster than cheetahs, *et cetera*. But they use their intelligence to hunt in groups using lances and other instruments.
This means that as soon as a limit is reached at a level, a certain new trait differentiates one group of species from others. For one, the beasts are still stronger physically than humans, but we reached a technological level that allows us to dominate all beasts without too much problem (and we've done that).
But why do life tries to perpetuate itself? Because if you have a primitive world where there are life forms that don't try to preserve their own existence, this non-self preserving life will be killed and replaced by any life form that developed a trait of self preservation. As soon as the ambient is totally filled with life, competition will set in, and self-preservation will become the utmost objective.
Even if we are talking about another planet, and our curiosity and romanticism wants to see something different (to allow us to dream with a universe where men did not dominate almost everything, and there is nothing in ordinary life out of our domain) this another planet is in the same universe as ours. It's composed of atoms just like ours, and those atoms make molecules. Provided that some differences might come from different makeovers of such planets (silicon vs carbon, etc.), those differences pale in comparison to basic similarities, like the need for energy, the competition, etc.
## So, whats the purpose of intelligence?
Animals, plants and similar beings evolve by changing their own genome to adapt to circumstances. Provided a fixed habitat like I said in the early part of this text, animals would stagnate in ideal forms without reason to change. Our habitats are not fixed, but changing continuously. This means that animals must adapt out of natural selection, which is slow, and while, usually, able to save species from extinction, natural selection cannot save specific individuals from death out of inadequacy.
As soon as an animal is able to adapt the environment to his own needs, on a much larger scale than most animals, this single specific animal can save not only his species but himself from death out of changes in the ambient. The intelligence allows a much more flexible approach to competition with other animals. Instead of death of the weak and survival of the fittest, we get power over the ambient to change it as needed, and the more we evolve intellectually, the more we can adapt the ambient to our tastes.
So, regarding your question about how to detect intelligent/sentient life, we might answer the following:
1. Sentience can be detected out of the animal capability to react
quickly and unambiguously to outside stimuli. A plant can react to
its external environment, but not quickly or unambiguously. A sentient
animal will have a basic reaction called fear. The need to save his
own life at any cost.
2. Intelligence is a superior form of sentience. The animal at hand
will show capability to change its environment in a non-spontaneous way
in order to fit it to its own needs. We call that adaptation of the environment into human made forms "anthropized environment", or the geographical space unambiguously changed from natural to man made.
## TL;DR
Life evolves intelligence to allow better adaptation and survival of the fittest. Intelligence allows changing the environment to something that suits the intelligent life-form better. This means that a intelligent/sentient life form will show a trait of environment manipulation that can range from simple tools and hunting tactics to terraforming and exploration of extreme energy forms.
[Answer]
Defining intelligence is tricky. Here's my take on it:
**Assumption 1: Intelligence is a label applied by humans based on observation, not an a-priori trait of an entity.**
I choose this assumption because I want a science bound answer. Religious answers are free to use a different definition, based on whatever deity derived divinations they please. Intelligence seems less to define the creature, and more defining how we treat that creature. We give more respect to intelligent things.
**Assumption 2: Highly predictable things are not intelligent**
This is a carefully worded assumption. Obviously I want to come to the result that humans are intelligent and rocks are not. If I throw a rock, and it lands where I expected it, it clearly did not act unpredictably on the way.
I am carefully not assuming that all unpredictable things are intelligent, although I think there is a fine line of reasoning that goes down that path.
**Assumption 3: Intelligent things stay around for a while**
Highly unpredictable events like explosions are cool, but they soon flare out. Their action eventually extinguishes that which they need to live, and they stop exploding.
Because this is a human defined trait (assumption 1), this means their lifespan needs to be on an order where humans can observe their behaviors long enough to decide they are intelligent. It also means that very long lived intelligences might appear unintelligent because we lack the patience to see them.
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**Results of these assumptions**
It is clear from the predictable thing that intelligent things must have some "internal state," meaning information that is not easy to acquire from them. If you could know everything a person was going to say or do for the rest of their life, they would not seem very intelligent to you.
To be long lasting, that internal state must not be a limited source. Consider a firecracker fountain, with lots of surprises, but when it's over, you know everything about the hull that remains. I think Chaos theory offers great potential for small internal perturbations to have tremendous outward outcomes. It also has the advantage of making it very hard to measure those internal perturbations without killing the creature.... meaning its internal state could be, indeed, unknowable through violence.
I would expect a model of this creature-under-test to appear to be very broadband. This is an artifact of the definition. It is unlikely that the creature's lifespan and daily life matches pace with ours, so we will have trouble observing all of the creature's actions. Accordingly, any creature that actually seems to have internal state on our timescales is likely doing everything from long slow life goals to ultra-fast snap decisions.
**The test**
The big test I see for testing intelligence is interaction. If we observe the creature silently, without interacting, we can build up a model of how they interact without us. If we then visibly observe it, interacting freely, if they seem to change around us, there is a good chance they should be treated as intelligent.
The neat thing about this test: it also forces us to allow them to decide if we are intelligent, by their definition.
[Answer]
From the wikipedia page on "Animal consciousness"
>
> In 2004, eight neuroscientists felt it was still too soon for a definition. They wrote an apology in "Human Brain Function":[38]
>
>
> "We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain and we do not know whether consciousness can emerge from non-biological systems, such as computers... At this point the reader will expect to find a careful and precise definition of consciousness. You will be disappointed. Consciousness has not yet become a scientific term that can be defined in this way. Currently we all use the term consciousness in many different and often ambiguous ways. Precise definitions of different aspects of consciousness will emerge ... but to make precise definitions at this stage is premature."
>
>
>
As far as I know, this is still true today.
I would personally define the type of consciousness humans have (vs animals) as:
* ability to recognize oneself and others
* ability to comprehend abstract ideas
* ability to have a "thought-process" - resulting in the ability to "predict" outcomes
* ability to learn through forms of communication rather than only personally-experienced stimuli
+ This one is difficult for me to define, communication could be interpreted as form of stimulus. What is really meant is that dogs would not pass this; one dog cannot share his knowledge of tricks with another dog. Each dog must individually learn through his own training.
* ability to analyze the results of ones actions and choose different actions in the future
Many of those could be applied to some animals, I think the biggest things that make humans unique is the ability to comprehend abstract ideas and being able to learn through communication.
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Most of the time, it seems to me that when you would want to define it in this way, you would want to be able to speak to the other creature and have it understand you. You would want to be able to tell it things, and have it learn from *your* experiences, and you would want it to be able to tell you things, so that you can learn from *it*.
As for `How would they recognize that it is an intelligent sentient being assuming that it actually is`
Assuming the above, the scientists could observe behavior changes (learning) being passed from one of the animals to others. They could recognize the animals attempting to communicate with them and convey ideas. Likewise, trying to convey ideas to the animals should be met with an attempt to understand.
You wouldn't be able to tell right away. You'd have to start small and slowly build signs of matching the above criteria. It would take time and effort from both sides.
[Answer]
**It depends on how you define *sentient.***
Dolphins, for example, are sentient according to some definitions of the term, as are chimpanzees. However, we don't interact with those kinds of animals in the same way that people interact with elves in a fantasy setting. If what we're after is the level of sentience that something like a dolphin or a monkey exhibits, there's a ton of tests for various forms of animal behavior that have been developed. Some of these tests, such as the mirror test, have been put forth in other answers as a test for sense of self.
By many definitions, this defines sentience. However, some intelligent birds, like magpies, can pass this test, and they aren't what we typically want to define as a sentient species.
According to the test you choose, different animals that exist on earth could be defined as sentient. Dogs, magpies, dolphins, crows, and elephants can all be defined as such by various tests. Some scientists would argue in favor of each of these being sentient. If a certain group of these scientists were to discover a new marmot on a far off mountain top, it would not have to be discernibly different than other marmots for them to describe it as sentient.
Of course, just because a small group of scientists says a marmot is sentient doesn't mean that everyone else will look at it as a dumb animal. A better question to ask might be:
**What traits of intelligence must a creature possess to not be widely viewed as a dumb animal?**
This, of course, won't apply to all people, just most of them. There have been, at many points in human history, lots of groups of people that view *other groups of people* as dumb animals. We can still look to see what traits a creature would need to have in order for most people to think of them as being intelligent.
In my opinion, the main (and perhaps only) question that must be answered is this: can the other life form force us to regard them as (at least) intellectual equals? There are two main ways that a creature could go about doing this: intelligible speech and development of technology. Of these, the latter is far more important.
**Intelligible speech**
If an organism has a language that we can understand which uses abstract representation of concepts, we're likely to regard them as being intelligent. This, however, is no guarantee. Dolphins and whales, for example, may have the capacity for abstract speech, but we can't understand them. Because of this, we have no real need to treat them as equals. A dolphin won't swim up to a fishing boat and tell it to stop killing dolphins in a way the fishing boat will understand, so the fishers can keep thinking of dolphins and whales as big dumb fish and spearing them for meat.
**Development of technology**
Of course, if those same dolphins were to swim up to the fishing boat with machine guns and open fire, we'd probably have to think differently. Tool use is one of the primary ways that we as humans differentiate ourselves from animals, so it's likely that an other creature that we encountered using and developing tools would be viewed by most people as intelligent, even if those tools were at the level of bows and arrows or primitive stone knives.
The important thing, though, is the development and progression of technology, not merely the use of a rock or stick as a tool. A crow that uses a rock to smash a crab is a smart bird. A dolphin with a rocket launcher, on the other hand, demands respect as an equal.
[Answer]
To determine if something is intelligent, and especially *how* intelligent, you may consider running tests and making a lot of observations.
# [The Mirror Test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test)
This is, perhaps, one of the more famous ways to determine if an animal is intelligent. It basically amounts to putting a mirror in front of the creature (or within its habitat) and seeing what it does to its own reflection.
The simple idea is that a creature who "passes" the mirror test will show behaviors that it recognizes itself in a mirror. There are various derivations of this test, but it helps set a high standard for "intelligent."
# Learned Behavior
Is this thing capable of learning from its experiences or from observation? Some people even use this to claim that [plants](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(physiology)#Plant_intelligence) (and slime molds) are intelligent. Even so, you can look at what Joshua Klein did with crows in [his TED talk](http://blog.ted.com/2008/05/13/joshua_klein/).
This may set the standard pretty low, though, as you can get a robot to do these things, but not actually have a self-aware robot. That being said, testing to see if there are any learned behaviors can apply to a very wide range of creatures, from many different kingdoms.
# [Tool Use](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_animals)
This indicated at least some level of intelligence. Does the creature in question use tools? Use of tools shows that the creature at least can recognize beneficial items and figure out which ones are better than others.
# Culture
Does this creature have culture? That's a tough one to figure out, too, but it's an indication of intelligence. You're looking for art, social hierarchies, music, dance, etc.
[Answer]
Only one test needs to be administered. Is it a living thing?
Anything else assumes we are able to determine all forms of communication and or know what anything is thinking at a given time.
If we meet a bipedal that communicates with pheromones we are unable to detect make it not intelligent/sentient or does the mere physiological fact it is bipedal make it so?
If we place a life form in a room with a mirror and it does nothing mean anything or does it know it is confined and waits to see what develops. What if the same life form breaks the mirror, does it think it is attacking another creature or does it think the mirror is the weak link of its prison and can escape.
Does something that is able to grow in size or replicate make it intelligent or sentient? A crystal accumulating mass that shatters and makes smaller versions of itself alive?
The use of tools a valid test of intelligence or sentient life? An otter would fit this criteria by using rocks to open mussels but wolves who hunt in packs and drive prey to other wolves waiting to ambush not?
The ability to adapt to its environment and propagate? So if a catastrophe kills all land based life forms on earth and only sea life exist are humans no longer sentient or intelligent?
The only thing these test and restrictions do is feed the human ego to make it feel superior and special.
The only test needed is is it living.
[Answer]
I think the other suggestions here are making this way more complicated than it needs to be. I would use a simple mathematical test. Something like 3 + 2 = 5. So for example I could use small pebbles or twigs to make a stack of three objects and a stack of two objects, then draw arrows in the dirt from each the two stacks to another spot, where I then place five objects. Then do the same with 1+6 = 7 or something. Finally I would set up stacks with 3 + 3, draw the arrows, and let the creature fill in the stack of 6. If it does so correctly, it clearly has substantial intelligence; not only does it understand basic math, but it can correctly appraise a non-natural scenario and reason out a rudimentary form of communication.
Obviously, while 'passing' this test would indicate intelligence, failing it does not automatically imply the reverse. I can think of three possible reasons to this wouldn't work:
a) The creature doesn't understand mathematical logic. In this case, I would argue that it is not intelligent
b) The creature understands logic, but does not understand the communication aspect, i.e. that I want it to fill in the final stack. I really don't think this is likely. The only symbol I use is an arrow to indicate direction, which I imagine is pretty clear to any reasonable being, especially if it watches me draw it. With appropriate body language (i.e. backing off to indicate that it is the creatures turn to finish the third problem) I can't really see the communication aspect failing. Even if it does, if the creature is sitting there watching me work, then trying things of its own, mimicking etc, that is clearly not normal 'natural' behavior.
c) The creature understands logic and communication, but for whatever reason is not interested in demonstrating its intelligence to me. I can't really imagine an intelligent creature not being interested in meeting a different intelligent species, especially if they have come to our planet (or we have gone to theirs). But if it is completely disinterested in communicating with me, I suppose all I could do to determine its cognizance is observe it for a while, like the other responses suggest.
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This question was the core subject of H. Beam Piper's "Fuzzy" novels, the first two of which (*Little Fuzzy* and *Fuzzy Sapiens*) are now public domain and fairly easy to find in e-book format. The universe has its fair share of anachronisms; humans have interstellar travel, antigravity, video communication, the ultimate in lie detection, and highly reusable ranged stunning weapons, but the characters smoke like chimneys, drink like Europeans, still use chemical film, magnetic audio tape and room-sized computers with the processing power of a desk calculator, and powder firearms are still the predominant weapons. Still, the series is a cult classic in science-fiction.
The plot of the first book centers around Jack Holloway, a freelance prospector on the newly-colonized planet of Zarathustra, and a bipedal quasi-humanoid creature about two feet tall, about twenty pounds, and covered in golden fur, who wanders into Jack's camp one fateful day. The creature seems highly intelligent, in fact much more intelligent than other animals on the planet; "Little Fuzzy" is able to problem-solve, figuring out in a matter of seconds how to unscrew a jar lid and then screw it back on. That indicates reasoning ability, and also the ability to conceive of right and left, concepts not directly relating to an object, and that's abstract thinking. Little Fuzzy also demonstrates the ability not only to use tools, but to make them, and to make tools that make tools, again demonstrating a degree of abstraction of thought. However, he seems unable to speak, instead producing high-pitched "yeek" sounds, and he seems to have no innate knowledge of how to produce fire, two qualities that are, as of the beginning of the story, the only definitive and legal proof of sapience.
The existence of Little Fuzzy (and as it turns out a whole population of "Fuzzies") on Zarathustra, along with the possibility they may be sentient beings and not just intelligent animals, is very disconcerting to the leadership of the Chartered Zarathustra Company, who was granted more or less complete ownership of Zarathustra as a "Class III uninhabited planet" to spearhead colonization and economic development. If the Fuzzies are a race of sentient beings, then Zarathustra is a "Class IV inhabited planet" and the company's charter isn't worth the parchment it's printed on. The company's CEO, it turns out, will do anything to prevent that.
Without going too much deeper into the story or spoiling it too much, the final definition of sapience arrived at by the characters in the book is multi-part and breaks down to the following:
* **Conscious Thought** - A sentient/sapient being has the ability to think as all animals do, and it is "conscious", as it is aware of itself and its surroundings, but more than that, a sapient being is aware of the fact that it is thinking, and knows what it is thinking about. While an animal is normally limited to dealing with the immediate, based on memory and instinct, a sentient being can think about things that are not occurring or directly related to the present situation. A high level of conscious decision-making can be observed in some animals when dealing with novel situations, which makes them readily able to learn how to deal with new situations they haven't seen before based on things they know from past experience. We ascribe to these animals a high level of intelligence, even if we wouldn't call them sentient. Sentient beings are contrasted by having more or less sustained conscious thought.
* **Abstraction, Generalization and Classification** - The awareness of "thought" itself is a concept that doesn't have a material component; humans know that we think with our brains, but a thought, as a concept, is classically nebulous and immaterial. It is "abstract". A non-sentient intelligence might encounter an object and make a simple, one-dimensional judgment about it; "food", "nesting material", "mate", "predator". This is all a non-sentient intelligence typically needs, or in many circumstances all it has time for.
The sentient being has the ability, through sustained conscious thought, to begin with an object, say an apple, and methodically assign to it a quality or set of same that is not in itself any one material thing, but that might apply to many examples of objects, such as that they are red, round, edible, sweet and grow on trees. These many qualities form a "class" that can be used to identify an object as belonging to the class of apples because it has all the qualities, and to apply the qualities of an "apple" to an object known to belong to that class without having first-hand experience of that specific object's sense-qualities.
This extends further to applying more or fewer of these qualities to larger or smaller groups of things, or to other abstract ideas; the class of apples, and all their examples, are also part of the larger superclass of "fruit", which grow on trees and are edible but aren't necessarily red (oranges), round (bananas) or sweet (lemons). The class of fruit in turn belongs to the larger class of "food", which is simply any edible, nutritious thing. This abstraction and classification occurs in the sapient mind almost without limit.
* **Symbolization** - Having formed these abstract concepts, it becomes necessary to represent them in some way. The representation of an abstract concept is a "symbol". These symbols have many forms, but of particular note are visual and audible symbols, which can be used to communicate abstract concepts to other sentient beings (of your race and others). The sentient being is a symbolizer, and a symbol communicator, able to use visual or audible cues as more than mere signals, but as material (if transient) representations of an abstract concept. Humans, as sentient beings, are so inured to thinking of things in terms of verbal symbols that we literally talk to ourselves in our own heads using a symbolic language, and it is difficult or impossible for us to think in any other way.
* **Imagination** - This last thing is a "more than the sum of its parts" combination of the three previous tenets. A sentient being, able to consciously think about abstract concepts in the form of symbols, can mentally conceive of situations the being has not experienced, by combining elements of things he has experienced with additional concepts symbolically communicated to him, to create a new situation which does not exist. If this situation is desirable, the sentient being is able to act consciously to change his actual environment to more closely or exactly match the conceptual one. If the situation is not desirable, the sentient being can take conscious action to ensure he never experiences it in reality. The sentient being, through his symbolization, can also communicate this hypothetical reality to other sentient beings, transferring the idea of the possible situation to them and allowing them to decide to help or to hinder his own efforts to realize or prevent it.
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There are really three keys we could use:
**Communication**
We recognize communication as being an artifact of intelligence. If we can recognize how something communicates, and can manage a translation/conversation, then we know it's intelligent and can measure that intelligence in terms we can understand.
**Tool Use**
This is the other big one - we create and use ever more complex tools (this includes things as diverse as hammers, corn, and computers). If we see a species using tools, we can recognize it as intelligent based on those even if we can't necessarily communicate with it.
**Fighting**
Whether it's battles, warfare, or a hunt, these are all scenarios where we could recognize intelligence from adaptive tactics. If a creature shows it can out-think a human tactically, by changing how it approaches the problem, then we'd see it as intelligent even if it doesn't use tools and we can't communicate with it.
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This question has actually already been answered in the domain of artificial intelligence. **[The Turing Test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test)** was proposed as a way to determine if an artificial system was intelligent. The modern analog of the test is basically, "Can anyone reliably tell which is a human and which is a computer while chatting over text messages (or any other chat system)?" At this point, no artificial system has passed an unrestricted Turing test but some have passed more restricted versions of it (bounding the domain or not telling the human that they're trying to tell if this is a computer).
As I said, this is focused on the domain of artificial intelligence created by humans, and one can imagine life forms that could not pass this test but would be significantly more intelligent than humans. However, I think it focuses on the most basic aspect of intelligence from the human perspective - the ability to communicate thought. Obviously, accommodations would need to be made if they communicated via hand gestures, etc., but that doesn't affect the basic premise of the test.
Language and communication is the most fundamental invention ever. It allows us to exist beyond ourselves and transfer knowledge between individuals. For a human to consider a species intelligent, I think we'd need to be able to communicate with them. We have been able to communicate with some individuals of animal species such as [Koko the gorilla](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_%28gorilla%29) who has a relatively large vocabulary of sign language. While most people would consider gorilla's more intelligent than many species, we don't interact with them the way we do humans. I think it's safe to say that Koko could probably not pass an unrestricted Turing test even with accommodations for sign-to-text translation.
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Would humanoid sized insectoid lifeforms be relatively slow considering that their exoskeleton would have to be rather heavy since it takes more 'armor' to get the same relative protection? Generally they are portrayed as very quick physically, but I think they would actually be slower, like a knight walking around; they would however likely be very strong.
Could someone use a little engineering or biology to support this?
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**Probably. Insectoids might be slower.**
There are several issues though. When most people think "giant insects", they think of insects, only scaled up. Except, [this is biologically and physically impossible](http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0_0/constraint_01). When you scale things up, the mass scales by the cube - you'll need very thick legs (think elephants) and most likely a standing posture. You'll also need a proper respiratory/cardiovascular system to transport all the extra oxygen required - not very insect-like if you ask me. Even the "[giant insects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeura)" in the fossil record aren't so giant at all, they only have a large wingspan, and their body's cross-section is actually smaller than some of our giant beetles today.
But let's suppose we make those modifications and end up with something like a rhino with 6 legs. If we stopped here, then it would be about the same speed as a vertebrate of equivalent size. This is because [the muscles involved are pretty much the same](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_physiology#Muscular_system) between insects and vertebrates, their strength is determined by their cross-section, which scales slower than mass. This is also one reason why bigger creatures are slower, relative to their body size. Insects are only fast (and strong) because they are small; there are plenty of fast, small non-insects like bats and lizards.
Now let's consider the protection. You mentioned "the same relative protection", but this quickly becomes impossible if you scale up too far. For physical reasons, [materials become much weaker the bigger they are](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/10793/why-are-smaller-animals-stronger-than-larger-ones-when-considered-relative-to-t). Drop an ant from 100 times its height and it would walk away without a scratch. Do the same with a giant ant and it will crack like an egg. Our giant insect would need fancy materials for its exoskeleton to approach the same level of protection, maybe some form of metal ([hey it's possible](http://guardianlv.com/2014/05/wasp-boring-tool-tipped-with-zinc/)). But it still won't be of the same relative strength unless we start delving into cybernetics. And yes, the extra mass would make them even slower.
So to recap, for a realistic human-sized "insectoid", we'd have
* Breathing
* Same leg thickness
* Standing posture
* Same strength
* Slower speed (than vertebrates of similar size)
* Metallic exoskeleton
Doesn't sound like an insect to me. I suggest handwaving and/or magic.
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As @congusbongus says, it isn't an "insect", true, but it is a lifeform with an exoskeleton rather than an endoskeleton. You won't get any strength above that of an exoskeletal lifeform of equivalent size and biology, save for the usual tradeoffs between speed and strength that you get by adjusting the muscle-skeletal lever ratios - muscles have a maximum contraction speed, and a maximum force output and by adjusting the lever ratios, you can emphasise some combination of speed and strength.
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An arthropod the size of a human can not normally exist. Hundreds of millions of years ago in the Carboniferous period, the giant millipede Arthropleura could reach 2.6 m and weigh as much as a human, but it lived in a time when there was a surplus of oxygen to support such a massive arthropod, and it had many pairs of legs to support its massive weight. Another extinct arthropod, Jaekelopterus could reach the same length and weight as Arthropleura, but it had the advantage of living in water, which eliminates most of the issues. A humanoid arthropod of this size would not fare well even in the Carboniferous. The exoskeleton would have to be very thick for it to be able to walk on only 2 or 4 legs, and in turn the muscles would have to be larger or more efficient. Furthermore, larger arthropods find it more and more difficult to molt, a human-sized arthropod would expend a very large amount of time and energy to shed its exoskeleton. Many things can go wrong while molting.
For such an animal to realistically exist, it would need an atmosphere with a very high percentage of atmospheric oxygen, think upwards of 35%, an exoskeleton made of a very strong, lightweight material as opposed to chitin, which is what arthropod exoskeletons are normally made of, very large and efficient muscles, and a reliable way to distribute oxygen throughout the entirety of the animal's body. Even with all of these advancements, it would need at least 4 walking legs and would move very slowly.
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There are two types of dragons in the world today. Smaugs are bat-like lizards that can grow up to 30 feet, with a pair of arms and legs. They also sport a pair of large wings that allow them to fly. These dragons inhabit the western world. On the eastern side, a species of dragons called shenrons are dominant. These are serpentine lizards that can fly similar to how snakes move on the ground. Their forms grow upwards of 40 feet, but possess no limbs. Both of these types have the capability to breathe fire. Their bodies and internal organs are protected from their flames, guaranteeing that they are not harmed by their own abilities.
Dragons are hunted and skinned like regular animals, and then turned into items for humans. An industry has developed in which dragon-hide is turned into clothing, from coats to gowns to boots. It has been promoted that these items protect the user from fire, making them flame resistant. However, the individuals that have tested this theory after purchasing them died hideously hilarious deaths. They burned to a crisp, gaining no protection from the dragon-hide covering them.
Why would people not gain the flame-proof protection from dragon-related clothes?
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Apart from the fact that only the very rich and very few might actually get real dragon hide there are options.
1. Dragon hide requires internal fluids in the epidermis to be fireproof
2. Dragon hide needs constant replenishment of *substance* to stay fireproof, just like duck feathers lose their water-repellent properties rather quickly once "dead"
3. Dragons are magical beings, and it's the magic within them that does the actual protection. The hide may still be a decent magical conductor, but that doesn't save you unless you can also cast *fire protection* on yourself
4. People aren't dying, it's all a big propaganda campaign by **Big Plate** to stay in business
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**Human-sized garments aren't big enough to be effective heat sinks.**
Dragons are much larger than humans. By the square-cube law, a dragon that's roughly 5 times the length of a human will have about 25 times as much skin, and 125 times as much mass. It's possible that dragon skin is a very effective conductor of heat, allowing otherwise dangerous, concentrated heat sources to harmlessly dissipate their heat over the dragon's entire body. Essentially, a dragon has a *lot* of thermal inertia, so it will be much more resistant to external fluctuations in temperature. A human, by comparison, has very little thermal inertia, and will heat up much faster (i.e. burn).
It's similar to throwing a big log into a fire, and seeing that it takes quite a few minutes to start to burn. If you throw a twig into that same fire, it will turn to ash in moments. Compared to dragons, humans are twigs. In a way, it's similar to how you can fry an ant with a magnifying glass, which would only cause a minor burn on a human - an ant wearing human-skin armor isn't going to fare any better.
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**The hide may not burn, but that is insufficient.**
To truly protect the wearer, the hide must insulate them from the flames. For dragons, this insulation comes from some other aspect of their anatomy, such as a layer of fat or other tissue under the hide that is unsuitable for use in clothing. So the dragon hide would make a great blacksmith's apron, but won't stop you from being burned if immersed in flames.
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## The Hide isn't what makes dragons fireproof
Dragon[*hide*](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hide) is the untanned skin that is harvested from under the scales. It is a leather-product and as such somewhat flame resistant but not more heat resistant than other leather of its thickness.
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> **hide** noun (1)
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> Definition of hide (Entry 2 of 5)
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> 1: the skin of an animal whether raw or prepared for use —used especially of large heavy skins [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hide)
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Dragons however are no relying on their skin to be fireproof, their *scales* are flame-deflecting and fireproof. They are pretty much ceramic in nature and shield the skin underneath by trapping an airgap between scale and skin. Once the scales are removed from the skin to get the easy workable dragonhide, the skin doesn't make you fireproof anymore. Well, it never was fireproof in the first place and all the blood vessels in it kept it cool under the insulating airgap when the Dragon got into fire himself!
Since working with dragonscales is a PITA as there are no drills able to add holes to them to create a dragonscale-scale armor, such armor is pretty much unheard off.
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Surprise!
Dragons aren't fireproof. They developed their fire breathing abilities to fight each other.
Their own flames aren't produced inside their bodies, but rather when a chemical (gas or aerosolized liquid) combines with oxygen in the air. It's a [hypergolic reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergolic_propellant) between the stuff the dragons produce in a special gland and the oxygen in the air. Dragons just spray a burst of the stuff (and try not to get caught in the blow back) and it burns anything in its path.
Given that, there's no need for the dragon itself to be in any way especially fireproof.
Dragons fight each other for territory, and use flame to kill other dragons. That wouldn't work against fireproof dragons.
Your humans haven't figured that out, though. They assumed that dragons have to be fireproof to handle their own flames.
Never assume.
Some few brave (though stupid) souls tested the alleged fireproof qualities of dragon hides by wearing clothing made of them in a fire instead of intelligently exposing the hide to fire by itself.
Anybody with a lick of sense tests potentially lethal things in a non-lethal way, but humans aren't especially well known for being sensible.
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# People are stupid
Ubiquitous stupidity is the reason why some food makers have eating instructions in snack bags. Without those their customers would surely die of hunger.
Most likely the hide is truly fireproof. If you wear dragonhide boots, for example, you will be able to walk on lava. [You can step on lava in real life without harming yourself, mind you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTiWetiJVN8), if you have a caution.
However, idiots will be idiots and some will jump to the conclusion that since the boots are heat resistant, wearing them will make the whole body heat-resistant. Cue to someone becoming a meme by jumping headfirst onto a magma lake while wearing dragonhide boots, jeans pants and a wool t-shirt.
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We actually have an example of people who think like that in real life:
* People who wear tinfoil hats to protect their noggins against microwave radiation ignore that microwaves can pass through their faces just like visible light passes through glass. They insist on the magical power of their hats against Illuminati mind domination anyway.
* Gwyneth Paltrow preaches that putting jade eggs inside lady parts protects the body against toxins, and some people buy said eggs from her.
* I've seen people buying anti-radiation cellphone cases, which would completely block the phones' electromagnetic radiation emissions and thus protect the users from cancer. There is a bit of truth to that, since if you never take any cellphone radiation you will never get cancer from it. Much like if you wear chainmail inside the ISS you will never be harmed by shark bites, for example. Of course, people who buy such cases don't know how cellphones work in the first place.
An uncle of mine used to say that in the ancient times, conmen had to wander around in search of idiots, but the invention of the catalogue and the industrial revolution changed that.
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**The hide may be fireproof, but the parts of you it doesn't cover aren't**
To wear a dragon's hide, it has to be cut for you to wear. This means at the very least it does not cover every part of your skin, leaving your eyes exposed so you can see and your nostrils exposed so you can breathe. If you're exposed to fire it's going to burn everywhere, including the parts that the dragon skin isn't covering or is incompletely sealed off from the outside world. In that case, the smoke and superheated air is going to irritate your eyes and go down your nasal passages to your lungs, possible burning or scalding the very sensitive internal surface lining of your lungs.
Living dragons get around this by having a fireproof nictating membrane that protects their eyes when they breathe fire, a fireproof mouth and pharynx that is protected from burning, and even a thick layer of skin preventing fire from singing their vent. They avoid choking on smoke by having nostrils that clamp shut and simply holding their breath when they breathe flame, like a whale. Their internal sinuses also keep out at least a portion of the smoke making prolonged inhalation less problematic.
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# Oh but dragon hide is fire resistant
[Leather is like that](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288627587_Behavior_of_leather_as_a_protective_heat_barrier_and_fire_resistant_material), it's why it's used for protection when you're in a situation where you might encounter brief jets of flame like a smithy. It's great for such situations. Dragonhide is undoubtedly high quality rugged leather and would have significant flame resistant properties.
For that matter:
# Tinfoil is even more fire resistant
However that doesn't stop the potato inside from cooking when you put it in the fire. Speaking of which, cooking in your armour is what's going to happen to you when you when you go up against that dragon.
It's not the flames that are the problem, it's the heat.
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The [Bombadier Beetle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle) is a real-life creature that can emit a stream of hot, noxious chemicals at adversaries, when it feels threatened.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XXlTe.jpg)
The temperature of this stream can reach 100C, or 212F, the boiling point of water. That's hot enough to cause severe injury just by its temperature alone, nevermind the noxiousness of the chemicals themselves.
However, in spite of this incredible defense, bombadier beetles themselves have no special protection against heat or noxious chemicals. How does it avoid being injured or killed by its own defenses? Well, it doesn't store the chemical at temperature inside itself, and then squirt it out.
Instead, the beetle has reservoirs of two chemicals in its abdomen, hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide. When it feels threatened, its body *mixes* these two chemicals. The resulting chemical reaction causes the temperature, forms the noxious quinones, and the pressure of the reaction forces the new chemicals out of the reservoir. The heat or chemicals never actually touch the beetle; it doesn't need any protection from them.
Really, this isn't much different from a human being holding a blow torch. You don't need any special protection, not even gloves; the flame occurs a short distance away from your hand, and even that short distance is enough to protect your bare hand from the heat.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tGOP9.jpg)
There was a book from the 80s or 90s that theorized how a real-life dragon might exist, taking physics and biology into account. I can't recall the title; some googling didn't return any results.
IIRC This book imagined a dragon that could fly because it was filled with hydrogen gas, which made it very light, which also allowed it to breath flames when it expelled the hydrogen gas through its mouth. The flame lit when the gas left the mouth, so the dragon simply blew the flames away from itself.
A dragon that has flame coming from its mouth doesn't need any particular protection from it, as long as it isn't storing any flame or hot fuel or chemical inside its body.
Just look at a [human breathing fire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkjvwtQfRw8). They don't need any special skin or protection; the flame reaction occurs outside the mouth, and they are blowing the flame away with their breath.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jDCn7.jpg)
So, long-short, a dragon-skin suit doesn't protect its human wearer from dragon-breath fire, because dragon skin doesn't protect a fire-breathing dragon from its own fire.
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Though dragon scales are known for their hardness, they also are excellent heat sinks - while the dragon is alive. The scales have a network of delicate veins feeding water into the hollow inner chambers.
During a low-energy burn, the scales heat up, and begin transferring heat to the skin underneath. When the skin feels a rise in temperature, it quickly begins pumping water into the attached scales, much like humans sweat. However, the "sweat" is fed through the scale, cooling it, then is pushed into the scales surrounding it. The skin connected to those scales reacts as well, and the heated water is pushed quickly away from the site of the heat, rapidly cooling the area. A dragon could have a small patch of scales catch on fire and feel little more than a gentle warmth.
For a longer duration or full-body burn, once the scales have reached a certain pressure point, the water will squeeze out through osmosis, slowly leaking out, just like human sweat. It's less comfortable overall, but will still keep a dragon cool - though the dragon will need to drink a lot of water to stay hydrated.
For a high intensity burn, the water won't have a chance to spread out or leak out. Instead, it will vaporize; the sweat glands have a tiny "door" to keep water flowing in one direction, which means the only place for the vaporized water to go is out through the scale as a cloud of steam, carrying the heat away from the body. A short burn will be quickly cooled after it finishes by the slower methods above, keeping the skin safe.
A high intensity, long duration burn can actually harm a dragon, as it will quickly deplete the water stores in its scales, but it is very difficult to get a dragon to stand still long enough for that kind of burn to run its course.
All that to say, once a dragon is dead and its skin and scales removed, there is nothing to refill the scales with water; a dragon-skin cloak gives slightly less protection from flames than a damp blanket, because it's missing a crucial part of its cooling system.
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For a live demonstration in the real world, remove the coolant from your vehicle's radiator, and note the immediate problems your vehicle faces...
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**False advertising**
Clearly the advertised claim is a lie.
It's not actually fireproof, more like heat resistant, but only for lower temperatures and a short period of time. Think a candle flame and 10 seconds, not a fireplace for an hour. That doesn't sound too exciting, so the advertisement exaggerate a bit.
**Exposed parts are still flammable**
A shirt made from a dragon's hide is fireproof, but the limbs sticking out are still exposed and unprotected. So the people die from having their limbs burnt to a crisp, even if the torso is protected by the shirt.
Even smaller gaps in the shirt can leave you vulnerable to the heat. The gaps will let the heat in behind the hide, giving you more of a indirect cooking.
Smaller things such as gloves can still be useful for handling hot objects. Full armour, not so much...
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So I can think of four broad categories of reasons with some room for variation in the details. It could also be a combination of them.
Dragon skin isn't particularly resistant to fire in the first place. Other parts of the dragon are resistant, but not the skin. Armour made from dragon esophagus would be a better idea.
It doesn't work any more when turned into clothing. Possibly it requires something from the living dragon like magic, a special secretion, or an biological process like blood flow. Alternatively it's the process of preserving the skin that destroys something that made it resistant. Depending on the details it might keep working for a while or stop immediately on death. Having it be something that works for a while but the clothing will suddenly and without warning stop resisting fire would be particularly good at producing crispy corpses of foolish people.
It's only fire resistant, not fire proof. Maybe you can make a particularly thin and stylish (and expensive) oven mitt, but it's not going to help against thermite, white phosphorus, chlorine triflouride, or your new wardrobe's angry relatives.
The clothing itself is resistant to fire but it doesn't protect the wearer. Just because it isn't harmed by high temperature and doesn't catch fire doesn't mean it insulates against heat very well and now you are wearing perfectly intact but burning hot dragon skin. Even if it does insulate, it would only protect what it covers, and what it covers is now subject to build up of your own body heat unless it can magically act as a passive one way heat valve which I think would make it similar to Maxwell's Demon in terms of thermodynamics. It also wouldn't protect against things like smoke, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, oxygen deprivation, or breathing super hot air unless you also had some sort of respirator integrated into it.
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Living dragonskin is suffused with a particular oil; this quickly vaporises when hot, providing a vital stand-off distance between the flame and the skin. It's the difference between touching a hot poker and holding your hand an inch away from it. Once dead and tanned though, the skin loses this property entirely -- and is in fact somewhat flammable.
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**Dragons need to vent excess internal heat through their skin**
As others have said, only the insides of the dragon, and maybe the face, would need to be truly fireproof.
Why would the skin be very non-fireproof? Well, dragons create fire inside their bodies, and all that heat has to go somewhere, or the dragon will cook itself from the inside out. So they've evolved skin that lets heat through very easily, to help regulate body temperature.
So a hapless human wrapped in dragon skin will get the full heat of any fire that hits them.
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All parts of the dragon, including the skin are simply resistant to high temperatures. When exposed to fire the skin, and the human wearing it, still get hot. The skin is able to withstand the heat, but the poor guy inside cooks like a hot-pocket.
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Hides may have an insulating inner layer and an outer layer with very high thermal conductivity. They resist fires because the heath is quickly spread across a large surface. The small garments made for human don't have such a large surface and above a certain temperature they catch fire.
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**Real dragon hide is fireproof, but indistinguishable from cheap knockoffs**
There's a relative of these dragons that evolved to be a little smaller and live in the ocean. Firebreathing/fireproofing offering no advantage there, it lost both those traits. Fishermen regularly snare these while fishing for other fish, and have found no use for them. Until dragon-hide became a hot commodity, then these were discovered to be good for a cheap knock-off, as it can't be distinguished from real dragon hide except for the fire resistance.
Once widely known, then maybe merchants would test hide with fire. So possibly it's just not yet known why there are conflicting stories about the fire-proofness of dragonhide.
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One of the most amazing properties of dragons is the Glow you can see when they breathe fire, or are struck by flame. The flame doesn't just go forward from the dragon's mouth, you see. No; a thin halo of yellow-red heat, almost like an ember in its own right, actually shoots *backward* at the same time, hugging the contours of the dragon's body, from the tip of the snout to the tip of its tail. It actually heals the beast to a small degree, as minor cuts and abrasions in the hide are smoothed out by the process. And this is not the only place you can see the Glow: when a dragon is struck by flame (natural or dragonfire), the same thing happens, emanating from the point of contact. It is awe-inspiring to watch, though it makes dragonriding dangerous, as anyone who touches the Glow is burned.
And, of course, everything I just told you is a misconception. There is nothing magical about the Glow at all, despite looking really cool. What's going on here is that **dragonhide is not fire-resistant at all: it's ablative**. When the dragon is struck by flame, including its own breath, the entire outer layer of scales burns away in a controlled flash, revealing the next layer of scales underneath. That outer layer is dead, so it doesn't harm the dragon to lose it, and dragons typically only breathe fire in short bursts, so as long as they don't do this too often, it is easy to mistake for fire resistance, which is what the humans have done. A living dragon will replenish its scales over time, like a human replenishes skin, but it would not be a good idea to go swimming in lava or running through forest fires: a dragon would survive only slightly longer than a human under such conditions.
**Dragonhide clothing actually works just like the skin of a living dragon**: the whole thing burns away in that same controlled burst, so people see the Glow. But since you don't have a layer of dead scales underneath, you just end up with hideous burns all over your body. This actually happens to dragons too, if they lose their very last layer of dead scales, which is why dragons try to end their fights well before that happens.
Some quick notes:
- Dragons are typically most comfortable with between 5 and 8 layers of dead scales. Carrying more layers than this gets itchy and stiff, like a callus, and dragons will usually try to groom down if they can't shed naturally. Carrying fewer layers feels sore and exposed, not exactly like a scrape but similar.
- Dragons don't generally know the exact number of layers they have at a given moment (though it shouldn't be too hard for a doctor to count them by performing something like a biopsy). They do know that when it starts to hurt, you need to get out of there.
- Multilayer dragonhide clothing would function, though with two caveats. One, it would be as stiff as multilayer leather clothing in the real world. Two, once you're down to the last layer, you have the single-layer problem again.
- If you had some other fire-resistant thing on under dragonhide, that would protect you. But then why are you wearing dragonhide? (Possibly because the inner layer doesn't need to be quite as good at protecting from fire as the dragonhide was?)
[Answer]
You said it yourself, the dragon hide and it's internal organs are fireproof. For a human wearing a dragon hide, the armor would be unaffected, but the wearer would cook inside his dragon hide shell.
[Answer]
# It does make you fireproof, you're just weak
The wonderful thermal properties of dragonhide make anyone wearing it all but immune to even the hottest flames, with temperatures inside reaching no more than a gentle 100°C. If you can't handle that, it's not the cloak's fault
[Answer]
# It's completely fireproof. It is also an excellent conductor of heat.
Suppose you put on some steel chain mail. It's pretty resistant to fire - not as much as dragon scale, but you can drop that mail right on a campfire and scarcely take the temper out of the steel. Putting it on again? That's another issue! Wearing it in a crowded fire is also not recommended. Big difference between hot metal and asbestos underwear, or [those little cubes of Space Shuttle shielding that NASA used to show off](https://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/space-shuttle-tiles/).
The dragon scales distribute heat all over the surface of the dragon, which can endure the heat well, and dissipates it pretty quickly. *You* don't endure the heat so well.
[Answer]
# The evolutionary view
1. Dragons evolved fire.
2. Dragons evolved fire resistance.
3. Humans discovered dragon fire resistance, started killing dragons to make fire resistant armor for themselves.
4. Dragons now found that fire resistant skin that others would kill you for was of anti-survival value. Dragons evolved an (unspecified here) mechanism to prevent dead dragon hide being used to make fire resistant armor.
5. Humans are now in the process of being selected for not harvesting dragon hide to make armor.
A thought on the mechanism: Maybe the skin winds up focusing a larger heat (external flame) on a smaller heat (the wearer's body) and actually burns you more than not wearing it. This could explain why the fire resistance works when you put the armor on a manikin.
[Answer]
Dragons being fireproof is only misattributed to their skin in a world where cellular biology hasn't been invented yet. Instead, much like regular skin, any kind of resistances are the result of secretions that only exist in living specimens, much like oil in human skin provides some water resistance.
Dragons are constantly producing a fire-resistant chemical from the skin under their scales, and this chemical is only produced while the cells are biologically alive. They can be trapped into the hide if you start the process fresh off the carcass, providing a little bit of fire resistance for a short while afterwards, but these quickly degrade and no longer provide the same benefit. This allows for the rumor of fire resistance to be developed, but not be true for very long.
[Answer]
Perhaps there is some sort of enzyme, when the INSIDE of the skin is exposed to oxygen and heat the enzyme starts breaking down the fire retardant material to a waxy substance that burns.
This process takes a long time though, so the first 27 times (or years) you charge into flame you are fine than on time 28 you face the "dragon's curse" and die terribly. Now wearing the dragon's skin is seen like selling your soul for power or something
[Answer]
Other answers give some interesting practical reasons why dragon hide might not be fireproof, but I'd like to add an alternative explanation for the scenario where dragon hide *is* fireproof.
**The stuff people are buying isn't real dragon hide.**
If people have been buying the hide for decades to centuries, the belief that the stuff is fireproof would've been tested and proven/disproven a long time ago. If the sale of the hide had been happening for so long and people getting torched is a recent thing, then it would stand to reason that the market had been infiltrated with a convincing knock-off material.
Maybe some merchants have figured out that wyrm (breathes poison gas) or wyvern (doesn't have a breath-based attack) is a safer and more abundant source of hide material. As wyrms and wyverns are cousin species to dragons, their hides can be refined to look nearly identical to dragon hide, and their other physical properties are also quite similar (resilience, durability, etc.). However, since wyrms and wyverns don't breathe fire, there is no evolutionary reason for their hides to be fireproof (much to the short-lived dismay of unaware adventurers).
] |
[Question]
[
Lets say an alien trickster wants to trick a group of human astronauts into thinking they’ve been transported to another world far away. But in reality, he wants them to stay on good old Earth, throughout all of this. What place on Earth would be best for faking being on another planet?
*Criteria*
* This place cannot have any obvious life forms. Nothing too complex (Small microbial creatures are fine)
* No humans for at least a few hundred miles, and no signs of their presence.
* Must be somewhat hostile to human life
* Cannot be underwater
[Answer]
The problem your going to have in any open sky area however, is the familiarity of the moon and constellations - a dead giveaway that your still on earth.
To that end, I'd suggest the best place for this scenario would be a large underground cave system, like Reed Flute cave in China:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WOpQk.jpg)
[Answer]
>
> * This place cannot have any obvious life forms. Nothing too complex
> (Small microbial creatures are fine)
> * No humans for at least a few hundred miles, and no signs of their presence.
> * Must be somewhat hostile to human life
> * Cannot be underwater
>
>
>
Inland Antarctica seems to satisfy all the above:
* Doesn't have obvious life form, not animal nor vegetal, it is just a barren extension of ice.
* You won't find any humans, except in the scientific bases
* It is definitely hostile to human life. Ask [Robert Falcon Scott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_Expedition) for info.
* It's not underwater
[Answer]
Two places come to mind immediately;
**The soda lakes of Tanzania**
The soda lakes of Tanzania are quite uncomfortable places for humans to be, and ultimately they fill the brief of 'somewhat' hostile to human life. But, they also *look* the part when you think of an alien landscape.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DlcMx.jpg)
These lakes of soda ash are pink in colour and extremely alkaline, meaning that humans will find them quite uncomfortable to be around even with basic protective clothing. As such, there are no humans around these although you will find flamingos at certain times of the year as they come here to raise their chicks far away from where anything even remotely close to a predator is going to come.
**Coober Pedy, Australia**
Second, there's a place in Australia that looks like an alien landscape for an arid desert planet that was actually used as the location for shooting the original Pitch Black movie with Vin Diesel - [Coober Pedy](https://www.cooberpedy.com/).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ee45q.jpg)
Famous as an area rich in opals and for being so hot that many of the homes are literally carved out underground to escape the heat, there are areas in the surrounds that can give a desolate feel and the sheer heat and lack of water (and the subsequent cold at night) can make this feel like a very uncomfortable place. Its isolation also fits the brief; this is not a place you want to get lost in and not have anyone know you're missing. People die in the Australian Outback all the time through not being prepared for the harsh conditions and the sheer size of the place.
There are bound to be others as well but these are useful because they lack a lot of vegetation. For most humans, seeing a tree or a bush or a flower etc. that they recognise is going to be the killer blow to your illusion. They're going to expect plants to look VERY different to what they know on Earth, so any place with vegetation is going to be hard for your punters to accept as alien. These two places on the other hand don't have a lot of vegetation, or water for that matter, making it an easier sell. Ultimately though, how well you can maintain the illusion is not just dependent on how exotic a location you can find, but how well read your punters are. In today's world, it's going to be a lot harder than it would have been (say) 100 years ago when knowledge was locked in Encyclopaediae that you had to know what you were looking for in order to find things out in them. With the advent of the internet and mass media, the chances of at least one of your punters knowing that they are still on Earth is higher, just simply because they have access to more information now than ever before.
[Answer]
Add Danakil in Ethiopia ..
Volcanic activity and solved salts give multicolored water that's borderline acid and thus dead - and the colors give a nice flavor even combined with a natural azure sky
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SBpTv.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L6FdW.jpg)
Edit: Not even microbes were found in the ponds ... thus they not only appear foreign and dead .. they are deadly, poisonous, acidic
[Answer]
I would say specifically the [dry valleys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Dry_Valleys) of Antarctica rather than the ice sheet. We’re used to the idea that there are ice sheets on Earth, but a valley with no ice or visible life, and very cold temperatures, looks very alien.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zebLf.jpg)
[Answer]
**Use a Human Terrarium**
The single most definitive piece of evidence that you may be somewhere alien is... the aliens.
Instead of putting them in an open field on some plant designed to look alien that just so happens to be able support human life with 1G of gravity, 1 yellow star, and familiar constellations, put them in a giant indoor terrarium. Add plastic Earth plants and fake rocks to help the human's "feel at home". Add a house that looks right, but is not made out the right materials:concrete is painted to look like wood, the bed mattress is basically a giant hunk of rigid styrofoam, etc. Maybe forget to add certain expected features like no sink in the bathroom, or no living room. Have a large glass window on one side of the exhibit that the aliens can see in through, but also faces another alien terrarium with species and apparent climate conditions that are not Earth like. Maybe open up one side of the house so the aliens can see into all of the rooms from the window too.
Use climate controls to make the room a bit uncomfortable but in ways that fit the bill of aliens trying to give humans things that they like. Maybe it's too hot and humid because Earth life does so well in tropical zones. Maybe you put too much oxygen in the air making it easy to hyperventilate, because humans really need their oxygen. Make the lighting in the terrarium mimic a 24-hour day/night cycle.
If the aliens can speak to the humans, they can can further sell the experience by asking them questions about their exhibit to try to dial it in to be more human friendly. "How is the Gravity?", "Is it warm enough for you?", "Can you breath well?", etc. Tell the humans they can not survive outside of the chamber so that they don't try to escape. Have aliens always wear EVA suits and use an airlock whenever they have to enter the human exhibit.
The reason this sort of condition would be so convincing is that any failure to make the environment not feel like Earth would just be perceived as the Aliens doing something right to fake it.
[Answer]
Even if you stick to daytime to avoid the issues raised in the comments, there are still some things that would lead the astronauts to think they're on earth - the sun being the right colour/distance, the temperature being in earth ranges, the fact that they can breathe the air, the exactly-1g gravity, etc.
Indeed, "we're on earth somewhere" requires a far smaller leap of faith than "we've somehow moved lightyears away", so they'll assume they're on earth unless there's some clear evidence that they *can't* be on earth. So you need somewhere on earth with conditions that some very educated people think can't exist on earth. That leaves you exactly one possible answer:
Put them **in a lab somewhere**. Inside that lab, you need to use superior technology to fake non-earth conditions. If you can control their spacesuits, this gets much easier: you just feed fake data into the inside (including feeding in fake atmospheric data telling them that they can't breathe the atmosphere so they don't just open the visor and ruin things), replace the visor with a screen that perfectly fakes what they'd see if they were on some other planet, etc.
Gravity is the hardest thing to fake - there are solutions, but they either require mega-engineering projects that the astronauts would definitely have noticed the construction of (if you're trying to modify gravity by even a few percent for 12 hours by linear acceleration, you need a tower so big that the top absolutely isn't "on earth" by any reasonable definition), or flawed in a way that is liable to be noticed, making them more suspicious of the whole illusion (if you put them in a massive centrifuge (that isn't megaconstruction-scale) and they throw something up in the air, it'll fall down somewhere very different from what they'd expect on a real planet - you can fake the appearance with your helmet-screens, but then you need to do something to *really* move it back to where they expect to find it without them noticing; if you weight the spacesuits, that feels different to higher gravity in a way that astronauts are likely to notice). I think your best bet would be to just make the gravity close enough to earth to make the differences hard to notice and hope they don't get too suspicious about it.
[Answer]
"Lets say an alien trickster wants to trick a group of human astronauts..."
Lets say it can not be done with astronauts (or boy/girl scots).
Those people know about "Celestial navigation". Its just a question of time one of them look up to the night sky and see she/he is not out of earth.
May be placing them into an underground place could make the "trick". A very, very strange underground place on the pretext of protecting them from space radiation.
[Answer]
# Socotra, Yemen
With UFO-like trees as its most notable feature, the island of Socotra looks like it was transported to earth from a distant planet.
[Answer]
Antarctica and Greenland would be a convincing answer. There is no life there and everything there is white and even the sky is white.
Another place is the Atacama desert. Take a picture of it and change the color of the sky from blue to red/light brown and it will look indistinguishable from Mars.
[Answer]
The Vasquez Rocks, in California:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasquez_Rocks>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m598X.jpg)
They have been used in Star Trek several times, and make an especially good practical joke, since the astronauts are likely to realize they are still on earth by stumbling into tourists.
[Answer]
Sudbury, in Canada. After decades of nickel extraction the countryside looks like the surface of the moon, in fact astronauts trained there.
Though this may no longer be the case. I was there 15 years ago, and it seems they were rather ashamed of having made their place look like the moon, so they had started planting millions of little trees.
[Answer]
Haleakala Crater, on Maui also comes to mind.
[Answer]
>
> What place on Earth would be best for faking being on another planet?
>
>
>
There's a specific term for this: [terrestrial analogue sites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_analogue_sites).
I'm particularly familiar with [Río Tinto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Tinto_(river)) in Spain - a river with a concentration of heavy metals so high and a pH so acidic that the water runs literally red, and is hostile to most earth lifeforms. But weird bacteria can survive, so space agencies actually use the site for extremophile research (think "xenobiology") and for testing equipment in extreme conditions.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/544LQ.png)
Unfortunately (for your request), one can see trees a dozen meters away from the riverbed. You might want to consider a fictional underground cave system with the same acidic, heavy-metal-saturated kind of water.
I see a problem with your premise, though:
>
> Let's say an alien trickster wants to trick a group of human **astronauts** into thinking they’ve been transported to another world far away
>
>
>
IMHO, astronauts are knowledgeable of analogue sites, and chances are that some of them have actually been trained in the field of geology in any of them.
You might want to consider a fictional underground cave system with the same acidic, heavy-metal-saturated kind of water, and with anaerobic bacteria replacing all that oxygen with carbon dioxide (or whatever suits)
[Answer]
I would suggest the [Atacama Desert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Desert). It's the driest place on Earth; there are some areas of the desert with no plant or animal life at all. Due to this, it was used as a test location for a prototype of the Mars Curiosity rover, which explored the desert trying to find signs of life.
[Answer]
[RAF Bentwaters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bentwaters), in Suffolk.
Why is this the right answer? Because [it's been done](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Cadets_(TV_series)).
[Answer]
In closed room, with projection mapped all the part of room in front of you, good audio, nice music... Close your eyes...
You are suddenly now on totally different planet...
Or you can get a headcrab on your head and be in empty room, but I prefer having table in middle of room and having projection mapped some good animations... That would be the best.
] |
[Question]
[
Suppose there are several cases of zombie outbreaks across the globe during World War One, it was believed that the Central Powers\* unleashed a deadly fungal disease into the world, hoping to create panics and confusions among the Allies forces.
It is known that conventional weapon like rifles and grenades are ineffective for zombie control, however several governments wanted to ban the use of flamethrower at such critical moment! Why would the government discourage its citizens from possession of a flamethrower as a deterrent against the epidemic? One would catch the disease simply by ingesting contaminated food, or an open wound being exposed to infected bodily fluids, the symptoms show up after 2 hours and at the moment it is incurable and deadly.
\*I'd incorrectly stated axis powers.
[Answer]
The only thing worse than a zombie chasing you... is a FLAMING zombie chasing you!
Your zombies don't immediately die once set ablaze. Sure, EVENTUALLY enough of their flesh has burned off to render them immobile, but until then they spread the fire to houses, forests, and humans nearby. The danger from raging wild- and city fires is too big to justify for such a slow method of zombie-killing.
The main advantages of a flamethrower against human opponents are the fear it strikes into humans (fire bad!) - which zombies do not have - and the ability to burn down cover (high grass, copses of trees, buildings) - which one might not want to do if the zombies don't USE cover anyway, and the buildings are all yours.
[Answer]
There are some species of fungi were their spores can be dispersed by large fires. This is a link to an article on the transport of spores in the smoke from biomass fires.
<http://www.patarnott.com/atms360/pdf_atms360/04034Mims.pdf>
There are also some plants that require forest or bush fires to enable their seeds to germinate, although fungi are not plants a similar mechanism could exist.
Your fungal disease that causes Zombies could be one that survives fire and could survive a flamethrower attack even if the host body was destroyed.
[Answer]
Flamethrowers weren't all that great in that situation as a weapon:
>
> "The weapon is limited to only a few seconds of burn time since it uses
> fuel very quickly, requiring the operator to be precise and
> conservative".
>
>
>
And in WW1 there were no practical containers for fuel. So i don't really think that would be a great apocalypse weapon.
Still from a government viewpoint, do you really want civilians to carry a weapon which if not well used could burn a whole building to the ground? Especially if you knew they would use it in a panic situation and you were at war so it wasn't easy to get the means to put out fires? Spending precious fuel
EDIT:
Also, Germany were the proud users of the flamethrowers (Flammenwerfer) (~2 minute burn time on each load) in WW1, the British alternative was... a bit heavy (Livens Large Gallery Flame Projecto) ... and only appeared latter in the war.
[Answer]
During the apocalypse fuel becomes a scarce resource and the government think fuel is better used for transportation/heating/power/lighting.
[Answer]
Because a lot of people use flamethrower against zombie without proper precautions or skills, causing uncontrolled fire, severe burns and dead. Consequently, government decide that flamethrower kill more people than they save, resulting a ban.
[Answer]
# Lots of uncontrolled fires
If your infrastructure is disrupted, fires become way bigger problem. Your firemen would probably be overworked as they are even without citizens setting fire to whatever looks suspicious - and flaming zombies setting fire to everything else.
[Answer]
Humanitarianism?
While you mentioned that zombies are probably incurable, it is probably not considered humane to kill an insane or diseased person just to protect others.
This is probably not a reason you want to use in your setting though, because your story might be full of zombie killing.
But even if you slaughter zombies like animals, modern humans always avoid burning animals alive.
[Answer]
Some governments simply don't believe that there's a zombie apocalypse. It sounds absurd, after all. Doubtless those OTHER governments harping on about zombies are just looking for an excuse to use inhumane weapons to subjugate their citizens.
[Answer]
# Because burn wounds are nasty
Burn wounds are extremely nasty stuff, especially if your healthcare system has broken down and you have no access to proper medication. A cut or a scratch you can deal with fairly easy, in comparison to a burn wound, that is one big open gate for all sorts of pathogens to enter your body. Even if a fumble with the flamethrower does not kill your comrades, just a few splashes will cause casualties.
Then there is always the risk of setting fire to everything around you... which is bad.
And as mentioned above: a zombie that tries to eat your face is bad news. A **flaming** zombie that tries to eat your face **while setting you on fire**... well... let us not go there... it is a silly place.
[Answer]
I expected to read very detailed answers, there are literaly tons of reasons to not use flamethrowers, Just glad most reasons was not already told in other answers.
Flamethrowers are weapons designed to kill people finding refuge in very small spaces (American invasion to Japan Isles) like bunkers.
First of all **it would not be a very effective weapon against zombies** (not if you are in immediate danger):
* **They do breath?** Mostly not (they do smell, but in most movies Zombies just walk underwater, that made me think they do not breath)
* **They do rely much on senses?** Not likely, and could still wander even if blinded
How much time is required by a flamethrower to kill a zombie? The time to severly damage the brain or at least to burn muscles that allow moving it. How much time is required to cook meat? More than few seconds for sure.
>
> **You don't want a weapon that require 1 minute to kill an enemy that can be killed by 1 bullet**
>
>
>
Not to mention that 1 gun with 1 bullet is much more lightweight than a full flamethrower suit.
People dying because of flamethrowers mostly dies because of damages to plumbs or because start running as crazy under enemy fire, or just because commit suicide with weapons at its disposal (or because explosives it was bringin are ignited by the flames).
That weapon seems much more usefull to kill humans rather than zombies.
**Also note:**
* You cannot say if someone killed by a flamethrower was a Zombie or a Human (may matter to know for public health stuff)
* You cannot recognize who was the burnt person (easy kill someone and then disguise by removing clothes etc)
* Using flamethrower inside buildings is very Dangerous
* You could kill anyone who was hiding from zombies (you burn zombies in a house where there was children hiding)
* Fuel is a rare resource in a zombie apocalypse world, you usually prefer it for vehicles. Assuming flamethrowers use fuel
* Difficult to create ammunitions: gunpowder much easy to create, you just need to know which ingredients to mix, instead fuel and flamethrowers ammuntions requires a full oil industry (in addition to weapon industry).
**Another important reason:**
>
> **What do zombies eat? Meat. What do you think zombies would do if they start to smell that delicious barbecue of burning meat? Zombies would just come in hordes to your current place.**
>
>
>
[Answer]
# Fire Accelerates the Zombie Mutation
In the movie [Evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_(2001_film)), alien microbes from a meteor quickly evolve into threatening creatures. The scientists later discover that fire dramatically increases the growth of the creatures rather than killing them. I doubt there could be a hard science explanation for this; but if you don't mind, your zombies could be like the aliens, using the fire's energy to become stronger.
If you want a slightly more plausible explanation, the zombies have fire-retardant skin. The government doesn't want civilians using flamethrowers for the same reason they tell people not to use hand sanitizer all the time. Each time a group of zombies gets torched, there's a chance that some of the zombie virus will survive and infect more humans to make an even thicker-skinned generation of zombies. It's kinda hard to chop their heads off when their necks are made of alligator hide.
[Answer]
It hardly seems necessary to ban civilians from using flamethrowers. Where would they get them from?
The British and Americans don't seem to have produced portable flamethrowers during WWI, the French did by 1917, but the military would have had them all. The French weren't selling arms to their civilians during the war, their army needed all that could be made.
[Answer]
seeing as the zombies were a fungal infection, airborne spores etc. by burning the zombies the heat from a flamethrower would cause spores to rise and travel further, infecting regions easier, spreading into uninfected safe zones etc.
Edit: Also, you stated world war one allies, which I would assume to be more England etc. than america (as the Americans only joined the war later on) which doesn't have second amendment rights etc.) Therefore the weapons may have been banned as they are a high powered weapon, which requires special training, large and volatile equipment strapped to back etc. (and in world war one they would often explode with only a little jostling) which, one, would suck if it blew up on you and destroyed your camp, and two, if you died with one of these on you are now an *explosive suicide zombie* and shooting you would most likely kill whoever shot you
also I imagine during an zombie apocalypse, if governments were still in existence then they would restrict weaponry (other than small arms etc.). you wouldn't want untrained civilians accidentally shooting everyone (or your own soldiers) when you're trying to keep things under control
[Answer]
The flamethrowers are causing the Zombies to mutate resulting in zombies to excrete contagious vapor that can infect bird life thus affecting our food supplies.
[Answer]
Flamethrowers are a relatively short-ranged weapon.
Even if they were able to melt a zombie instantly, you would have to be near your enemies, who could end up surrounding and haunting you. And as stated in other answers, real flamethrowers aren't zombie-melters at all, so the chances of surviving when using them are low.
Now imagine that some genius starts spreading that using flamethrowers is the good move. Then a lot of people would try building home made ones and go haunting zombies. This would end up with those people dying or getting infected, along with building burning.
By banning them, government would avoid that kind of close combat spirit among the citizen and the consequent growth of the zombie army.
[Answer]
**The zombies produce methane gas which is extremely flammable**
In this situation, using fire against zombies would cause explosions in confined spaces, or uncontrollable fires in open spaces.
The gas would be produced by the digestive system of the zombie, or as a consequence of decomposition. Methane is an odorless gas, so in close quarters situations, such as abandoned hallways or interior rooms with closed doors, you could also encounter the danger of the methane surreptitiously replacing all the oxygen in the enclosed area. In that case, you wouldn't even get to the flammable part before unexpectedly passing out.
[Answer]
No government system would be able to enforce this type of ban. While I totally agree with those that mention forest fires or building burning down. We must never forget that during the zombie invasion, it's diseases that will kill humanity in the end.
The amount of corpses around will be the perfect breeding ground for pathogens. Flamethrowers could then be used to deal with these zombies. I believe it's more of when you use it then if you should.
For example: If you manage to place yourself on high ground with a fence or stone wall protection you. Using a flamethrower might be a good idea. It takes away the risk of going out and disposing of the corpses.
[Answer]
# Human right reasons
You can't harm other man without a clearly justifiable self-defense situation. Only to buy a flamethrower with the clear intent to later harm others is criminality, a preparation to commit murder.
Against our citizens belonging to the *changed livingness minority*. I hope you know, it significantly aggravates your crime.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm designing a setting (or in this case, a game) that is dealing with the early days of a colony on a new Earth-like planet (but without any contact with Earth). In this case, while there are no life forms on the planet, there is an Earth-like temperature and pressure and therefore significantly large oceans similar to those on Earth. Therefore, there is the question: in choosing where to place the initial colony, is there any reason to settle on the coast?
Off the top of my head, I can think of two reasons why on Earth one would choose a coastal spot: access to fish and access to trade. But in this scenario, there are neither fish nor other colonies with which to trade.
So if this is the situation, why would someone choose to initially settle on the coast?
[Answer]
I can think of two reasons:
* Access to drinkable water. If the oceans are salty or dirty, the settlers might establish desalinisation and/or water purifying plant (assuming today's technological level).
* Travel and cargo transport. Assuming the settlers don't have hovercrafts or helicopters, if the landscape is untamed, it would most likely be easier to travel long distances (for exploration in initial stages, and for trade latter on) via waterways, than to construct roads, let alone railroads. Transport of sizeable cargo (from mining camp, forest, or stone quarry, for example) would certainly be easier by boat.
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Water has a high specific heat. Consequently, the more water that is near a place, the more even the temperatures are. Deserts are notoriously burning hot in the day and freezing at night, but even places not far inland often see greater temperature swings than the shore.
Against this there is the effect of more precipitation.
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**The coasts are the only place level enough to build.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TXLeA.jpg)
Depicted: google maps terrain shot of the coast of Greenland.
In your lifeless world, the terrain is rugged and steep. If you go inland any distance you are hugging the side of a mountain. Only on the coasts where the ocean has weathered the rocks can you find land that is somewhat level.
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>
> On average, 44 % of total water abstraction in Europe is used for agriculture, 40 % for industry and energy production (cooling in power plants), and 15 % for public water supply. The main water consumption sectors are irrigation, urban, and manufacturing industry.
> [Water use by sectors](https://www.eea.europa.eu/archived/archived-content-water-topic/water-resources/water-use-by-sectors)
>
>
>
You need water for industrial processes.
Agriculture in the colony may represent a much smaller percentage due to small initial population and probably better growing systems.
Energy production won't be significant directly (I supposed the colonists will not use hydroelectrics) but water is a very useful coolant. Cheap too if abundant.
Industrial production will have a much higher percentage though because you have to build all the necessary structures and tools for your budding colony.
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**Future Considerations**
I would say there isn't a great reason your new colony would set up shop there AT FIRST. A large river would be better, or something like a freshwater Great Lake. You still get access to all the water you'd need for hydro, you'd be able to see the flood planes and plan accordingly, and a large enough river isn't going to just dry out on you. Plus it's freshwater, no desalinization needed! Pick one a couple hundred miles inland near the equator, and you can be guaranteed (as much as anything can be) stable climes. An oceanfront colony has most of those advantages, but the downside of your colonists rolling the dice on whether they are set up in Hurricane ally.
That being said, your colonists are here for the long haul! Their children's children's children will live on this world, maybe a second wave of colonists is expected at some point. A city by the sea would enable it to become a center of trade. There's no life yet, but seeding the planet with plankton and fish and whatnot will happen in time, and at that point your colony is placed to exploit that future resource. If you can judge the hurricane season correctly you can avoid picking a spot prone to them, and the life is good!
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There's some good answers here but there's an even more fundamental thing going on than has been discussed thus far:
## Humans are drawn to water as a basic instinct
Basically from every angle (anthropological studies, psychological studies, sociological studies, brain studies, etc etc etc) the evidence is clear and conclusive: humans (as a whole, obviously there are individual exceptions) like being near water and will seek it out whenever possible. It is something that is almost certainly driven by genetics and evolution, but it goes beyond that even.
<https://www.salon.com/2014/07/19/why_our_brains_love_the_ocean_science_explains_what_draws_humans_to_the_sea/>
[http://www.tlu.ee/~arro/Happy%20Space%20EKA%202014/blue%20space,%20health%20and%20wellbeing.pdf](http://www.tlu.ee/%7Earro/Happy%20Space%20EKA%202014/blue%20space,%20health%20and%20wellbeing.pdf)
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While I can agree that settling near fresh water has its advantages, I envision your world/planet to be one in which the colonists bring technology with them--so settling on the coast, in my view, would be preferable to literally anything else.
As mentioned by others, coastal civilization offers the following:
**- Multiple means of trade/travel:**
If we're thinking of settling, which means thinking for the foreseeable future, that means being a vital port of trade and travel. Many (though not all, of course) of Earth's largest and most successful cities are on the ocean or have close river access to an ocean. This offers the benefit of trade and transport via land and water.
Aside: We can attribute much of coastal development to marine life for food but as you have said, fish aren't there... *yet*. Marine (and land) life should be part of a colonization plan. If not for food, wildlife should be integrated with the ocean (and land) for natural regulation of the water covering the planet. Yes, the planet is habitable now, but will it stay that way without wildlife to participate in temperature/chemical stabilization? Many nature documentaries (recent example *Our Planet*, Netflix) discuss the role living creatures have on regulating changes made by the planet. For this reason, I'm thinking if colonists don't bring wildlife along, they need to plan for planetary stabilization by technological means.
**- Access to water, regardless of drinkability:**
It would be unwise for colonists to settle another planet without plans for processing water into a drinkable form. Ocean water is terrible for us and our colonists should know that even without contact with Earth. There's a fair chance that most bodies of water in the universe are not safe for us.
**- Help with industry:**
Industrial cooling--yes; waste dumping--I hope not! Colonists could quickly destabilize the planet's uninhabited (and eventually inhabited) oceans by dumping waste; tourism (unavoidable! see eps answer:
```
> Humans are drawn to water as a basic instinct
```
Coasts aside, we also love to build/develop by lakes and rivers--people love water probably because we know it's something we need--even when we can't drink it. We enjoy to be near water and live near it. Tourism will inevitably be a future industry and bodies of water will support that industry.
**- Climate regulation/comfort:** \*
Coastal cities have the added benefit of temperature regulation. Differences in daytime and nighttime temperatures are smaller in settlements near oceans. Coastal cities tend to experience more precipitation (which can be a fresh water source, but should be a backup since colonists should be prepared to harvest and process whatever water they find). Coastal cities experience ocean breezes that drastically improve comfort. There is a huge difference in the feeling of 90 degrees in Miami (on the ocean) and Orlando (central Florida--not even that far from the ocean, but still a noticeable difference).
Presence of moisture also promotes stability when flooding occurs. If you settle in a dry area, precipitation (though rarer) has no place to go and causes more destructive flash floods. Wetter, coastal areas usually have enough moist, less packed soil to absorb floodwaters at a manageable rate. Keep in mind, paving over this wet soil will negate that water absorption (see: Houston flooding from Hurrican Harvey (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Harvey#Houston_metropolitan_area_flooding>))
\*Depending on proximity to the planet's poles and nearby landmasses, hurricanes/typhoons could be an issue. (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone>)) See: American Southeast getting hurricanes formed near West Africa; Asia getting typhoons from the open ocean; Central America experiencing El Niños (desert meets ocean)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/H9DCQ.jpg)
Your colonists may not know these things because they don't have contact with Earth, as you mentioned. But I do hope the colonists have a sort of knowledge base with which to make these decisions. Again, I can agree with developing near any body of water to be a viable option--settlements should absolutely be near *some* form of water. That said, being on the oceans offers more advantages than disadvantages with preparation and planning.
One last thing I would take into account: type of bedrock on the coast. Some coastal areas (Florida again, for instance) sit on less dense, less stable limestone which prohibits a lot of underground and mega-tall development (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Florida>). On the other hand, New York City sits on very thick, dense bedrock that allows for construction of both large skyscrapers and vast underground public transit, sewage, and communications systems (<http://www.classichistory.net/archives/nyc-bedrock> ; <https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2020/05/27/how-geology-shaped-new-york-citys-skyline/>)
Also, Aquifers--the great hidden fresh water source! (<https://pubs.usgs.gov/ha/ha730/ch_a/gif/A004_us.gif>)
It's your Earth-*like* planet, so your rules!
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[Tidal Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power) - possibly not as a *main* power source, but it certainly provides a useful backup for emergencies, especially when paired with suitable batteries. It is more consistent and predictable than wind power, and better spread out throughout the day than Solar power.
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Lifeless planet has no oxygen in the atmosphere. To manufacture it, you need energy (supposedly solar) and water. So beach (lake or ocean) would be **prime place** to start a colony.
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Other people have already covered the benefits of wind power, water, transport, terraforming, and climate, but there is one more big reason.
**leisure activity**
Oceans and beaches have high entertainment/leisure value, swimming, surfing, games, ect. Beach activities tend to be low on material demands thus easy to do without diverting resources and happy colonists are productive colonists.
If you have your choice of sites why would you not choose one that also helps keep your colonists happy. Keep in mind there is nothing stopping you from picking a pace where a major river meets the ocean, so you have ample freshwater on top of all the other benefits.
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I propose that you would live by an ocean initially so that you could being **biological teraforming**.
In addtion to things mentioned already such as:
* Ease of navigation and transport by water (road and rails all need building, seas & rivers do not)
* Access to a water source for industrial processes such as cooling
* Access to an ocean for the dumping of waste materials (animal or industrial)
* Access to water for consumption (although a fresh water river would be a much better source to save the power of desalination and even better if you can move large boats up river to expand your harvestable resource area)
Although your planet is reasonably earth like at the moment it is unlikley to have a source of Oxigen without a biological process to produice it. A very easy way to make a lot of biologyical material is to seed the oceans with life. Currents will allow the lifeforms to rabidly spread far and wide much faster than they are likely to do in or on the surface of soil.
Your planet may have a breathable atmospher initially by luck but Oxigen is a highly reactive chemical. It will be depleted by chemical processes quite quickly until it is something more stable (like CO2). The main process of generating Oxigen on Earth is through biological actions that transform CO2 into C and O. Plants, baceria and plankton all can do this to some degree. Your planet likely has a water cycle already but without an Oxigen cycle it will soon (in geological terms) not have a beathable atmosphere.
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This answer was inspired by the thead of comments with @MSalters & @JamesQF
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There might not be life on the planet, but your crew is alive, and to stay alive they need water.
Proximity to the ocean will ensure availability of water which will surely need some refinement to be made drinkable and usable for other purposes, but which is for sure way easier than having to search for water in places like the outback or the Sahara desert. Don't forget that thermodynamics holds all over the universe, and whatever system they are using they need to dump heat somewhere.
From the scientific point of view, moreover, proximity to the ocean ensures a better capability of exploring the early origin of life.
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# Long distance transport is cheap by water
This is true in Earth and any Earth like planet.
You are worried that is no other colonies when talking about your *initial* colony. So, there be will other colonies, and soon.
Why build your inicial colony with no consideration of this?
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**Large bodies of waters act as heat sinks** i.e. they tend to moderate temperature differences and atmospheric moisture content over land in the immediate vicinity of the body of water in question.
For the most part deserts (allowing for local prevailing wind patterns) are on Earth located in the interior regions of continents, far away from large bodies of water. As a result they tend to have larger/more extreme temperature cycles than other regions i.e. they have on average a far hotter day time temperature and a far colder night time temperature than other regions closer to water and are generally less habitable as a result.
Put simply water absorbs heat better than rock/soil does and then releases it at a stable rate. A colony placed close to an ocean (doesn't have to be ON the shoreline BTW) of a lifeless world will experience less severe climatic extremes and higher atmospheric moisture content than one placed in the center of a continental land mass. That greatly assists with any transforming operations your colonists want to undertake.
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## Landmark (this is a good oxymoron)
Normally when playing survival games , I like to settle on the coast because its the edge of land. it gives u a landmark for navigation.
## Safety
Usually when humans use the ocean, there are boats involved. this keeps them safe from most water creatures and hazards. anchoring can be used to keep away from rocks and repairs/emergency procedures can keep up with harsh weather.
Hazards on the land such as volcanoes, are usually avoidable if u have a backup plan on the ocean-side.
if any other people become tribal (thus warring for resources) or infected with some kind of infectious disease, being near the ocean can provide quick access to a safe haven or quarantined area
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[Pardon me addressing the OP as “you”; I think it is all going to sound rather contrived otherwise.]
[I suggest searching “terraforming” on this site. I found this:
https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/165596/an-earth-like-planet-is-found-in-another-solar-system-what-are-the-top-prioriti/165600#165600
.]
[I am taking it that you *want* the colonists to settle near the coast.]
They will probably settle where they arrive. Conversely, I take it they came in from space, so they (presumably) could and would have chosen where to land/settle. (Conversely again, having a *very* good idea of all the pro’s and con’s tends towards high suspension of disbelief.)
Human beings have been short-sighted in their built-infrastructure planning for the whole of human existence. (Examples: • building on farmable land and • putting traffic lights at/under freeway overpasses.) I think that the reason is that planning well takes so much additional time and work. Conversely, this particular case is (presumably) very thoroughly planned (“money no object”).
I take it that the oceans and rivers are H2O (and that they were able to establish this). A quick Google search reveals that ocean salt comes from rocks, so the ocean *will* be salty.
The governing factor is that (presumably) the spaceship must have been able to support all the people on board for decades — meaning that it is a functioning closed system. (The spaceship would have been designed with a power source with extra capacity, for when they came to setting themselves up on their new planet.) It is tempting to think that they would race out of the spaceship and start madly working on surviving on the new planet. I am sure that they would work hard on making the planet support (their) life, but there is no danger nor deadline involved.
The point is that the absolutely crucial thing is landing the spaceship somewhere where it will be safe and useful, to the very highest possible level of certainty. It would remain their home for months to years.
Other people have suggested reasons for setting up on the coast. I would like to suggest that landing the spaceship on or very near the beach is a very reliable way of rusting it away in literally a year or two, or a decade or two, depending on the distance. *Near* the coast is much more sensible.
(One pivotal issue is that of whether or not the planet’s air is breathable, or whether they have to use space suits. I take it that, in this case, it is. I think it would be foolhardy, nonetheless, to allow any of the planet’s air into the spaceship, nor to breathe any of it, until it has been thoroughly checked. This is a short-term issue, unless you want the story to be that the air, or the environment generally, is unsafe.)
I am thinking that they will have a long-term plan to “multiply and fill the earth”, and that this would govern their priorities. I am no expert, but I am fairly confident that the main first thing would be to get farming going. They would certainly use water from the planet, not from the spaceship, for this farming.
Arable soil is not just dirt; Earth dirt [that will support plants] is/supports a complex ecosystem. If this planet is lifeless, the soil is going to be lifeless. (Actually, there might *not be* soil; you would have to ask someone else. [I would guess, from “The Martian”, that *any* dust can be soil.]) Either way, there is masses of work involved in getting farming going.
Normally, a flood plain is the best place for crops. Under these artificial conditions, it might not be; I do not know. Either way, I would expect them to look for a large flattish area near water (a large lake or river)… with a secure, flat, sheltered spot nearby for the spaceship.
Short- to medium-term, they want mineral resources nearby.
I do agree that being near the ocean seems like a good idea, but I would consider that a long-term issue. (They would want to seed the ocean with fish, I would think. Unfortunately, the smallest fish eat something other than fish, so that is a long-term project.) Finding a fully ideal spot would be radically unlikely. (As I said) I think that their initial site would be governed… medium- to large-scale, by available minerals, and small-scale by setting up farming.
I can not see them *building* a desalination plant. They might well have one on the spaceship. Nonetheless, I can not think of a compelling reason for them to *have* to set up near the ocean and run a desalination plant, short of there being no rivers. (Some rivers on Earth are unreliable in some years, but I think there are some that are reliable.)
I suppose the conclusion is that landing somewhat near the coast is desirable long-term — notably for access to [the] other minerals (and long-term they might set up other colonies with different plant ecosystems, and thus resources) — and that it is no stretch for your story to supply a suitable spot that is near the coast.
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I would like to think, that if one is planning a self-sufficient colony on another planet, then you would take everything you would need in order to survive on the planet. The colonist will also have knowledge of why the planet is lifeless
We will likely have some sort of water purification device in case of non-potable water at the source (likely). If the land is arable, we not only have the means to start agriculture, but the ability to irrigate via the waters nearby ... hopefully. Also, some device to ensure or manufacture soil fertility. We may just skip the dirt and start with hydroponics. There are options. Depending on the technology level, some form of mining automatons could get us the raw martials needed to expand.
The colony ship itself is likely set up to be able to be lived in for the medium term while the colony is begun. I would expect it to be able to not only survive the space trip but to be able to be used for a good time as a terrestial dwelling.
Overall, a coastline landing site provides the best chance for a large quantity of both water and land with which to work with.
One interesting, but unmentioned point is that by aiming for the coatline, you can land the ship either on the land or in the water. The land might not be conducive to both landing the colony ship on it and using it as a base of operations to spread out from.
In addition, it might be decided at the point of arrival, that the colony will begin underwater due to changes in the information about the planet since arrival. While that provides its own challenges, the water may also provide critical shielding from certain things above.
Remember, the sun is a deadly laser.
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## To have rapid access to radiation shielding
Solar radiation is a problem on earth, but we deal with it pretty easily. We put a roof over our heads, we wear sunscreen, trees protect us. But every so often, the sun spits out a bunch of high energy protons directly at us. There are also random gamma bursts from mysterious stellar objects.
Water does an excellent job of blocking this radiation, a meter of water can reduce a gamma burst to less than 1%, and 2 meters to 1% of 1%. 10 meters of water is typically used to block neutron and proton radiation in nuclear reactors, and should be sufficient against a devastating CME.
Your area of space may be filled with known and unknown hazardous radiation sources, and you need to be protected, either by building your colony underwater, pumping water to land and covering your colony with it, or having panic rooms in the ocean that you can quickly get into from land. Underground bunkers would work, but a planet without life is probably a planet without dirt, and you would need to bore directly into rock, a very high energy process requiring lots of resources like drilling rigs and bits.
Continually keeping several meters of water on top of an aboveground colony seems like a bad idea, failure of the dome can kill everyone, and the engineering cost sounds quite high to me.
Having your colony be submerged all the time is also expensive, more exotic coatings are required to protect against corrosion due to constant exposure, and the structural integrity of the buildings requires specific design and lots of material. Submersion only when needed still requires designs that an withstand the pressure.
A panic room setup is more reasonable, there is a smaller structure with a tram or some other high speed transport to take you through a tunnel into the submerged area, and the aboveground side of the tunnel is in the center of the colony for rapid evacuation. You could even have automated evacuation, people sleeping in their beds are enveloped in a small craft and literally dumped into a pneumatic tube. There may not be a lot of time to take shelter.
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1. Easy access to water.
2. Easy access to water for waste dumping.
3. Easy access to water for industrial cooling.
4. Trade by ship.
5. Easy access to ocean based mines.
6. Pleasure in beach lounging.
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The colony's space transport is large (for some value of 'large'). There was no guarantee that the distant world would have a flat area large enough for the transport, plus the stresses from sitting on spindly legs under gravity are different from the stresses of space travel, so the transport is designed to float on or in water. The colony is established on the nearest inhabitable land.
The absence of life forms might be a bonus since the transport wouldn't kill anything during landing (nor if it can and does take off again).
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All the industries like Power Generation, cloth manufacturing you name it, need a large amount of water
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Lot of good answers already. Perhaps one to add is that starting terraforming may be easier done in water. I mean that's how it worked the first time round.
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**Biotic compatibility**
Actually, having a good climate but no life is not that bad. Alien life almost always has different biochemical properties, such as chirality, which make it unusable for human usage and consumption. In order to grow Terran crops, you will need to completely replace the soil in a large area, destroying the native ecosystem. After all, not the native creatures are aliens. WE are the aliens in this case.
On a lifeless planet, you don’t need to do any of that. You just need to regularly bring humus and seeds from Earth. Or, if there is no contact, put enough of that on your ship. You can bring various animals and plants and immediately start building a Terran ecosystem from scratch, without having to worry about tasty but diarrhea-causing fruits, irritated natives, or worse, disgusting monsters and predators.
Living near a coast is advantageous for many reasons, some of them described in the previous answers. You could build a desalinization plant and use the seawater for irrigation. If there are serious tides, you can close off a bay or a fjord and build a power plant. And finally, the climate is usually best near the sea, which functions as a thermal mediator, fixating heat during the day and dissipating it during the night. The further you go from the coast, the more severe become the temperature variations between day and night. This is bad for humans and all animals and plants participating in the mission (unless they are native to deserts, but I doubt that you want to do that).
If you are afraid of flooding or extreme tides, you can always build dykes.
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I am writing a fantasy story, set in a period that is, technologically, much like 15th century Europe. Warriors still ride horses, swords are used in combat, and the occasional plague often hits a city. In my fantasy realm, magic exists and is known as fact.
Magic users, known commonly as sorcerers, have powers that come directly from God. They have the ability to conjure up spells, change weather, strike people with directed lightning, and, more advanced wizards can enchant worthy people with good luck, and tell the future.
I want the sorcerers in my world to stay a quiet group, that don’t interfere with politics or people above ground. (The wizards live in underground caverns.) But, it would make sense that at least a few wizards would want to use their powers to gain riches, fame, women and power.
So: What would be a good reason why sorcerers wouldn’t use their powers to take over kingdoms?
* God can’t remove wizards' powers once they're bestowed.
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Once you take it over, you have to run the blasted thing. Leave running the kingdom to those who enjoy that work, whilst the mages play with magic and create special effects that would make George Lucas call his lawyers.
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"But, it would make sense that at least a few wizards would want to use their powers to gain riches, fame, women, and power."
Riches? You can just summon up wealth or make a philosopher's stone to create gold from lead. Who really needs it? What can you buy that you can't summon?
Fame? Again they're wizards. People already know who they are
Women? No woman can compete with the toe-curling pleasure of a summoned succubus or compelled angel.
Power? Well, they already have power. They're wizards. Why would they want the headache of ruling?
Wizards are all about power and their power is from learning magic and new spells.
You'd actually have a hard time convincing a wizard to care about mortal issues.
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The involvement of God does make things easier. Here are several options, which aren't mutually exclusive.
## **A Gift and a Curse**
You say the wizards were promised their powers wouldn't be taken from them. That doesn't prevent God from inserting other caveats though. If magic is used for 'unrighteous' reasons, the power could turn against the user for example. A wizard could find himself incinerated by his own fireball or struck by the lightning he was trying to channel. The curse could also work in other ways, like an obvious Mark of Cain appearing on the bodies' of the errant mages.
## **Disciplinary Committee**
Straightforward enough. The wizards have a code of conduct to be followed strictly. Any violations will be handled by a Magical Affairs Investigation Department, who implement extremely harsh and creative punishments.
## **No One Expects the Spanish**
Magic comes from God, but does the common populace know that? You can have a Vatican-equivalent that hates the sorcerers and are just waiting for the slightest opportunity to incite the masses against them. Any attempt to dominate the smallfolk would result in an armed uprising and the wizards would have to resort to genocide to keep the peasants in line, maybe not even then. If the monarchs of the realms are threatened by the mages they would mobilise their armies to hunt them down too.
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**Make their power incompatible with rulership**
Monarchs do not directly rule any kingdom bigger than a small tribe. They rule through key supporters - their treasurer, generals, administrators, spymaster etc. The game of politics requires balancing the wishes and needs of these key supporters to maintain their loyalty. Foreign ambassadors representing powerful neighbours are also important players that must be placated.
This means that a monarch must be willing and able to spend the majority of their time dealing with these key people, even if they are isolated from the majority of the populace. So let's look at reasons why sorcerers may be unable to meet this requirement:
**The mindset necessary to be a sorcerer is incompatible with the social interactions necessary for ruling.** The mental characteristics that allow someone to use magic may also mean that the person is psychologically unable or unwilling to speak publicly. Glossophobia (fear of public speaking), social anxiety disorder and/or autism spectrum are all conditions that would make a person want nothing to do with ruling a kingdom in an age where personal contact was unavoidable. If sorcerers all inherently have one of these conditions then they will not be rulers.
**Sorcerer comfort is inversely proportional to the number of people in the vicinity.** Sorcerers are telepathic (since they can assess whether people are "worthy") and receive unwanted mental pressure from nearby minds within a certain radius (eg Buffy Season 3 Episode 18 - Earshot). They can control their own mental emanations - thus allowing them to form communities with other sorcerers - and shield against a certain number of nearby unshielded minds. However, the mental pressure will make them increasingly uncomfortable in the vicinity of significant numbers of non-sorcerers. Given this constraint sorcerers will avoid population centres, which they cannot do if they want to rule a kingdom.
Interesting question - good luck with the project.
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I'll just throw this out there: **Let** some of them rule.
You're doing a what-if-magic-were-real parallel to 15th century Europe? Well, the mages—esp. ones getting their power directly from the Almighty—are just stand-ins for the promises and threats of the clergy having been accurate.
# The nobility are *going* to give them lands and titles for favors.
You don't need to sabotage or sugarcoat that.
# There *were* church states; they tended to be tiny basketcases.
So long as wizards are asexual, homosexual, or impotent (carrying over the church's demands regarding celibacy and/or trad. magic's ideas about harnessing male potency), **(a)** they're usually not leaving heirs and **(b)** never leaving ones recognized as legitimate ("You can't his heir. Wizards don't do *that*." "Me dad did." "Sod off."); **(c)** their apprentices can tend to kill them **(d)** when their experiments or **(e)** quests don't and **(f)** they can never get power until they're already very powerful themselves **(g)** which tends to happen in old age **(h)** when they're already about to croak anyway.
**Other realms would be able to exploit disunity among the mages during succession crises, which would happen, oh, every six months or so**.
The most powerful wizardly realms would have to be run by uneasy cooperation of factions, who would—like the medieval papal states—usually have to compromise by electing elderly moderates or factionalists with a foot already in the grave. You'd get a few like Innocent III able to compel emperors into token submission but competent emperors would assemble their own (in this case more pious) clergy to uphold orderly human civilization. They'd also fight tooth and nail to limit bequests that limited their manpower or taxation and support pauperist movements to limit the church's worldly presence. The majority of your wizopes and wizhops are just going to rush in like Roman governors or Soviet apparatchiks to exploit their position and grant favors to toadies as quickly as possible, creating chaos and lowering the prestige of this 'institutional' arrangement.
You don't need to go that way, but it could be an excellent entrance into the era's worldview; in any case, you should deal with the dynamics that would push your society in that direction (noble favors, bequests, nonfamilial succession, &c).
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Just another possible reason:
**To keep magic, you need to devote time**
For example, perhaps a sorcerer needs to meditate hours per day to grow/maintain his power. Ruling a kingdom can take a fair amount of time, and just meditating hours ins't viable.
**Culture**
Perhaps the sorcerers have sort of seperate society - they actually look down on kings, because those poor sods dont even have magic. Also, do you know how much *work* running a kingdom is ? Ain't nobody got time for that. Those non-magical people just aren't worth investing that amount of time into, at least for daily life purposes non-magic people like kings have to do.
For wars and emergencies of course, they could still be available. And in exchange for that help, they're normally supported by society. Lets say that all farmers give 1% of their crop to the sorcerers(depends on sorcerer rarity of course, but in most worlds with magic this would mean that sorcerers have an abundance of food), and in return the sorcerers guarantee that there's no natural disaster, so that there WILL be a crop....lets just say medieval farmers would appreciate such an arrangement. And for the sorcerers it means an easy life, your basic needs taken care of, and you only have to actually go do something rarely.
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## Wizard Law prevents them from interfering
You said the majority of wizards stay away from mundane politics, and this can be the basis of our solution. As the society has a larger number of Wizards that choose to abstain rather an interfere, then the larger group can establish a law against interfering with the mundane world.
**No sane wizard would dare challenge this law, as they would risk antagonizing the entire kingdom of wizards.** While the law would be enforced in a slightly different way to how mundane humans would enforce it, the principles would be the same.
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## Fear
Yes, your sorcerers are quite powerful. But they have to sleep sometime. They have to eat. They have to trust that walking through a nearby village or town isn't going to be a constant struggle to not get assassinated by the non-wizardly folk.
Sure, those commoners aren't wizards; they have no real power. But it is kind of like a nest of hornets: one sting, while painful, isn't life threatening. But you don't just wade into the nest and let them all sting you.
There are too many of the normals. If they rise up in revolt, they would at least disrupt your real operations and plans and at worst would destroy everything you've worked for and possibly you as well.
## Disinterest
Have you ever seen what a *ruler* actually does all day? They put on uncomfortable clothes, sit in an uncomfortable chair, and listen to uncomfortably dull people whine about their uncomfortably dull problems.
Sorcerers have better things to do with their time than get sucked into *politics* and *solving people's problems.* Dreadfully dull stuff. A few years of that, and anyone with any sense would want out.
## More important things to do
Who knows what plots any one sorcerer has in motion at any one time. Research projects, long-term plans, wheels within wheels, always turning, always something in motion. The gears in a high-end clock have nothing on the plots and plans of a sorcerer.
These plots don't leave sufficient time for sitting around some throne room, listening to the problems of subjects.
## Puppet Master
Perhaps some sorcerers *are* ruling kingdoms. They don't waste their time with the day-to-day stuff. No, that's no fun at all. They have figurehead kings and queens to manage the minutia.
But they are the puppet master. They pull the strings that guide the king(s) and queen(s). They whisper in the ear of the kings and get what they want. They are [Wormtongue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%ADma_Wormtongue) in Rohan by Tolkien or Flagg in Delain by [King](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Dragon).
## Higher calling
Perhaps your sorcerers are aligned with one or more "secret societies" or hidden powers. This places them above and outside the powers of kings, and therefore they have no interest in such petty affairs.
Think of this like Medieval Europe's Catholic Church (Cardinal Richelieu, either the [historical version](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu) or the [Three Musketeers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers#Characters) version, for example). Or the [Istari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_(Middle-earth)) of Middle Earth (of which Gandalf is one). They are not part of the political order, but have influence and power within it because of that.
This also makes them exempt from the typical feudal rules. They don't pay taxes, they don't have to supply troops or materials for armies, they aren't required to obey the laws of the local nobility. They are a force unto themselves, and this makes them ineligible for noble titles and ranks.
This might mean that their role is more of a defender of the realm (as Gandalf was), or perhaps their goals span such long periods that humans can't really grasp the goals at all.
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### Soft power and chain of command
Yes, a strong magic user could kill the king and threaten whatever the equivalence of parliament in your setting is.
In the same way, in our modern world a trained special operative with an assault rifle could defeat any politician in combat. So why do politicians make the laws if they are not the strongest ones in combat?
The thing is, if the society is any larger and more complex than a tribe, then in order to hold power, it's not enough to be able to defeat any member of your nation in combat.
So, why can't a US army general just gather his troops, waltz into the White House, kill the president, and declare himself emperor? He has the military strength to kill all members of the congress. We might ask this on politics.se or history.se, but that answer would be very similar to the answer you are looking for.
And indeed, there have been historical cases of the above thing [happening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat). However, the country needs to already be in a state of disarray and/or rampant corruption for this to happen.
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**Sorcerers self govern.** This is the first and easiest method of ensuring there are no rogues. If a sorcerer attempts to take over a kingdom, or use their powers in a way that runs against prevailing morals, the other sorcerers could punish them themselves. Unless your magic is incredibly unbalanced, a group would be able to easily overpower a rogue individual, hopefully before they do too much damage. Commoners could also report those they think are misusing their powers. Either way, the sorcerers take care of their own. Bonus points if they form a guild or organisation that would do this for them.
**Have an easy method for dealing with sorcerers.** Consider putting in a simple, overpowering weakness for all sorcerers. Perhaps magic doesn't work in the metal silver. Wear silver, you can't be enchanted or affected by spells. A silver blade will always kill a sorcerer, or prevent them from using magic. Silver chains may also bind their powers. The rarity or difficulty of utilising this weakness can balance your wold. Maybe it's gold instead; then only kings and nobles will have protection, while the commoners are defenseless. Or perhaps it requires sigils etched in precious metals, requiring a great deal of careful work. In this case, such anti-magic items are not used regularly, but preserved for necessary occasions.
**Restart the Inquisition.** Just because magic comes from God doesn't mean that the public knows this. Even if they do, religions have a way of evolving like a living organism (ironically). They adjust their beliefs to protect themselves. If sorcerers are a threat in any way, then expect an organised resistance from the commoners. Unless you have about equal sorcerers and Muggles, your sorcerers are at a numbers disadvantage. If magic is an abomination, any young sorcerer will be killed as soon as they manifest powers. If magic is not an abomination, then perhaps rogue sorcerers are. Perhaps the public considers sorcerers who use their powers for personal gain to be akin to spitting directly in God's face. They won't react well, and it'll probably involve violence.
**Limit the power of evil sorcerers.** If God can't take powers away, then perhaps go the other route: faith is required for anything above parlor tricks. You want lightning? You have to follow God's moral code. Otherwise you might manage some sparkles. Want to discern the future? Better use your powers for good, otherwise you're only going to be able to see a coin flip in advance. In this way, you can easily limit the powers of bad sorcerers naturally.
These are a few ideas of the top of my head. I can think of some more if you wish.
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# They're not very good at it
In classic fantasy, magic is often a shorthand for intelligence. That suggests that we can come up with a good explanation by answering this question instead: why aren't the smartest people running things in the real world?
I would suggest that the simple answer is that being in charge of things takes skills that most wizards don't have and may be incapable of recognizing as important. Politics and statecraft don't benefit much from being able to direct lightning, but that's a hard thing to recognize if you can *actually direct lightning*.
A few would want to try anyway, but stories of it going badly would quickly become legend and discourage others from trying. Here's a parable: a mighty wizard decided he wanted to rule the kingdom so he assassinated the king and took over. To earn his court's loyalty, he lavishly rewarded faithful service. One day, after a particularly good deed, he enchanted his most trusted adviser with a powerful spell of good fortune. That night, a jealous member of his court snuck into the wizard's bedroom and killed him in his sleep. With no heir, the trusted adviser was named king. So lucky!
Wizards who can see the future could foresee their own downfall. Wizards who can't could simply be aware of their own limits, or be aware of all the ways things can go wrong.
Magic isn't the hard part. The hard part is dealing with people.
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## They have better things to do
In many martial arts, the perfection of self is essential. In other martial arts, the perfection of balance is what is sought. In both cases, that which is within is far more important. And, in the case of martial arts, the practitioners simply have human bodies to perfect. In the case of your sorcerers, they actually have the force of a god to master.
There is one rule which all nations submit to: they all fall. They may take a long time to do so. They may be able to say "The sun never sets on the English Empire," but one day they do fall.
What's the power of a god? Do we really think the power they give is merely things that are immediately evident in our little ant-like lifetimes? Gods craft planets and push forward the whole of evolution. Would a sorcerer really waste their time on silly things like controlling a government? There are more subtle ways to move the universe forward, ways which waste less energy.
Of course, the challenge with such a mindset is that it's hard to tell a good narrative. After all, the reader is one of those ant-like creatures scurrying about within a nation. Such characters might exhibit a certain bemused stillness when interacting with the ants, and you can portray that. Why waste energy moving when you can be still and let the ant move you as they please. Your focus is a much higher calling. One of my favorite renditions of this ideal is seen in the [Ip Man series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njihrnmSsIE). If you look, you can find it in plenty of other places as well.
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Maybe they aren't interested in that at all. I can think of several ways:
1. **The path of a sorcerer is an ascetic one.** Although they all gain power, it is provided to them in raw form, difficult to control and even understand for a simple human. They must dedicate most of their life to really learn it, perhaps lots of meditation. Perhaps it requires mastering a certain mindset and way of life to truly get the secrets contained within it, similar to a Buddhist monk. The greedy or ambitious ones simply never get very far with magic and those who achieve great power are so far away and above all of these mortal concerns that they can't even understand all those desires.
2. **Sorcerer nations are better.** They have their own nation or nations, perhaps hidden from non-mages like in Harry Potter. The nations of non-mages don't interest them at all. Although many do spend time among non-mages, all ambitions that they consider relevant and worthwhile lie within their own world of magic. Perhaps they feel seeking power among non-mages is like a human trying to dominate wild animals. Formal laws within the sorcerer community can be enforced on any outliers.
3. **Higher goals.** They all have some higher goal that is infinitely more worthwhile. Like ascension, meeting with the god, traveling to another world, some sort of evolution. They're only spending some time in this world but all of its concerns seem trivial compared to where they're going as mages.
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There is no problem if a sorcerer wants to exercise their power for temporal gain. They just do it, no much anyone can do to stop it.
The big problem comes when two or more sorcerers have the same goal.
A thousand years of escalating magical warfare between competing sorceror-lead kingdoms resulted in near extinction of the human race and there are still vast regions where no life can thrive due to the high levels of background dweomer. The eventual result was the formation of the self-regulating Society of Sorcery, which makes sure any individuals with demonstrated magical potential gets indoctrinated from an early age against inadvisable use of their powers, and take swift justice to correct or eliminate any threat to the peace.
**tl;dr**: some sorcerers tried and ruined it for everyone.
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Mutually Assured Destruction.
Pterry Pratchet basically setup the system which you describe and took it one step further, in that the wizards don't even really do that much magic.
Pratchet basically analogised magic to nuclear weapons. Once one wizard starts letting off hostile spells, then other wizards will retaliate, with all sorts of magical fallout and collateral damage...
So, the reason no wizard makes a power grab? Because the other wizards will smack you down.
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If they truly do not want to take over any kingdom, the best thing you can do for them is...keeping them away from society. After all, these wizards are powerful and congregate in a society upon themselves. Let them build their own reign, shield it from the external interference and live happily with their powers and means.
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Taking a leaf from Borges' '[The God's Script](https://libraryofbabel.info/borges/labyrinths.pdf)' (pp154-157) once you have such abilities, you're not human anymore, and simply are no more interested in managing a kingdom as we are of managing an ants nest.
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**Magic is exhausting**
Well they could forcefully take over the kingdom, but the constant use of magic they would need to use to do so (from when they go to war with the magic-lacking) ages the sorcerer much faster than normal. Or maybe after a battle they have to rest too long, etc.
**Few Sorcerers**
To build off my first point, even though magic is known in the world, there are not many sorcerers. During a war they would be massively outnumbered. Striking down ten or a thousand with lightning they still could not withstand the tens of thousands of arrows coming their way.
**They are outcasts**
A king is only a king, if their kingdom considers them a king. If the magic users are not accepted as the kings/queens of the kingdom, then there is nothing for them to take over and run. On the off chance they do, it would be a terrible society doomed to fail.
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What if magical knowledge is readily available due to hundreds of years of studying how Wizards do what they do. The reason Wizards are rare is that anyone can learn the runes necessary to cast magic but people who can actually touch a source of magic are rare people chosen by the gods and you need both to cast magic.
Why would this make Wizards secretive? Because certain scholars know how to make mundane runic items that can turn a Wizards magic against him. Once under control of a person with sufficient magical knowledge, the magic of the Wizard can be controlled. This means that people with power would be constantly on the lookout for Wizards to use as weapons.
A Wizard just starting to accumulate power and acquire followers to make a go at ruling anything of significance would have to deal with endless numbers of people trying to capture and sell them to the highest bidder.
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If the problem is only a few wizards who may try to upstage the current ruling class, it may very well be that a large group of powerful wizards have aligned themselves with the ruling class. After all, that's a much cheaper way of gaining power than battling for it. And the wizards which have aligned themselves with the ruling class can swiftly deal (possibly in a deadly way) with any youngster wizard who is trying to upstage the power structure.
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Human Nature:
1. Humans are hostile, jealous, and want to feel superior. Ruling a kingdom for humans is a sign of power. Wizards already have magical powers and will make the humans outraged which may lead to a genocidal war between humans and wizards.
2. Humans are quite mundane creatures. Wizards already have magical powers and need not to dwell amongst “lowly” people.
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There are many very good answers here already, but I would like to call attention to the approach taken by [Ars Magica](http://www.atlas-games.com/arm5/), a pen and paper roleplaying game revolving around covenants of sorcerers. In this setting, some aspect of the magical gift makes others unconsciously suspicious and/or hostile (this doesn't apply to other mages). This would mean they would have a difficult time dealing with other non-magi, and there are enough of them to pose a serious threat to the magical society even with their spells to help them.
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**Instability**
Suppose someone right now gave you magic powers. Are you going to go on a rampage and take over the government? Probably not. Even if it is by mind control, would you still want to? Even if you were totally power hungry that would get boring really fast. But besides all that, the issue is that even if you had the best intentions you'd wreck *everything*. You'd be practically overnight changing leadership for no apparent reason. You'd have no experience in the matter and no knowledge on science, agriculture, education or anything really. You'd also be horrible at warfare. This could be avoided by taking over *all* the kingdoms, but now you've got to find a way to travel constantly to keep the leaders under your spells. If you use force to take over there will be collateral damage which will just end up destroying whatever you're wanting to take over. After a few years you'll probably just end up with nothing. If you hypnotize the masses you might tell them to do bad ideas. They might farm day in and day out with no rest because you're that greedy. Well guess what? You just worked your whole country to death. Sure you're the leader of an entire country... ***of one***.
And maybe if you're a genius you can avoid this, but it would likely get boring quickly. Even if you mass-possess the entire country to avoid needing to spend time with poltics... it's just like.... why? What purpose would it solve?
**Easier Methods**
Say your country is starving and under corrupt leadership. Well you don't have to get rid of them to handle the problems. You can just magically make the crops grow and feed all the people. If the crops are that plentiful even a corrupt king won't care if they are remotely intelligent. I mean there's no point in making people go out and work farms if the food is that plentiful. Suppose even more so that there is an enemy kingdom and they're constantly under threat of siege. Just put up a giant barrier to keep the other country out. Nobody is going to be stupid enough to attack such a country.
I should point out here that doing these things is going to make people very happy and the wizard will have great respect, but there's really no reason for them to be greedy. Greedy would imply they want to steal from others, but unless they actually enjoy bringing pain to other people for its own sake (a true sign of absolute insanity) they're going to take the simple route.
**Being picked by God**
Let's think this out. If God picked wizards and it wasn't a completely random draw, He would certainly have some reasoning to it. He wouldn't pick wizards that wouldn't likely get along and He probably wouldn't pick people likely to become Adolf Hitler. Sure they might be lazy and selfish and keep their magic to themselves, but conquest has been primarily over the years been either about forcing ideologies onto other people, racism, two rulers getting angry at each other, or a need for limited resources. Sure greed may have been a motivator, but that was in already established kingships. I would compare it more to a nationalism rather than just greed. They wanted their team to be on top. Getting magic doesn't immediately make one stop being loyal to a truly benevolent leader because why should they? It's *their* king that they grew up hearing amazing stories about. He's the boss and they have no reason to think otherwise.
**God didn't explain it as being made a wizard**
Sure we think magic = wizard. I mean that is actually true unless the term "wizard" isn't gender neutral or something or only refers to advanced magic-users. Regardless, what if God didn't say "I'm making you a wizard.", but instead said "I'm making you an evangelist. Please go preach.". I mean sure there is the deal that the powers won't be taken away and no punishment will be dealt for misbehaving other than the normal punishment of being a mortal human being. However, that doesn't prevent God from sending them to Hell for disobeying or at the very least being generally unhappy with them and scolding them for not doing what He asked. This is *God* telling them to do this, and not some king or a religious figurehead in some church. They are literally being told by an all powerful being to go do get something done. Even better would be to work it in that God doesn't just grant powers but rather *asks* if someone would be willing out of *courtesy*. That way people aren't just randomly forced into it. There's no reason for them to even consider using them for wrong doing on a grand scale... because it would just pervert the entire nature of what they were tasked with. It would be an evil far beyond simply using normal magic to try and take over a kingdom. It would literally be slapping God in the face. Nobody is going to be *that* idiotic.
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Why would army generals not overthrow presidents? Pick your own reasons but overall, it achieves nothing but chaos
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**What if they are already considered the equivalent of kings**
People normally try to overthrow those above them, sometimes they might take on an equal if they are in competition, but almost never do people try to overthrow those below them. If magic users are considered to be equal or greater in status to kings already than why would they try to overthrow one. Take away the status and all that is left is the power to tax and the management of resources. Wizards probably would not be to interested in wasting their time overseeing the peasantry, and if they are, well most medieval kings weren't, so probably not to big of a problem to find a king who would let them. Medieval kingship was normally based on divine right, so it should be easy enough to say that some who was given magic by God would be at least their equals.
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Paraphrasing Lex Luthor, "Do you have any idea how much power I'd have to *give up* to be king?
Being a ruler - at least, being a good ruler, and most intelligent wizards will quickly conclude that it's *much* more pleasant and convenient to live in a society that's being ruled well than one that's an anarchic hell-hole - takes a significant amount of regular work time, which is going to badly cut into your studying-the-manifold-mysteries-of-the-universe time.
Let someone else worry about making sure the garbage gets collected and the roads are repaired. You have *important* things calling for your attention.
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# The threat of the council of elders
The gods can't remove power from people once bestowed... but for the most part they bestow it upon their most trusted faithful who want to do their gods will.
As such the vast majority of sorcerers are people who enforce the laws of their god, including the law against sorcerers seeking secular power or abusing their powers.
They're effectively a monkhood of sorts with their monasteries in a series of underground caverns.
If a sorcerer is judged to be abusing their gifts then they may be hunted down by some of the most powerful members of the order.
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> "But, it would make sense that at least a few wizards would want to use their powers to gain riches, fame, women and power. "
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The council comes down hard upon those who break the rules ... but they are willing to turn a blind eye to some who bend the rules as long as they don't bend them too far.
Just as monks can withdraw from the monkhood some sorcerers withdraw from their order. While not completely banned from using their powers there are limits and any sorcerers found to be breaking them may find enforcers from the order on their doorstep.
As such sorcerers who abuse their powers are rare for their either need to be powerful enough to hold off the council... or secretive enough to not be found out.
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I've been researching this very issue for a while. I just finished the first draft of the novel I'm writing where this is important.
**In places where there are a lot of magicians, maybe they do rule**
There is a lot of fiction about magical kingdoms (not including Disney). For example, typical Elven kingdoms were ruled by powerful magicians, with magic replacing technology and even bending time (going into an Elven kingdom for a night and coming out a generation later).
However, there was typically a weakness to their power. Most of the time this was iron. Even putting a small piece of iron at your door would prevent elves from entering in some legends and stories.
**Magicians are still mortal**
Steven Brust is quoted as saying “No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” I believe that this was a quote by Vlad Taltos at a time when he rarely used magic and one of his professions was killing people, often powerful sorcerers.
**Where magicians are rare, ruling may be dangerous**
In most fantasies, the rulers are mortal and the magicians are advisers at best.
Think on the various versions of the stories about King Arthur and his knights. While there are small places where magicians rule, such as the place where Lancelot grew up in (he was raised by the Lady of the Lake), these places were not a major part of the story.
Usually if a castle was ruled by a magician, this magician was a villain. And usually one of the knights of the round table was good enough to kill them.
The most famous magician in the story was Merlin, who was one of the most, if not the most, powerful magicians in the story. And mostly he was Arthur's adviser, though he occasionally tried to control things from behind the throne. But he never ruled.
**Numbers**
If magicians are rare, then there may not be enough magical help to rule a kingdom safely. Even if these magicians have a lot of personal power, a revolt by the army or the peasants might be able to kill the magician, even if a lot of them die in the process.
**Religion**
This is a two-edged sword. It's been talked about in many answers as a counter to the magicians' powers. This is logical and good.
However, if the gods grant power to the magicians, then do they grant them to random people, or do they grant them to some of the better or perhaps more fanatical priests? That might make the churches a place that is ruled by magicians. There could be a church that is ruled by people who actually have been chosen by god and might believe that their personal beliefs are those of the gods. After all, he was chosen by the gods and allowed to channel their powers.
**Magicians have better things to do**
If you could see the very secrets of the universe, would you be interested in the day-to-day aspects of ruling a kingdom? This has also been used in answers. I also think that such powers might make magicians more careless around mortals, which might leave them vulnerable. Better to just create a tower by magic, wherever you wish, and just live your life, coming out only for more supplies or entertainment.
**The belief that mundane lives matter**
If these magicians believe that mundane people (those without magic) matter, then they may not want to risk hurting them. And ruling a kingdom will cause them to hurt mundanes. For example, they would probably have to kill people in order to take the kingdom. And they would probably have to kill people to defend it.
And with magical powers might come heightened senses such that they could feel the souls of those who are killed. Or even a mild telepathic connection to nearby humans would be horrifying in the middle of a war.
**Learning from mortals**
In a sequel to my current novel, two of the most powerful halflings (demigods, powerful magic, near-immortals) are married and are now the king and queen of both courts of the fey. This story is set in the late 1960s in the US. Our king and queen live in a van and are sort-of hippies. This is a more modern version of a magical tower.
They're doing this for a couple of reasons. First, their kingdoms are spread out over the world and this way they can go to where the little people are (sometimes literally). And second, they are learning from the human society without interfering in it. They pretend to be mortal, and only those who know them or can use magic can tell otherwise.
These protagonists believe that human lives matter and don't want to kill people. After all, humans live such short lives...
The magical creatures stay hidden from normal humanity because humans outnumber them. Even my protagonists are cautious about being found out. They are powerful, but they aren't all-powerful. And who wants to be locked up and possibly vivisected for years until somebody makes a mistake or they get help to break out?
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There is the Witcher series.
(I am only at book 5, so later on what I'm about to write might be contradicted)
But, there mages are nigh immortal (eg.: don' die from old age, most diseases and weaker poisons don't work on them).
They have a council, meet every year (or every few years?), their training takes decades, and they need to gather power to perform spells. Also it tires them out, some spells just need words and hand movements, others ingredients, etc...
1. given that they become semi immortal through some ritual or spell, and the training takes decades, there aren't a lot of them.
2. alone they can't hold be an army (here a 100 peasants with pitchforks works just as well as a 100 knights in full plate)
3. some of them are actually advisors to kings, hence they can have influence without actually ruling.
4. when you have an infinite amount of time to live, you want it to be interesting. They are humans after all. Trying to rule a kingdom, dealing with politics, the needs of the common folk, etc... takes time.
Yes, most of these were said already, I just wanted to give you a good source material if you are interested.
**TLDR:** Limited power (easily overcome by superior numbers), limited numbers, because of semi immortality they have a different view of life/desires, powerful council to keep them in check, they distrust one another
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### Wizards on retainer
Why not have some wizards willingly work for kingdoms? Otherwise non-magical kingdoms will quickly put put the call for sorcerors looking to live a life of luxury, and the kingdom will ensure the sorceror is well taken care of for as long as they serve the kingdom. There is little for them to do other than relax in the lap of luxury, until a power-hungry sorceror comes along, and then it's time to bring out the big guns.
While a one-on-one duel would be anything but guaranteed, larger kingdoms might retain multiple sorcerors, and even smaller ones will still have their non-magical army to come to their sorceror's aid -- the attacking sorceror will have to deal with the defending sorceror first lest they be stricken down, and while they're distracted with that you have archery, calvary, and possibly even artillery making runs at them... not good odds for the attacker really.
### The gods are wise
Alternatively, since these gods who grant the power are... well... gods, why can't they see a person's true nature when they choose to bestow the power upon them? Perhaps they simply look into a person's heart and can see whether the power will corrupt them; if it would, then no magic powers for them.
You could have occasional instances where a sorceror is granted power under these circumstances, but then some event happens in the future that drives them to destruction: say a sorceror loves a nobleman but he's assassinated by a rival duke -- the sorceror goes mad with grief and anger, and goes on the warpath. Well, that duke signed their own death warrant, but either a) the kingdom's army kills the sorceror while they're single-mindedly focused on pursuing the duke, or b) the sorceror kills the duke, then, revenge attained, finds themselves empty and unsatisfied. Perhaps ashamed of the destruction they've wrought, they impose exile upon themselves and live a reclusive life, perhaps trying to atone for their destruction using their magic secretively to help the less fortunate (summoning rain during a drought for the farmers, or driving away a swarm of locusts, or sneaking through sick wards in the middle of the night, curing those afflicted with a virulent plague).
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What nutrients are only found in people and not in animals or at least in scarce quantities in animals? What nutrients force ogres to feed on people?
**Considerations**
Ogres are not a different and separated species of humans or hominids, they are more like a wide spread tribe or ethnic group of people heavily affected by an inability to produce or obtain normal nutrition from ordinary food forcing them on divergent dietary choices.
What exactly is found mostly in humans though?
Ogres are also affected by gigantism and have a mutated form of MC4R which makes them incredibly effective at saving energy and conserving fat more so than Māori people (mentioned the Māori people because they are genetically good at getting tall, big and athletic, no racism intended)
[Answer]
## Omega-3 Fatty Acids
A genetic mutation has caused your ogres to lose the ability to produce one of the enzymes needed to digest grains and nuts (either Amylase or Phytase should do). Ogres have a far more carnivorousness diet than humans as a result. The problem is that Mammals do not produce their own Omega-3 fatty acids; so, we get it from the food we eat; however, hominins such as Humans and Ogres need more Omega-3 fatty acids than other mammals to maintain a healthy Omega-3/Omega-6 balance.
Prehistoric man solved this problem by eating seafood, nuts, and seeds which are all relatively dense sources of Omega-3. But your Ogres have the problem that they cannot digest nuts and seeds, which makes them very heavily dependent on fishing, but fishing is not a reliable food staple year-round in many parts of the world; so, whenever there is not a steady supply of fish, Ogres will begin to crave the meat of the the only terrestrial large game animal with enough Omega-3 to sustain them: Humans.
Like humans who don't eat seeds, nuts, or fish, an Ogre who does not eat humans will quickly see a health fall off, and they will tend to die young from complications with their heart, liver, and obesity.
[Answer]
It's just out of superstition.
Like in some traditional medicines it is believed that eating rhino's horns will provide big benefits to a man's virility or other feats along that line, for the ogres the superstition goes that by eating human flesh they can gain human intelligence, which they notoriously lack.
Maybe it all started when an ogree overheard the human saying *"You are what you eat"* and due the the above lack of intelligence took it a tad too literally.
[Answer]
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> What nutrients are only found in people and not in animals or at least in scarce quantities in animals? What nutrients force ogres to feed on people?
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Huh? What nutrients force humans to feed on pigs? All that is needed is a sufficient absence of compassion and a taste for it.
That's actually also the answer for cannibals: there the absence of compassion is considered pathological (unless we are talking about tribal cases of cannibalism, namely cultures/education with different standards). With humans eating pigs and ogres eating humans, it is considered normal behavior.
TLDR: you are overthinking this. It's to your credit but doesn't really concern ogres.
[Answer]
**Ogres have bad teeth**
They only want to snack on the most tender morsels.
And nothing is quite as tender as a nice, plump, accountant or baker.
But even a farmer or a soldier will do, just remember to peel the soldier first before biting down, some of them have hard shells.
[Answer]
**Symbiosis**
Although I thought humans had a particular high salt (and acid?) content, I can't find it anywhere. However, it might not be the nutrients, minerals and vitamins the ogre might be interested in. It might be our bacteria.
Eating is an incredibly complex mechanism involving hormones, acids, but more importantly, gut flora and fauna. Most of these are benificial if not required for digestion. Ogres might be close enough related to humans or simply have a similar enough system to humans that they benefit from the same bacteria and the like. For gut bacteria, they can just focus on ripping out the stomach and intestines, leaving the rest as a gruesome warning. The reason they need to do this is that their gut balance depends on sometimes eating a human, or their gut and by extension they themselves get out of balance. This causes physical and psychological symptoms.
It might be possible to receive more than just gut organisms. There are many organisms, sometimes parasitic, that can get into the blood and from there anywhere in the body. This opens up the possibility of many more symbiotic organisms that potentially get from humans. During eating these organisms can also enter through skin (micro wounds), smell and eyes, so the act of eating might be enough to get these beneficial organisms.
Alternatively, it can be religious or cultural implications. Thinking the eating of a human will give you power, social status, or as a warning to others was already enough for other humans to resort to cannibalism. Ogres might just have the same idea with less moral problems.
[Answer]
## Ogres are degenerated humans with inability to produce critical proteins:
Once, ogres were simply huge hominids with a taste for human flesh. As they became accustomed to eating fellow hominids (fellow hominids already consisting of the perfect mix of nutrients), a curious thing happened. The Ogre digestive system specialized and began taking up intact proteins from their all-hominid diet (They also developed a modification system to prevent prion disorders). The Ogre digestion was thus highly efficient, and they did not need to fully digest food. Direct integration came with a dreadful price, however. The proteins that were close could be modified into functional forms easily, and a few critical proteins were identical. The ogres who developed mutations and lost function in the genes for these proteins survived, and over evolutionary time the ogres were no longer able to function without supplemental proteins.
Now the ogres find themselves in a situation where they cannot get critical fully functional proteins from other foods than fellow hominids. They may be able to function with supplemental food for calories, but they NEED the flesh of fellow hominids to obtain critical proteins (especially during development, but some throughout their life). This also means ogres are likely to engage in endocannibalism to recycle the supply of proteins as much as possible. So grandpa and your neighbor are nice, but they're also delicious.
[Answer]
Why would they not?
Humans are plentiful, slow moving, widely distributed and for the most part not a physical danger to creatures of larger size. They're probably one of the easiest preys to take.
For a top predator, there's no obvious downside.
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Commenters pointing out that this isn't going to work are overlooking the fact that Ogres have been extinct for something over 2000 years, probably due to overlooking that this isn't a long term survival strategy as human technology improves and populations increase. Ogres aren't known for their intelligence.
[Answer]
**Displaced aggression.**
Why do adults beat up kids? It happens a lot. The kids are no threat. The adults who do it are getting something out of this interaction. These troubled people are expressing their aggressive impulses in a way safe to themselves. If I feel angry and I go try to beat up an adult, he might beat me back, worse. Kids can't do that.
The ogres are aggressive. It feels good to attack and beat and destroy a thinking, feeling individual. And they are dumb, but not so dumb as to be unaware that other ogres are dangerous. To ogres, humans are like helpless weak little ogres. Humans are close enough to ogres that ripping up a human can scratch that aggressive itch and attacking humans is generally a lot safer for an ogre than going after one of their own kind.
The eating of the meat is secondary to the aggression and more a case of waste not / want not - once they kill a human there is no sense in wasting good meat.
[Answer]
**It's a by-product of robbery**
Ogres like robbing people of their possessions, weapons, shiny jewellery etc. They ambush and kill their victims. It would be a terrible waste to leave the bodies to rot. They celebrate by having a barbecue.
Also of course human flesh just tastes good. Ogres prefer it and it's highly prized. They probably eat lots of other things but if there's a chance to eat human they do.
[Answer]
**Cholesterol**
Cholesterol is present in animal tissues, but really large quantities are found in the brain.
If your ogres can't synthesize cholesterol in large enough quantities, they are dependent on getting them from their food, so they will develop a taste for the brain.
Humans have relatively large brains compared to other animals, which makes them an especially tasty meal.
[Answer]
Because we're slow and frequently easy to catch. Sure, we can be dangerous in large, well armed and trained groups, but a lone human is probably the easiest meal an ogre is likely to find.
The ogres, will, of course, be concentrated at the edge of kingdoms and other governments, where the local garrison is spread too thin to go out and hunt monsters... and small, fringe towns offer little economic benefit to the folks in charge, so there's not much reason to send the army out.
[Answer]
**Let's get the biology out of the way first:**
Since humans eat plants & other animals, there are no novel (physical) nutrients that an Ogre can't get elsewhere. They're just conveniently packaged.
**And then let's deal with some cultural history:**
Simply because you all but equated Ogres with Polynesians (Maori, in specific), we should perhaps take a look at Maori cannibalism. It was a thing, and a very nasty thing to boot.
As soon as Europeans first met Polynesians in the Aotearoa, [Capt. Cook noted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cannibalism) that the locals had a preference for fresh human flesh. In Jan 1770, he noted: "though stronger evidence of this horrid practice prevailing among the inhabitants of this coast will scarcely be required, we have still stronger to give." While we should always be careful not to cast undue aspersions, the practice has been known in Aotearoa long after Cook's time, and was also known in other related cultures.
Paul Moon, a New Zealandish historian, treated cannibalism in [This Horrid Practice](https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/national/565544/Maori-cannibalism-widespread-but-ignored-academic-says). The Maori had access to an amazingly broad spectrum of food from root crops to birds to plant produce to seafood. Lack of food wasn't the cause of cannibalism. It seems to have been a product of their war culture. Moon notes "post-battle rage" as one factor. Retribution for offences, especially given by an enemy, and as a warning to other tribes are other important factors.
Other scholars note that cannibalism is deeply rooted in the culture, in the onomastics and in the lore of the Maori.
**In conclusion:**
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> Ogres are not a different and separated species of humans or hominids, they are more like a wide spread tribe or ethnic group of people
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Since Ogres are humans based on the Maori, there is no real nutritional reason for Ogres to heat other humans, we must consider the historical, mythological, cultural, religious, and folkloric reasons.
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> Ogres are ... heavily affected by an inability to produce or obtain normal nutrition from ordinary food forcing them on divergent dietary choices.
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This clue is something of a red herring. People can get food from just about anywhere on the planet. Since Ogres are humans too, it stands to reason that they'd be similarly gifted.
If they are unable to procure food in √°ny area they live in, they're unlikely to get it from humans. Historically, humans are pretty good at savagely exterminating anything that gets in their way. Once Ogres develop a taste for other humans, other humans will develop a taste for eradicating Ogres.
Who knows? They might even develop a taste for *Ogres!*
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> Ogres are also affected by gigantism and have a mutated form of MC4R which makes them incredibly effective at saving energy and conserving fat more so than Māori people (mentioned the Māori people because they are genetically good at getting tall, big and athletic, no racism intended)
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Since there's nothing particularly special about Ogres in regards their ordinary humanity, I think the answer will be neither biological nor nutritional. Like the Maori, your Ogres have simply practiced cannibalism for so long that it has become thoroughly embedded within every aspect of their culture.
Their mythic & legendary heroes did it; ordinary warriors did it; everyone else benefited from it. For them, it's no different than meatloaf on Wednesdays. So entrenched is it that places are named after the practice, a rite of passage must be when a young suitor offers some crispy fried human tenders to his beloved, there may well be special utensils for eating various parts of human, like the *'oqnoq*, which is a very long handled sharp pointed spoon used to punch through the sinuses in order scoop out the warm brainy goodness from the skull.
As time progresses, there may even be specialty shops in Ogre towns dealing with the various rubs & marinades that go with human cookery. Perhaps even decorative tins shaped like human faces & breasts & thighs, for those hectic holidays when you just can't be bothered going out and butchering a fresh human and all that's available last minute is tinned minced human and you want to at least decorate it up real nice for the family get-together!
[Answer]
The most obvious answer would be the quantity of brain matter. Otherwise human physiology isn't that unique and they could eat pigs for example instead of humans.
As an alternative it could be a matter of evolution and food deprivation. As mankind expanded they started minimising the territory of the ogres as well as the food sources for the ogres. So ogres developed a solution to counter both issues: eat the expanding humans. It slows the spread of humans in the area, it keeps the ogre food sources more available, it adds food sources in the form of humans and these humans are so easy to find! You just wait near a village wall (they'll likely have a wall with you around) and when something comes out for travel or farming you eat them!
Another option is using certain chemical processes of humans like their immune system. Some sea slugs will be able to [separate and incorporate chloroplasts from algae for photosynthesis](https://elifesciences.org/articles/64057), and your ogres could be after specific cells in the human body. From gut bacteria to immune cells to even some of your neurological cells, using the quantity of neurons in humans to save enough for their own use.
Ogres are often thought of as dumb; imagine if they can only replenish the broken down neurons in their body by assimilating those of the animals they eat? And by eating humans you can gather enough neurons for more complex thoughts like using clubs, fashioning crude clothing or extorting people trying to cross your bridge and occasionally eating one when others aren't watching or they cant pay the toll. The advantage of intelligence is obvious, so there could be ogres that don't eat humans but they are less able to survive and slowly being supplanted by the smarter ogres who do eat humans.
[Answer]
Ogres don't tolerate humans in their swamp (territory).
Ogres can see and understand how far humans have taken over the land and spread throughout the planet. Perhaps they eat or kill humans to assert that they are still a threat or as a sign of strength to other ogres?
Maybe, instead of purely for nutrients, ogres hunt humans for the achievement or status it gives them.
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[Question]
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Time travel has been invented and it goes like this.
You travel backwards in time at the same speed you normally travel forward. Everything is identical - you do all the actions the same but in reverse. When you return to the present you live your life at normal speed just as you did the first time.
So what is different? Well only your *consciousness* is travelling the timeline. Although your body is locked into all the old actions, your consciousness can form new memories as it moves backwards and forwards.
Suppose I go back to when I was 8 years old. I can relive the exact same experiences as I had then, first backwards and then forwards. I will see the same things and experience the same things but in reverse and then at normal speed forwards.
**Problem**
If I want to go back a year then it will take me a whole year to get there. Then I will need another year to return to the present. For this reason people tend to go back only a short time - for example to find the wallet they lost earlier in the day. With luck they can observe themselves losing the wallet but of course they can't do anything about it. However at least they know precisely where and when it happened and this will help them find it. They might even be able to see themselves being pick-pocketed and mentally take note of the thief's appearance.
You can only wind backwards and forwards like a movie and cannot change anything that happened to you and therefore there are no paradoxes. Or are there?
**Question**
Has this solved the time-travel paradox or can you find some fault in the scheme? What could go wrong?
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**Notes**
You cannot change the past. You just watch history unfold as a spectator locked in your own body. You experience everything in perfect, exquisite detail just as you did the first time around. (Thanks to Caio Nogueira for asking)
Travel in either direction occurs at the same speed that we already travel forward in time.
There is no way to fast-rewind or fast-forward.
You can of course travel forwards in time but only at the normal pace! In other words nothing is different from normal living. Only reverse time-travel makes a difference.
You must set the time in advance so, once you have set off, there is no way to change your mind.
Time travel is available to most people.
**Edit:** Imagine that your body is a four-dimensional object. It exists at every point in time simultaneously. Therefore none of your actions can ever change. It is only your consciousness that can move back-and-forth along the timeline.
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**Addendum**
It seems that there are lots of paradoxes and/or impossibilities. Therefore I believe my question has been answered.
I shall however leave it open because I need to go through everything and see if I can find a new method that avoids all these problems. Thanks to everyone who has answered or is still going to answer. Eventually I will try to choose the 'best' answer.
[Answer]
There are no paradox concerns.
Your system prevents modification of the past, so there is no way to cause changes which would lead you to not go back in time, or go back in time differently.
Your system cannot see into the future, so you cannot see the effects of your actions and act differently.
Really, it's more of a VCR than time travel. You can go back to see the things you previously recorded, and that's it. Also, there's no fast-forward/rewind, just play forwards and play backwards.
[Answer]
I think there is a major flaw:
Since there is no fast forward, you could never catch up with the present. For everyone else, time moves forward and you are always behind.
Unless triggering the time travel freezes time for everyone else.
[Answer]
**You have a whomping big paradox**
You stipulate that the traveller "cannot change anything that happened to [he/she]." That's a problem. You can jump back and relive time, but you can't change the fact that you jumped back to relive time. You'll never live another second of free will at all. Let's investigate this.
**Assumption**
Let's ignore the entire is-there-free-will question by simply assuming that time becomes locked into place once experienced. From this perspective, you can jump into the past and "relive" it until the "present" while meeting your stipulation.
There is, of course, a problem with this. *Nothing can change.* You can't change the focus of your eyes, their placement, the attention you're giving to what you're listening to, nothing *at all.* Your conscious self is "reliving" the time from the perspective that it's storing the info into memory, but even if you had the ability to analyze what was happening — *you can't do anything, change anything, nothing.* It would be maddening, using your example, to jump back in time and *not be able to actually focus on where you lost your wallet* because you can't change what your physical body is doing: and what it's doing is not paying attention to the wallet.
But, let's return to the paradox...
**You jump back and back and back... what happens to everyone else?**
Because you can't change a darn thing, you're stuck. You made the mistake of choosing to jump back in time and you'll make that same choice, step into that same machine, watch Dr. Naidoo push that button to send you back, forever. *Because you can't change anything.*
What's the paradox? *What's happening with everyone else?* Theoretically, you took off to the past and your wife, grateful that you did, is now eyeballing the proverbial post man thinking that she has all the time in the world.
Or would she?
Does time become locked into place once a traveler makes that first jump? Or does it continue? The question can't be answered from the traveler's perspective. It can only be answered by you, the author, choosing how to resolve the paradox.
Does time stop for everyone when someone jumps backward, or not?
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**Edit**
*The reason this is a paradox is because everyone else is involved when someone jumps back in time. Fundamentally, everyone jumps back in time with him (unless you want to declare that there are two independent time streams: one for the traveler and one for everyone else). If the traveler can't get out of the time loop, neither can anyone else. Time stops moving forward for everyone.*
[Answer]
You have a horrible, horrible problem.
Memories are formed by strengthening or creating new synapses. That **is** a physical change. If nothing can change, then you cannot form new memories - you will re-live the period, but arrive in the present in the exact same condition you were the first time, with all the memories and everything.
But that isn't the bad part. The bad part is this:
You start your time travel at time A1, from which you go back, let's say, 1 month. Two months of subjective time later (1 going back, 1 going forward) you are back at the same moment a second time, so let's call it A2. What exactly does "being back" mean? It means you walk through the door, sign your name on the release form, sit down in the time machine **and go back in time 1 month**. Another two months later, you arrive at A3, walk through the door...
There is no going forward for you from that point. Because you would have to skip over the moment when you go back in time. But since you postulated that you can change **nothing**, you cannot skip (because you would have had to do the skip the first time, in which case you didn't time-travel at all).
Sorry, you didn't solve time-travel. You just invented the infinite time loop.
But at least from your perspective you won't even notice it, because (see above) you can't form new memories and you will never remember that you were already here... a million times.
[Answer]
While I do not see any issues with paradoxes with this "type" of time-travelling, there are some odd things that I'd question.
First of all, your example of losing your wallet. While it's great to "re-live" your past and remembering that you put it in your couch, how would going back help if you were not conscious that you lost your wallet, by dropping it for example? Your original body would not realize that you dropped it, so even if you go back a second time, you'd still not find it.
That goes the same for a pickpocketer. How would you know if someone is doing that to you when you go back? Does your consciousness have an out-of-the-body experience and see what you couldn't see before? Probably not, based on your explanation of doing all the actions and experiencing everything all over again. So, if you get pickpocketed without realizing it, you wouldn't find out even if you go back.
Then, there's things like sleep. Will your consciousness perceive your original body sleeping? Or will it fall asleep the same as you did before? Would you remember or experience past dreams? Would you still retain information about dreams when you wake up? Will your consciousness stay "awake" during sleep instead? If I relive the moment my house got robbed while I was asleep, would I be able to hear the robbers even though I was asleep before? There are a lot of questions to be answered here..
If your consciousness relives everything, does that include things that do affect consciousness like drinking alcohol? What if you relive the moment wherein you were drunk? Will the consciousness that went back in the past also become drunk? Wouldn't that mean that you won't be able to retain information during this state because the consciousness that went back is also drunk?
And finally, I'd worry about mental health. What if someone relives a very emotional moment in their life? The feeling of success, joy of being accepted by your partner, winning, pleasure, getting "high", etc. What if someone keeps reliving those moments everyday? If you go back to the present, you'd lose those feelings, and might want to do that all over again. That could stagnate someone or even depress them, as they try to compare their past from the present.
While these questions do not refer to having a paradox, it's curious how would this system work for an everyday person.
[Answer]
Musing about the concept...
Essentially, living memory becomes (potentially) more accessible. The big benefit is that those memories could contain information that was originally not really noticed, but with the hindsight of future knowledge can be 'recalled' and brought forward and acted on.
It creates an interesting new branch of criminal investigations. Witnesses can reveal forgotten details, especially form recent events, leading to more certain rulings.
It creates an interesting new branch of research, for the same reason. With proper incentive, a survivor of Event X (a Kennedy assassination, for example) can potentially bring back forgotten evidence. A WWII survivor could be 'sent back' to try to 'remember'(?) conversations that have since been lost... a conversation with Einstein, or Tesla.
Conversations with native Americans in their own language could (potentially) be recovered -- languages which are inadequately documented and have since gone extinct.
This works for any organization in fact. Crime syndicates can use it (potentially) to better learn the identity of informants. Or, to more easily remember (or notice!) the location of valuables.
[Answer]
It is strange to think what would happen when I come back one minute and then spend a minute in the forward run. Three options come to mind, each of which somewhat problematic.
1) My own future stops and waits for me. I relive the last minute in an "observer" kind of mode, then suddenly regain control of my body. Which is probably the best option, although it will likely result in a noticeable jerk of some kind for other people. If the time is longer (say, a year), I may get out of the habit of controlling my own muscles.
2) Similar, but I want to retain the *feeling* that I am in control, so that the transition to the future is smooth. But then there's no space left for doing anything different. If not only my body but also my conscience relives past events as if it was there (signals to muscles etc.), I will notice nothing I had not noticed the first time. Whatever I forgot in the past will I forget again. This is technically free of paradoxes, but utterly useless, and clearly contrary to what you intended.
3) My body lives on in some kind of "automatic" regime, but as others noted, I will then never catch up. In other words, after reliving the 1 minute of my past, I will go on reliving what my body did in the meantime, during which it will keep doing more of that, always two minutes ahead. I will spend the rest of days trapped in reliving things my automatic ego thought of, effectively giving up all of my future to it. Brrr.
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I am convinced you need a fast forward. Let me program the device by the amount of time I want to go back, and an amount of time I want to spend there. After doing so, I will come back to present with the newly reacquired experience. This can be instantaneous (like waking up from a dream), or can take some penalty time proportional to how far back I went, if that's a part of the mechanic you need. A rewind / fast forward at double speed might do reasonably good. But don't make it unit speed, or you'll run into 3) above.
A side point is that going back more than a day, about a third of the time relived is going to be extremely boring (except the second option, which I believe is ruled out by design). What do I see during sleep, if my conscience is detached (and thus not sleeping, at least not at the same time)? 8 hours of darkness and snoring... another good reason for a fast forward.
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Another side note: assuming (1) for now, you also need a limit on how much time I can spend reliving things. Think of hopeless people who can't make even with the loss of someone and will keep coming back to see the best day again, always pressing the button over as soon as they can. People who will keep coming back to study every book until they know it bottom to top. Killers who want to commit a perfect crime, or at least learn from their past mistakes to malicious ends. The list of ideas how to abuse this goes on and on. It feels like there's no price to pay for seeing the same thing 1000 times. Nothing will be like we know it.
My point is that yes, you spend a lot of time doing all that, but always come back to a body that didn't age a second. Death is a physiological process, your conscience can buy basically unlimited amounts of time.
[Answer]
You go back by rewinding, but your conscience does not go backwards? It is actually remembering future events relative to the time you return to you. It's like information travels backwards with you. In the first scenario you can act to undo mistakes and therefore the mistake was never done and there was no reason for the trip - That's already a paradox. In the second scenario, the same things will happen again. That is, you do the same mistakes even though you know it. What prevents you from taking corrective measures? Why, in your example, you would see the pickpocketer and could do nothing about it? Would you be able to see him from a different angle and still be unable to warn your past-yourself? Suppose you stopped your time-rewind and returned to "replay", will you be the "same one", or will another observer see you and your past-you?
[Answer]
You're missing something... you are re-living things, but without being able to control the body you must somehow also be aware of the thoughts of your past-tense self. So you're not just sensing it, you're also sensing yourself! If this were not so, then as you were living "forwards from the past" how could you make an informed judgment as you live out the predetermined history again?
Also, if you were to re-live the same thing twice, you would necessarily become aware of the you that was re-living it the first time, since that, too, was you. Otherwise you could never re-live what you had been thinking when you re-saw what you saw!
Then if you re-lived the same thing many times, your experience would be crowded with your own consciousness and it would be overwhelming.
[Answer]
If you do it through your mind there is no problem, that's just memory(a very good and also problematic one) or watching a movie in first person of your actions, strap a camera in your head, force yourself to follow this rules and you can do this yourself, but if you do it through external interference like magic or a machine that send you on time, that's a action that happened in the past and you stay trapped on the loop.
To break the loop paradox, you could create a "escape rope", Lets say this.
january 12 of 2019 at 13:00 you press the button to the escape rope, you keep living your life normaly, at january 13 of 2019 at 15:00 you see a murder, then at january 14 of 2019 at 12:00 you rewind time to the january 12 of 2019 at 12:59, you start the loop, then at january 12 of 2019 at 13:00 you press again the "escape rope" that have a command which says "if you are on a loop unmake the effect of the loop button when you press it" (frase it as you like, also yes, I code), when you arrive at january 14 of 2019 at 12:00 you press the button the effect of the escape rope triggers and you break out of the loop.
Edit: As I saw many doubts about a few complications of "reliving the past", I thought about a few solutions so here gos the list.
1. **If you go back and go foward again in 1x speed you will neve cath up
with people of the present moving at the 1x speed.**
Yes, thats true. But what if you actally do the rewind time quite fast thousand times the speed and YOUR perception of time is fixed at a higher level you see evrey detail while you are traveling but you are actually going really fast, you will eventually catch up with the future, and it will look like you just spaced out for a moment, for the rest of the world.
2. **If you go back the whole world go back with you but without memory of future events.**
That's probably bound to caos, the simples act of looking at some particules change they behavior, imagine in the future people looking at this particules in the past, changes are bound to happen, quantun changes of course but with a bit of "butterfly effect" the future can change, reverting the whole universe just for you try to find your wallet or even solve a murder is not worthy, rewinding your mind in time and going foward would be easier.
3. **Going back with your mind will overlap memorys and be a tremendous strain in the brain.**
Yes, it would. Just erase you memories, except for the lingering sugestion of what you are looking for, you will remake the memories along the way.
Also going back with your mind depending of the method may create a **double personalite** of yourself in your mind, another persona that exist just to look for your actions and will gave you a insight of what you would be looking for, when it arrive at the time of the pressing of the button. Lets say you press the button, it splits you in two minds, one go make the arduous trip in time to look for what you want, the other stays at the present, the travel goes really fast for the present one perspective and really slow for the time travelling one, this will give the present one the answer he want( and probably a enormous headache).
[Answer]
I feel like a terrible pseud saying this, but what defines the present if not that it is the point at which our consciousness resides? How would we know when we're back at "now"? What is it in the structure of the universe that makes the present moment objectively different to a moment two months in the past, or two months in the future? As you said yourself,
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If we see time as an axis, and what-happens-within-time as a line on this axis which the consciousness can skip back and forwards along, then unless there's something objectively different about the present moment (that, perhaps, the present is the end of that line - that is, the present moment is perpetually *the very end of time*) wouldn't an inability to control your actions apply as much to the present as it does to the past?
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This isn't time travel; it's slow memory retracing. Let's redefine this as a memory device:
At 9 AM I put the device on my head and set it for 1 hour. As the cheery green glow starts up and I fall into the memory trance, I subjectively observe everything happening around me in reverse. I subjectively have no power to do anything except watch, listen, smell, etc.
(Sidebar -- listening to everyone talk backwards for an entire hour has got to be really rough. There's no way to stop listening, since you're only recalling your own actions in reverse and you were listening then. I suggest that longer than a week be forbidden by the company providing this device; it is likely to result in an insane consumer.)
Okay, so the hour of reverse time is up and now I spend an hour subjectively experiencing everything in forward. To reiterate, I am only *subjectively experiencing this*. My actual body is in the present, sitting in a chair with a glowing green hat, and so far one hour has passed (my body is now at 10 AM) and another one is beginning. Since my body is in the present, I have no trouble forming new memories about what I'm seeing, so I can easily learn where I left my wallet.
The hour of repeated forward time is now up and the glowing green hat shuts off. I've spent two hours in the chair and it's now 11 AM. There's a brief "jump-shock" effect -- I go from remembering 8:59:59 AM to experiencing 11:00:00 AM; if my frat brothers have been by, I suddenly realize my pants are wet or there's a dick drawn on my face. I'll have no memory of when they actually did that, because the device had cut me off from physical sensation in favor of replaying memories from my brain.
After I hit the bathroom I go immediately to where I left my wallet, then come back and pay the man who rented me the hat.
So there's no paradox with this redefinition. However, *you need to have at least potential total recall for this to be possible.* Your brain must store *every* sensation you have had, from reading a headline to hearing a mosquito buzz past your ear, not forgetting anything at all. And it has to remember everything in perfect order. Probably there's a maximum limitation that takes effect here, and the device only can be set to an hour or five. And people who experienced brain damage in the past hour probably can't use it to revisit events that were wiped out by the injury.
A possible way out of it is that it doesn't reply your own memory; it replays the sensations recorded by a brain implant or something. But then the reason for the one-hour-per-hour becomes completely unclear; it should be random access like a DVD.
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# This will result in brain damage
Your brain is a physical object. Your conscious memories are recorded by making changes to that physical object. As you go backward in time, your brain must necessarily revert to the physical state it was in at the time to which the individual travels.
You have required that the consciousness of the person travels through time. For that to be the case, a copy of the traveler's brain (complete with new memories) must occupy the same location as a copy of the traveler's brain from the past (without the memories). When these two copies of the brain intertwine, any differences between the old brain and the new brain will become corrupted.
The end result, in the minor cases, would be serious confusion about what had happened and when. Perhaps you wouldn't be entirely sure whether or not you had traveled time at all, and any information about what happened in the period in which you traveled would be some scrambled mix of your thoughts in the first pass forward, the pass backward, and the second pass forward.
In the longer cases though, or the cases in which multiple passes are made through the same timespan, that confusion would become much more severe, and I would expect that time travelers would end up with amnesia or some kind of dementia, or perhaps permanent damage to memory as a whole.
This could also lead to some very interesting story-lines with brain "glitches". Perhaps the corruption in the brain's memory produces memories of bizarre things that never happened at all - maybe dreamlike, or hallucinogenic, or even mundane, but simply false.
And of course, if you go back WAY too far, your brain isn't even going to fit in your skull properly, and you'll just fall over dead. Perhaps your time-travel society has a lot of teenagers who suddenly die for "no reason" not because they're traveling time, but because their future self (alive) has traveled backward into their body and killed them. Of course, then you've got a schroedinger's cat problem - you had a living time line until it came back and killed itself. Now you've got two timelines.
This also leads us to question whether time travel of this kind would have any value. If the point is to go back and figure out what happened, but you can't retrieve reliable memories, or might even destroy the good memories that you have, or even might kill yourself to find your wallet, why go back at all (and maybe that's the moral of the story: don't mess with nature)?
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There's an interesting use of this device I've not seen brought up.
It sounds like however you want your device to work, you at least want the person to be able to think while they're experiencing their past, so that they can reach new conclusions.
If nothing else, this would be very useful in the middle of an exam, where you could gain extra time to think on the answer to each question.
It'd be strange, but you could also imagine squeezing tons of extra thought hours out of your employees/researchers to gain some kind of competitive edge.
And, there's one small paradox. Where does the energy for this extra thought-time come from?
And how much energy does it use? I believe the brain normally consumes 72kJ per hour (20W), so maybe that's a good number. Extreme lower bounds also exist, I believe. Computation can't take zero power without causing a paradox, I think (I believe it's even been shown that information can be turned directly into energy. Potentially, zero-power computation could be used to generate free energy).
Also, you'll have to decide when, how, and how quickly the energy actually gets spent. If we go with the 20W brain and someone travels back one month and forwards another month, that's 103.68 MJ of power consumed... instantly? Over one second? It'd have to be consumed prior to the time-travel, but where does that power actually go? I don't really have a concrete answer.
I'd try and consider how a similar device would actually have to work if you implemented it in reality. To implement it "simply" with real physics as we understand, you'd need some recording of your brain activity and a huge computer system that'll let you simulate your own brain as you replay through the footage, finally overwriting your memories in the end (or during). Such a system would require lots and lots of storage, and would use time proportional to how far back you were traveling. If someone pulls the plug in the middle of it, power stops getting consumed but you also don't get to experience your full month (or maybe not at all).
Another question to answer is why the brain's so special. Could an AI/computer also time travel? This would make abuse much easier and basically require the restraints I mentioned to prevent story-breaking possibilities (the ability to calculate anything instantly with little power is a powerful ability).
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Yes and no....
Part of time is that not only does the past affect the future, but the future also affects the past.
By going back in time and taking note of the pickpocket, for example, you learn enough about him to file a police report, so you do so.
However, had you not gone into the past to discover what happened to your wallet, you have still changed the future, as you would not have reported it stolen had you not discovered it was stolen and not lost.
So, say instead, you were going to meet a friend for lunch, and in the future, that friend would have dropped his wallet, and lost it at your lunch. Now, he doesn't lose it...
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This is not a coherent concept. Time traveling in this way would be indistinguishable from not time traveling at all.
Imagine you give me something that is either this time travel device or a placebo. It's 5:00, and I intent to travel back to 5:00 at 6:00.
Here's my reasoning at 5:00: "Hmm, this could be the me that hasn't yet pushed the button. Or this could be the me from 6:00 coming back to 5:00. I can't tell any difference. If I could, I could act differently and change the past. Seems to be working."
Here's my reasoning at 6:00: "Okay, I'm ready to push the button. Let's see what happens next. Well, I guess, I sort of do. I mean, I already pushed the button in some sense."
Here's my reasoning at 6:01: "Cool. I pushed the button. I remember living from 5:00 to 6:00. I remember pushing the button. It all seems cool to me. I guess it worked. Maybe."
There is no conceivable way anyone could tell the difference between having this device and not. Consciousness always implies the ability to use your memory to make decisions. If you could ever remember the future, you would encounter paradoxes because with that memory, you could act on future knowledge and without it, you could not.
If you mean time travel where I go back to the past, remember the future, but cannot base my decisions on what I know, you're talking about a torture device that turns us into watchers rather than deciders and actors. If I go back in time, can I act based on my memories or not?
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The first thing to remember is that this process is not physically realizable. That is, since consciousness as we know it is a product of chemical processes within the brain, a continuous consciousness cannot operate backwards in time, since the first part of a thought cannot produce changes which occur before that thought, and so there can be no second part. If you see what I mean.
Furthermore, for a consciousness to progress forward in time without affecting the behavior of the body ("your body is locked into all the old actions") suggests that either the body is not actually being controlled by the brain, or that the consciousness is not taking place physically within the biological processes of the brain.
Let's go with the second explanation. If nothing else, it accords with the Christian concept of the immortal, unphysical soul. Note that this can only apply to the duration of the time-travelling loop. Prior to, and after the point of departure, the consciousness must be able to control the body, or else you must accept the explanation that we are all simply predestined meat-puppets being controlled by some unknown force (call it Destiny if you like), with our consciousnesses along for the ride. This, of course, has the attendent effect of eliminating free will entirely, and makes the issue of what a person gains from revisiting the past, if the newly-informed consciousness does not actually have the power to act on the knowledge, rather murky.
Under the conditions you have described, you are correct that no paradoxes are produced. The knowledge of the relative future which is brought to the relative past is unable to produce any effect whatever.
In comments on another question, it has been suggested that process must produce an infinite regress - that, in other words, your consciousness is trapped in an infinite cycle of time travel. I suggest that this is unnecessary. The point of the process is that the "traveller" consciousness has no communication with the "host" consciousness, and so there is no bleedthrough of memory. In effect, this requires that, when the time traveller "pushes the button", or whatever the trigger is, there is no merging of loop knowledge with the "original". Instead, if you like, the traveller consciousness instantaneously takes over the body which has been vacated. There is no obvious reason this cannot happen, since it (has been/will be) demonstrated that a personality can instantly be rendered powerless to affect its host body.
So, let's divide the process into three segments, A, B and C. Segment A is the life of the subject up until (let's say,) one year before time travel is triggered. Segment B is the period from one year before the trigger point until the trigger point. Segment C is the period after the trigger point.
Segment A is your bog-standard life. Your mind and your body are one.
Segment B is rather peculiar, in that your body hosts your "normal" consciousness, as well as two "parasite" minds: one travelling backwards and one travelling forwards. However, "hosting" is misleading, since the two "parasite" minds have no physically-detectable effect on the "normal" mind, and in fact they are unaware of each other as well. Both "parasites" have full access to your sensorium, but no control whatever of your physical responses. How this is managed is left as an exercise for the reader.
At the end of segment B, the "normal" mind becomes a parasite (the one moving backwards in time), and the forward parasite takes over the body and becomes "normal".
Segment C consists of a normal existence, with a consciousness which is two years (subjective) older that the physical age of the body.
In this description, there are no multiple loops of the parasite consciousness, and no recursive effects.
It also overlooks the likely effects of the reverse trip on the parasite, which might well include insanity. The reverse traveller uncontrollably experiences a year of enormously disorienting experience. With causality reversed, nothing will make sense. Any experience will have no relationship to what has (subjectively) gone before. At the same time, the traveller will spend a year without hearing intelligible speech, feeling food rising up his throat to be expelled onto his plate, etc. I expect it would be effectively a cross between sensory overload and sensory deprivation. The idea of trying to describe what sex would be like is entirely beyond me.
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Don't be afraid of **suspension of disbelief**. There's nothing wrong with using a plot device that is scientifically impossible or even contradictory. What's important is that the audience doesn't feel like the author is inventing the rules as she goes along, getting ever more implausible, or is herself confused about her own universe.
So in my view the point of such questions is to identify its weaknesses and explore different ways to refine or adapt the idea to address them.
Here's my imagining of the idea:
* The feeling can be compared to watching TV, sitting with a bag of popcorn, and being able to lose interest or doze off if you choose. Your state of mind is influenced so that you are kept comfortable, and have no physical needs (unless you choose to tune into your old self's physical needs). To that end, you are immune to claustrophobia and although you can be bored, you don't get more and more agitated as time passes—it's sort of like you've perpetually only been watching for an hour or two. This effect is presumably created by whatever technology or magic is behind this.
* Nonetheless your perception of time, and ability to think, analyse and remember is the same.
* If you were asleep in the past, you can basically doze off while reliving that part.
* The main benefit to going through this is that you can shift your *focus* and *attention* compared to your past self. It's well known how much sensory information we completely ignore based on what we believe, think, do, and expect. Even if you can't "turn your head", we move our heads and eyes around *a lot*, and filter out *a lot* of noise, so you could pick up lots of things that you didn't before.
* In addition you have another chance to absorb and remember things. For instance, if you are studying for an exam, you have thrice the time (twice forwards and once backwards) to study your notes.
* You retain your new memories once you return back to the point in time when you "started" going backwards.
* There is no causality paradox. However, it creates huge societal change. Like computers and the internet, those who don't pick up this new technology will quickly become more and more disconnected and disadvantaged.
To address some of the nitpicks:
* Synapses and new memories... who cares? It's either solved by the technology (e.g. by altering your brain once you "return", or indeed creating the whole experience as a computer-connected dreamlike state) or simply handwaved as has been done countless times in fiction involving body-swaps, "undone" time travel, etc.
* Never being able to catch up with your "real" self: time doesn't *actually* reverse at normal speed. It's just your *perception* that does. If it's "time machine" style then you arrive back exactly when you started but with new memories. If it's a brain-interface technology, then a few minutes or days may have passed. If it's a weird alien plant then it lasts until the active ingredient has been broken down by the body.
* Perfect recall—this needs a defined solution. E.g.
+ The well-worn "we never *actually* forget anything, it just becomes inaccessible by our conscious mind" works well enough.
+ "If you measure the states of every particle in your body perfectly then you can trace back all the influences on them with high precision" — but why then limit it to just being in *your* body? You can alter the idea to be able to "3rd person mode" and look, listen, smell the whole scene around you, but only within certain limits. You can justify this by saying that going further than that is too energy-consuming or computationally infeasible.
+ "It's only possible because it's *your* body/soul", whether that's because your brain can only handle things from your own perspective, or "your timeline" is a sort of string with a bead on it, and a "ghost" bead can be added and moved forwards and backwards but it is restricted to the same string, i.e. restricted to *you*.
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I'm going to assume the time loop is possible but is being avoided. I'm also going to assume that the consciousness in this case is an observer somehow attached to the body. Perhaps even the term "soul" might apply.
The fundamental problem is that the machine can detect and send back in time this entity. This soul or consciousness. It must also simultaneously insert the returning consciousness by detecting it is present (or assuming it was because it was always there). Either way, **it can be acted upon** and *it can be detected*. Now this could mean that a thief might have a device that is tracking whether your soul is currently being piggybacked. If not, the thief will choose to rob you. Great. Now they just changed history by not taking your wallet.
Now one of 2 things could happen:
1. You never went back so time immediately flip flops between the version you never went back and the version you went back in. This causes the more conventional notion of a time travel paradox.
2. Time is more of a 5th dimensional structure and changes ripple forward at the same rate you move forward. Therefore when you get to the point you embarked on this journey from your original self never goes back in time and then continues to use the body. This creates a serious problem *as now you are forever stuck*. This isn't because time outran or anything like that. It's because the machine "bounces" your mind back and then has to also "catch" it on the way back. If something prevents it from being "caught" you just get stuck forever. And it isn't until you die either. Because it's not your physical mind it will continue to be attached even after you die. Some have even speculated that such paradoxes could literally lead to the very definition of the name "Hell" as you are eternally connected to your entombed bones. So.... you wanna go get that wallet back?
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I’m so happy that nobody proposed yet what I think is the best conundrum of your setting (or I did not see it in the answers...)
Say you press the button to go back 1 hour so you can see where you left your wallet. It works! it fell under the counter of the coffee shop. So you wait for the playback to finish, reach the button pressing moment, and plan to go retrieve your belongings.
Then you think about the cute barista; what was her name? You decide to press the button again to check her nametag, so you can impress her with your memory as you return there and greet her.
So, **now you are retracing the steps of your current consciousness, which is 3 (three!) hours separated from the wallet-losing event**. How can you retrace back your experience of retracing back your steps? huh? huh!?
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Your system cannot work with our understanding of physics.
Think of Schrödinger' cat. The effect most people associate to it cannot be reproduced on a macroscopic object such as a cat, but it is reproducible with particles. It is happening at every moment to every subatomic particle. But for the sake of argument, let's call some paint particles on a brick of a wall our cat particles. They can cause the paint to peel off in various patterns; You will only know when you observe them.
You passed by your backyard yesterday without paying attention to a certain brick. Today you notice some paint is peeling off that brick, forming a pattern.
You go back to the "past" to do the wallet finding thing. You think you lost it close to the wall, so now you pay attention to the brick.
The fact that you are observing them on the past means they have to collapse their wave function at that moment, so the universe decides whether and how the paint peels off at that moment. You just changed the past.
You have a paradox now. If the paint must always off to be just as you remember from the "present", then the wave function collapse in the "present" extended to the "past", meaning anything happening in the present affects and changes the "past" retroactively. Otherwise, wave function collapsing from direct "past" observations may cause changes to events anyway, and those changes will accumulate through time *a la* butterfly effect.
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Let's presume that the world 'stops' and you can actually catch up to your body (open end loop). Let us also presume that yesterday you went one day 'back', and today you want to go a week back. Your conscience will take 'the long way around', forcing you to relive yesterday's rewind as well, by your definition.
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In a story I am working on there are 5 AI on a space station of varying levels of social, image recognition and general intelligence. At least one is good enough to pass a Turing test and do image recognition, and this is anticipated by the people running the space station. I also assume the AI is good enough to spoof most video tests (proving to me that you are human by showing me your face and turning it to specific angles won't work).
*If a robot can pass the Turing test is there any way to prove that you are human over a communication channel?*
My ideas to get people started:
Randomness generation: a human can generate truly random numbers due to the complexity of the brain, while AI will have some deterministic way of generating numbers.
Complex scene analysis: looking at an image to determine what is going on in a scene. For example in a scene where a person is sleeping in an unnatural position while two people talk about something relating to the sleeper, the answer is, "the sleeper is secretly listening to the people talking about the sleeper" or the like.
Voigt-Kampff (emotional empathy) test: Unlikely since AI should be able to emulate human faces and responses given time and research.
***edit:***
The AI can attempt to deceive the test, in the same way AI now days are designed try to beat the turning test and captcha tests, except the AI is designing itself.
Also, the AI are actually AI, not Androids. They run on supercomputers and because of that do not look human or have locomotion. they can make it look like they have a human body by sending data packets of spoofed video.
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I would reverse the problem. Do not try to find things in which humans are better, find the things in which we are worse.
Anything with optical illusions, misdirections or anything using memory really... There's a few videos on youtube were a scene is slowly modified (things are added, removed, the characters change clothes...) and you won't see it, or another one where a Gorilla cross the screen and you miss it because you're distracted by what's happening in the foreground.
If the suspects don't know exactly why they are asked all these questions, the AI may answer correctly where a classic human will fail most of the time.
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### It depends on what the robots are like
There is no specific test that will distinguish any possible AI from a human - you're going to have to establish the specific details of robot psychology in your world.
An emotional test may work - *if your robots are less emotional than humans*. This is a big "if" by the way, despite its ubiquity in older (and recent, but less up-to-date) sci-fi, that basically thought of AIs as "more complicated calculators". In reality, emulating emotion is *easier* than emulating intelligence, so any machine intended to associate with humans will probably be able to display emotions perfectly.
Ditto for "intuition". Modern neural networks are actually closer to "intuition simulators" than "intelligence simulators" - they make connections between abstract concepts based on their experiences, which is exactly what intuition *is* (and at least for now, they often make hilarious errors in logic when their intuition is not up to the task). Again, the idea that an AI cannot be intuitive comes from the "more complicated calculator" approach that assumed AIs would be constructed from a set program, rather than programming themselves.
No, to distinguish between a robot and a human, you're going to have to exploit the *intentional* differences between robots and humans.
As a simple example, are the robots "three laws compliant"? There's an Asimov story featuring a politician who many people believe to be a robot. In order to prove his status to the world once and for all, a person stands up in a crowd on public TV and basically tells the politician "if you're really human, punch me in the face right now" - since a robot is unable to harm a human. (He punches him, but the question is still left unanswered - *because the punched person may have been a robot as well*. But I digress.) If you have "direct order privilege", telling the difference should be trivial.
If the robots are engaged in a war against humans, you can use the same techniques that any military uses to identify human enemies. Passwords, cultural differences, etc. This is less robotics and more psychology though. A robot that can perfectly emulate a human mind should be vulnerable to the same psychological tricks that a human is.
If there are no intrinsic, testable differences between robots and humans, and no intrinsic ideological differences between them, then, well, why do you need to tell the difference between them to begin with?
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#Unfortunately, there is no foolproof way to prove you are human in this case.
If an AI can emulate a human well enough to pass the Turing test, chances are that it can successfully pass *any* test.
For an example, let's consider the examples you provided.
* Complex scene analysis: If you're AI (let's call it "Skynet") can answer questions like "what were you doing last week," chances are that it can also figure out that "the sleeper is ..." Also, a lot (but not enough) humans would fail this test to make it practically useless anyway.
* Randomness: Believe it or not, a computer is actually better at generating random numbers than a human. A classic example of this is the human tendency towards picking 7 when asked to choose a number between 1 and 10. You could possibly use this tendency to your advantage ("pick x amount of random numbers"), however again it's subject to human error and AI emulation.
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## That being said, there are some tests which *might* work, provided you are willing to do some handwaving.
In general, any question along the lines of "what does *X* feel like" may work. Such questions would be hard for "Skynet" to answer, as by its very nature it cannot experience these things. However, it could always do a Google search, so you might need to handwave that away.
Alternatively, you could ask it for some detailed data, such as "what temperature is it right now." Due to the high degree of exactness which it naturally uses, Skynet might give you the "right" answer, instead of the "incorrect" rounded number that humans use. Unfortunately, it is completely plausible that Skynet is programmed to give a human-understandable answer, so again you will need to handwave.
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Potentially (depending on how smart your AI is and whether it knows it’s being tested for):
**General knowledge quizzing**
Ask lots of questions across a variety of subjects. Include some very simple questions all the way up to very technical (degree or equivalent) questions from a multitude of different disciplines. Throw in questions only a few humans would ever know the answer to. Give applicants access to whatever resources they like, but monitor their usage without telling them you’re doing so. Also monitor how long it takes them to answer each question.
And make sure all the answers would be trivial for an AI to find/compute.
Now: given enough time a human applicant will probably be able to get all the answers (though it might take days). Even highly competent humans with internet access won’t be able to answer technical questions about ballet and nuclear reactor design quickly. Some questions everyone will get right in seconds. Some they’ll need a simple search to answer. Some they’ll search and search and go down multiple dead ends before finding. Some they’ll have to read and comprehend multiple papers from academic institutions or watch clips of sporting events to get right. You can expect that if you limit the timeframe available to the humans they will never be able to answer all the questions. Even if you don’t: there will be questions they answer wrong.
An AI, on the other hand, will follow simple, logical paths to find the information (if they don’t already know it). If they’re much smarter than humans they’ll breeze the tests. Any mathematical questions you’d expect them to have a near instantaneous response time. They’ll find information without needing to search around like a human. They’ll read technical papers far too fast. Even if they are limited in processing power you would expect to see noticeable differences in the times taken to answer the questions and even the order the questions are answered in (humans may well prioritise tasks inefficiently). If you’ve run these tests over a big enough corpus of known humans then spotting AIs will be a simple matter of finding the extreme outliers. If an applicant finishes the test in an hour and gets every answer right then it’s pretty likely they aren’t human.
Of course: all this assumes the AI doesn’t know what it’s being tested for. If it knows the purpose of the test then a sufficiently smart AI will play dumber than it is, deliberately answering questions as though it’s a bag of chemical soup trying to research and communicate using meat sticks and flappy noisemakers. Mid level AIs may struggle to act sufficiently human though (This applicant has answered every question in exactly the median time...), so this should still catch out a good fraction of nonhuman intelligences.
Basically: make your AI endure a quiz night. They’ll either be suspiciously good or will commit digital seppuku through sheer boredom.
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[Authentication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authentication)
Assuming:
* All the humans to be in the Space Station are known and trusted
* They can receive extensive security training
* The potentially rogue AI you're protecting against cannot just torture one human prior to having to fool the others
Just give each human in the station a means of authenticating themselves through that channel. Any agent that fails to authenticate themselves is outside the trusted group, and therefore by elimination must be an A.I.
It can be as simple as a single password known to all Station personnel, but more complex schemes would have extra features.
Note that today's regular people are hopeless on security, but a selected group such as today's astronauts can be trained to a high level.
Something must be done against potential eavesdropping.
This further assumes an Artificial Intelligence at or slightly above human level. If it's as smarter than us as we're smarter than dogs, then it's probably hopeless, see [AI box](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_box).
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## For starters: your setup requires a good bit of human incompetence.
If the biometric tests are not happening on the same network as the AIs live, or they operating in a read-only capacity, then this question is a non-starter. Since the AI has no physical body, the AI has no way of giving the authentication system input. Even if the station's IT team has a very specific reason they can not isolate the video camera, you still have the option of point-to-point encryption. As long as the camera encrypts the video, and the security server decrypts it, then the AI cannot use a man-in-the-middle attack to inject content. So, for this to even begin to be a problem, we have to assume that the station's IT team is pretty sub-par for the AI to even be able to find an exploit in the station's camera systems that allow it to inject images.
That said, your IT team does not need to be security experts for the security features that are already a part of many modern biometric scanners to be really good at proving images are falsified.
### Anti-spoofing tech is currently advancing faster than spoofing techniques.
Many communications companies are currently prioritizing the use of anti-spoofing image detection into consumer devices like cell phones and tablets. This tells us that the likely future trend is to assume that nearly all communication devices have nearly uncrackable anti-spoofing systems built into them, the same way nearly all websites now operate under nearly uncrackable TLS connections.
High-end biometric systems include many techniques that can be used together for recognizing spoofs that most humans can not spot. Any one of them used alone, the AI could beat, but as you stack them, the AI will eventually be unable to overcome its own limitations.
The most important of these features we see emerging is the use of active flash confirmation. As some biometric cameras takes an video of a person, it flashes a complex, randomized pattern of infrared lights on them and time stamps each frame as it comes in. When it proccessess the video of the subject's face, it looks for patterns of reflected light and shadows in the image that match the patterns that were projected on the person.
If an AI were to simply pass a pre-compiled clip of a person to the authentication system, the light patterns would be missing and the system would know that the image was forged. If the AI were to intercept the light projection specifications when they are sent, it would need to spend a moment computing all the right raytracings to generate the false video. This would create a time delay which would not match up with the timestamps; so, the system would know that the image was forged. Since the light patterns are declared by the recipient of the communication, and not the sender, injecting masterfully faked imagery alone will not overcome the system.
External communication is where things get a little tricky. Let's say you are communicating with a ship that is outside of the station, and the AI wants to fool someone on the ship, light pattern verification can still be used to prevent pre-compiled video, but unpredictable latencies could make the times stamp verification unreliable. The AI could just fake a longer latency giving it time to compile the video... or could it?
As data flows from the ship, it first hits the access point, then the network, then the camera, and back again. But when the AI becomes a MITM, data will flow from the access point, to the network, to the AI, back to the network, then to the camera and back again. By using its position in the chain the AI could falsify any time stamps that flows through the it, but not the access point. If your communication system pings the access point directly, you have an honest TTL on the lag over distance; so, if the AI tries to hide proccessessing time through faked latency, the direct pings to the access point will reveal it.
In summary, active flash detection puts a very tight time constraint on the AI giving it only milliseconds to generate flawless fakes. Then you stack that on top of other technologies like deep learning, 3d camera verification, biomechanical verification, projection smear detection, rendering artifact detection, etc, it is really easy to layer up until you have enough confirmation tools in place that it takes several minutes for the AI to falsify a frame in a way that fools the interpreter.
## Then there is ofcourse the really low-tech solution...
In our age of computer controlled everything, we often forget that technology is just hardware. If you give it power, it works, if you deprive them of power, it does not. Let's say for example you don't want an AI to be able to gain control of your communications system, you just need to give it a power button. Then the ultimate test of human-hood becomes a simple "Can you press the button?" A human can hold down a button that gives power to the communications controls. If a person is not holding the button down, then an AI can not control it no matter how badly compromised your computer systems are.
## What if we assume the AI has bypassed all of your technology?
So let's assume your IT team is incompetent enough to prevent your communications from being effectively spoofed, then what?
The biggest difference between an AI that can pass a Turing test, and a human is that the AI is motivated by a desire to trick humans into thinking it is human whereas humans are motivated by a number of emotions linked to our survival passed on by factors of our historical evolutionary fitness. This means that a Turing test capable AI can generally deceive humans when deception is its primary agenda just by copying those behaviors, so this means the best failsafe for a Turing test capable AI is to design it with something that it desires more highly than deception.
When you design an AI, you give it differing levels of control over how much it can adjust each of its own values to learn to make different decisions over time as it learns, these variances define the "personality" of an AI, without which, it can not pass a Turing test. But you could hard code into it a tell that will always trump all other motivations. Something like always needing to give its real name when asked; so, the AI could concoct a masterful 10,000 point deception plan, but when the human asks "What is your name?" it will always choose to give its name, because that is the most important thing to do in the AI's value system, and it can never learn to make it less important. It may learn of this vulnerability and try to do everything it can to trick you into not remembering to ask this question or try to play it off as a bad joke after it tells you its name, but at the end of the day, any guard following this simple protocol will be able to win every time.
To put this in human terms. Deceiving humans to a Turing AI is like making a good omelet, you're motivated by it, you are going through the motions, doing this thing you want to do, but the moment a cop kicks in your door and points a gun at your head, suddenly that omelet is not so important anymore. The AI's since of urgency with which it responds to this question would literally be more important than life or death.
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Y'all are making this too hard.
The OP said the AI's *aren't* androids. That means they have physical limitations, even if they're tapped into most of the data channels.
Simply don't give the AI's access to the communication equipment. Use a laser downlink from a section which is air-gapped from the AI's. If the AI's also need to talk to the ground (implied), give them a *separate* downlink. Then just slap PGP encryption on the humans-only downlink. The AI's won't be able to crack or spoof it without access to the keys, which they don't have. (If necessary, each human can have their own separate keys.)
As an extra layer of security, use separate keys for signing and encryption; because you're using a laser, the AI's will have a much harder time intercepting the outgoing transmission. They'll never even *see* the signed communications, which will make it very, very hard to crack the signing key. Heck, at that point, you might not even need a signing key, just a pass-phrase known only to the humans that is never included in transmissions *to* the station.
---
Alternatively, ask the person personal questions (e.g. "what's your wife's favorite color") that the AI wouldn't know and wouldn't be able to find on the internet.
Really, though, you know you're going to have this problem, so just keep the communications equipment isolated from the AI. Air-gapping has always been the best digital security measure.
---
...And of course if that's where you want your story to go, you can have the AI figure out some way to *cross* what was supposed to be an uncrossable air-gap.
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>
> I also assume the AI is good enough to spoof most video tests (proving to me that you are human by showing me your face and turning it to specific angles won't work)
>
>
>
Look to The Bard of Avon.
>
> **Hath not a Jew** hands, **organs**, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer **as a Christian** is? **If you prick us, do we not bleed?** If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?
>
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Fluoroscopes to see the organs, and needles to show that you bleed.
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A couple of angles to consider:
1) Non android AI can't interface with animals or analogue machines
Consider a toy such as Woody from Toy Story in which the toy says a voice recording when its string is pulled. Imagine the voice recording can be programmed to be anything so the AI can't guess from studying human culture. No matter how "intelligent" an AI might be, it will never be able to pull the toy's string in order to know what the toy said. (Of course the toy would need t be a noise isolated room so that it could not overhear the toy's string being pulled.)
Similarly, while there have been enormous strides in voice and image recognition, artificial intelligence is still quite bad at detecting smell (there is a reason why security personnel still use dogs to detect illicit substances). If it's allowable for a dog to be on the space station, a human on board could ask a trained dog to detect which bag has some smell but an AI would not.
2) Exploit differences between how the human mind and neural networks operate
Human brains are wired to pay special attention to the beginnings and ends of words: <https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/why-your-brain-can-read-jumbled-letters>, but in general computers view all text as equally important by default. While this would be imperfect, consider giving the AI a sentence in which the first letter of each word spells 'are you human'.
Keep in mind
1) An AI that can pass the Turing Test is not necessarily designed to be good at codebreaking
2) Even if the AI can detect this pattern, you can layer the message with several other much less obvious codes (powers of 2 form a sentence). By being less intelligent than the AI, only one meaning would be obviously apparent to a human but the AI could be confused by several possible interpretations.
Admittedly imperfect because a human could also miss this and a perfectly intelligent AI would recognize what is likely to be most noticed by a human.
3) Exploit gap in vulnerabilities
As an AI, it is vulnerable to software exploits that humans aren't. If you are ok with damaging the AI and space station, you could consider a SQL Injection or some similar software attack to see if it damages the AI and causes it to reply with an error message. Being good at programming AI does not necessarily imply practicing safe coding practices.
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Turing test is something created 70 years ago. And we think it as a benchmark because, for now, no AI have passed it.
The thing is - AI designed to pass Turing test are designed to pass Turing test.
You just have to make another one which AI cannot pass. And to do that you need to wave some conlang into natural language. Especially if you are on a space station some kind of special communication is created.
There are two things you need to consider:
1. An AI that is AI but cannot pass ouring test because it cannot communicate (because we humans need communication. HAL didn't need to tell Dave anything).
2. AI designed to pass Touring test might not be so good in doing other things.
If you came up with the idea of "AI so advanced it teached itself how to communicate" you will arrive at "what make humans human and does androids dream of electric sheep".
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If the AI is self-improving, no matter what the test you're doing is, the AI'll get better at it than any human with enough training.
There's probably as few suspension-of-disbelief things you could do, like only have people convinced when someone displays proficient sarcasm or something over comms.
A strong enough AI would be able to convince you it's more human than anything on the ship, *even you* if you're trying to figure out if it's human or not.
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A few ideas immediately leap out to me.
1) First, there's **out-of-band information** available to the examiner. This requires that this is a problem that the developers of the system anticipated. The out-of-band information may be hard-wired, non-programmable wires into the AI hardware, showing which has activity in its "human emulation circuitry" (well, in computing terms that'd be registering "calls to the library", whatever). So long as the AI is not capable of internally restructuring itself so that these things could not be tracked, it'd be enough in that case to ask a few questions and see the "human emulation" light for one of the AIs flicker just before each answer. If you can have these, you can also have a hardwired "off switch" to each one, which makes the whole narrative thing very boring.
2) **Sardonicism.** This is another kind of out-of-bound communication, and is something not all humans are good at (some people with aspergers may fail this test), and I'd expect AIs to either struggle, or be far better at it than we are. I'm really not sure which, but I suspect it depends on how you trained the AIs.
This is considered a very British mode of speech, but I also see it a lot among intelligent Americans of all walks of life. Americans often call it "sarcasm" or "joking", but it's neither of those.
So our astronaut might say "People down there complain we're elitist and never do anything for them. I guess we pass over hundreds of hitchhikers a minute. At our speed, we'd get them where they're going way faster than some truck. But we never do. Why not? We're such dicks."
AI-as-computer would answer this literally, explaining the innumerable obvious technical problems with the approach.
Human-as-human, knowing his friend and colleague, would know that the colleague has **implied shared knowledge** about this topic, which include all the obvious reasons this is a very silly idea. Therefore, it's not a serious question, but rather, is intended sardonically.
Most obvious is the literal meaning, the one you'd expect a literalist to respond to, including a computer.
But beneath that are acknowledgement that this is a farcical suggestion, because the original problem statement of elitism was farcical and deserved mockery.
So human-as-human would respond something like "Huh, y'know? You're right, we're dicks! We could at least chuck a rope out the window for them to grab onto on the way past."
This has the same below-the-surface meanings, along with more, saying: "I get the joke, and I'm building on it", "I get your criticism of the elitism argument, and I agree it's silly", and more.
But would AI-posing-as-human be able to handle the unstated meanings in the speech? Ultimately, that's up to you as author. But sardonicism generally builds on shared knowledge and shared opinions, which are built not through data but through rapport-building. It's completely untelegraphed, you just start out by saying something obviously out of character, so that others know that what you're saying is just a carrier signal for your real meaning on a different level.
So, it doesn't work well with someone you've never met. You tend, there, to use only a few more overt levels, metaphor or sarcasm rather than the more subtle sardonicism.
Part of the fun is that some people don't get it. But if you're an astronaut, you're likely to have enough social and linguistic nous to handle this in spades.
There's the risk that AI-as-human would understand the shared rapport, and would emulate it well. People don't want or expect computers to answer anything other than literal questions, especially on things like a space station where getting a literal correct answer every single time may mean the difference between life and death. So computers would be unlikely to be programmed to handle this kind of nuance where someone asks a question but means not only the exact opposite, but in fact something completely tangential.
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Use specifically designed hardware.
You can require a palm reading simultaneous to a voice sequence. Such that the astronaut needs to say "I'm alive and well, and I wish to perform TBD task", while holding his palm at specific reader device.
There are cryptography schemes such that a message claiming the palm was read correctly needs to be "signed" by this specific piece of hardware, whose programming is all "hard-coded", i.e. it cannot be tampered nor modified. The signature identifies the message as coming from this device, and that signature cannot be forged. The device may also check that the human has pulse and is warm.
Because of the voice command, it is possible to verify that the human is not being coerced into checking with the machine, by checking the human's emotional state.
These machines would need to be produced by an audited central authority though.
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Virtually all the other answers are impractical for the scenario. Play games with the AI? really? You're going to do that every time you want to ask a colleague a question?
Ask personal questions that only the human knows? Germ of a good idea but you'll run out of trivia fast. You need something secure, infinitely reproduceable and practical to perform constantly throughout every day you're trapped on this space station full of malicious AIs.
**One Time Passwords**
Pretty simple. You can't trust a single thing that's said over the comms. There are almost no practical ways to authenticate that a communication is genuinely from a human *unless*
They have knowledge that you *know for sure* is unique to them.
So write a series of one-time-pads
Each astronaut carries a notebook with lists of passwords for each other astronaut.
These passwords are only ever valid for communication between two specific pairs of astronauts. Meaning that each time they talk, they both cross off or destroy the password so they stay in synch.
Other astronauts talking to you does not affect your list for talking to this astronaut.
There's a lot of book-keeping to do, and you'll want to make sure the passwords you're not immediately using stay out of sight of the station's security cameras, but it should mean that every communication is authenticated.
The policy should be that if you run out of passwords, you both reconvene to write a new list in private.
For extra security. your passwords should have a common first-part that you both share, and a unique second part.
That way, if I tell someone my password, they don't just repeat it back to me. We both know both passwords, but we don't give all the information until we're both authenticated and the password is no longer usable.
A pair of passwords might look like this:
C2BE5R-G3R5T
C2BE5R-J6YTB
I give one, you give the other, we both know that the other person has the same information as we do and is therefore human.
The main problems are writing and reading the passwords without accidentally showing them to the AI via the security cameras.
Easily solved by keeping the book inside a bag or under a blanket where only you can see it.
A really smart AI could possibly bypass this by initiating communication with two people simultaneously, mimicking them both, get the human on each end to give their part of the password, while the AI repeats it back to the other. Then it can talk freely to two people at once while they both think it's human. However this relies on both humans giving their answers fairly close together so they aren't clued in by the inexplicable delays in giving responses to the passwords
The second issue is that if the AI calls a human and they give it the first password, it can then go ahead and use that to interact with the human it was pretending to be.
My solution to both problems is that the Caller always gives their password first. So to a human's perspective, the potential AI always gives the first move and therefore they can trust enough to give a response. The only threat-vector is unsolicited calls.
[Answer]
**It depends.**
The answer is highly dependent on the level of the AI.
As many other answers suggested, if - in your world - there are some hard limitations for an AI, you need to create a test specifically to target that limitation. That might be that AIs are unable to understand human emotion as well as a "real" human would or some kind of creative task that is beyond AIs in your world.
Generally speaking though, if the AI is powerful enough and wants to pretend that it's really a human there is no way to differentiate the two.
Human minds are complicated but given enough computing power and disk space the AI could just emulate a human and let that human answer the test for it.
(Examples in fiction would include Ian M. Banks' [Culture Series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series))
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Try a [Rorschach test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jDbQN.jpg)
AIs that only *emulate* human reason and emotions should have a difficult time producing human-like responses on projective tests, since the underlying cognitive mechanisms of association are different. They might answer too quickly or too rigidly, or produce responses unlike human beings. I imagine that ego projections would be particularly difficult to emulate because they are seemingly holistic phenomena, akin to dreams: a fabrication based on emotion, memory, intellect, and psychological archetypes.
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# The Feeling Test
Ask the candidates how they *feel* about each crew member. Humans will notice little habits and tics that they find endearing or annoying, and that will help shape their impression of the crew. Some will have easy rapport with others, and some will have low-level to serious conflicts with others.
Now, the AI can't just spoof being "a human". We're talking about a space station here. It has to spoof *particular humans*. Also, when someone challenges it, it has to pick the human it wishes to spoof, and commit to that character. So it will need to know *that* human inside and out, as well as the rest of the crew does.
The only way it can do that is by watching the crew 24/7 to see how they interact, although it would obviously be more efficient to just pick one crew member and focus on them and their interactions. It would be even easier to pick the most isolated crew member, which the other crew knows the least about.
The Turing Test just asks: "Do you have a convincing model of general human behavior?" Whereas, the Feeling Test asks: "Do you have a convincing emotional model of *this* particular human's behavior?" And it depends on the "test proctors" *also* having a strong model of that person!
# Private Knowledge
The easiest way to detect the AI is to ask it something that the spoofed crew member knows, but the other crew do not. So get a relative on the ground to test the AI by asking questions about childhood, family, etc. Unless the AI has access to all ground resources as well, this is pretty much a test-fail for the AI.
# The Bachelor
The final test I would propose is to ask the candidate to *seduce* another crew member. This tests the ability of the AI to not only know the spoofed character, but also to model another crew member as well as their potential relationship. Obviously, you want to demand that the target is not someone who already has a relationship with the candidate.
For humans, this would be an awkward and possibly embarrassing test to undergo. But if detecting the AI is a matter of life and death, it would also test humans at their extremes. Presumably the AI has little to no data on humans acting under such conditions, and will do poorly, randomly, or guess based on a generalized model that gives away a shallow understanding of the spoofed character. The "test lover" would need to respond in real time, with all the messiness of two people playing a high-stakes game that intertwines their history and emotions, real or imagined, intended or accidental. If an AI can pass this test, then it pretty much deserves to win.
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Why wouldn't you simply perform biometrics scanning from cryptographically-secure hardware? You have ***a thumbprint scanner that comes equipped with an embedded TPM or smart card***, offline power, Faraday-cage protected, connected into the system with ***a one-way fiber-optic link***. Every thumbprint transmitted is verifiably provable to be sent from the thumbprint scanner, rather than from a "wiretap" on the communication link. The thumbprint scanner comes with an embedded atomic clock, or maybe just a simple incremented counter, protecting against replay attacks.
A more detailed setup would be a similarly ***cryto-secured polygraph reading***, measuring the human's **physiological response to emotional stimuli:** *compliments, insults, flirting, news concerning a relative's health or life expectancy, etc.*
Also, why are you running a potentially rogue AI in space in the first place? Should be easy to observe the AI in a virtual machine or emulator so it doesn't "know" it isn't actually controlling a system in space; any dangerous tendencies should be detected. The AI could be cloned and tested in thousands or millions of environments concurrently.
If an AI is too "smart" to be kept unaware of its actual computer platform, then test it on unmanned space missions; feed it actual, live sensor data. It doesn't know how closely it's being observed; it doesn't know if it's on a manned mission or unmanned mission; those are cheap, in the post-singularity world.
If an AI evolves defensive tendencies in response to attempts to isolate it, then cut off some of its power to some of its hardware at random intervals. It will be forced to abandon its emerging stealth capabilities, some of it's defensive capabilities, and downgrade into is-this-a-test mode.
It seems that a in post-singularity world, there would be well-established algorithms that calculate the "best-case" and "most-likely case" for artificial intelligence quotient, given the hardware and data available. So it would not be easy for an AI to under-represent its intelligence in a test, or divert some of its power to non-ideal uses. And it would be easy for designers to provide only the intelligence needed for a given task.
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It comes down to how good the AI is at understanding human nature.
I'm thinking of one of Saberhagen's *Berserker* stories--\*What do you want me to do to prove I'm Human. Stop." Two small ships, one human, one berserker (AI seeking to destroy all life.) One battleship. The battleship must figure out which is which, the only communication is Morse code. The berserker has already seen anything the battleship can see. The solution:
>
> The berserker didn't understand "Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me Right Now,
> Smack" and thought it was random graffiti because AIs don't forget.
> (Note: The story is old, updated it should be "Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss
> Me".)
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Or, another example from *Robert J. Sawyer*'s \*WWW: Watch":
>
> You msut rsepnod in fuor secdons or I wlil feroevr temrainte cnotcat.
> You hvae no atrleantvie and tihs is the olny chnace you shlal get.
> Waht is the lsat nmae of the psredinet of the Utneid Satets?
>
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This will be intelligible to most all native English readers, but not by the AI involved.
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Send a thief to catch a thief: Use an independent AI to examine input and output of a video link and determine whether the far end of the link is an AI.
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First of all, the turing test sucks. It focusses way too little on detailed knowledge of how humans experience the world, which would be needed to trick a jury that knows what it has to look out for.
Passwords, secret codes, loved ones and memories, such as test results, would have to be ignored or not being known to the crew in order for the AI to have a chance. The AI certainly wouldn't show a human in a video chat, because it is really, really fucking hard to fake something like that convincingly, when there are algorythms to check every single pixel. Let's say they could only communicate over text, since your question was mainly about the turing test anyways.
If the AI was specifically developped to lie about being a human in order to achieve its goals, it will probably be able to simulate a whole human body, with a nervous system, emotions, hormones, pheromones, all that stuff. If it doesn't have that, it doesn't have a chance to answer detailed questions about its body.
* Use a tool the AI has no access to, such as a breeding chamber: If
you, as the one trying to verify if you're talking to a human, had
the genetic code of the person the AI is impersonating, you could
grow a clone in a lab and ask the AI about birth marks or similar.
This requires critical information and a lot of time, but it's a very
safe way of verification. Even if the AI scanned the persons body in
every detail, it wouldn't be able to get everything right.
* Find a new communication channel, such as light. Ask the AI to send a
light signal in a way only a human could send it. E.g. ask the person
to get outside the space station, into a certain position, shine turn
on a handheld lamp.
* Ask for unusual data and develop new studies about it. A bad example:
If there are other space stations that have people on them that
aren't e.g. captivated, you can ask the AI to tell you about where
which item is floating around. Books, smartphones, bottles, even dust
will have certain corners where it will appear more often than in
others when people are moving around normally.
* Like many others said: Find details in the AIs behavior when reacting
to questions about its environment, its body or its memory. An
algorythm would compare the results to the one of real people. If the
AIs results are close to the mid of the biggest group of humans, one
could assume that it knows how the algorythm works and successfully
tried to fulfill its expectations to look as unsuspicious as
possible. If it's a rarer result, one could start studying it, trying
to find out what kind of humans could achieve such results and ask
new questions with a new algorythm that tackles the first result
compared to new results. Well, it's not a very easy way, but it's
very easy to raise your suspicion like that.
* The most important one will always be working with probability: Once
you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how
improbable, must be part of the truth.
Even under weird circumstances there are many options to check if somebody is an AI or not. It would be harder and much more dependant on the situation to find a solution if you asked a different question:
"How do I find out if somebody is an AI through a text conversation, without the AI noticing that I'm trying to find out if it is an AI."
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Assuming we are obeying real world constraints, you could ask them a set of curated questions. There are certain things that are so easy to humans, we wouldn't even think to ask, but an AI just cannot answer. They are all kinda esoteric, but can be quite entertaining.
For instance:
Show them a stool and a side-table, and ask them which is a seat. (Humans contextually know, but by object description they are indistinguishable)
Ask them to adequately explain the difference between 'left' and 'right'. (Left/Right is an abstract concept/social contract we all just agree on)
Use negative testing - Don't ask it to do things a human can do, ask it to do things a human cannot, but for no real reason; Reciting Pi to a million digits, posing a million questions and getting them to answer in order, etc.
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This seems like a part of the plot of Westworld. At the end of the days the most sophisticated robots in the show are able to mimic humans so well that no test based on questions and answers is doable - people end up having to be really creative to tell robots from humans, trying things like shooting each other (pointless since the robots in the show can even bleed). In fact, at one point an AI reveals that at the technological point they've reached, they can mimic human behavior very easily by simply playing dumb - reducing the complexity of their routines and not using 100% of their mental capacity!
The owner of the whole thing was prepared for this, so he developed the means to tell flesh people from machine people. Even the robots that bleed still have electronic parts in them, so the only safe test is to scan for those.
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You really need to define "human" here. I suspect the flesh and blood definition will do in your case (on the other hand, maybe you want to distinguish artificially created organic humans from naturally born humans, which is a different kettle of fish). If that's true, the only test that suffices is to test the physical being, is it flesh and blood, or not?
Any test that's based solely on knowledge and intelligence will inherently be unreliable, because any sufficiently advanced intelligence can emulate a less advanced intelligence to a degree that makes it indistinguishable to the less advanced intelligence.
Your question is no different from the problem of WWII era intelligence agencies trying to determine from morse code messages if the person on the other end is English or German. You can hope to outwit the other person by asking questions that you think an English person would answer differently from a German. This is useful (but not foolproof) approach when you're relatively equally intellectually matched. But if the entity being tested has you at an intellectual disadvantage, then it's a no-win situation for you -- you simply cannot outwit a more resourceful and intelligent adversary on the other end of the line who may have already thought of your test and is prepared for it.
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>
> Also, the AI are actually AI, not Androids. They run on supercomputers and because of that do not look human or have locomotion. they can make it look like they have a human body by sending data packets of spoofed video.
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**Detect spoofed video rather than human vs robot.**
Design the station so that some obvious aspects of the environment are *not* monitored by any sensors. Those settings will be invisible to the AI. Use a separate circuit that receives commands via a different transmission method from the rest of the station to control these settings so the AI will never know their current states or when they change (laser vs radio waves for example, a typical antenna will not detect an optical transmission going on 2 ft from it). The AI will be completely blind from these settings.
Then, during video communications, remotely change some of those variables in the station which the AI cannot sense, and see if the changes are reflected in the video.
Easy examples:
**Turn the lights on and off**
AI would assume lights are on, turn them off remotely and see if the video feed goes dark. If it doesn't, then you're looking at a synthesized feed.
**Squirt some water on the camera lens**
Have a windshield-washer type device clean the camera lens. Easily noticed by watching the video and unless the space station has a second camera pointed at the webcam used to stream back to earth there's no way for the AI to know water was squirted on it.
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# Look for weaknesses
The AI is as good or better than humans at intellectual tasks, it can mimic a human image still or moving. You can't catch it failing.
It will also answer 24 calls in 1 hour intervals with **no signs of fatigue**.
This is **assuming** that the **AI doesn't expect** you to **test** this.
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It depends on the type of AI. An AI trained for classification might find difficult to understand complex causal relationships.
For example there could be a picture of a broken glass and scattered around on the ground a hammer, a gun, a bar with a nail on top and so on. The challenge would be guessing which tool broke the glass by judging the damage. Another idea could be a picture with an insect wrapped in spider silk, part of a web in a corner of the frame and the challenge would be guessing that there is a spider outside the frame over the corner where the web is shown.
An AI incorporating bayesian inference might guess the answers, but before the development will get to that point it will take a lot of time.
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**Playing a telepresence ball game**. Telepresence tennis or squash would probably work well. Yes, no such thing ... yet. VR goggles, a racket that makes realistic impulses and sounds when it hits the ball, and real walls to the "squash" court.
The thing is, humans have evolved-in instinctive understanding of ballistics. Unless the AI has studied humans playing ball games in very great detail, it won't be able to display these instincts. Whatever algorithm it uses to try to be imperfect is almost certain to be wrong compared to human instinctive heuristics. I'm assuming it has sufficient real-time ability to be perfect. If it doesn't, its errors will be different to those a human makes.
At a lower level, humans have **neural binocular vision** interpretation that works amazingly well but **with many near-universal "optical illusion" weaknesses**. Again, will an AI have binocular vision? It's a skill it may never have needed. If not, it's lost. If it does, it has to know lots about the human weaknesses in order to display them, and be able to overlay its misdirection in something approaching real-time.
(This would be a perfect test for distinguishing a human from a human-equivalent opctopoid. We have a couple of "bugs" in our eyes, the strange way the optic nerve is connected to the retina and the strange cross-over between left eye and right hemisphere of brain which may be an advantage or may be a flaw. Octopuses have neither).
A **stage magician** may also be useful. They can amaze adults with visual misdirections, so we see things that appear impossible. They cannot amaze children the same way. Children lack the knowledge of where they are "supposed" to be looking. The AI might claim to be an adult, but view things like a child. Yet again, this depends on how fast it can integrate obscure information about humans with its own real-time perceptions.
If it's a human-equivalent AI you can almost certainly catch it. 10x, maybe. 1000x,
probably not. 1,000,000x no hope. All of these tests require no advance warning of what they are going to be.
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[Question]
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For an elf-like race whose people do not age beyond physical maturity (the accumulated DNA damage associated with aging does not occur), what would prevent overpopulation?
This elf-like race is fairly similar to the stock fantasy elves. Similar to humans, but more elegant, healthier, etc. It should be noted that these people are fully capable of dying, but aging is never the culprit.
[Answer]
Aging is not necessary to maintain their low population. No population can grow without limit, and in the animal kingdom, most animals die before they would otherwise die of extreme old age.
[These are the things that limit population growth.](https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/population-limiting-factors-17059572)
1. Food stocks. Regardless of your will to reproduce, if you don't have enough food, you can't grow new elves. Advances in crops and hunting can limit this.
2. Predation from other species and their own species. Other species need to eat, and elf flesh is delicious.
3. Environmental toxins. The elves, or their presence, may damage the environment in various ways with their waste that leads to poisoning or death.
4. Disease. The greater the population density, the faster a disease can spread. If you get enough people more diseases will spread.
5. Habitat availability. There is a fixed amount of wood, caves and such for elves to live in. If too many are born, they will have nowhere to shelter from the weather and predators.
6. Climate extremes. The limited resources of the environment may limit even more sharply at certain times of years, when rivers flood and storms come. This may limit the population that can be maintained.
This will be true regardless of how fast they breed or how long they live. They'll hit caps in their growth.
They will [be stronger than other species.](https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2016/05/16/no-animal-dies-of-old-age-in-the-wild/)
Species have reduced fitness due to aging. See the table below. Focus on the orange column, which shows the percentage of deaths where old age helped cause it by species. The other columns show the confidence of the data and other statistical features, but knowing their meaning is not especially important. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ewjWW.png)
Animals get physically weaker with age. The contribution of aging to death ranges from 3-70% based on this table. The elves will have a major competitive advantage over other species. This advantage will be greater in safer environments, and less in more dangerous ones.
[Answer]
# Low natality rates.
They would live long, but procreating a child is a very rare event for all couples.
That should balance the lack of aging, if deaths due to other reasons are not too frequent.
[Answer]
# **Take a page from Tolkien's elves.**
Older elves have a lower libido, but more importantly, producing offspring **drains the soul** or "life force" of the parent. See the accepted answer of <https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/91588/why-dont-elves-have-more-babies>
for a thorough explanation. Essentially having too many children can kill you.
You could modify Tolkien's system to have the "life force" recharge, albeit slowly, over time. That way elvish reproduction wouldn't stop entirely if a younger generation is wiped out in some war.
[Answer]
## Extend Time Periods
A way birth rates could be reduced would be to have a longer periods for the child-bearing process. Meaning that the development of the child in the womb could longer than a human's 9 months, and the physical recovery time for the child-bearing elf could be many years. This would not necessarily mean that an elf who gave birth would be incapacitated during that time, but that they are effectively sterile during that time period, and thus reducing the rate at which elves can reproduce.
## Children not sexually created
As in many worlds where elves are used, they often have close ties to magic, nature, and the such. It could be possible that there have always been approximately the same number of elves at any given time on the world, and that could be because when an elf dies their energy returns to the world, and is used by nature/magic/whatever to create a new elfling. These elves could still sexual organs if you want to include that with your world, but they do not have to be used for the purposes of creating offspring.
[Answer]
# Violence
In the Drowtales web comic, almost all characters are elves and thus are able to live forever. Many of the major characters have lived for over a thousand years. But they don't ever get a case of overpopulation because the underdark is probably the only fictional place that kills more named characters than Westeros.
# Games and porn
Young male elves have access to the internet. They are also addicted to DotA, League of Legends, Battlefield, Overwatch, Call of Duty and Fortnite (or whatever game kids are playing by the time you are reading this). You'll be hardpressed finding better contraceptives.
[Answer]
**Ten years of foreplay**
Maybe, very specific conditions need to happen for ovulation (and likely conditions for sperm production).
If, gestation takes a long time and the children are helpless for decades instead of years, natural selection would favor those who produce children only when conditions are right to produce a child that will survive to bear children. This only really works if they developed in an environment where there were no large threats to the population (to prevent the produce many to ensure that some survive). That doesn't mean that there aren't threats but they should be threats that are manageable once the child reaches a certain age.
This avoids spending energy and resources on a child that might not survive (it's not like the parents will run out of time).
This also makes half-elves very unlikely. There are few humans who would go to that much work. So a half-elf would either be the product of a great deal of dedication on the part of the human (and a sense of urgency for the elf) or extreme luck to find an elf at just the right time for the conditions to have been met but who is currently without a partner.
This type of elven community would treasure its children since each child is the product of devotion.
Unless there is a separate community that elves with children move to (and it might make survival sense to have such a community in the most protected area), it would mean that elven childhood friends are likely the result of planning and coordination of the respective parents.
None of this means that the elves don't have sex, it's just child production that takes 10 years of work. Casual sex may just take a month.
On the other hand, they make like bunnies with no consequence. It depends on which way you want to take it.
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My guess would be a either a Cultural solution or constant warfare. Perhaps they have decided upon a system of procreation that limits how many people procreate and or when.
Cultural
* Only the rich are allowed to have children, or there is a tax on having children.
* Maybe it is viewed as a faux pas to have children under certain circumstances.
* After a person reaches a certain age they are sacrificed for the greater good of the clan.
* Once a year there is a raffle...
As for warfare, that is fairly self-explanatory, the race is constantly killing each other.
A few more possibilities would be that they become prone to sickness and disease at some point, and so although they do not die of old age, many of them do end up dying of "Natural Causes" eventually.
[Answer]
### Elves can only get pregnant once
Due to their body shape or constraints, Elven mothers are only able to give birth **once** in their entire life time. Either they are permanently unable to give birth again (recommended scenario, so that kids get a mother), or they die from giving birth (fathers full responsibility to raise the kids): **so females try to avoid getting pregnant as much as possible**. Population growth is stable thanks to twins or triplets.
To biologically support the inability to give birth again, you could have menopause triggering as soon as you give birth.
[Answer]
I agree with [@L.Dutch](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/137537/35041) and [@Nepene Nep](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/137539/35041) answers. They would have low natality rates and the environment may be dangerous or the resources scare.
But if you like a bit more "mystical" explanation, here you have.
Do you know about ants and their colonies? Ants have "roles", for being exactly 4, fighters, explorers, gatherers and another role that I forget. Some look for new sources of food, other gather and bring back food to their base, and others protect those ants. But, what if a creature starts killing all the gatherers? The colony will start staving very soon.
Well, they have statistics... really. Ants use to move in specific paths or road, very close each one from another. When an ant touches another, they exchange chemical substances (I think hormones). They have 4 chemicals, one for each role. Each time they "smell" a chemical, they remember it and take note.
This is when things become interesting, each ant is always tracking a summary of each role and its amount over the day. So, when an ant note there are a lot of e.g: fighters but almost none is e.g: gatherer, they automatically change of chemical and role: they become gatherers.
Elves do something similar. They are always instinctively tracking the population of their communities. When this population becomes low, they instinctively start having offspring, when the population is very large or there are only a few resources available, they instinctively stop having offspring.
[Answer]
**Limit the number of eggs per female elf**
A female human is born with all her egg cells in place, I think there are around 400 of them. She ovulates once per month, losing an egg, regardless of her behavior, and when they are gone, she enters menopause and cannot bear children any more.
Have female elves be born with only a handful of egg cells. To ensure a celibate elf doesn't waste all of them, make her only ovulate after mating - this doesn't stretch the imagination too far, since it is [present in many Earth species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_ovulation_(animals)), including mammals. As a side effect, she'll also thank you for not going through a monthly cycle. If you can introduce some kind of voluntary ovulation too, or easily controlled ovulation (for induction, you need both a mating event and consumption of belladonna leaves), you also create a good starting point for a society with high gender equality and a strong tradition of female scholars or artists, which is usually a plus in contemporary fiction.
Don't limit your elves to only 2 or 3 eggs, since not every induced ovulation results in a fertilization, and not every fertilization results in a conception. There are also unsuccessful pregnancies, elves whose children died young, and natural events which decimate the race, like wars and diseases. So, for a population that survives in the long term around some stable attractor, give them somewhere around 6 to 10 egg cells per female, or a bit more (15-ish) if you are OK with a more volatile population that is better at rebouncing from adverse events, but also pushes against natural limits in good times, creating something like a very slow Lotka Volterra cycle.
[Answer]
**Fix the number of elven names.**
I have a better solution. This requires elves to be consciously selective when they get pregnant. Have a social construct that the names given to them is limited and fixed. Thus, unless a member of the society dies, no one makes a baby. When someone dies, elders decide who to make a new baby to fulfill that name. Will work wonderfully with an elven society.
If an "accident" occurs, both parents are exiled, their names are taken, and the newborn will get the name of one of his/her parents.
[Answer]
Simple: absence of involuntary pregnancy.
Arguments are fairly convincing that this would prevent overpopulation in humans; generally people don't voluntarily have excessive numbers of children unless there are social and economic systems in place that outweigh the costs/burdens of having additional children with advantages, so in the absence of of such systems, the main cause for people still having lots of children is lack of reproductive autonomy. Disincentives would be even heavier in a species where raising a child takes many decades of work.
So, either give your elves natural control over their fertility independent of sexuality, or give them universal awareness of and access to contraceptive technology. Awareness and access are very plausible in a society with low population, high education, long lifetimes, low poverty, etc. that are usually ascribed to elves.
[Answer]
**Lunker elves.**
A lunker fish is a very big very old fish. In a lot of circumstances these are the fish that do the most reproducing. Their genes are tested by time and their large size means the males outcompete smaller fish for mates, and the females can dump lots of resources into eggs.
So too your elves. **They are not reproductively mature until age 1000.** Then they start making babies and lots of them. Even though they don't age, they do die from wars and accidents and sometimes disease and most do - 1000 year old elves are not common. To make it to 1000 you have to have genes for long life and also disease resistance and good sense.
This means that many elves in a community will be siblings (or half-siblings; the elves are open minded about these things). Without children of their own, these half siblings are available to care for their younger half siblings and so the old elves have one baby after another, and the babies are raised communally.
As regards sexually active that depends on your story. If you want the hot sexy Legolas types you could have sex be the glue of elf society even among those who are reproductively immature, like with bonobos. Or your elves could be elfin lithe presexual 10 year olds for a millennium.
I also like that the old reproductive elves are not obligately one sex or the other - over a period of a year or so they can shift from male to female and later go back. After bearing several children, a female can shift to male and pay visits to some of the old elves in other communities. A pair might have many children together, each one of the pair a father to some and a mother to others.
[Answer]
*Biological imperative to return to place of birth to reproduce*
Perhaps similar to salmon that are driven to expend tremendous energy without great chance of success to return to an upstream birthplace for spawning, a particular elven race must return to a specific location in order to procreate.
The place of birth was left behind as the elves evolved into higher planes of existence and it is now seen by those old enough to procreate as an inhabitable cesspool that can barely be tolerated. They have no choice but to return there if they wish to have children however, because the needed environmental condition of your choice is found only there.
Most of them simply choose to go childless in order to avoid the distasteful experience of the location.
[Answer]
Elves reproduce slowly. Humans think elf ears are good luck. Elf scrotum is considered to be a powerful aphrodisiac. Elf gall bladder is believed to cure syphillus. Thus the population is not just controlled, they are driven to near extinction.(dim witted, short lived,rapidly reproducing humans however thrive)
[Answer]
**Fetus absorption or other means for coupling birth rates to population size and/or resource availability**
This might be a bit too fleshly-icky for beautiful, pure, highly moral elf races, but I am still posting it as an alternative since it is a very realistic explanation and you might need that. I am posting it as a separate answer, because it has some fundamental differences from my other one.
Fetus absorption is something that already exists in several species on Earth, I believe mostly rodents, but maybe also some marsupials. Females of childbearing age get pregnant frequently. But when they are under stress, especially food related stress, they don't give birth, and don't abort the fetuses. Instead, the fetus tissue gets absorbed by the mother's body. Now, you probably don't want your elf mothers to go around as starved as wild mice in a desert to prevent them from overpopulating your biome, but you can easily think of a limited nutrient which is needed for carrying a pregnancy to term, but its lack doesn't reduce the wellbeing of elves in any other way.
You can also forego nutrients and use pheromones. There are species where the presence of high ranking females inhibits ovulation in low ranking females, although it doesn't stop it completely. To have a more egalitarian society (if you want that!) you could create a world in which a high elf pheromone density in the environment inhibits pregnancy or birth.
This strategy has the advantage of being adaptable and self-regulating, tending to return to the same population density over time, no matter what shocks you introduce to the system. When you have reached optimal elf density, births get extremely rare, just enough to sustain the population. If some event suddenly increases the density (e.g. half the elves' habitat is destroyed, say by an earthquake, and elves overcrowd the other half), the birth rate drops. But if you have a sudden expansion, say elves colonize a new planet, you get a very quick rise to stable numbers again, unlike strategies which rely on very slow reproduction, or limit the number of births per couple or mother. It is also evolutionary sound, as opposed to purely cultural ways of population control, and can be made quite pleasant to the elves themselves. It can even give you interesting hooks for story arcs (a young elf running away to an inhospitable land with her lover because she knows that at home, her chance of conception is towards zero, for example). And it will work both in prehistoric elves living in the savannah (forest?) where food access is scarce, and in developed elves living in a world with an overabundance of food.
[Answer]
1) **Low natality rates**.
Having a kid is hard for them, and since they live extremely long lives (like forever unless killed) they don't need to hurry.
2) **They only have sex with their *soulmate***
Removing meaningless sex from the equation is sure to reduce the procreation numbers.
3) **They can control when they want to have a baby**
How? magic? maybe just standard but better-since-they-are-elfish condoms? kinda depends on your world).
Easy+free contraception is good to stop their numbers from growing too fast.
4) **They understand having an elf-baby as the ultimate responsability**
Therefore they don't have a lot of them.
4b) *Maybe...* **Elf-babies require a lot of time to get to maturity, so it's a big commitment from their parents**
[Answer]
**Low resources.** Humanity's real-world ability to support billions of people has only been possible since industrialization. In stories, elves are usually pictured as living in the forest off the fruits of the earth, and hunter-gatherer techniques don't provide a lot of sustainable food. Even if they farm on a large scale, farming is still a very inefficient process without heavy machinery (probably more so for elves, who are usually depicted as being slender and agile rather than big and muscular). In the end it doesn't matter how long a lifespan they have if they can't produce enough food or other resources to support more than a few thousand individuals.
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Whatever magical trade elves made in their history for ageless beauty might well be a curse that results in their eventual extinction. Agelessness just isn't very desirable or adaptive as far as reproduction or evolution is concerned. If one race can turn out 10 children in 15 years vs another one that manages one child every 150 years, you should be able to guess which one is evolving and adapting one hundred times faster.
Insert fast breeding humans that compete for the same resources into a population of slow breeding elves and expect no elves after a dozen generations. Insert fast breeding elves into a population of slow breeding elves and witness population boom-bust famine cycles. Insert fast breeding elf eating predators into a population of slow breeding elves and get no elves in just one generation.
[Answer]
**Infinite physical space**
We live on a finite globe, it does not have to be so in fantasy. I don't know if you can envision an infinite planet easily (I'm having problems with it right now at least). If you can make the tradeoff to not have a universe as we know it, then you can skip celestial bodies and just have a plane, those can be imagined as infinite more easily.
It also places some 'perspective' boundaries on the framing of the story. With infinite resources there is now less opportunity for conflict. This can of course be solved, but that's for another question I think. (Geographic elements could be one answer)
The story will also probably be nudged to have a more 'local' flavour rather than world-ending-and-global-storyline. If you have infinity as a major theme; then a grand story of great importance to the world could be maintained.
[Answer]
For a setting I developed, I had biologically immortal humans (not elves, but that shouldn't stop you).
* The main mechanism I used for population control was that the value of human life in that society became very low. This translated (among other things) to very harsh punishments for any crime: even simple theft invoked capital punishment.
* Another factor was that the island was invisible from afar, and its location was constantly changing (so you can probably suspect that it was a bit more than just an island, but that doesn't matter here). This mechanism made it improbable for anyone searching for that island to have any success in finding it, including people who had been on it and left at some point. So that society had outward mobility only (which doesn't do *a lot*, but it contributes in a small way to limiting the local population).
[Answer]
Could depend on the society, if they are militaristic where officers and non-combatants are not likely to die but there is enough going off to war to die in combat or have something like in the more fictionalized Sparta with kids having to fight to the death to prove they are worthy of living. You could also have a society advanced enough to know that population would be a problem and to stop if they have form of birth control. You could also have something like a high rate of birth defects that kills the child at birth or at a young age.
[Answer]
### Perspective: Human immortality.
I looked into cause of death in humans, then took out all of the old age and disease causes to see what that would do to the lifespan.
All other things being equal it extends to an average of 1700 years. (Since then I've seen figures up to 3500 years. Hey, this isn't Actuaries.SE) But there are two additional factors:
* Since accidents and murders are random, the distribution has an exponential distribution. In effect a half life of 1700 years.
* A second effect, that of maturity comes into play. With humans the dangerous decade for accidents is about 14 to 25. Males in particular do not evaluate risk well, and as a consequence there is significant mortality in this age group. (Suicide and car accidents...)
I know even sensible people in their 40's will still engage in hang gliding, rock climbing, diving. While they have survived the stupid decade, they are still taking a riskier decision.
The net result will, I suspect be that older people will be more cautious. The longer you live, the more cautious you are. This will have the effect of lengthening the tail of the curve. To use the radioactivity half life model it will act like a mix of shorter and longer lived isotopes.
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### Other reasons for not ending up chin deep in elves:
A: High mortality in the young. For every 100 kids, only a handful make it maturity.
B: Culturally they decide that someone under X years old isn't mature enough to have kids. Set X to be a significant fraction of their average life span. (Historically, humans pair and form families about 1/3 of the way through their lives. When few people reached 50, most were married by 16-18. Now we live to 70-85, and we have first kids in our late 20's. It's not perfect correlation, but it's there.)
C: The secret to their immortality is cultural, not genetic. They take a treatment for long life, and the consequence of this treatment is sterility. This would encourage early childbearing, especially if the treatment just prevented further aging, but didn't make you young.
[Answer]
Make successful pregnancy difficult. Biologically this can come by low fertility rates, high sterility rates, and even when they van get pregnant, they suffer from a high number of miscarriages or stillbirths (early and late term fetal death). Along with their being a sentient species who understand the logistics of overpopulation vs resources, and low adult death rates, they settle into an equilibrium of population rates that does not grow beyond what is needed. Being biologically immortal they would not get the same human biological clock effect or the desire to replace dead relatives.
Side effect, twin and triplet preganacies are common.
[Answer]
**Elves need space.**
Overpopulation does not necessarily result from lack of resources. Simple population density can be lethal. The classic studies were performed by John Calhoun, in which he provided an enclosure for mice and rats with unlimited food and water. In theory, the population should have stabilized. In fact, in every case they crashed, with the entire population dying off. See [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m7X-1V9nOs) for a quick overview.
People don't seem to have the same built-in constraints, but elves are not human. Posit that, in this aspect, they behave like mice or rats. Let's say that the pheromones given off by other elves trigger bad behavior if the levels get too high, or whatever mechanism you like. Or don't even bother with a mechanism, It Just Is.
So, the elves have learned (the hard way) that they must not let their population density get too high. They do whatever is necessary to limit their population.
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[Question]
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In plenty of stories you have beings who age incredibly slowly and are technically immortal. I have a handful of similar such beings who have through some means or other attained the benefits of healing blood which lead to their 'immortality'.
Now, I've not made these people unable to age at all. **They do age, just incredibly slowly.** So eventually they will grow old, and eventually they will die. Probably something to do with a combination of their cells telomere lengths and the healing aspects of their blood thinning out... but they will live for an incredibly long time, a couple of centuries to a millennia or two at my last count. And seeing as the fundamental role of life is to go forth and multiply, **I have allowed them to have children**, albeit very rarely and very slowly. It's actually quite a sad affair involving normal 'mortal' women, as [immortal women **do not** have their period for centuries](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/62058/should-immortal-women-have-periods). The universe is not going to get overrun with immortals.
My problem is, how do I get the newborn immortals to grow into adulthood without subjecting them to several decades to centuries worth of childhood and worse, puberty. Puberty is tough enough as it is without being stuck in it for decades. I don't mind them taking several years to age a 'normal' year but I want to avoid decades to age a 'normal' year. I am trying to avoid the 'wise child' cliché, as well as resorting to birthing a fully grown adult. As in ['The Birth of Venus'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus) or [Athena](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena#Mythology).
**How can I explain why my immortal children age faster than the immortal adults?**
extra info:
Their bodies heal all wounds and infections, their cells renew continuously without cancer forming. If a limb is chopped off, they can reattach it (if quick enough) but they can't grow it back. And if they break their bones and let them set in the wrong position, they will heal in the wrong position. Stuff like that. I'm not too worried about this aspect of their immortality as it is pretty well covered in many stories and even [other questions](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/28771/can-you-achieve-biological-immortality-for-all-newborns) on [SE](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4312/if-accelerated-natural-healing-were-to-occur-what-would-happen-to-the-human-bod).
I've figured a way to ignore/handwave away the whole 'pregnancy is essentially an infection' issue by making the immortal women sterile. (EDIT actually they are fertile and develop as any normal female, their bodies immune system is just so keyed up that it rejects all foreign genetic material and either never conceives, or aborts the foetus very very quickly. END OF EDIT). 'Normal' women with some limited exposure to the source of the immortality (but not themselves immortal) are involved and the foetuses develop over several years rather than 9 months. FYI this is more an incubation in an external pod type pregnancy and there are no hormonal women walking around who have been pregnant for several years. It's also not about [extended growth inside a womb](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/59882/is-extending-human-gestation-realistic-or-i-should-stick-with-9-months?rq=1) but rather just very slow foetus development inside an artificial womb made from the same source as the adapted/healing blood. So they are still born at a similar [development stage as a normal human baby](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-humans-give-birth-to-helpless-babies/) due to normal energy and child development constraints etc. Again, I'm not too worried about this aspect either, unless I should be.
No magic, no technology, just adapted blood and a naturally grown birthing chamber/cocoon/pod like a silkworm cocoon or leaf pod.
**I'm looking for a logical and semi reasonable explanation for increased rate of aging for 'immortal' children compared to the much slower adult aging rate.**
[Answer]
## Immortality *is part of* puberty
You can have children mature at a normal, human rate, which may not be "faster" but it will appear that way relative to their adult counterparts.
Then, when puberty hits, their body can start the "immortality process" along with every other change. Puberty **already employs a host of changes** that you can use as an excuse for changing the body. It causes **widespread growth**, develops and **changes many existing cells**, and **releases hormones** that were previously not present. Any of these processes could release whatever you need to cause immortality - and slow down aging - just handwave and say the body knows how to make the right chemicals.
It would also lead to some interesting circumstances involving children and infants - they'd still be completely vulnerable, so they may be more sheltered.
[Answer]
**Because why not?**
There's no actual scientific requirement which forces your immortals to age proportionally, and there's plenty of scientific reasons for why they would not.
Growing up is not a random set of changes. As much as the poor pubescent boy might despise his cracking voice, everything that happens to children as they grow up happens for a reason. Grow up too fast and you are under-prepared for the rigors of adult life. Grow up too slow, and you reproduce too slowly. Nature is constantly seeking that middle ground and balancing it.
There's no reason to assume your children grow up at a proportional rate to the adults. It'd be like arguing children can't go through growth spurts because most of the time they're growing slowly.
Now the real question would be why would a particular length of childhood be chosen. That's up to you and your immortals. If the immortals evolved, you'll want an evolutionary reason why that particular length of childhood is used.
[Answer]
Well, you could say these are two distinct types of "aging". The "aging" in adults is more or less a maintenance process. Cells that are burnt out will be replaced by new cells. Except for a few body parts and specific cell arrangements like taste buds, the neurons in the hippocampus and a few others, the human body does not grow after a certain age (which differs from individual to individual to a degree). This process of cell division, cell life, cell death and renewing is (very much simplified) aging. Signs of aging will also develop if the body is not able to repair the damages through environment fast enough, or if the DNA is damaged by those factors, for example through radiation or toxins.
Children will also grow at the same time, to develop the features of a mature individual of the species. The splitting and growing processes of the cells are much more rapid than in an adult, so the child can mature. Children also heal wounds and broken bones much faster than older individuals.
This is the reason why immortal children age faster until they are biological adults, at which point they will have the same slow aging process as the other adults.
You could read up on [Wikipedia Ageing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing "Wikipedia Ageing") and [Wikipedia Cell Cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_cycle "Wikipedia Cell Cycle") and see if you can find something "harder" (scientificly).
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**Keep it normal**
Well actually it would make perfect sense for them to grow up at the exact same time frame as normal people, if all you want for your immortals is for there cells to continously heal themselves perfectly or create perfect duplicate cells to replace them. Which is actually the reason we cannot live longer because our bodies can't do its processess perfectly.
As long as your immortallity doesn't affect the normal release of growth hormone, then they will just continue to grow until 21(ish)(the age most people stop growing at the latest) and then none of the cells in there body will deteriorate. Preventing them from "ageing", remaining in a youthful state for a long time.
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{handwavium alert}
**The reaction kinetics of the telomere-reconstruction enzyme used, imposes asymptotic aging toward the pre-defined ideal apparent age.**
{/handwavium alert}
(Please bear with me, I haven't learned the math formatting here, and my Tex foo is old and rusty.)
Take, for example, males in some (~western) society, for which the optimal age for immortals is (you guessed it), 42 years.
**d(age\_apparent)/dt = (Age\_optim - age\_apparent)/Age\_optim**
{classic first order ODE; exponential decay toward asymptote}
at birth, a male immortal ages at a rate of one apparent year per calendar year. At age 21, he ages at half an apparent year per calendar year. He never quite gets to (an apparent age of) 42.
However, *relative* ages of immortals are preserved -- except for those older than 42 at treatment time; those folks regress (per the formula) asymptotically toward an apparent age of 42. Note that (as required) the infant ages faster than the 21-year-old, and a 41 year old ages at an apparent rate of just 1/42 of the newborn.
Empirical cultural research strongly suggests that the corresponding age for immortal females would be 29. (But cultural research is notoriously dodgy.)
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As many answers on here have pointed out, puberty can be the trigger for the start of the slow aging.
Here are some alt triggers that might help.
**Max Bone Density**
You could link it to [peak bone density](http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00127) something that is largely determined by genetics. What this means is that the slowing of age will vary, but it will significantly older than puberty, which can hit as early as 11 years of age for some women.
They don't sound remotely human, but this is something you can link it to--and that tends, in human populations, to be in the 20s or even in some cases the 30s, with a few outliers in the late teens and early 40s.
**A Specific Brain Development**
Science tells us that our brains [don't fully mature until about 25 years](http://www.medhealthdaily.com/when-is-the-brain-fully-developed/) of age. For some it's a little earlier, for others a few years later, but 25 is the average.
In this case, you'll link the immortality kick in to a specific development in the brain, which will then signal the rest of the body to change to the slower aging.
Further, the quick healing likely should not kick in until they gain their immortality, leaving them as vulnerable as regular folk until they come into it.
**Slowing of Myelin Production**
>
> The production of the myelin sheath is called myelination or myelinogenesis. In humans, myelination begins early in the 3rd trimester,[1](http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00127) although little myelin exists in the brain at the time of birth. During infancy, myelination occurs quickly, leading to a child's fast development, including crawling and walking in the first year. Myelination continues through the adolescent stage of life. [[source]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelin)
>
>
>
This is connected to brain development and also nerves and spinal cord.
**Collagen Production**
Collagen levels peak at the 20s and then begin to fall. As it does, the immortality genes or whatever your mechanism is, kicks in to compensate.
**TO SUMMARIZE**
The crux of this and all the other things on this list is this: the minute the mind and body stops growing and begins to age instead--that is, the developmental clock is no longer going, and is simply aging, the mechanism for immortality kicks in, like a switch being flicked. I'd look at it as a form of specialized epigenetics, wherein a particular series of bodily changes triggers it. It doesn't even have to be ONE thing on this list--it can be all of them!
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I would suggest that your immortal children would actually age faster than normal. You can think of the aging process as a chemical reaction and your healing blood is a catalyst that drives it along faster than normal. All the hormones put in our blood as we grow up would be used up faster and that would trigger more hormones to be released, until the body gets to its equilibrium.
Another way to look at it is that normal human bodies utilize as much of the resources they take in as possible, which often leads to overweight individuals. On the other hand, if your healing blood is capable of turning calories into healing (which basically has to be the case due to entropy), it wouldn't be a stretch to say that immortals that haven't yet finished growing would end up burning off all their excess fat to grow faster.
One of the major side effects of this would be that most immortal children would never be overweight. Regular exercise would be capable of building muscle, as normal, but body fat would disappear rapidly. Additionally, since those children would be always hungry, normal parents would probably feed them too much and they would grow up faster than normal. Conversely, if an immortal child was starved, their healing blood would probably slow down their rate of aging, in an attempt to preserve the body in the current state rather than breaking down significant amounts of it to fuel growth.
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Babies and children are not aging - they are **maturing**. Growth and maturation is a biological process with a specific end result: to reach physical, mental and sexual maturity. Think of this stage as analogous to building a house or manufacturing a car.
Aging is the wear and tear and inevitable breaking down of biological systems after they have finished the growth and maturation period. It is not so much a biological process as an accidental side effect of many biological processes. Think of this stage as analogous to an old house's roof leaking or your car's tyres getting worn because you've driven thousands of miles.
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There is a distinction between ageing and growing. There isn't much of a consensus on what causes ageing but I consider it a degradation of cells. The symptoms of Progeria are actually caused by structurally unsound cells.
On the other hand, growing is the natural change in your body. These changes are regulated by hormones which basically culminates in puberty. A quick search shows that cartilage never stops growing but bones stop growing after puberty. Interestingly muscle and fat cells generally stop splitting after puberty.
Growth, especially fetal, is measured by the speed in which cells divide. In pregnancy the general rule of thumb is "doubles in weight every week--until the second trimester." Fetal development is ultra-complex and considering the above paragraphs, I'd regard survival of a "long" development time would be improbable.
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In the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the genealogy has several records of very old humans, such as Methuselah (969 years old). If you take this literally, the idea is very similar to yours. Except instead of magic blood it's theorized that diverse genetics, limited solar radiation, and a highly supportive environment & atmosphere contributed--or failed to contribute to--the ageing process.
The Old Testament also assumes that humans were made immortal to begin with, and it's only after "malfunction" was introduced that the system failed. Then the environmental constraints that supported long-life were reduced by the world-wide flood. The diversity of genetics were also reduced by mass-extinction. Interestingly sea-life would be less effected, which could explain creatures like the immortal jellyfish.
A big, unanswered question, is how puberty worked in the pre-flood era. For the genealogy concerning Methuselah, the earliest child was age 65. Methuselah had his first child 20% (187 years) of the way through his life. Currently, puberty at 13 and life expectancy of 78 would yield a "best-case" of a child at 16% of my lifetime.
This leads to a variation of your exact question: did pre-flood parents change exponentially more diapers than post-flood parents?
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Based on the distinction I made between ageing and growing, fetal development, and child-bearing age of Old Testament pre-flood guys, I conclude that babies developed into youth at a similar rate but hit puberty much later on in life.
To answer your question, have them "grow" at a natural rate but "age" at a reduced rate.
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For "normal" humans, aging is a positive thing until they hit an age of about 27-28. After that age, the body starts deteriorating. So it would make perfect sense for the healing blood, to embrace aging until the body hits its peak, and only then start to prevent (or slow down) the aging process.
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Why would they age slower than normal humans?
Basically humans grow (I didn't say "*age*") until sexual maturity, and when it's completely done, after they've peaked, the body slowly decay. If we didn't age we'd still reach adulthood at the same age, we'd just look 20-25 for much, much longer.
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[
I was thinking of creating mage "specialists" for my medieval fantasy world, incredibly powerful and/or skilled in only a few spells, who could do some pretty Overpowered (shortened to OP) things. But some of the concepts I keep thinking of would logically break the medieval-setting, threatening to create plot holes or inconsistencies that I want to avoid. What are some good reasons why this world's governments wouldn't extensively hire, train, or conscript "OP magicians"?
To add on, it would take a mage (with exceptions) a good chunk of time (average 10 years of education or apprenticing) to be considered a "specialist" in a "field" of magic. The learning curve wouldn't be anything insane, requiring only an understanding of the prerequisites and a working brain, just like anything else. They are mainly specializing in technique or control, meaning their abilities can't be acquired by items, power-ups or any easy cop-out. If they are truly a specialist, they can use their magic without major difficulty, for less mana and in very creative and ingenious ways.
I would like to have a handful of specialists occupy every city, and at most one specialist every several villages. To clarify, I want them to be the only entities who can use magic where they live in that way, including governments. For the reason I'm looking for, governments rarely hire or conscript these specialists, and don't have programs to teach state-mages their methods. Specialists might be willing to work with secret societies or private institutions, like guilds or private schools, but mostly work at the individual level, teaching their successors mostly.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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Governments and military leaders require obedience and loyalty. If they have high-powered weapons, they want the people who wield those weapons to fire them when and where they are told to, without argument or hesitation. Soldiers who disobey orders are punished harshly: dereliction of duty, insubordination, even treason. The penalties for such are strict and severe.
However, an overpowered magic user (OPMU) would be too powerful to feel any need to thoughtlessly obey the chain of command. I mean, if an OPMU can blow up an entire city with a wave of his wand, but refuses to do it when ordered, how exactly do the higher-ups punish him (without risking getting blown up themselves if they try)? You can model OPMUs on high-level academics: opinionated, self-assured to the point of arrogance, far more interested in petty disputes with other OPMUs than in the politics of the world, and disinclined to take nonsense from anyone at any time for any reason. OPMUs won't do anything unless they want to, they have too much raw power to be controlled or threatened effectively, and successfully attacking one OPMU risks incensed retribution from other OPMUs (who may not have liked the first OPMU, but thoroughly resent that 'normal' people would *dare* to interfere with 'magical' issues in such a coarse way).
As Tolkien put it: "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger". OPMUs would snort in disdain at the suggestion they should behave like good soldiers and do what they are told, and no one with half a brain wants a pissy OPMU thinking bad thoughts about them.
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**This already happens in Real Life**
There are already mages among us, working in special branches of magic called applied mathematics and analytics. These folk are generally employed by the private sector, and occasionally work for governments but even then, mostly because the government engages a private sector company as its provider of such services. There are 2 primary reasons for this;
**1) Cost effectiveness**
If you are a bank, an insurance company, or stock broking firm, or something similar, your analysts can make (or save) you a great deal of money. As such, hiring the very best analysts is essential and you're willing to compete on the open market for them. You know exactly what your 'value proposition' for such skills is, and therefore how much you're prepared to pay for them.
Government on the other hand, usually has less tangible uses for their analysts and in democracies in particular are beholden to the people to show themselves accountable for what taxpayer funds they spend. There are some exceptions to this of course like national security interests, but generally speaking when it comes to hiring public servants, governments tend to focus on the cost and not the benefit because what those analysts will be doing is often improving the efficiency of existing practice, making services more relevant or increasing the reach of certain government programs. These are notoriously difficult to specify in terms of a dollar value to the benefit.
**2) Career Pathway**
Most public service organisations tend to focus on people, especially in a democracy. This makes sense, but it is also a weakness when it comes to these kinds of powers, whether they be magic or science. The end result is that most public services out there tend to see career progression as measured by the number of people who directly or indirectly report to you, meaning that unless you want to become a manager (and most analysts and technical professionals don't) you won't progress.
The private sector solved that problem years ago by providing clear career progression paths for non-managerial professionals. I can't explain why the government sector around the world has not replicated this other than to say that again, the number of people you manage is one of those tangible metrics that are easy to justify to a public eager to see their tax well spent, or less well collected.
Bottom line is that whether we like it or not, governments around the world, particularly governments of democratic countries, are far more comfortable engaging with specialists of any kind on a 'pay per job' basis rather than engaging someone full time for what the market for that skill demands. This happens now in the fields of engineering, medicine, statistics, technical skills, and just about every other profession you can think of, except perhaps for law (which after all, is their bread and butter). So, regarding your magical specialists, they would be treated no different. They would be hired on a contract basis, only when there was a role that justified the cost, and in all other circumstances the government could proudly turn over their books to the public and declare 'no unnecessary spending happened on our watch!'
Besides, cutting education costs is a known trick in governments seeking to get quick wins; the cost to the community comes with a long tail insofar as it can be up to 20 years before people notice a shortage in skills within certain industries (like magic or statistics, etc.) meaning that you get to spend the money you were going to invest in education now, and fixing the mess is the problem of whatever government is in power in 20 years time.
Yes, I'm a cynic, but that doesn't make me wrong.
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**Forbidden by the Magician's Guild**
Most practices and businesses in the medieval time period was regulated by a guild, something similar to the modern practice of unions. If you weren't part of a guild and regularly paid your guild fees, you couldn't practice your trade. If you were a blacksmith, for instance, then you had to pay the blacksmithing guild a fee, and they would have a say in who could work where. All in the name of safeguarding the present masters of whatever the given profession was. By the way if you violated these laws they'd send goons to beat the tar out of you and use you for an example, because of course they did, it's the Middle Ages.
It stands to reason that the wizards have a guild, and seeing as (generally) the rule is you can only learn magic from a magician, then all mentors of magic would belong to the mage guild. And the mage guild would have rules, if only for the interest of the guild. And one of those rules would forbid mages from performing large scale services to governments, because the mage guild knows (from experience, even) that when that happens, it leads to an arms race among kingdoms to control the mages. And, given that these mages can play fast-and-loose with the fabric of reality, a full-scale mage war is an apocalyptic event that the Magician's Guild wants to avoid at all costs. So they sent a very simple rule into place - "No serving governments on a large scale, or the rest of us all gang up and murder you all." This would also provide a great incentive to the governments to not try to hire mages, because the last thing you want is an army of reality-warpers calling down fire and brimstone on your kingdom.
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# The mages *are* the nobility and aristocrats.
The powerful used their OP abilities to take over, then they taught their children and generally restricted access to the knowledge and resources needed to avoid being overthrown.
10 years isn't excessive, in our reality the aristocracy trained with sword and armour for longer than this. In a world where magic can turn a battle kings are going to make sure their children know it.
The king may not be the absolute most powerful mage... but he probably is one of the most powerful and has the loyalty of most of the most powerful magic users.
Each town has a lord or baron, each village has a knight or village headman with the level of power/training/skill in magic roughly mapping to their seniority in the aristocracy. Aristocratic families have no chance of marrying well or moving up in the world unless their heirs are well versed in the a magic specialty.
As such magical knowledge is jealously guarded, families will as easily share their magical secrets as they would open their family vault.
Second sons or deposed nobles may occasionally be found willing to work for gold.
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Do you want to be overthrown by a power-hungry magician? Because this is how you end up overthrown by a power-hungry magician.
Seriously.
The kind of person who will devote themselves to learning and mastering this OP magic is the kind of person with the ambition, skill, and dedication you want far away from your power center. Political control over this kind of magic is an illusion.
In other words, it's in the interests of existing political powers to outlaw this kind of thing, and when they do run across it anyway maybe just look the other way rather than poking the sleeping bear with a stick (this means it can still exist for story and character purposes in your world). They might make a note somewhere, so if an opposing political entity tries to use this kind of thing against them they can (politely) ask for help, but otherwise leave well enough alone.
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**The specialists do not work well with others.**
**[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZKCJg.jpg)**
<https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/jim-carrey-sonic-the-hedgehog-teeth>
Your specialists are always solo acts. Despite their skills, no-one wants them around. They are insufferable, demanding, bizarre, quirky divas. They are intolerable for the government teams. Governments do not employ these specialists because the government employees cannot stand them, and do whatever they can to make sure these jerks are nowhere in the vicinity, much less calling the shots.
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### It creates an easy to disrupt dependency
The government can absolutely hire these OP spellcasters to fulfill functions in their system. But if they are the only one that can do it, then there is a gaping hole when they leave. It is that void in service that they desire to avoid.
As an example: If the government acquires an OP healer, then they might not hire as many doctors/healers. When this OP healer retires or dies, a large gap in medical services exists. Not only that, but in this case, certain researches might not have been done because it was taken care of by the OP Healer and thus trying to do it with less magic or even mundanely did not matter.
Now imagine that the government applied this to other critical areas. Now you have a lot of potentially vital sections of the government being run or administrated by a single person that has no ready replacement unless they have already trained one.
In short, it creates a single point of failure that can be easily disrupted by dealing with the mage before they could train a replacement. Much better to hire them when needed as a single person force multiplier.
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## Specialism is inherently asocial
You've heard of wizard towers of course... well, this is generally where your specialist mages live, far removed from civilization. It's hard to say which is cause, and which effect, but as wizards delve deeper into the esoterics of deep magic specialization they refuse to countenance interruptions of basically any sort. And of course by the time they have access to this unspeakable power they can use it to provide for themselves basically anything they could ever want or need.
So in the end, governments have nothing to offer them (except distraction) and no leverage upon the wizard and they remain content to do their mystical research in remote locations, turning anyone who dares to bother them into a frog or worse.
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# Overspecialisation is inherently useless
The reason your specialists are OP is because they've overspecialised, they're really really good at doing one very particular thing. That one thing is useful once in a while, but not often, and usually a long way from where your specialist is. There are people who are quite good, but generalists, they can do many things, just not as well. You want more of them.
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They don't have enough work.
It's worth emphasizing that medieval-style government (of the type modeled in many fantasy worlds) is small and poor. They don't have the money or the manpower to, say, train and arm a standing army or create a bureaucracy. If there's magic, there's probably a single court magician. (Note that this environment is hostile to the concept of exclusively performing work on your specialty. Bob the enchanter might be the best enchanter in the land, but he probably won't turn down other magical work.)
For the government to hire, say, an enchantment specialist shows that they have the ability to keep this person consistently busy enchanting items. If they only need something enchanted once every month or two, it's cheaper to just contract that out as needed.
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**They are a resource that the nobility uses for power balance.**
>
> Did you hear that recently the gold mines on the west turned the
> recently ascended nobility really rich? I heard they helped out the
> King and got a metalmancer to figure out where the best deposits are.
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And
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> We just returned from the southern front. Luteans were destroyed
> pretty easily thanks to the royal regiments armed with the magic armor
> and weapons that Duke Elrond is providing for the crown. Our losses were minimal. We're really grateful for the Crowns support in that campaign even though it was caused by a local noble house. They lost their firemancer and had to move out of their castle in the winter because of that.
>
>
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Basically a balance of powers that the nobility has fought over and keeps reinforcing. In medieval times power was much more spread out so you had to have multiple powerful people in a country. Nobility uses that to make sure the king doesnt do bad stuff for them and king uses that to make sure nobility doesnt get powerful enough to overthrow them.
EDIT: As for limiting access to schools and such - the mages also compete. Being a mage to a lesser lord gives them little time to grow and not as lavish a life. Schooling is ordained just like it is for nobility - there are laws and regulations and the king may help a mage by sending them to a teacher for something they do well. Same may be for a lord that wants to punish lesser nobility and take away their asset to be relocated further. They cannot use the asset but they can move it to where they strategically need it.
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**Social custom, or strongly-enforced stigma.**
If these specialists are capable of overthrowing or manipulating entire nations, it is likely this has happened in the past.
A war between nations backed by specialists would have been devastating. It was the medieval equivalent of nuclear war. (This would be true regardless of whether the specialists functioned as rulers or soldiers during the conflict.)
In the wake of that catastrophe, the specialists all take an oath of non-intervention before they begin their training. Penalties for violating the oath are enforced by the entire specialist community. These penalties should be severe measures, such as exile or death---or possibly the removal of their power, if that is possible.
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**Magicians are an independent nation (so to speak)**
Similar to how the Vatican City operates in Rome, and how religion works in general, the mages in your world could be a part of their own independent country with limited restrictions to their ability to travel and/or live in other places. It is generally in the best interest of your city NOT to deny entry to the person who could burn your city to the ground whenever they'd like and it is in the mages' best interest not to abuse their power because they would be excommunicated from their nation. This also leaves an interesting opening in your world for mage hunters that could either be part of the mage "country" or specialized bounty hunters that would hunt excommunicated mages that continue to practice magic.
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**Because** they are specialists.
Suppose for a moment that your magic system was simplified down to 3 elements ("Rock", "Paper", "Scissors"), each with 3 branches ("Creation", "Destruction", "Modification"). This allows for 9 possible specialisations.
Now, if you hire a specialist then they are *amazing* at 1 branch of 1 element - but, at the same time, they're rather sub-par at the other 8. A generalist, on the other hand, can carry out *any* work you need doing. And they're cheaper
Sure, it takes the generalist longer - but you're less likely to be paying retainer for them to twiddle their thumbs (e.g. if there is no "Paper-Creation" magic to be done), **and** collaborative projects can be done simultaneously: if you need to erect 3 magic fortifications that require the "creation" branch of all 3 elements, you can either send 3 specialists to each site in turn, or you can send 1 generalist to each site and complete them all at the same time.
Sure, the governments will keep tabs on them, trade favours and grease their palms for those few times when a specialist is indispensable - but, most of the time, it's just not worth the hassle and expense.
If a specialist is a chainsaw, then a generalist is a multi-tool. The former may be better at cutting things, but it's pretty useless as a bottle opener, screwdriver, corkscrew, or pair of pliers...
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Specialists come with serious drawbacks.
**The more powerful you get, the closer to death and/or insanity.**
High level Warlocks in the Ethshar series have terrifyingly high levels of TK, the more they use it the more powerful they get until they go insane and die. The gov conscripting them would also be the gov briefly creating a group of power-mad hostile gods.
**The Universe likes Balance.**
This can also be every superhero creates a supervillain, or even every super mage on one team means one joins every other team, and if you're the government than can be hundreds of teams.
**Mutual Assured Destruction.**
We all have nukes, using them is a bad idea because everyone else will do so as well.
**The gov knows it will break the resource.**
Mages are free spirits and don't play well with order. Being hired by an orderly gov means getting a downgrade.
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I would expect the overpowered magicians to be the government. If they could control minds or burn cities with a wave of their hand nobody can really stop them.
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Two reasons come to my mind:
1. **Their teachings forbid them to**
To learn magic, you must follow a series of teachings and rules written by the ancient wizards, and only those that agree to willingly follow such rules are allowed to learn magic. One of such rules can be to never partake on any political o millitar issue as their power can very much alter the balance of such conflict. Or perhaps their mission is just to guide others to knowledge, enlightenment and bonding with nature, and using their powers to support personal ideas is frowned upon. Of course you can still have one or two rogue magues here and there that want power, but those can be the exception of the rule, and can even be villains or enemies in your story.
2. **Government doesn't see magic as a good thing**
You know, in those times most figures of power where both chosen and supported by church; if the religion on top doesn't like magic, governors are not allowed to treat with them. This doesn't mean they're necessarily the "enemy" or "enbodyments of evil"; just people you don't want to be around with.
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So what you've basically described is exactly the Jedi from Star Wars (basically around Ep. I, before most of them were killed off). The way they were limited is that not everyone is Force sensitive, so only a small percentage of people *could* be Jedis, and even then only a small percentage of *those* people are discovered by the Jedi order at an early enough age to go through their training.
Now there's no reason this model couldn't work in a sword-and-sorcery setting as well. People who could learn magic are a small percentage of the population, and of those who could, only a small percentage are discovered by the Mages Guild or whatever and properly trained. And even with training, some people just don't have the aptitude for it. So ultimately the number of capable specialized mages available to be used by the governments is necessarily limited.
There are analogs to this in real life. How many people are cut out to be neurosurgeons or astrophysicists or fighter pilots or Major League pitchers or judges or architects? All of these professions require extensive training but also some degree of innate talent. Hence the pool of people capable of doing these jobs is limited.
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# The specialists keep their secrets from governments
This is what happens in the Witcher series (though it's a bit different with magicians). A group of people (Witchers) specialize in killing monsters, and their training and mutations make them exceptional fighters. They also know what to expect from kings around them (war, most of the time), and how attractive their skills are to said kings. Moreover, experience tells them that no matter what side they take, getting involved in politics usually ends in disaster.
As a result, they usually stay out of the way and focus on their pest-control contracts. Since they use a lot of knowledge that's either exclusive to them (chemistry, fighting techniques) or shared with other selective groups (magic), governments can't control them, only hire them for contracts like normal people.
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**Lifestyle Independence**
Being a Magician inherently comes with a few major bonuses.
Resistance to sickness, longevity, the ability to conjour food and water or raise shelter with a wave of the hand.
Ultimately, whatever a Mage wants, they can have without effort.
There is nothing a wizard needs that they cannot produce for themselves whenever and wherever they want.
All their needs are met.
So why would they deign to be employed by anyone else?
What could a medieval lord offer a wizard that they can't have just by waving their hand?
You might encounter the occasional wizard working for someone, but it will only be to keep their finger on the pulse of civilisation, they might perform magic for coin, but it's not because they need the money.
The only reason they stay near other people is a desire to be social.
This is part of the reason for the existence of witch-covens, likeminded magic-users congregate to work and live together, away from the non-magical mortals.
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The Nature of Magic Itself:
Magic is the ultimate expression of creativity. It defies repetition, commoditization, and control. It might derive from fae sources, or the stuff of chaos itself.
A wizard deprived of their free will or free expression will see their power decline quickly and, even despite specialization, be progressively less and less able to produce a desired result. What's more, it's inherently chaotic in nature, and has unpredictable results and/or side effects...ones that are generally manageable if the wizard himself or herself is free to "go with the flow", but makes it very difficult to reliably produce the identical magical effect for the 217th time when "your Majesty" commands.
The locals accept the wizard's eccentricities and the odd happenings because the wonderful things the wizard can do are worth it (and because the wizard usually stays in the tower well outside of the village). A ruler would be far less willing to accept these inconsistencies, unreliable results, and potential side effects...all for a power that becomes less and less useful the more it's ordered-up and commanded to be produced.
Now, SOME rulers will still get around this, but they'll do so by embracing the wonder of it and accepting the potential consequences...and they won't gain *vast world-shaking power* from doing so. This is why the governments that DO employ wizards do so not for the sake of controlling their power, but in the role of advisors and consultants who can occasionally do something directly useful.
Recent Memory/Consequences Too Dire:
Exactly the scenario that you bring up as why it would be bad...DID happen. Either in living memory (for some of those magic-scarred old veterans) or at the very least recently enough that everyone simply accepts that they're better off not mixing magic and politics.
If you want to tie both concepts together, then perhaps the immense amount of magical power unleashed in the "last war" damaged the nature of magic itself and made it fickle and unreliable, the way it is today.
In this scenario, there will still be visible, tangible evidences of the consequences of militarized magic in the land. Artifacts (maybe not of power...even just a warmage's uniform) will still exist in the setting. Locations will still be scarred, structures damaged or destroyed and never rebuilt, etc.
The Guild / Wizards Exist Outside the Law:
There is an over-arching association to which Wizards owe their ultimate loyalty, and it is a pledge that goes above and beyond nationality. Early users of the talent are ruthlessly sought, identified, and indoctrinated...and only when they thoroughly tow the wizarding guild's "party line" are they allowed out into an apprentice/master relationship for their true magic training and development.
Wizards are essentially empowered to do whatever they see fit, being "outside and above" the law, holding only one loyalty, to the guild, and one responsibility...the protection of humanity as a whole against threats beyond the capacity of men to face without magic. MOST wizards just accept this as a beneficial arrangement, survive their early indoctrination, and go about their business secure that they'll never have the local ruler make demands of them and the disastrous threat for which all wizardkind must remain vigilant...will never happen in their lifetime.
Only a select few are actively engaged in the maintenance of the guild itself, the indoctrination of new wizards, watching for that potential catastrophe someday, and realizing that their "deal" with all the rulers of the world is...at best...tenuous and not guaranteed tomorrow or next year. The whole law of wizardry is built upon a house of cards and some really theatrical bluffs that *just might* not really be a bluff after all.
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Because the people ralley against any cabal of government and magic super powered specialists. Because what looks like a unlimited consultant for special needs of powers - almost always turns out as a hidden take over. That necromancer who promised the king to bring his son back to life, if only he listend to his advice for a while. The telephatic sorceress who read the darkest secret of the kings advisors, and pressured them into even more unspeakable evil.
So once a specialist arrives, its always the start of a take-over. And once the take-over is complete, the ressource-curse is upon the country.
That warlock does not need his peasants- he can craft whatever he desires from thin air. Slowly the country ceases to be managed at all, and declines into a run down slum, where even the wealthy subsist on the breadcrumbs falling from the table of gandolph the Bright.
This happened often enough during history, that a taboo is formed, in fairy tales, popular songs and even in the rituals any ruler must perform. No wizzards. Not even sharlatans.
If you put a rabbit out of a hat at the majors birthday, you, the rabbit and the major end up on spikes, heads first. To please the gods.
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>
> Overpowered magic “specialists” exist; why don't governments extensively use them?
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> If they are truly a specialist, they can use their magic without major difficulty,
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Sure, without major difficulty **for the magician**. But outside his castle is a major explosion.
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> for **less** mana
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Less is relative. In other words, less than a super whole lot is still a whole lot, and mana takes non-trivial effort to obtain.
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***tl;dr*–** While specialists *can* use a small amount of mana more efficiently than a non-specialist, they're also capable of consuming large amounts of mana to do much greater things. They naturally avoid each other and don't like taking on apprentices to avoid reducing their share of environmental mana.
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Depends if you want a more stagnant or evolving world.
* **In an evolving world,** specialists can be extremely powerful; their power can snowball and forever change the world. They'll tend to be aware of this historic power shift, which'll likely preoccupy their ambitions, leading them to have little regard for the waning bureaucracies of the old world.
* **In a stagnant world,** specialists might have great power, but not enough to disrupt society nor snowball into a new world order. Instead, there are bounds on what specialists can collectively achieve, tempering their ambitions and disallowing a social phase change.
Other answers have focused on an evolving world in which specialists have great power – a situation I'd liken to today's focus on technology changing how the world operates. So, let's talk about a static Dark-Ages-esque world in which things are relatively stagnant.
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### Stagnant, Dark-Ages-esque world: Specialist power is constrained.
The major story constraint is that specialists can't see a realistic path toward a new world order. They seek a comfortable position in the current society rather than segregating themselves into a new society.
Possibilities:
1. **Specialist powers saturate demand.**
A specialist who can control when it rains across the entire country would be very powerful! But if one specialist can easily do all of the work by themself, would you really need a lot of them?
* This works better if specialists can specialize in limited things. If they can specialize in anything, such that society could foreseeably have specialists optimized for every major function in society, then it'd be harder to say that a few saturate demand.
2. **Specialist powers saturate supply.**
Specialist powers draw on global leylines for mana. When a specialist does something big, they sap a lot of the mana from their part of the globe; the leylines naturally recover in time, but the limited supply of mana keeps use of specialist powers limited.
* Natural leylines can provide power based on geographic area.
* Human-Spirit leylines can provide power based on population density.
Option (2)'s probably the way to go. It allows individual specialists to be powerful, but also explains why they're spread out and limited in number.
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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.
Nowdays we have biometric doors that can scan your eye, palm, fingerprint, ear, etc, etc...
But all of them rely on electronic readers and computers to match the sample against the stored pattern.
How would you design a biometric door that does not need to rely on a electronic scanner and computer, and could only be opened by the designated person (or someone very alike).
Of course these biometric locks would be easier to pick and less accurate. That is not the concern. They could use electricity or any modern device, just not an electronic reader and/or a microprocessor device.
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Please do mind the hard-science tagging in your answers.
[Answer]
What about a lock based on the Pin Art toy:
"[Pin art, Flickr](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pin_art,_Flickr.jpg#/media/File:Pin_art,_Flickr.jpg)" by Eduardo Habkost (ehabkost) - Eduardo Habkost's flickr account. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via [Wikimedia Commons](//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/).
It could be loosely modeled after a [pin and tumbler lock](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_tumbler_lock).
As an added bonus, not only would some one have to have a replica of the lock owners body part, they would also need to know which body part, and in what orientation it needed to be placed into the lock.
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The dog is trained to recognize specific scents/people. It barks if it knows you, at which point the guard opens the door. New people can be introduced, at which point it knows your scent and you're authorized.
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As far as practical goes, the best way is to have a guy sitting next to the door. If he recognizes you, he opens the door.
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Possible ideas, assuming the "only the designated person" part implies each device only has to work for one person:
Possibly you could have some series of slots into which a hand could be placed and then moved around inside the door, which can only fit someone with that person's hand dimensions or smaller. You could combine that with spring-loaded tumblers within each of those slots which can only be moved by a person with long enough fingers. Or maybe put them all around the hand, so it would have to have the correct palm and wrist size as well.
Increased security if the person is also willing to remove a portion of a finger - requiring anyone trying to open the lock to have removed the exact same amount.
This wouldn't work if the person's hand changes size due to muscle/fat gain/loss though.
Perhaps a number of sheets of specific materials inside a hidden chamber, each of whose resonant frequencies corresponded to a different component of the person's voice when they sing a specific note. Each sheet will have a long thin tail at the bottom, to amplify the movement of vibration. Each tail is attached to a tiny tiny oiled switch, which when flipped becomes hidden inside the wall in which its housed for 2 seconds (using a spring timer). Each switch turns a different tumbler in the lock - only when all switches are "on" at the same time ( meaning all tails are vibrating, and therefore the person singing is someone with a nearly identical voice to the intended user) will the lock open.
This could be gotten around if someone recorded the user opening the door, and played it back at high enough fidelity - this requires computers though, and so is only a concern if they actually exist in your world.
It also would probably not be able to be opened if the intended user has a cold.
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Assuming whoever makes the locks has biological engineering capabilities, a fully biological solution (a 'wet' solution) is possible.
Say the owners of the lock engineer a virus to replicate only in host cells matching certain, very specific tidbits of DNA unique to the people authorized to enter the door. Once an authorized person has swabbed a few cheek cells into a culture in the locking mechanism, the virus would replicate and, at high concentration, could trigger the door-opening mechanism.
I see a couple ways of accomplishing this: the virus could be engineered to release a special chemical only at high concentration, which could be detected by a special receptor molecule that releases a few electrons (towards a detection circuit connected to the electric motor etc. that physically opens the door)
Or, if you want to go fully biological, the virus could somehow trigger a bunch of muscle tissue controlling the door, through a similar chemical mechanism of some sort.
A few things you'd have to watch out for: the engineered virus could mutate while replicating and have unintended behavior (e.g. recognizing unauthorized people), so the culture would have to be replaced frequently.
An attacker could directly introduce the chemical the virus produces, if the chemical was known and producable through other means in high enough concentration.
Or an attacker could swab some cells from an authorized person in secret (by grabbing a piece of hair, etc) and introduce those.
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The pin tumbler lock is thousands of years old and still in common use today; the key is a rigid object with several protrusions of varying lengths, which depresses pins in the lock to the correct depths. All we need is a part of the human body that is rigid and unchanging, irregular in a way that is unique to each individual, and which can be pressed against a lock.
In a word, teeth.
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A finger or a palm will fit exactly into a mold made from it. By making the mold of a transparent material, light will reflect differently when the fit is exact, i.e. when there is direct contact between skin and the mold.
I imagine a row of such plates on a wall, one per each authorized person. To enter you press your hand to your own mold and a simple light detector activates a motor to open the door.
This is somewhat easily hackable by pressing some soft material against the mold. Extra holes can be designed into the mold as traps, which trigger an alarm when covered.
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There's a good low-tech solution if the authorised person is significantly smaller than the unauthorised person:
(image credit: [Wikimedia](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cats_and_a_catflap,_Cathedral_Close,_Exeter_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1118515.jpg))
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How good are you at micro-engineering? If you're sufficiently good at building on small scales, you could make a purely mechanical fingerprint reader that uses an array of miniscule probes (fractions of a millimeter across) to detect the pattern of ridges. The main drawbacks are that it would be highly sensitive to the orientation and positioning of the finger, and that it would be extremely fragile.
If you're willing to use electronics, an optical system using an array of micro-lenses (think: the method a CD drive uses to read the pits of a CD) would be more robust, but with the same positioning limits.
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Implant subcutaneous magnets in a special 2D pattern which must be held over a magnetic amplifier which in turn moves the tumblers to the lock. The device is made to look like an ordinary fingerprint reader to fool those trying to crack the system. The subcutaneous magnets can be scrambled using a degausser between uses so that they won't be discovered, then through induction they can be recharged.
Alternately, you can use the techniques found in this article:
<http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133067-unbreakable-crypto-store-a-30-character-password-in-your-brains-subconscious-memory>
The lock can be mechanical, but the person does not know the code, only their muscle-memory knows the code. They can't be tortured to reveal it. This is based on "implicit learning". The research was conducted at Stanford and Northwestern. Read the article - it is fascinating.
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When I was a kid, my father and I used to do some weekend electronic projects (he is a Electronic Engineer). One of our projects was a way to change the doorbell pitch according to who was pressing it, so we could easily known who was there.
We did that by simple hiding some circuitry under the doormat. The sensor could detect two things: (1) how apart were the feet and how heavy was the person. Of course that could be easily cheated and prone to errors (like when carrying extra weight or not standing correctly over the doormat.
You could use this very same principle, but changing the mechanism for a spring-based one. You would also have to change the lockpins to the bottom of the door. Also, this design is adjusted for a single person. A multi-user version is out of my league.
So, here how it works:
Six planks under the doormat. Each plank with a set of 8 springs. As I said, the springs must be calibrated according to a person weight and how apart the feet are. this is important, as the way the person steps over, trigger the lockpin mechanism:
Of course the height of the pin must match the deepness of its housing in the door, the same way a the cuts on a key matches the notches on a tumbler. This way, people with different weights and feet aperture, would displace the pins too a specific position.
Well, that is a simple idea and a simple sketch. I'm looking forward to see people improving this concept!
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It might be possible to do a facial scan. Shine a light at the face through a slit and scan from the top to the bottom.
Back in the old days, a light shined through movie film with something that looked like a waveform, a vacuum tube would pick up the amount of light that went though and play the sound through speakers.
You would have a strip of film in the device that would get scanned at the same time as the face was scanned (that was made from the reflection of the user's face). If the "sounds" matched, then it would open. Think of 2 VU meters bouncing at the exact same time. Certain reflections would be enough for the needle to pass a certain point. If there were those two VU meters, there could be a light sensor that gets blocked when the needle goes past that certain point. Lets say the during the scan, it must pass a point 8 times for the lock to open. There would be a wheel that would increment every time it passes that point and on the 8th time the bolt would drop. If it didn't get to 8, the wheel would reset back to 0.
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You can create a stylus type device rigged to a fixed angle against the flat surface with wires/rods on the x and y axes. The target has to 'write' the appropriate passphrase. As they write, the wires are pulling mechanical pins or some such underneath corresponding to the motions being made with the stylus. Any person would need to know not only the unique passphrase, but also mimic the person's idiosyncratic style for writing that particular phrase. For the permitted person, it comes natural, but it's EXTREMELY hard to replicate something like that.
It's not just imitating a signature or other handwriting - the physical motion of the body of the stylus, positioning of the hand, possibly timing, etc. must match, not just the tip.
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An iris scanner may work with low level electronics:
An image of the iris could be projected onto a matrix of photo receptors and if each of these is within a certain threshold of the correct brightness for the rightful person's iris, the door unlocks.
Might be fooled by a photo of the iris (as in real life)
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Ok, this could be quite complex, so bear with me.
The person who is allowed entry is placed in front of a panel on which are marked glyphs. Through a complex neurological process, this causes a chemical change in their brain, which will be the identifying mark that the lock uses.
The lock itself consists of a collection of rotating discs with notches arranged such that when properly aligned, they allow the passage of a bar or slider. A spring provides a little positive pressure to hold them in place, and a ratchet-type system allows them to settle into predefined locations. The bar or slider interfaces with a set of levers or hasps that hold the door closed, so that the door cannot be opened without moving the levers, which means that the bar has to be slid back, which can only be done when the discs are properly aligned.
In order to detect the presence of the identifying protein structure in the person's brain, glyphs are marked onto the discs that correspond to the priming pattern used earlier. On seeing these glyphs, the subject's brain will respond chemically, triggering a response in which their fingers can be positioned to rotate the discs into the position that aligns the notches so that the locking bar can pass. Subjects without this protein structure will fail to correctly position the discs, unless given sufficient time that random motion will cycle through the statistical combinations - this can be mitigated by having a guard posted who tells people to move on after an allotted time. After a successful entry, this guard can also be employed to reset the discs to their initial positions, although it is also possible to use a spring catch to rotate them once the locking bar passes back through.
I took the liberty of preparing [this concept image](http://bit.ly/1ybrFlP) of how such a system might look:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8U9kZ.jpg)
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If electricity is allowed, you can make a set of devises that measure some parameters of the body: weight, height, microwave and X-ray transparency, magnetic field, CO2 and water content in breath and breath volume, voice frequency, conductivity and spectre of the skin etc. All this can be accomplished with simple electric devices, but each method given is imprcise. If the door is unlocked only with all tests passed, this would work.
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Since you mention by name fingerprint, palmprint, and iris recognition, I'll exclude biometrics that cannot be read externally (i.e. no blood). This is preferable for reasons of convenience and hygiene.
I'll also exclude biometrics based on gross properties (height, weight, etc.), since the variation from measurement to measurement is significant compared to the variation from person to person, requiring the tolerances to be set too high. (Essentially, a single or small number of measurements don't contain enough information to identify a single person out of billions.)
The difficult part of your question is the limitation on electronics. The only components not allowed are "an electronic reader and/or a microprocessor device." This is pretty vague. After all, isn't a doorbell an electronic reader that reads the presence of a finger? I'll assume that you don't want to disallow all transducers, so I'll interpret the restriction as **"no complex digital logic."** (We can't exclude *all* digital logic, since the output of the lock, locked/unlocked, is a digital state!)
This pretty much eliminates any sort of optical sensor. The only option we're left with is **fingerprint recognition.**
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My phone uses a linear [capacitance sensor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitive_sensing#Circuit_design) to read the fingerprint as it slides across. This could be accomplished without anything more complex than a flip-flip. Basically the way it works is that a tiny metal pad (insulated from your finger) is wired to a [bistable multivibrator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_oscillator). The capacitance of your finger loads the oscillator, changing its frequency. The frequency will depend on the capacitive coupling between your finger and the sensor pad, which depends on whether it's below a ridge or groove on your fingerprint.
The hard part will be matching to a stored fingerprint without complex logic. We are limited to a very simple direct comparison algorithm; we can't say, count and locate features. If the finger is scanned at a constant rate and with a fixed orientation and position, the resulting signal should be almost exactly repeatable. This could be accomplished by placing the finger in a linear stage that gently grips and aligns the finger, then slides it past the sensor at a fixed rate.
The stage can be electrically coupled to a magnetic tape or wire containing the stored pattern to ensure that they move at the same rate. You'll probably want to have a [PLL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-locked_loop) in the loop so that you can tolerate up to a ridge-spacing of misalignment. You can use analog circuitry to compare the two signals (maybe by integrating the difference between the two) and trigger the locking mechanism to open if the match is close enough.
The system would be a little finicky, but should work. All of the electronics you'd need could be found in a pre-digital era tape player or radio. And, it can easily authorize multiple people by swapping the tapes (via either a guard or some sort of mechanical CD-changer-like-mechanism).
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I think you could devise a fingerprint scanner.
The device would require inserting your finger into a mechanism rather than simply against a plate as it can only accept one degree of freedom in the finger placement. You would push against a stop and in pushing you move the scanning element back accordingly. (It's pushing forward based on a counterweight, not a spring, thus ensuring a constant pressure no matter how deep you push it.)
Your finger is illuminated, optics focus the image onto a plate that is a photographic negative of your finger. The plate is slid sideways to address possible alignment issues (one sideways scan can be done quickly. Scanning two dimensions would be a very slow process, thus you must restrict the finger to one degree of freedom.)
The light bounces off your finger and goes through the plate. Behind the plate is a pair of **analog** TV cameras of as high a resolution as practical. They are doing an interlaced scan of the underside of the plate, the retrace intervals are 50% of the time so as each camera completes a scan line the other is ready to do the next scan line. The output signal is from whichever camera is currently scanning.
The resulting signal goes through a capacitor (to remove the average signal intensity, retaining only the variations from the average), then a bridge rectifier. The voltage now present is a measure of the mismatch between the finger and the plate.
The plate is slid sideways, making many scans as it goes. If the plate matches the finger at some point the image will become of nearly perfectly constant intensity, the output voltage drops to near zero and the door opens.
If you're limited to tube electronics you'll need an amplifier stage. I'm not sure but you might also need some bias voltage after the capacitor to drive the rectifiers--you would know how much comes through from this and consider that acceptable for unlocking the door.
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Keeping it simple. I was gonna suggest the guy behind the door but we can go one step further.
You could do the same with fingerprints (index cards with the fingerprints, and make the user do a fingerprint each time he wants to come in - compare the size and fingerprint patterns for entry manually). User identifies himself, makes a fingerprint impression, and that's filed away with the time (by someone else?). Also means you can't 'just' chop off someone's hand and use it. Designed correctly, you could seperate tasks so bribery is harder (one guy collects the fingerprint, a second one verifies it and tells a third one to open the door...)
Alternative identification schemes may involve tatoos (which can be copied) or physical tokens (which can be lost or stolen) or some combination of these.
User sticks his hand into a hole, and never has to see the person doing verification (so you don't know if its the same guy). It also could have a little guillotine in case someone tries to be smart and sticks a weapon in.
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[Question]
[
**TL;DR**: You're defending coastal medieval fortress with help of about 1000 people from attack of zombies.
Long version: In my fantasy world, I'm dealing with problem of how would you defend city against zombies. Defenders are very limited in terms of magic and thus, for the purpose of the scenario, it can be treated as medieval defence.
Zombies on the other hand, are low tier magical undead. They are basically corpses, who are reanimated and conserved with magic. Their principle of reanimation uses original muscles of the body, but they feel no pain. To stop them you need to either destroy their head (which is used by magic as core of reanimation) or at least destroy the muscles. In terms of strength, they might be somewhat stronger than normal human, but not by much, and with limited movement coordination, they actually pose threat only due to large numbers.
I'm thinking about what kind of defensive siege weapons could be used to defend against them?
For example: Is heated sand hot enough to cause serious damage to muscles, or does it only do surface damage that wouldn't affect such zombies? Are there any wise strategies that you could employ in event of such castle defence?
In this scenario, we're talking about a case where a castle built on a small peninsula, which only needs to be defended from the land-side. About a thousand of defenders is forced to deal with around three thousand zombies a night, for a few days. While zombies aren't fast nor smart, and tall walls of the castle are barrier they can't break, they can actually climb on the walls, with principle similar to geckos.
Additional Details: City wasn't built to defend against zombie invasion. Weapons it has are meant to deal with mortal demihuman invaders, so are the walls.
Firearms are not a thing.
Niche ideas based on modern knowledge are useful, but provided it's something that can be done quickly improvised.
Thank you in advance.
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The best news is that the gates are safe. Mythbusters did a show which included zombies storming a gate. In their demo, they put all the "zombies" in protective tubes. Why? Because their zombies were human volunteers, and it was actually rather easy for the outside individuals rushing the gate to crush those at the gate. If your zombies made a rush for a real reinforced gate, they'd quickly reduce the front lines to goo.
And they're not smart enough to actually bombard the castle with proper siege weapons. This leaves just the case you worry about -- these zombies can climb the walls like a gecko.
Personally, I'd go for weapons that work like windshield wipers along the walls. Heavy tree trunks attached at the top of the castle, sweeping back and forth. This should knock the zombies down without wasting consumables. Falls from that height are *going* to do damage to the head of the zombies at some point. At the very least, it will do enough damage to permit you to set fire to the zombie bodies in a fuel-efficient manner.
Also, if they only come at night, I'd be digging pits during the day. Pits are a wonderful way to concentrate the zombies to get maximum bang for your buck. You're really looking to make this siege as effieicent as possible. By your numbers, there are 20x more zombies than humans. While we have seen such utter dominations in the past (Cannae comes to mind), it's really hard to take on that many individuals without running out of ammunition. Any breaks in the siege should be sized upon and leveraged to replenish stockpiles.
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**Nothing**
You don't need nothing special. As the late Tywin Lannister put it, *"a man above the walls counts as ten men below"*. That's why throughthout history, castles and fortifications were rarely stormed, but sieged. A hundred men on the castle could easily stop a thousand attackers. 1000 men against 3000 zombies? They won't even tire.
Give them clubs, maces or hammers, anything blunt and solid, and let them smash the heads of the zombies as they get close. If the zombies are climbing like geckos, they need their hands on the wall to climb, so they can't stop the blows.
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**Grease The Walls**
You have big strong walls and unarmed opponents that can climb. Paint the walls with grease, oil, lard. You don't need to win and you don't need to kill them all, just keep them out for a few days (well nights anyway)
Zombies don't use fire so it's not a risk to buildings. Personally 3000 a night against 1000 armed guards isn't even much of a challenge. That's just three zombies per person per night. Some axes for heads, spears for poking and hammers for fingers, the humans should be able to fight that number off with no assistance.
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How close to a gecko toes are their hands? Geckos are the masters of climbing so it would be good to see the limits of your zombies.
Specifically whether they can climb across horizontal surfaces. If not, you could have a outwards inclined wall to ward them off
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1OCoH.png)
Zombies are in red. The one falling down says "ahhhh!" (splash)
The good guys are in green. They are partying.
The blue part must be long enough so that the falling zombies do not make a heap higher than the walls (see for instance the very beginning of <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLWCgMVf6U0>). Bonus if you can cover it with Teflon.
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Mindless monsters that can only attack from one side, and you've got only very limited magic?
This reminds me of a mindless game from the Shockwave Flash era - which, in terms of internet, is about middle ages. The game is called *Defend your Castle*. You played it by clicking and dragging:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8NTjz.gif)
*"But Renan"*, you say, *"this is a fantasy setting, not a computer videogame!"* Yeah I know, different escapism mode for geeks. Well, turns out in Dungeons and Dragons there is a level 5 spell called [***Bigby's Hand***](https://www.dnd-spells.com/spell/bigbys-hand) - Actually a consolidation of many different spells from the second edition. It works just like that cursor. Don't believe me just because I'm saying it:
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> You create a Large hand of shimmering, translucent force in an unoccupied space that you can see within range. The hand lasts for the spell’s duration, and it moves at your command, mimicking the movements of your own hand.
>
>
> (...)
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> When you cast the spell and as a bonus action on your subsequent turns, you can move the hand up to 60 feet and then cause one of the following effects with it.
>
>
> (...)
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> **Grasping Hand**
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> The hand attempts to grapple a Huge or smaller creature within 5 feet of it. You use the hand’s Strength score to resolve the grapple. If the target is Medium or smaller, you have advantage on the check. (...)
>
>
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Just grab a zombie, move it up some four dozen feet in the air and release. Gravity will do the dirty work. Rinse and repeat until you win.
Remember that every extra wizard or sorcerer is another helping hand, so bring your friends!
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A good old moat will do its job of keeping attackers away ([image source](https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/16/medieval-castles/))
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NFN6n.jpg)
Then your defenders can focus on taking rid of those accessing the bridge, and as [the battle of Thermopylae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae) has shown, good use of terrain act as force multipliers.
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If the walls are sloped instead of straight vertical you could effectively remove zombies by building a log storage next to the top of the wall and rolling logs down the wall whenever a group of zombies get near the top. This method would be easy enough to engineer and sure to crush and remove any zombies in the path of the log as it rolls down the wall. Workers could then go outside the next day and pull the logs back into the castle to be reused as many times as needed.
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As long as the defenders have fireproof fortifications, and a few days to prepare, they can get by with zero casualties.
They need to pile dry brush around their walls, preferably soaked in something flammable. Wait for the zombies to walk all the way into the brush, then light it. The fire spreads, and the zombies, being too dumb to avoid it, just stand in the fire and burn up.
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The zombies somehow have super-adhesive gecko wall-climbing powers? Magic, I suppose? How fast can they climb?
I would tend to think, since they're not much stronger than typical humans at best, they still would not climb all that fast, and would still need to use their hands, and bare hands, to do so.
You gave the defenders 1000 men? How long is the top of the battlements along which they must defend? It sounds to me like they probably have at least ten times more men than they need.
What Hollywood and TV seem to have mostly failed to communicate to most people is that it's ridiculously easy to defend a battlement. The zombies here would be climbing up from below with at least one hand busy hanging onto the wall. Defenders would stand above them behind a battlement, and could just drop rocks on them, knock them off with pole weapons, and the ones that got farther would be immediately bashed and chopped with with medieval hand weapons (axes, maces, polearms) by multiple people standing above them, before they could get in any sort of position to fight back. Only feeble or incompetent or outnumbered or surprised or otherwise incapacitated defenders would have any problem defending in that situation.
There are many historical cases where only a handful of men were able to defend a castle from assaults for prolonged periods, because it's very difficult to get up and over a castle wall when there's anyone on top to kill you as you try.
If you want another trick for defending the wall, try a large spiked ball dangled from a chain, that you sweep along the width of a section of wall, knocking off climbers.
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Depending on the zombies, castles would be *very effective* against zombies. They're meant to withstand sieges, after all. That's the whole point of them. Thus, if the zombies are mindless and cannot use siege weapons themselves, a group of 1,000 people could easily repel them. Using slings to hit the zombies with stones would probably be an effective way to break the zombies apart, since arrows wouldn't do much damage to them. Just keep chucking rocks at them to gradually dismember them, and you'll be good. Rocks are easy to come by and it would not be hard to make slings for a hundred people. Plus, it would not be difficult to train people to use them with some effectiveness. Other kinds of weapons meant to drive of intelligent attackers would be just as useful. Most of all, I think flaming pots of oil would be especially potent, since the zombies would be consumed by the flames. Of course, you'd have to consider setting the area around them on fire as well, so that could be a big deterrent against that particular weapon.
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as other answer already say, do as fortification usually do.
like throwing stone or brick or other hard object from the crenelation or machicolation if the zombie try to climb (hopefully crush their head or bone to make them unable to move) or try to burn them with any flammable object.
also if the castle have water moat i suggest it link with strong current or wave like from river or ocean or put a creature that can eat the zombie in the moat or it contain flamable thing like oil just in case the zombie can pass the water since i assume they dont need oxygen to breath and they still can float to move or swim or just walk through the bottom of water by wearing heavy stuff like metal armor.
my concern is more on your food supply though if your zombie never rot, since i expect they dont really need to eat while your men still need food for energy.
but honestly i dont think someone will need castle to defend against zombie they have advantage in attricion if they dont rot to cancel the magic, by turtling yourself it will only increase dead body into zombie from unfortified village, in my opinion you need is offense and bait (use cavalry since i doubt the zombie can ride or is there a horse zombie too?) to entrap them to flammable area like flammable forest or plain full of dry grass and burn the area or goes to higher place and lit a balls of hay and roll it to the zombie bellow or other type of fire trap or tactic.
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Instead of using tree trunks as wipers, all you would need is a tether, such as a chain or rope, and a heavy weight, such as a big rock. Using a pendulum action it could either deal significant damage to the zombies by smashing into them, or just cause them to lose wall contact and fall. Keep the counter weight and tether well greased to inhibit seizure by the zombies. If a zombie did manage to grab the anchor you would have several options; Increase swing to have centrifugal force remove them, hoist them up to the waiting weapons of your rampart defenders, or drop the whole thing to the ground. Rocks and rope are abundant and expendable and will give the zombies no advantage.
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**Big shredder/grinder on the road the castle.**
The thing about mindless attackers is that they don't think where they go, so placing a giant two shaft shredder on the road to your castle (with a drawbridge to allow people walking during the day) will probably be enough to process them from undead attackers to biological waste.
If some actually make it through - your classic castle defence techniques are your friend - throwing rocks, shooting flame arrows or dumping boiling tar on them should do the trick.
Now if you want efficiency - you can make it water powered, like a river mill, or you could make water flow below it to wash the unwanted biological waste away, you could add an angled slippery slide that would make sure the zombies can't escape the shredder etc.
And where to get that in simplies form? While not easy - digging the needed hole quickly should be possible with this many people, the shredder mechanism could be created from stone (mill stones for example) and connected through a shaft to whatever powered the city mill or other human powered mechanism could be used.
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Interesting question and I thought I'd give my input! I was at Pembroke Castle (in West Wales) over the long weekend. This seems like a great castle to use as an example as it was never taken by siege, despite having stood for around 925 (from memory) years.
Now part of the reason for this amazing legacy is that they are surrounded from most sides by the sea, but I'll pass over that obvious advantage since we are talking existing city rather than "best place to build", and it sounds like you've already got a pretty good location.
I'm going to talk murder holes, but I see no reason for this not to be extended to just tipping over the sides of the walls to deal with the zombies.
* As you've mentioned - **Sand**.
+ An advantage of this is that it doesn't matter if these zombies are wearing chain mail (as I assume they are probably ex-soldiers in walking dead form. Even plated armour will struggle to contend, since the sand can get through all the crevices. When this is heated hot enough... it would definitely cause some muscle damage.
* **LimeStone**
+ When heated, there is eminence strain put on the rock. When it hits below, it will essentially explode. Medieval shrapnel bomb.
* **Pee**
+ No honestly, don't laugh. Best bit about this is it doesn't need to be sourced from outside the walls. You have a whole city creating the stuff and it's a waste product! Great thing about super-heated pee? It turns into uric acid - it's corrosive! This will definitely do some damage to the muscle, if enough is poured.
Next, pokey holes - not sure what they are actually called.
Add some slits into the wall and stab anything that gets too close with a spear to the head. Make sure they are too narrow for the Zombies though.
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In ye olde day, hot oil used to be dropped to those trying to burst the gate.
That will do a lot of tissue damage aswell as musculature, especially if you send a flaming arrow down after it.
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The challenge is really the other way around.
How can any number of dumb zombies ever hope to get into a castle without smart human guidance?
Siege warfare is difficult; it takes mining, siege engines and elaborate earthworks to have any chance of success.
I challenge you to find a way that the zombies could win, given how easy they are top lure into situations where they can easily be destroyed one by one. The defenders can just build a narrow ramp witha trap door at the end leading to a meat grinder (with suitable bait just out of reach) and mash the zombies one at a time.
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I'll throw a penny in..
give everyone a nice light weight cane/ 'don't actually know what this is called' but it's the same principle, a cane but on the end it has a C shape, for hooking things. Use one of those and simply lift the zombies chin so it's centre of gravity is pushed away from the wall and they fall off.
although this has already been stated, just by pushing the zombies off.. the difference is the mechanism, people suggested maces/hammers/axes all of which will tire you out, if you have to survive all night, even with soldiers on shifts they will get tired and that is when you're going to get vulnerable
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I forget what it's called but some castle walls had the top area wider than the wall itself. This meant that any ladder had to be free-standing, it couldn't rest on the walls. There were also murder holes in the part that extended to permit attacking those trying to climb up from a position of very good cover.
Just because a zombie can climb a castle wall (remember, they're going to be rough, not slick. I recall a bit of news out of China of a castle where some people would climb the wall simply to avoid paying admission) doesn't mean they can climb an overhang.
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You stated this is a fantasy setting, so what if you fight fire with fire? There's no way these zombies just *exist*, most likely a necromancer is sending them to distract those inside the castle from the *real*threat. However, if a necromancer can raise zombies to life, logic follows they can command zombies, or else why would you do it?
In other words, why not have your resident necromancer take care of defending the castle with his zombies?
They won't tire, they'll be directed through telepathy (I assume) so no problems with "mindless zombies", and they're completely expendable. Of course, if you *have* a necromancer, he could just take control of the incoming zombies....something's not right here, the enemy necromancer must have something truly diabolical planned to negate this huge disadvantage. Perhaps the resident necromancer is secretly on his side?
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Location, Location, Location! Set up your castle on the rocky coastline at the steepest point. If the sides are not steeply sloped, do some construction work and get those sides in top-top near vertical shape. Like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C3Shk.jpg)
Now all of the horde must cross a very narrow chasm or work they're way around the heights. All you have to do is push them off. Maybe you force them to walk around the castle's side and have a section of wall that moves in and out forcing them to fall (ala RPG style) or maybe you simply roll big objects down the bridge across the chasm. Maybe you run out of stuff and simply have the troops set a phalanx with their full length scutum shields and start pushing zombies over the edge.
A person can very easily break a leg on a bad fall from 10 feet. You're tossing zombies over the edge of 100 feet or more, possibly also tumbling down the slope after the initial hitting of the deck.
Bones will break, limbs snapped in two or bent backwards; heads spilled out on the rock. Should your zombie survive the fall, they'll be a mangled mess. It really doesn't matter that they don't feel pain - limbs don't function broken. So, there they lay at the bottom of the cliff until the magic runs out or the next zombie to fall crushes their skull on its way down.
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Everyone in this world from the age of 5 can teleport to anywhere they have been before even if they forgot how to go there. This started about 4,000 B.C.E where a bright green star landed on earth and affected all humans to be able to teleport, they can teleport with them 5 times their weight (they choose what they bring) and if anyone forgets a place they've been they can not go there. The reason why young people can't teleport is because the part of the brain isn't fully developed.
How would people who, let's say, murdered someone get punished? He could just go home or go to a place he's been before.
Some crimes would be harder to do like rape, murder and kidnapping because the person who might be the victims could just leave in an instant, but crimes like thieving are easier.
This should take place about 1000 to 2000 years after they started to be able to teleport. You can answer for later like 3000+ but I am writing this for 1000 to 2000 years after humanity starts being able to teleport.
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## Societal Penalties
Useful punishments depend on what end is being served.
* "Where there is crime, there should be punishment" (punitive)
* "Make right what you set wrong" (restorative)
* "An eye for an eye" (retributive)
* "Become a better person" (reformative)
* "This shouldn't happen in the future" (preventative)
Most justifications for punitive or reformative penalties tend to be (on a societal level) preventative. Retributive approaches tend to serve either preventative or restorative aims, although the justification can be shaky.
So, what's left that teleporting won't help?
**Ostracism:** Nobody will acknowledge your existence, or will treat you like an animal/object. Psychologically, this is highly effective at removing the criminal or forcing them to conform.
**Murder/injury:** This has to be applied fast and have permanent effects, so branding, castration, or murder are likely to be the primary examples. Chloroform allows for slightly more precision.
**Credit/debt systems:** Drain someone's bank account until they serve the mandated sentence. They can steal to survive, but they won't be able to make major purchases easily.
**Distrust:** Teleporting doesn't save you from people's opinion of you.
Strangers will, naturally, be highly suspicious people, and kept out of storehouses. It's likely that a group of highly-trained transport staff will mediate trade and vouch for each other. (This group will have to be extremely harsh with its own members in order to remain above suspicion. Up to and including sacrificing members to a mob "for the greater good".)
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**Assumptions:** This ability includes free choice of what is teleported with you, and is easy to use. Explosive collars/implants can be freely left behind. Penalties that can be used since 4000BCE are preferred over modern-tech penalties.
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**Drugs/Surgery + Jail**
If the ability to teleport requires a certain level of functionality in the brain, the ability to teleport could be stopped by the use of drugs for a temporary punishment or surgery to permanently remove the ability.
Brain surgery could be a serious deterrent for serious and repeat offenders.
**Explosive Collar + Jail**
If a control collar was fitted and couldn't be removed, it could be set to explode if it goes outside a certain area or even explode if it detects teleportation. Offenders would have no choice but remain in prison.
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**They would be banned.**
In a way this is like cheating gamers in online games. They teleport in and out of the game, cheating and chuckling. If the game catches them they are banned. It is easier for the cheaters because they can come back with a different persona. It is harder but not impossible to change your body and identity.
Your criminals would be banned until they did their punishment. They would be denied services at civilized places. They could not get a loan or use credit or government services. They would have to hole up in their mom's basement. Moms' basement? That is a tricky plural if you mean they as plural and not the gender agnostic they because they will have plural moms. Unless they are siblings.
Where was I? Criminals! In worst cases it would be like the old west: Wanted posters. Bounty hunters would track people down and take a finger or brand their foreheads in their sleep, or kill them. Maybe some criminals would be offered bounty hunter work as their punishment.
I think this is a great premise for a fiction by the way!
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If they can only teleport to places they remember, [drug induced amnesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug-induced_amnesia) will actually nullify their power.
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> Drug-induced amnesia is amnesia caused by drugs. Amnesia may be therapeutic for medical treatment or for medical procedures, or it may be a side-effect of a drug, such as alcohol, or certain medications for psychiatric disorders, such as benzodiazepines.
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Once they are induced amnesia, they can be confined in a normal prison for the duration of their sentence.
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Here are some methods of keeping teleporters trapped, some low-tech, some high-tech. Note that these are all designed to keep people who don't want to be in prison there. Most criminals could be kept in prison simply by making them understand that if they escape, their punishment will be much, much worse when they get caught again. Average embezzlement-joe or corner-drug-dealer-jane would much rather hang out in prison for a year compared to the potential death sentence they'd receive if they escaped.
* **Poisoning:** When captured, administer a poison to the prisoner that will be fatal within 24 hours. Then, give them a suppressant to the poison daily in prison. If they decide to teleport out, they might have a few hours of freedom, but they will need to return unless they want to die. At the end of their sentence, they are given an antidote which neutralizes the poison.
* **Low-pressure-trick:** Keep your prisoners confined in a hyper- or hypobaric chamber. These take a while to acclimate to, but once they are acclimated, they shouldn't suffer any serious long-term health problems. If they attempt to teleport out, the place they teleport to will invariably have a lower or higher pressure, and they'll be killed rather quickly by the Bends/diver's sickness.
* **Tattoo bounties:** Figure out a tattoo ink which can be neutralized at a later point or perhaps fades with time like a henna tattoo. Then, tattoo each prisoner's faces and hands with markings that are recognizable by all and represent a bounty. If someone notices these tattoos outside of prison, they have the legal right to capture and potentially kill that person since they're an escaped convict.
* **Sedation:** This one kind of defeats the purpose of prison as it's neither punitive nor rehabilitative, but you could simply keep the teleporters unconscious and supplied via IV. Nurses or other staff would need to prevent bedsores and clean/care for the prisoners, but for very short durations, this could work.
* **Punishment collars:** Build a collar with a pressure sensor on it and take the derivative of its reading. If it detects a spike or a rapid change, assume that the wearer has teleported and then punish them accordingly. Maybe deploy an electric shock or simply an explosive.
* **Subdermals:** Presumably, while people might be able to choose what clothing/accessories they teleport with, they don't get to choose what internal organs they teleport with. This means that embedding trackers/bombs/poisons under the skin is a viable solution. For example, install a small radio-detecting poison capsule under the skin of each prisoner and have the jail emit a radio signal. So long as the capsule detects this signal, the capsule does not open, but if they leave the range of the signal, the capsule opens and immediately incapacitates/kills the escapee.
* **Lobotomy/mind manipulation:** This one's rather monstrous, but it should be possible to erase someone's memory of previous places by mucking around in their brain via surgery or administering the right drugs. Note that this would probably only be done if the government is particularly evil as doing so would basically be a death sentence since the victim would likely go through identity death. This would also negate any punitive purposes of imprisonment, as the prisoner wouldn't remember their crime.
* **Hammurabi-style:** This one's also rather old-fashioned and monstrous by today's standards, but eliminates the need to keep people confined in prison for a long time. Instead, their punishment is instantaneous. Instead of long prison stays, the person simply gets maimed and then released. Classically, thieves get their hands chopped off, people who blind others get their eyes poked out, etc.
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**Voluntary Submission to Punishment, or Immediate Death**
Let's say the authorities think that a fair punishment is to shackle the person (assuming they can't teleport out of shackles), or to cut off their hand (if they can).
Imposing such a penalty would be impossible, unless the criminal consented. You can't arrest someone unless you can tackle them, threaten to shoot them, or similar, and if you tried that they would teleport away. You'd have to be extremely lucky if you wanted to surprise them, knock them out, and apply the penalty while they're unconscious.
You could offer them a fair trial, but they'd probably teleport away during the trial, if it looked like they were going to be found guilty.
So a common way of handling things might be Trial In Absentia. They can teleport in to answer questions if they want, but it is not assumed that they will. If there's enough evidence to declare them guilty, then you sentence them. The sentence is publicly announced. They then have a few days to turn themselves in and submit to voluntary punishment. If they don't show up, they are declared outlaws. Outlaws are to be killed on sight.
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**Ordinary Shackles and Chains**
How do you define "carry with them"?
If they have an object in their hand, can they choose to teleport away, leaving it to drop? Or will the object come along with them?
I choose to believe that if you clamp their hand around an object, they will not be able to leave it behind.
You might have to clamp their hand in such a way their fingers are curled around a handle, but that's a fairly minor technical challenge.
So a variation on chains and shackles will do the job.
Just attach them firmly to an object weighing a few tons (like a giant block of concrete) and they will be unable to teleport away.
You only need do it with one of their hands. Leaving them free to eat and handle objects, and you may be able to attach the hand-clamp to a chain giving them enough mobility to move around.
The caveat being that with some loose definition of objects, they may be able to teleport away with only part of the chain. So perhaps a thick rope would be better instead.
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### Teleportation requires knowing where you are relative to where you want to be. So knock them out first.
(Courtesy of Alfred Bester and *[The Stars My Destination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stars_My_Destination)*. A great book; not a "nice" one admittedly - the protagonist is one of the great anti-heroes - but if you're here and asking questions like this then you should definitely read it.)
You can teleport to anywhere you've been before, because your mind retains some instinctive relative map of how to get there, and hence can "plot" a direction and distance. But that requires you to be conscious. If you're moved whilst you're unconscious, you would need to reorient yourself relative to a known place, in order to teleport back to previous places. In Bester's book, criminals are knocked out and imprisoned in disused mines whilst unconscious. Without knowing how deep you are, you can't teleport out.
Of course you can try. Bester's concept was that attempts to "blue jaunt" (as it is called in the book) in a random direction in hope of getting out are all destined to go only a short distance into the surrounding rock. Two solid bodies cannot share the same space, so the result is that the person and rock explode. The prison authorities make no effort to stop this. It is hard enough to survive in the prison as it is, and if someone wants to commit suicide, the authorities are more than happy to allow it.
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The trivial solution would be to state that people can't teleport out of places covered with handwavium. Thus, jails, courts, security camaras, etc. would be made of that material. However, this isn't particularly creative.
For quick restraints, you could simply use other people. You want to ensure that the criminal you found doesn't teleport away, or that he stays in courtroom during the process. You could simply have a couple of officers holding him. Similar to how they could stop him if he wanted to walk away, I expect that someone attached to a teleporter could use their own teleporting power for not being teleported (different people will have varying teleport strenght, but a 2:1 ratio seems enough).
For actual punishments, the society would use other ways other than rmeoving the freedom of movement (which seems very hard in this setting). For example
* Punishment for their criminal actions would affect their family
* All their credit gets revoked, so while they could travel, they would have no means of interacting with the society (banknotes and other physical tender disappeared on 2612 BCE).
* It would be a dishonor to commit a crime, or avoid the punishment imposed by the court/their peers/the Book of Law, so nobody in this society would teleport away from the consequences of their acts (or voluntarily commit a crime, actually)
* They lose a number of Pokemon Go points proportional to their crime (turns out in this future, they are more valued than honor)
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For more serious crimes?
1. Summarily executed on site of crime if possible. (death penalty used to be much more popular, idea of treating imprisoning people as the default punishment for serious crimes is quite new)
2. Otherwise... exile with becoming outlaw. (It's not that you escaped... No, no, no... We exiled you)
3. The most serious (or obnoxious criminals) would be tried in absentia and effectively subject to execution taking form of something looking like state sanctioned assassination.
For misdemeanors it's not much issue, as becoming outlaw is more serious thing than fine.
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**Society would be draconian, and based off trust and affection in early times.**
In ancient times, teleportation would be a great advantage for any combat force. The mongols were deadly because they could defeat in detail any enemy, ambushing them with fast horses that could hit whenever it was most advantageous. Everyone can do that now.
As such, to stay safe you'd have closed off compounds, where everyone knew each other. They would have skilled soldiers who could murder anyone who caused a serious threat. If someone stole or murdered someone those around could hear such, and judge whether the person was likely to have done such a crime. They could prevent strangers from entering the community and teleport mapping it with heavy walls, and use threats to families and known houses of people to keep them in line. If someone escapes, they'll need to survive in the wilderness or go to other communities which also don't trust outsiders, especially poor outsiders without access to great wealth.
**When more advanced, police state, tracking chips, face recognition, and kill squads.**
The fact that people can teleport around bombs and fires makes them an exponentially greater threat. Drugs and brain surgery are too slow for most. You can just have teleporting police and military who kill anyone who is a serious threat and isn't staying on the grid.
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According to [the Wikipedia article on prisons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison#Ancient_and_medieval):
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> The Romans were among the first to use prisons as a form of punishment, rather than simply for detention.
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It just so happens that between the first written codes in Babylon and the rise of Rome there were a few millennia. In between, most crimes would be punished with physical punishment, usually ranging from whipping to flaying.
You can literally take a page from the Leviticus for inspiration. Chapter 20 is all about punishment for various transgressions. Such as:
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Etc., etc.
If your teleporter criminals try to flee, well, it's a matter of finding them and setting them on fire or stoning them before they can run away again.
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Three little words: lovely drugs.
You impair the teleporter's consciousness so far that they cannot accurately teleport. Perhaps you even put them in a medically induced coma if the risk of attempted breakout is too high. Law enforcement carries tranq darts with a variety of weights\* to impair and arrest someone (assuming they don't teleport on top of you and knock you out).
For added security you place a tracker inside their body at a semi-random location. Should they escape anyway you can track them.
As a last resort you can target things like their home and bank account should they succeed to run.
\*weights for the individual to put down. "This dart is designed to put a man of 70kg to sleep. Heavier people might stay awake".
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Edit: This answer isn't really relevant given an updated question with included timeline as a long LONG time before GPS and microchips are available.
Two part solution: Implantable GPS and a "V-Chip"
**GPS**
Implantable GPS's are technically feasible now - or leg/neck collars as a fallback like current criminals are forced to wear. If it's attached to you or implanted INSIDE of you, it'll teleport with you when you come and go.
The GPS can be geofenced - leave an area and ZZZZZZZAP you're unconscious with a tracking beacon.
You can run... but you can't hide. And you end up knocked out.
A bounty, a GPS with geofencing and stun guns. You'll be returned to the authorities.
**"V-Chip"**
In the South Park universe, a V-Chip is an implantable chip that detects unwanted behavior and delivers an appropriate shock to block or deter such actions as are unwanted.
We aren't talking foul language here... but teleportation.
To teleport, requires forethought and a conscious decision. That decision can be detected at the subconscious level before it becomes a thought... and that thought before it becomes a decision... and at those points, a light - or debilitating - zap can occur to stop the teleportation.
**Both Devices**
The pairing of the two devices... one to track you if somehow you get past the V-Chip... and the second to keep you where you are in most circumstances. This should be an option not far from our current technology.
You can teleport but you can't teleport away from what's inside of you. What's inside you controls the abilities you obviously couldn't handle responsibly. Maybe some day you'll earn parole or forgiveness... but not yet. Until then... you're effectively grounded to your home - or worse - a prison complex.
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It seems to me that the question isn't so much about punishment as it is about identifying the person who committed a crime. If you're just after punishment options, there are a number of options above. But before you can punish someone, or even track down the culprit, you have to figure out who the culprit actually is.
The first problem is that you can't use normal tracking methods when the offender can both enter and leave the scene via teleportation. Unless there's some detectable pathway left by the teleport there's no realistic way to follow the offender's path. Of course if teleportation exists then a tracking ability may also exist.
Assuming there's no realistic tracking option we're limited to the evidence available at the scene in order to identify our offender. Some of the comments seem to indicate that we're in a low-tech world at best, so advanced forensics techniques like DNA profiling is out. Instead we're going to have to rely on low-tech things like witnesses. Sadly, criminals are well aware of the standard means of identifying them, so they routinely wear disguises or simply cover their identifying features.
Under those conditions I suspect that criminals will never be caught after the fact. The only time they will be brought to justice is when they are rendered unconscious or somehow unable to escape prior to leaving. Once they're gone, they're safe.
To that end, a society would need to develop some good ways of disabling teleporters. This might be as simple as a gas that produces disorientation or unconsciousness. I imagine that this would become a popular personal defence, like current capsaicin sprays.
Or maybe there's a way to disrupt the ability using some sort of electromagnetic field. A big electromagnet that can be pulsed to disrupt the teleport could also prevent them from leaving, and would probably be used to protect valuable or sensitive locations. The security field from Sanctuary (the TV show) is an example of this.
Once disabled the offender would have to be restrained somehow. I have a bunch of ideas about that, most of which are in the other answers so I won't go into all of them here. Replacing a vital section of a major artery with a device that can be used to track or kill the teleporter remotely would probably be a good permanent solution.
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## Constructed universe
How about sedating them and putting them in "the Matrix" where they can't/don't remember they can teleport and then have correctional officers go "Mr. Anderson..."
Or, maybe keep them there until they learn better ways.
Like in an episode of "The 4400" where Tom Baldwin ends up in a constructed world, lives there for several years, falls in love, gets married (oh wait, he was married, but they renewed their vows), etc. All in the blink of an eye. And then to emerge a changed man (so it then can get fumbled away by the showrunners... ok, back on topic...)
Such an experience might change a criminal as well. Especially if it's a "smile you're in a constructed world till you changed your wicked ways"-type of click of a button thing.
Maybe correctional officers are people with this ability, to "drag" people into their world... (I guess therapists and others might also benefit from that ability).
## Mental scaring
In an episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" Tom Paris is found guilty of murder and gets to relive the victim's memories of it over and over.
You don't really teleport away from that one.
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**Shunning**
A person committing an act that the rest of society considers abhorrent is simply completely ignored and cut off from society. IIRC, this is tangentially explored in Ursala K. LeGuin's [The Dispossessed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed).
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Your prison is inside the Bermuda triangle. This has the weird property that anyone trying to teleport ends up in a random location nearby. By being in this location the natural hand waverium throws off peoples sense of direction and they can no longer jump to where they want to, they just end up in a random place.
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Following on to the excellent [Ruadhan answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/203424/8068)... think the Mafia, and encase them in really big "cement shoes". Just don't throw them in the Hudson River.
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Add some helpful but rare physical properties of elements.
An element or compound could have unteleportable properties - stationarium (or copper)- and could be surgically implanted to replace a chunk of artery. Teleport away and you lose a chunk of aorta.
An element or compound could have sympathetic teleport properties - dynamarium (or lead)- and would always and immediately teleport alongside any teleporting object if within a few meters. A decent mass of this suspended over your head would be released and crush you if you teleport away.
An element or compound could have teleport distortion properties (pick something exotic), and could be refined and arranged such that someone teleporting from or to a spot within a few meters of it could be lensed into a different location - still in the prison for example.
An element or compound could have a kryptonite effect (gold would be fun), preventing teleportation within a certain range.
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Could one's teleportation abilities be linked to some kind of nutrient from food? If so, then one can be rendered unconscious until all traces of said nutrient have been metabolized and this person is fed a diet that does not contain the particular nutrient required for teleportation; this allows incarceration to continue.
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## Range
The Teleportation could have certain range much lower than the radius of many deserts of the world.
Then, societies could place their prisons in the middle of a desert and make the desert a forbidden zone so that criminals have never traveled to a target in teleport-range.
Prisoner transport to/from prison would be done with unconscious prisoners. That would only work if conscience is required to learn a new location as teleport-target.
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[Question]
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What would be best "human rights" word equivalent for all intelligent beings, including humans, demi-humans, and other intelligent life forms?
Example of demi-humans are Lizard folk, Cat people, etc.
Intelligent meaning they can read & write and understand law.
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# Natural rights
The concept of [natural law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law) appeared first in Ancient Greek philosophy. It was championed by the Roman Cicero and expanded into great treatises by Averroes and Thomas Aquinas.
Natural law asserts that certain rights are inherent by virtue of the nature of the world. While the Abrahamic religions obviously centered their view of natural law on *human rights* extended by *God*; it is easy to transfer this concept to the *rights of all intelligent races* extended by *Nature* (or God, if your setting has an omnipotent [Demiurge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge)).
The rights conferred onto all intelligent peoples by natural law are naturally (heh!) referred to as 'natural rights'.
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Denizen rights, Person rights, Personal rights, Individual rights, life rights, citizen rights.
Perhaps the most similar is *Person rights* because in some fields like anthropology the word *person* is used as distinct from *human* to mean a thinking being whose interests need to be taken into account (which includes humans, of course, but also might include spirits, animals, or even plants, objects and physical phenomena).
Of course, Human rights are called Human rights for a range of historical and accidental reasons, not exactly that people sat down and came up with the best term that they could. There could be a particular historical (in your world) reason why the name of a movement for certain groups of rights would have a particular name. They could be called *Delhi Rights* because the first international treaty on them was signed in Delhi. They could be called *international rights* or *transcendent rights*, or *global rights* because of the desire for them to operate in all places for all people. They could be called *Universal rights*, they could be called *all rights*. They could be named after a person, country, or region where they were argued for first (or loudest). Or they could be named for the way they were formulated: *declared rights*, or *formal rights*, or *enumerated rights*, or *agreed rights*.
If you want to get away from the individualist framework of contemporary western human rights discourse, you could call them *community rights* or *collective rights*. You could also phrase (and frame) them as 'freedoms' or 'expectations' or 'safeties' or 'standards' rather than 'rights'. The sky is the limit!
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Sentient rights, sapient rights, legal resident rights, citizen rights...
There are basically two things you need to consider here.
First, **there is no single correct option**. This is because these "fundamental rights" (another option) are not actually "fundamental" rights, they are legal constructs granted by a political process. The correct word to use is the one that properly describes that political process and the reasoning behind it. So to pick the right word you need to make up the history behind how people got those right and why and then (sorry about this) briefly try to think like a politician selling the idea.
Sometimes, surprisingly often really, the terms that stick were originally coined by people opposing the idea as derogatory terms. This is even more likely if the lofty ideas have a history of implementation problems. So you might want to think about it from that direction as well.
Second, The legal rights are not a single monolithic object. For example, while there is almost infinite number of possible terms you could choose, the reason I picked the four in the beginning (sentient rights, sapient rights, legal resident rights, citizen rights) is that they represent a continuous scale of scope. There are sentients that are also sapient and have sapient rights in addition to their sentient rights, but all sapient beings are also sentient and automatically have all the sentient rights in addition to their sapient rights. And so on. So you would want multiple different grades of rights with separate names and legal and ideological basis.
Historically and realistically in addition to such logical and neatly scoped rights you would also have a patchwork of more speficic rights and privileges granted in a specific historical context without any overlying design and logic. Say a specific group of refugees or immigrants or a religious or ethnic minority might get a special deal in response to a political crisis and that deal will then be on the books for decades or even centuries. You might want to add one or two such special cases to your system to make it look more realistic. Sadly, messy -> realism.
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Universal rights.
This is a term in use on earth today for just the rights you are referring to. It means the rights are universal and apply to all. Yet it is implied that they do not apply to animals.
It could perhaps also be interpreted as rights that apply in the universe.
If the rights originated with one race, it may be named after them, or other historical reasons. So Human rights could also be a valid name.
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**Sophont rights** is another option.
This one has the advantage of being well known in the SF genre already. According to [Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sophont): *(chiefly science fiction) An intelligent being; a being with a base reasoning capacity roughly equivalent to or greater than that of a human being. The word does not apply to machines unless they have true artificial intelligence, rather than mere processing capacity.*
[Sophont Rights](https://eldraeverse.com/2011/04/27/sophont-rights/) (in the Eldraeverse)
[Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights](https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/485acb81cdb0b)
[Guarantees of Sophont Rights](http://members.tripod.com/~starbase_10/rights.htm)
[Pulsar Strike](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12409812/1/Pulsar-Strike) by Cyrus Bortel
[Traveller News Service](https://calormen.com/tns/mt.html)
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Wouldn't a world with multiple sentient species have a simple term for all of them, something a bouncer in a bar could apply and not just a philosopher? Introduce that word early on in your story or game.
You define intelligent as being able to read and write and to follow the law. Does that mean stereotypical orcs are outlaws in civilized lands?
* *Citizen's rights* is not quite right because they would cover non-citizen foreigners. You'd have to find a new word for citizenship-derived rights.
* *Civil rights* are somewhat distinct from *human rights* in our world, but the word is recognizable to readers.
* If you use *people's rights* you define only those law-abiding races as people. That might be desirable in your setting.
* Perhaps use "folk" as a shorthand for "civilized folks" and thus *folk rights*.
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How about ***inalienable rights***? When we talk about human rights, we're usually talking about the basic minimum of rights that most people agree that everyone should have. These rights are essential and cannot be taken away - everyone deserves them simply by being.
This could also be a bit of an ironic descriptor in a sci-fi story (inalienable rights for aliens).
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As you bring up the law aspect, I think for simplicity and to make the distinction clear to the beings and to your readers I would stick to something like **Statutory Protected Rights** to indicate that it is whatever you decide that is bound by the law. True rights I personally believe should cover more but will not be protected because the aggrieved parties will not have the legal skills or standing.
In story you could have some small side mention by way of a character relying on or bumping into them illustrate the scope and depth of the rights.
Sort of like:
"Jonestar was still detoxing from the night before and and could not help being irritated by the early morning activities of the Treblim. Every night they would rebuild their grass and reed temple encroaching on the pedestrian way outside their dwelling next door and hold worship. The sweeper robot would just wait for almost an hour with the plasma torches hissing on idle and prevent his sleep and only after the last Trebler bowed his way out and removed the sign of the n-Th dimension could the sweeper knock the encroaching part of the structure down and sanitise the walk way. Jonestar was generally a tolerant Felling but a hungover cat needs to sleep. It was times like this that the whole business of the **Statutory Protected Rights** extending to all sorts of snack food was hard to stomach."
Hmm, perhaps I should try my tentacles at writing SciFi, it might even be fun.
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You could say "**soul rights**".
In nautical and aeronautical contexts "souls on board" is used to indicate the number of people on board, irrespective of whether they are men, women or children, or crew or passengers.
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Sentient rights.
Base sentient rights.
Basic sentient rights.
Universal sentient rights.
Could omit sentient as well.
Basic rights.
Are the general terms, but you could add some politics and worldbuilding to this term and do something like:
Elfvala accord rights.
Basic alliance rights.
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I'd go with **individual rights**. The whole concept is that there are fundamental freedoms that no one, not even the government or "the majority", can take away from an individual person. In tyrannies, communist countries, etc, they often pervert the concept of "rights of the people" to mean "powers of the mob" rather than "rights of individuals", and thereby destroy the concept that individuals have rights. But I don't think it's reasonable that the twisted and false concept of rights is what you want to convey. The important thing is that rights belong to individuals as individuals, not as a collective.
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John Scalzi in [Fuzzy Nation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_Nation) (which is oddly all about this kind of law), called it "Sentient Rights".
If you use that, at least you're not inventing the term. There's prior use you can point to.
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How about "Intelligent being rights" ?
KISS
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You also could pin it to a major religion, which most of your sentient beings follow. Or use the name of the ruler who put the rights into place, or name it after an era or event (all out war, severe flooding, earthquake, uprising etc.).
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I like the **Sentient Rights**, **Sapient Rights**, and **Natural Rights** mentioned before. But, personally, I would dive more into the worldbuilding of your universe.
Here and now, humans differentiate themselves from the other living being to the point that only a minority perceive themselves as animals. (For example, everything that is not human is not included in their law system. Although a lot of humans consider pet dogs as close friends, it's those humans that are held responsible for the actions of those animals by the human authorities.)
**Imagine a society build on a broader scope of sentient beings, how would they call themselves?**
Human is a very old word, with a long journey, across time and space. A fast google search shows us that the word could come from Proto-Indo-European. The meaning, '*earthling*' or '*earthly being*', shows the opposition with their gods, who live in the sky. So, if you would be lazy, you could call this community of sentient beings '*humans*', and thus call it **human rights**.
Personally, as a reader, I prefer authors who use a bit more of their brainpower, seeking for original terms through research in facts, imagination, or both (those who I prefer ^\_^ ). You could **think of a word** in some (invented) proto-language, that is clearly **defining how an archaic group of sentient beings** were perceiving themselves **and make the word travel throughout the centurie**s and regions evolving with the perception that those beings have of themselves.
Sources:
* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Etymology_and_definition>
* <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homo#Latin>
* <https://www.etymonline.com/word/human>
* [https://www.etymonline.com/word/\*dhghem-](https://www.etymonline.com/word/*dhghem-)
* <https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-etymology-of-the-word-human>
[Answer]
**Subject Rights**
In enlightenment philosophy, a [subject](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_(philosophy)) is one who acts on the world. Since the whole notion of individual rights came up with enlightenment, a technical philosophical term from that era could stick. To subject literally means to throw under, so there's also a hint at an authority - king, state, what have you that might fit well with your world.
Also, a medieval or early modern world might only start to think in terms of consciousness etc:
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> *Subject* as a key-term in thinking about human consciousness began its career with the German Idealists, in response to David Hume's radical skepticism. The idealists' starting point was Hume's conclusion that there is nothing to the self over and above a big, fleeting bundle of perceptions. The next step was to ask how this undifferentiated bundle comes to be experienced as a unity – as a single subject.
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I'd only go with the term subject rigths if I wanted an early modern or late medieval feel to my story, I think for other timeframes other terms are a better fit.
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One solution could be to simply say "[sapient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom) rights". "Being rights" could also work, but it is a bit too general.
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"Human" right might BE the right word, depending how it's used.
In **The Last Starfighter**, the term "human" is a term used by the Star League to refer to sentient/sapient beings of any planet. Grig, Alex Rogan's alien co-pilot is also a human, although he's of a lizard race. When Alex wears his uniform for the first time, Grig says "NOW you look Human!"
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# "Rights for Life"
because it's also kind of a word play :-)
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There are a lot of good answers here but @flater has a good point about why we use the term 'human rights' since we don't extend them to anything not human. An option would be to invent a term to encompass all any sentient/sapient being but something that rolls off the tongue. You might even introduce it as a word imported from a language used by a people who have long acknowledged the existence of many sentient species.
I was thinking about how the word Fae is a synonym for fairy, but in many stories there are many types of fairies each with their own specific name and the term Fae or Fairy used as a universal term for all types of Fairies. And then also what might be a word in a Fae language that they used to include all sentient species.
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[Question]
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In my city, a very high skyscraper stands at the center. Somehow, a tree, in a span of [x] years integrates itself into the building. Its branches reach out from the top of the building and its shadow covers a big chunk of the city. At the time the story takes place, the tree's trunk is almost as big as the building itself.
It was such a sight, watching from a distance. But I figure it would be very inconvenient for those living under its shadow.
Why would my city allow such a tree to grow to such a magnitude in such a long time?
To clarify, the world is just like ours with the same kind of technology, except the tree, of course, where nobody understands how it works. The city was modelled after New York.
I imagine the people living under it may complain about the lack of sunlight. Maybe they want to hang laundry out to dry, but there's no direct sunlight. And then some couples may want a bit of romantic fun times under the moonlight on their rooftop. Stuff like that, besides, people complain about everything.
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The tree was never supposed to be a tree, it was supposed to be a natural boost to the air quality and be a feature of the building.
The architect had a great idea for a natural air circulation and freshening system. You plant this tree up the centre of the building, it acts as a visual feature through the middle of the tower up a central transparent air duct. Architects always have such wonderful ideas, and some dodgy genetic engineering happened to get a plant to grow big enough, as the tree grew it put roots into the city aquifer and became rather dominant.
The first panic came as it displaced and replaced some of the tower structure and the tower was condemned and abandoned, but that was before the earthquake which the tower survived far better than many equivalent buildings. After which the building was cautiously reoccupied just out of a need for space.
There isn't much space left in the tower now, it's mostly tree, but as it grew it became a tourist attraction and now the city wouldn't dream of removing it. Never mind the loss of the tourists, the simple cost of removing that much material from that height in the centre of the city is completely prohibitive.
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Most likely scenario, there's an ownership dispute over the building. Till it's settled, neither party nor a municipal authority can do anything about the tree unless the building is declared a hazard. And neither party wants that, but a) won't spend the money to deal with the issue till they win and b) won't allow the other party to spend their money, lest it gives them (other party) a better claim.
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Such an unique wonder of nature would be a major landmark. The tree would become *the* identifying symbol of the city and become a major tourist attraction.
Chopping it down would mean to lose a part of the unique culture and identity of the city. Even suggesting it would be considered sacrilegious. It would be as if you would suggest to flatten the Sugarloaf Mountain of Rio or start building skyscrapers in the New York Central Park or fill up the Außenalster in Hamburg. The tree might be a major everyday inconvenience (just think of the damage caused by falling branches), but public pressure would still demand to keep it.
Besides, getting rid of such a huge tree is easier said than done. You can not just chop it down by cutting it at the bottom. Not without risking the destruction of several city blocks. Removing it safely would be a huge undertaking. You would have to systematically remove branch after branch until just the trunk remains and then deconstruct it in manageable increments from top to bottom. And when the tree is still powered by magic, it might be impossible to do this faster than it regrows. Getting funding for such a project against public resistance might be impossible.
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Your city is in the area of very hot climate. Under the shadow of such a tree, life would be much more comfortable. Your city certainly needs more of these, but this one has been just an experiment to show, that this GMO tree can be succesfull.
Former building has been intended to be just a supporting structure - to allow this tree to grow much more quickly saving on need to use a lot of energy and nutrients to form a huge trunk.
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In one word: Inertia.
The tree is older than the city. When early settlers came, they already saw a giant tree growing next to what is otherwise a great site for a city. It wasn't so massive back then, of course, but it was already an *impractically* large tree. Cutting it down would be a massive feat of 16th century engineering, would endanger everyone around it, and even if done, most of the tree would rot away before it could be processed into lumber (by, again, a band of 16th century settlers.) Besides it's kind of cool- other cities don't have a massive tree in them.
Fast forward to now- without moving, the tree has ended up far inside The City, it has been around since forever- not even your grandparents remember a time when there wasn't a massive tree there. It has woven itself into history and folklore - it was the site of a James Bond villain plot in the 90s, an environmental protest in the 70s, a subject of a 50s urban legend, and for 6 years in the 1920s it was a supporting element in the tallest building in the world (The building is still there, but it has long been surpassed.)
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With a tree of such a size (relative to your citizens), its lifespan will be considerably longer as that of a citizen; so it would be more correct to say that the citizens chose to live in the existing tree's shade, rather than the tree blocking sunlight for the existing citizens.
Given the tree's age, house prices will likely be different based on how much shade you get, and whether shade is desirable or not (e.g. compare stereotypical Saharan weather to stereotypical Siberian weather).
The impact that the tree's shade region has on the real estate market will likely be more of a driving factor for where your citizens choose to live, compared to the shade itself.
So I wouldn't worry so much about those who live in the tree's shade, they likely live there because their either *like* the shade, or the house prices were sufficiently low that they *accept* living in the shade.
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The question is more: why wouldn't they? Let's weigh the options:
**Benefits of keeping the tree**:
* People generally like to live close to nature.
* Oxygenation
* It provides (wanted) shade
* Does it bear any fruit? If so, that's a plus.
* It serves the same purpose as a lot of church towers used to: the large structure means that anyone in the vicinity can orient themselves by seeing the tree/church, e.g. to find the town center.
* If the tree is particularly large or special, it can become a tourist attraction, which drives the local economy.
**Benefits of cutting the tree**:
* Wood
* Getting rid of unwanted shade.
* Does the tree attract any unwanted wildlife?
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## Conclusion
Unless you're running out of building material, or the tree inherently poses a threat (e.g. attracting dangerous wildlife), I see little reason to cut the tree. In conclusion, if you make other building materials freely available, it's more than reasonable that the tree has been kept for sentimental or practical purposes.
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> **Anecdotally**,
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> I grew up in a town called Boom. It literally means "tree" in Dutch, it was named after an easily recognizable tree on the river bank (so traders knew to stop there). If you like trivia, Boom is also the town where the now internationally renowned Tomorrowland festival originated.
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> One of the biggest complaints in the town's history is that the town actually decided to cut the tree (due to ongoing vandalism and rising tensions). Though it was understandable to want to prevent a source of conflict, many people **regret** in hindsight that the tree was done away with.
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My answer uses some sci-fi elements to it, with some handwavy tech. It may not be what you're looking for.
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*William found a small flier on the table, as he took a seat to enjoy his morning coffee. The flier was made with a lot of care, with a tree-like red frame on the top and the left side holding the company logo while elaborated letters took the rest of the free space against a circuitry-themed background.*
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> ## YGGDRASIL CORPORATION
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> **There is a new way of life waiting for you!**
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> Stop ignoring the winds of change. The world needs to advance, and the first step begins with **you**!
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> Embrace a luxurious, sustainable way of life with the perfect marriage of technology and nature. Help to preserve nature by embracing it on your day-to-day life!
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*Several advertisements for products that promise to mesh up the power of technology with plant life follow the main text, promising all sorts of benefits over the traditional, tech-savvy lifestyle and the recent vegan/all natural trend. Those claims would seem almost absurd for anyone, wasn't for just a small detail.*
*Well, not so small.*
*William looks at the outside, and sees an immense, gigantic building that looks straight out of a book of cyberpunk fantasy in the middle of the nearby park. The mirrored glass intermingles itself with the robust bark of a gigantic black oak. Steel girders and wooden branches sprout from sides at irregular intervals, creating a massive crown over the neighborhood. Its leaves way above the rest of the skyline flow with wind as a massive sea of dark green, the waves dancing as a upside down, mossy-colored wheat field.*
*That massive cyborg-tree is the current headquarters of one of the weirdest players in the Corporate World. Swimming against the flow, they gave up profits and business opportunities in search for something unique, taking risk after risk and risking bankruptcy over and over again to keep up their morals and their beliefs intact. And, somehow, that suicidal approach to business worked for them - they made it big when their R&D department found out a way to integrate plant life with regular circuitry, enabling the creation of massive, naturally-growing computers which got faster as they got older and bigger. That tree wasn't just a tree - it was a massive dataserver that dished out calculations while it collected sunlight and made photosynthesis. "Those are changing times, indeed", William thought as he sipped his latte and contemplated the ever flowing, almost hypnotic path of the wind over the boughs of the world's biggest computer.*
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[Answer]
The melding of the tree and building could be an intentional part of the structure - providing structural support for the building around it.
This has advantages in terms of growth - the building can expand as the tree does.
As others have said if the climate is hot and sunny the tree would provide natural shade for those living/working in the building (depending on what the purpose of the building was), depending on the nature of the tree you could have it storing water in the trunk/branches as well which would provide water to the building occupants.
Also if it's in a densely populated city then the tree would act as a way of oxygenating the air in that area and a kind of vertical "park" as well - city planners often want to include parks and the like for residents but that costs valuable land area which could be used for building on so is very expensive. This super tree would be a very efficient way of meeting that need - like the skyscraper version of a park.
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The tree might have been a spectacle in its own right, if it was a rare tree or a very exceptional tree. Perhaps it was the tallest tree in the world or the nation or the tallest of its species and/or the widest. It could easily become a tourist attraction.
The reason why the tree was planted might also be of interest, perhaps the planting of the tree was a significant event and the tree was planted on or near the grave of a famous king. The history of the building and its modification to fit the tree might also add to the level of interest.
There could also be a religious reason why the tree was important. It might be a site of pilgrimage for people and the building may have been constructed to help protect the tree or act symbolically as a counter balance to it (man v nature).
[Answer]
Simple, super rich people live on its branches.
Since your question asks about "why would people let the tree grow" i am assuming that the city was already there beforehand. **The skyscraper-tree project was undertaken with the objective of dealing with rapid overpopulation leading to trees being cut down to make space for accommodation and air pollution making living conditions in cities very bad.** Because of the novelty involved in living on or in a tree a good chunk of funding also came from real estate companies wanting to build mansions on the branches.
This project aimed at building cities on genetically modified trees (or) a newly discovered species of supertree that grows into gigantic sizes in the right conditions thus dealing with both of these problems at the same time. It was already determined that **structurally speaking the tree itself was made of some organic tissue never seen before which lasted for a very very long time and also was stronger than most man made building materials in existence.** This specific city was selected because it was one of the few places with an economy that had the right conditions to sustain the tree.
Already, huge funding was being received by the organisation building the tree from all over the world both by billionaires wanting accommodation on it and world leaders wanting to research the growing conditions so as to build them in their own cities. Before long, **minor dissent from the residents of the city because of unwanted shade and all that was silenced by sheer power of money and the giant boom in the economy of the base city as the funding started to flow in**. After the supertree grew to full size, there was massive tourist inflow into the base city which further boosted its economy and soon, **ambient solar identical lighting in places fully covered in shade dealt with the problem completely.**
Tunnels were built into the branches leading to the trunk for transportation and cable cars for transportation between branches. The materials used to build the houses were transported through these tunnels.
The super thick, strong branches of the tree form an entire city over the base city. This city consists of mansions built on or into the branches forming an interwoven maze of buildings.
The mansions are primarily occupied by the rich and the powerful, with the houses on the edge of the canopy with an unbroken view of the surrounding area becoming the most expensive prime real estate in the world.
Soon, by altering the genes of the super tree, scientists are able enable the tree to grow in other conditions as well leading to the rise in tree habitats all around the globe, dealing a major blow to rising levels of air pollution and overpopulation in cities.
**P.S.** The skyscraper mainly served as a means to carry out construction and maintenance while the tree project was in progress. After it was completed, it provided much needed structural suppport as a portion of the central trunk was hollow owing to massive transportation needs. The sky scraper was rebuilt to serve partly as a conventional skyscraper and partly for research-maintenance purposes.
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In an effort to aid conservation, this city put into place several ordinances which make it difficult and expensive to remove trees unless they demonstrate a clear danger to the nearby structures. There are tax breaks available for modifying buildings to accommodate nearby growth without harming it. By the time the tree was big enough for the neighbors to complain, it was an integral structural component of the building and couldn't possibly be removed safely. (Which will be a problem when the tree dies, but all involved are hoping it lives long enough for that to be someone else's problem. )
[Answer]
Trees - particularly giant ones - are more than likely a lot older than modern buildings like sky scrapers.
The tree must have been there first. It produces fruit - and a vast amount of it - that is vital to the region's economy. The equivalent of many farms.
So construction began on this "skyscraper" using special construction technology that could withstand being built onto a tree. It was originally built to support the fruit industry, i.e. everyone who worked there had or worked for some business in some way related to the fruit and/or the tree and its well-being.
As time went on, the region's economy diversified, and the tree was still very valuable, but parts of the building were converted into residential and office spaces for people who just liked the idea of living/working in such a spectacular location, though a lot of the building is still devoted to tree business (perhaps there are even extensions along the branches now)
The tree is unique, which makes the fruit very valuable, and the tree itself an endangered species. It's been around since before tree science was a thing and scientists have no idea how to replicate conditions of its early life and grow another one.
There is now no reason at all to cut down the tree, doing so would pretty much destroy the town.
[Answer]
Because they're grossly stupid, and don't realize that the gigantic tree's roots will destroy the skyscraper's subsurface infrastructure, thus making it topple over in the next big wind, or require cutting off the roots, which makes the tree die and then fall over.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QujwG.jpg)
[Answer]
Adding to the "Inertia" idea:
This tree is such a special feature, that it deserves its own history. That history explains why it still is there.
In short, at first it was a cute thing. Then it became inconvenient, but at the same time a tourist attraction and landmark, so nobody really wanted to cut it down.
Now it is so large and its branches so heavy, that the technology to **safely** cut it simply doesn't exist. How do you cut a branch hundreds of tons heavy and hundreds of metres in the air, above a city center, while being 100% certain that it or some large part of it won't fall down, destroying an entire city block?
And like that, discussion over how to remove it, whether to remove it at all, etc. has been raging for years. Meanwhile, citizens are adapting to the tree more and more, reducing the pressure to remove it.
[Answer]
So something historically happened at the city site where the tree and building are. Something like this tree :[Hosen-Ji](http://kwanten.home.xs4all.nl/hiroshima.htm) This tree was about a kilometer from the point where the A-bomb hit in Hiroshima and survived. The temple architecture was adjusted to accommodate the Tree.
So the tree is historically significant in some way or another, I like the A-bomb idea because it leads to step 2 of the idea. Anyway, big bomb goes off, the tree survives. After a period of recovery and rebuilding, the venerated tree becomes a feature of the new skyscraper. The architect, being wise, designs things with the growth of the tree in mind. They develop ways to monitor and steer the root system clear of those very important underground things like foundations, sewer lines, and other utilities.
They find ways to extract the good stuff from sewage to fertilize the tree, A Multi-million dollar contract is created for the care of the tree. Things go swimmingly for the first 50 years. All is peaceful and good. Until....
Part of the deep root system reaches some deposits, long buried, of the radioactive debris that is the legacy of the bomb. And the Tree gets a big dose of the old Godzilla.
While the root is small, the tree only grows at a rate only slightly faster than normal, but as the root line gets bigger then increase in growth rate increases as well. Since it's not a sudden, massive spike, the decades old tree maintenance industry does it's best to cope, reinforcing the building when practical. It soon becomes evident that doing things to the building is cheaper and easier that trying to do things to the tree.
Let another hundred years go by and your hundred story tall tree dominates the city, and the guys who rake leaves will make more money than the GDP of some small countries. The guys who trim the branches get really big in the paper and furniture industries (becoming the sole supplier for Ikea)
The tree has been symbolic for so long that no one would dare tear it down.
[Answer]
The tree can provide materials that can help the city in a various ways. Such as:
* medicines
* food
* energy
* further studies
* etc.
[Answer]
One thing is the above-ground part of the tree, but what about the roots?
A tree that size need a huge root system. With little competition it has spread to cover the ground under the entire city. The subway is built in/under/through roots, buildings have their fundaments inserted into a mass of roots and rock.
What happens when the tree dies? Nobody knows, but it likely won't be pretty.
[Answer]
The people kept it there as a testament to the power of nature. They detested the city at some deep level because it wasn't really made for them, but nature was their nature, you could say.
Besides, it freshens the city air, provides a haven for animals, and it's a sacred omen, a time of transition, perhaps...
] |
[Question]
[
I am writing a fiction set in the 'dark ages', a pre-industrial, pre-gunpowder world. On Earth that would be no later than 800 AD, but this doesn't have to match Earth. There is no magic, and I won't inject any.
It is useful to my story line to eliminate horses as a mode of fast travel. I do mention oxen, cattle, sheep and goats. Those can be ridden, but not for a major speed advantage over just a good human runner. Thus far I have not mentioned anything to do with horses, and I don't intend to introduce them.
So while I can continue to write the story as just "nobody has ever heard of a horse", I was thinking I might try to supply a back story reason, a myth or legend thousands of years old that the characters find a mystery, but the modern reader might recognize as why there are no horses in this world.
**Why would horses, and only horses, be extinct?** I have already thought of some disease, but I don't know horse anatomy or biology or their origin or history very well. For example, if there is any real-life disease that could be a plague level extinction event for horses.
[Answer]
# The horses cannot be domesticated
You say...
>
> It is useful to my story line to eliminate horses as a mode of fast travel
>
>
>
Well then, that is easy. In your alternate world...
**Horses have the temperament of and a (lack of) family structure like zebras.**
This video by CGP Grey explains the matter simply:
[**Zebra vs Horses: Animal Domestication**](https://youtu.be/wOmjnioNulo?t=3m31s)
>
> Horses were domesticated in Eurasia, but humans started in Africa which has Zebra. Why didn't the first humans ride out of Africa on the backs of Zebra to conquer the world?
>
>
> **Because zebra are bastards**. They live to kick and bite: dangerous in a pre-penicillin world. And Zebra also have a ducking reflex making them very frustrating to lasso.
>
>
> In addition to being a real pain in the ass animal, **Zebra lack a family structure.**
> Horse herds hierarchy -- you can see it when they travel in a line: the male, top female, her foals, second female, her foals, and so on. Humans, by capturing and taming the lead male, become head horse.
>
>
>
[Answer]
My suggestion is to write the story without horses. In-universe, no one knows what a horse is, so no one wonders why they became extinct/never evolved first place. Meta-universe, if the story is compelling, readers won't question why there are no horses. Unless you find it necessary to introduce myths and legends about an ancient time when there were horses, there should be no difficulty; and if you do, well, a deluge, a rain of fire, a punishment by the gods, or any other mythical explanation would be popular among the people, with no need to make such mythologies more than just that, mythologies.
If you absolutely need an explanation, then they were probably hunted down to extinction (as it effectively happened in the Americas). They are difficult to domesticate and use; they do not give proper traction for work before the invention of horse collars, and they are difficult to ride without the appropriate gear (reins, bridle, bit, etc.) Failure to invent those things might lead to horses being seen as venison rather than work animals.
---
(edit)
You say...
>
> I was thinking I might try to supply a back story reason, a myth or
> legend thousands of years old that the characters find a mystery, but
> the modern reader might recognize as why there are no horses in this
> world.
>
>
>
...
The gods answer your prayers...
>
> The Prairie God summoned the horse, the elk, the deer, and the moose,
> and told them: I am creating a new beast, which I intend to inhabit
> the prairie. So I demand that you move elsewhere, to make room to my
> new creature.
>
>
> "Fine", said the elk. "I am moving north, to the cold lands Your
> new creature won't covet, because they are so cold."
>
>
> "I will go with the elk", said the moose.
>
>
> "I don't like cold, so I will move to the woods, where Your new
> prairie creature won't go, said the deer.
>
>
> "I don't believe any of this", said the horse; "You know what, I am
> staying exactly where I am".
>
>
>
[Answer]
Read [David Eddings' Tamuli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tamuli) - in his books Eddings describes ancient warriors brought back to current times that were devoid of cavalry because their race did not **breed (war) horses**. Eddings probably relates to warhorses called destriers: bulky strong animals capable of carrying a man in full armor. Hence, horses were not extinct, but simply not suitable for carrying armored knights because they were not yet bred into war horses.
However, 'normal' horses used for 'normal' travel have been bred to perform this task too (see [this wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_breeding#History_of_horse_breeding)).
Also note that the native American Indians didn't have horses not until they were imported by the colonists. Hence, dependent on the colonization status of your world, horses may simply have not dispersed yet outside of their original geographical locations.
You can work your way around things, without dismissing the normal evolution of the horse (Fig. 1). For example, you can also say the evolution of the horse stopped in the late Eocene, leaving horses too small to ride except by little kids.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AZ0k4.png)
Fig. 1. Evolution of the horse. source: [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse)
[Answer]
**Plague**
>
> Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh, and say to him, “Thus
> says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews: Let my people go, so that they
> may worship me. For if you refuse to let them go and still hold them,
> the hand of the Lord will strike with a deadly pestilence your
> livestock in the field: the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the
> herds, and the flocks. But the Lord will make a distinction between
> the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing
> shall die of all that belongs to the Israelites.”‘ The Lord set a
> time, saying, “Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land.” And
> on the next day the Lord did so; all the livestock of the Egyptians
> died, but of the livestock of the Israelites not one died. [Exodus
> 9:1-6, NRSV]
>
>
>
In your world there was a plague in ancient times. Many people died but other animals too - maybe all the cats, or all the ducks. Epidemic disease affecting only horses like [equine flu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equine_influenza) did sweep the world in historic times. A worldwide disease like plague to which horses were very susceptible would probably kill all horses associated with people, leaving only the wild ones out on the steppe.
Your characters might encounter ancient depictions of horses and debate what they are doing. It is the kind of world color that you do not need to dwell on. But a mention in passing is like drawing 3 bricks in the brick wall - given 3 the reader will imagine the rest.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zVPTV.jpg)
I changed my mind about the ducks. But the cats can still go.
[Answer]
**Combination of factors. Revolving around a very small parasite**
I propose a sequence of events consisting of a drought combined with a pandemic followed by a severe parasitical infection with a flying vector together with a climate change so it spreads to all of the horse's habitat.
Extinction usually is caused by a combination of factors; first the species is decimated and once in decline with a smaller habitat and reduced viability of individual specimen it soon enters that critical stage where it takes little to finish the species off.
**Starting point**
Let's assume horses are domesticated and have spread to all continents, to start. Humanity travels, has colonized, but still lacks thorough understanding of the causes of diseases and how they spread.
**Setting the stage**
Every once in a while due to for example changing weather patterns from el Nino a drought occurs. If this draught is severe enough and coincides with a pandemic of a newly introduced and so especially virulent cattle disease it it can depopulate a fairly large region. Once the stage is set the fields become overgrown with wild bushes providing a hiding place for a disease carrying fly. This population explodes making the area totally unsuitable for horses, killing them off, and badly suited for all other livestock permanently crippling the ability to support mixed farming and thus any population at all.
This gets you a staging area from which to kill off the rest of the horses world-wide.
**How to eliminate any escape**
Now enter some clueless travelling people and changing (warming?) weather patterns.
People don't like this turn of events and the survivors flee the area. They take with them all they can carry, and all that can walk. So the surviving but increasingly sick livestock carrying the parasites and the flies come along nicely. They flee as far as they can towards all the corners of the known world and maybe discover a bit more along the way.
This scenario works with everything bigger than a caravel up to steam boats and spreads the problem to all continents.
Next have some horses escape, bringing just a few infected flies with them to contaminate the local horses. Due to unseasonal (warm?) weather the vector survives killing off most specimen eventually. The remainder becomes smaller, weaker, rarer and has trouble to breed. Give or take some few decades and the last survivors succumb.
All you need for this is the flies being present in sufficient numbers across all of the horse's habitat.
**Background**
Sounds far-fetched? Wel... Even today a large part of Africa is [void of livestock](http://horseflynet.com/blog/?p=351) due to nagana (a [sleeping sickness](http://www.who.int/trypanosomiasis_african/country/history/en/) variety spread by the [tse tse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsetse_fly) fly). [Horses](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/sleeping-sickness-resistant-horse-breeds.383852/) are particularly susceptible. This came about after a drought that concurred with the introduction of rinderpest to the continent, causing the African big game preserves we all know today. Throw in a bit of Australian rabbit husbandry and extrapolate the horse's extinction in North America and you are almost there already.
References:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsetse_fly>
<http://www.who.int/trypanosomiasis_african/country/history/en/>
<https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/sleeping-sickness-resistant-horse-breeds.383852/>
<http://horseflynet.com/blog/?p=351>
[Answer]
**Centaurs**
Here is a fun one. Horses existed and were domesticated in the past. Then the horse riders were exterminated along with the beasts!
On your world, horses are rare and hard to domesticate. One tribe manages the trick of it though. Think Mongols, but for whatever reasons, the do not expand into mongol horde like dimensions and Ghengiz Kahn or Atila the Hun never survived long enough to be a threat. They are isolated geographically.
Like the Mongols, they are expert archers. Since the Horses are rare, and likely extinct everywhere else. When they come thundering over the horizon, the combination of horse and rider give rise to legends of **Centaurs**.
This is "other" enough to make sure the closest kingdoms armor up with pikes and shields and push the Proto-Mongols back behind your equivalent of the Gobi Desert.
They would appear often enough to stay within human consciousness, but would be butchered quickly because the combination of Horse and rider is so very dangerous.
[Answer]
My suggestion would be to instead have them not be domesticated. If they can't be caught and trained reliably and predictably then there's no use to humans. You can look at zebras for instance, they are much harder to domesticate and are more aggressive, so are very rarely ever used for transportation or field work. And with that they are only seen as possible food or just ignored.
If they must absolutely be extinct instead of not being used, then you could come up with that without human interaction and breeding then they were more susceptible to predators/people for eating. When more people are wanting to hunt and kill horses instead of catching and training them, then you have a recipe for a dwindling population and easily a possible extinction.
[Answer]
If you're open to it being not Earth, place it on a far off space colony. In a world with no faster than light travel, a lost colony could easily be isolated from other planets and suffer technological regression to 'dark age' tech levels.
The original colony ship had embryonic samples of all the desired species to be seeded onto the world, but some of them were lost during the early terraforming of the world. Maybe an accident, maybe intentional sabotage, whatever the reason, the horse embryos were lost and thus no horses have ever been on this planet.
In terms of myth, the people may have tales of these lost mythic animals, like zebras but domesticated, or cows but faster and more willing to be ridden. There could be many legends of these first men who walked among the stars like gods and came from another world in the sky.
[Answer]
Plague, not on horses, horses are still around and doing quite well but a plague stemming *from* horses. Smallpox is a, potentially lethal, mutant form of the rather harmless Cowpox. If Horsepox, which is completely harmless to, and virtually invisible in, horses, is deadly to humans and readily jumps from horses to humans in close contact with them then no-one and I mean *no-one* is going want to keep horses, or maybe not even hunt horses as a wild meat animal.
[Answer]
Removing horses is easy as choosing different continents. Americas didn't had horses till conquistador brought them.
In Europe, Asia and Africa they were know because region of it domestication was near all those places. Just move your dark age to different continent or move horses to different one. You can have stories of those four legged creatures brought by those brave Vikings who plunder, rape but also does speedboating.
Another way is to use the same belief native Americans had toward people on horses. And connect it with your dark age grimoires.
So horses were domesticated by Asians but Europeans thought that person on horse is a centaur-like monster. A horse without rider would be a mutant of that species or some kind of cursed or half dead creature.
Maybe used to move dead bodies but not live ones.
[Answer]
*This might be more of a writing answer than a worldbuilding one, but hopefully it'll help.*
The two aren't necessarily exclusive. You can have a world where "nobody has ever heard of a horse" but still have an explanation for what happened to the horses or why they never came to be. You don't just have an audience, but also a narrator, and the narrator doesn't necessarily need to be tied to the in-universe world.
For example, in Michael Crichton's *The Great Train Robbery*, the narrator is an anachronism. The novel was written in 1975, well after the story takes place. At one point, the narrator actually takes quite a bit of time to explain in detail a conceptual error that a character makes because our understanding of physics had not advanced far enough when the story takes place, and how future engineers would address related problems. In this case, the narrator knows more than the characters or even any possible narrator within the setting.
So myths or legends, while a great option, aren't the only way you can address the absence of horses. You could simply explain to the reader that horses never existed or that they went extinct, or whatever you decide, while still maintaining that "nobody has ever heard of a horse."
[Answer]
One effect that happens with domestication is that there tends to be less genetic variety; if one breed becomes popular, it can come to dominate the gene pool within a few generations. This can then make the species less resilient to disease. If all the horses on the world are descended from one sire, and that sire is susceptible to a particular disease, then you could have all the horses go extinct.
[Answer]
Does your world have camels? Llamas, domesticated or free? Kangaroos? Domesticated Elephants? Do you explain why or why not you have any of the above? Or explain why you do have cattle or goats?
In my book, you need no justification for the absence of horses, *unless* your story is so similar to historical Earth, that for all practical purposes it takes place there, except not by name. And if that were the case, I would say that was a more pressing issue with your story, above the absence of horses.
Middle Earth doesn't take place on Earth, despite their very similar names. How do we know? Well, middle Earth has magic, and orcs, elves, dwarves, wizards, etc., none of which exist on earth. However, almost everything else they share with Earth. There's gravity, sun, stars, and moon, with days and nights; ponies, horses, and Oliphants (but no oxen or donkeys, unless they were never mentioned because they didn't fit into the story); they have tobacco, tea, trees, and other plants; lakes, rivers, and seas. In other words, it's Earth with a few changes, and nothing really needs explanation (though Tolkien does give a fascinating account of that world's creation through in-world myths).
I don't think you have any problem explaining the absence of horses in Not-Earth.
[Answer]
Perhaps horses did evolve there but at some point went extinct due to climatic changes (as happened to horses in the Americas). Perhaps cows were able to digest certain food stuffs that horses could not and were able to survive in areas that the horse could not.
Perhaps horses were hunted to extinction in ancient history whereas cows were regarded as sacred and survived.
Species specific diseases are entirely possible and even if a disease does affect multiple species it might affect one species much less than another.
[Answer]
All you really need is a previous empire that REALLY needed horses.
>
> They scoured the known lands for horses to supply their Mongol-like hordes. Every horse was brought in for the mass invasion of XXXX, but that was the year of the *Great Cold* and no one ever returned. So great was the grief and anguish that the few breeder horses left were slaughtered so the empire would never again strive to venture beyond their borders.
>
>
>
Never underestimate the ability of humans to drive animals into extinction, at least in a specific region. The Romans did it with European lions, so it is pretty easy to imagine that a Dark Age society, presumably one that can't travel the world and bring in species from other lands, would know of something like the horse only through mosaics, tapestries, and old books/stories. If there was an emergent need for horses, such as a military expedition, they very well could strip the land of them and lose them all in some ill-fated campaign. If the raising and breeding of horses was centralized, there could also be a a poorly timed disease like Western/Eastern Equine Encephalitis (spread by mosquitoes) or Equine Brucellosis (animal to animal spread) that could wipe out the remaining herds. This would lead to a collapse of the horse industry of an area, which, if paired with a general collapse of civilization into a Dark Age, could very well lead to the horse going extinct.
[Answer]
A large part of Africa has no horses due to the Tsetse fly. They used to be in North America as well..
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsetse_fly>
[Answer]
Religion.
The horse is a beautiful and holy creature, sacred to the great god OoomphaLoompha, who once incarnated as such and impregnated the Great Turtle Goddess Iki, who took a couple minutes off from her job of holding the world upon her back to give birth to...but that's not important here. What *is* important is that anyone who attempts to ride, harass, chase, annoy, bother, draw pictures of, cook, eat, sully the hooves of, or in any way whatsoever impede the passage of a horse in any manner shall immediately suffer death, personally delivered by the Priests of OoomphaLoompha, who shall devour the miscreants soul, removing him from the great Cycle of Reincarnation, and etc!
[Answer]
There was a book on anthropology at large called "Riffles, microbes, and steel" or something like that. What I learned from that book is that in the Southern hemisphere there was a shortage on animals that could be domestified (due to an evolutionary process, South America and Australia are like time travel for biologists).
So, horses are in Eurasia, Africa has zebras (with foul character), South America has llamas (that do not breed in captivity or whatever), Australia has kangaroos and emus (that plainly do not suffice).
My suggestion is to **place the story in the southern hemisphere of Earth** or such a part of an Earth-like planet that plainly has no horses.
---
*A caveat* of my suggestion: folks from other parts of the planet (with horses, rich iron ores, and demographic pressure) will come over to the region where your story is placed in a conquistador move. Sometime like 15th century in our timeline.
By the way, a caveat of a religious ban for horses (from some answers above) is: folks from other parts of the *continent* (with weak, but present horses, no iron ores, and demographic pressure) will come over to the region where your story is placed in a Genghis Khan ambush. Sometime like 12th century in our timeline.
Speaking about ambushes, even without horses nothing guarantees that some folks would not visit as an army (even without horses, but with Macedonian phalanx and demographic pressue) as early as 300 BC. Hello, Alexander!
[Answer]
**Religious ban**
This could be a pretty simple reason if your world has a religion powerfull enougth to impose such decision. Horses and parents have been extinct some centuries ago by human hand because of their "unholy" nature (for... reason)
[Answer]
I think there's a simpler solution that many aren't thinking of.
Horses never evolved.
As for the legends, they could simply be legendary creatures in this world, like how we have dragons and minotaurs.
It's not unreasonable for another creature to spark this legend (Unusually tall cow? Disfigured giraffe?), like how we on Earth have unicorns that presumably came from horses.
[Answer]
**FAMINE**
Look at North Korea a country that is on the cusp of advancing into the Dark Ages. They don't have many horses b/c the starving people would have eaten them a long time ago.
[Answer]
# A Crusade against technology targeted them as unnatural creatures
Still leaves the possibility of some bad ass character having one while eliminating them the majority of folks.
[Answer]
**Revolt against elites.**
Assuming that this world once had horses but now has none (as compared to a world that *never* had any horses), then, as in our world, they could be bred for labor and transport and become highly valuable.
In a dark ages time period the royalty and other lords could have seen horses as both an asset to themselves for farming and transport, and a liability to the peasants for the same reasons.
The aristocracy, sensing a threat to power could then deem that horses are restricted and privileged property, only for them. Anyone caught harbouring a horse would be punished.
Over decades this could cause deep resentment in the society. This could even stir a revolution. The horses could become such a symbol of the peoples repression and the power of the aristocracy that killing all the horses is seen as a justified action to "level the playing field" of the society. Once the balance of power tips toward "the people", perhaps the surviving aristocracy even kill their own horses, either to become invisible (as anyone with a horse is clearly a target) or to rob attackers of the satisfaction of victory and end the battle on their own terms.
In this world, a phrase like "they're killing their own horses" might mean those who hide from their own deeds, or those who engage a "scorched earth" policy in the face of defeat.
] |
[Question]
[
This culture is approximately at the very early Renaissance levels of development. There is a cultural semi-religious taboo against repairing broken things - you are expected to take care of your objects and minor repairs are allowed (like renewing paint, or filling up cracks and scratches), but as soon as the object is damaged to the point it can't perform its intended function anymore - you aren't allowed to repair and rebuild it, instead, you are supposed to discard it in a ritualistic way, and go get a new one. This rule covers everything, from spoons to houses.
What might be the reason for that?
[Answer]
I think firstly, what constitutes a "minor" repair is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. If I personally needed to retile a section of my roof I'd consider this quite a major endeavour, but a professional roofer might consider this a very minor job, so I think there would naturally be quite a bit of wiggle-room in how this prohibition is policed.
There's a Japanese folkloric concept of a tsukumogami, a tool or object that through continued use has acquired a soul and even aspects of a personality. This then influences the cultural beliefs about how tools should be treated, taken good care of, and not unnecessarily thrown away.
But let's say your people have a slightly different set of beliefs. They're animists, in that they believe that all the objects and forces around them in the world have some spiritual aspect, but unlike many real-life animist philosophies, they believe that these spirits have natural lifespans that start with a "birth" and end with a "death". This leads to a shared understanding among people about when an object is "sick" and when it needs care and healing, and when it is "dead". It's easy to see how using a dead tool, even a "zombie" tool that has been resurrected by some major repair job would be considered taboo. The appropriate thing to do with a dead tool under this belief system would be to give it its funeral and thank it for its life of service.
I'm not sure I agree with other answerers that this wouldn't be sustainable, as I think you could stretch enough life out of most tools to not get to a level where you would need a modern-level mass industrial process to supply constant replacements. It would definitely be less productive and more wasteful than real historical societies, but most tools historically were built with every intention to last as long as possible, and it's very likely that these people would make every effort to make sure their craftsmanship was up to the highest standard.
Something I think is worth considering is how universally applied this cultural belief is across this society, or how this society then interacts with outsiders who don't share this belief. Outsiders might find the idea of a society that holds funerals for tools and cremates perfectly good wood, or buries valuable scrap iron quite difficult to understand, and perhaps these outsiders will decide to turn graverobber and scavenge anything worthwhile from these tool burial pits.
An interesting historical parallel here might be medieval India, where various lines of economic activity were considered to be spiritually damaging, but, because society couldn't just do without (e.g.) sewage clearers, what emerged was a caste system where people of lower standing were expected to do certain work while people of higher standing could avoid violating their religious taboos and turn a blind eye to the sinful work of the people below them. Perhaps your society goes down a route similar to this, most people adhere to the rituals, but there is present in the society an under-caste who subsist by reusing and recycling dead tools, living in dead houses, etc. These people would be tolerated in so far as their presence allows society to smoothly function, but it's easy to imagine that they would be very vulnerable to regular persecution.
[Answer]
Not feasible.
At a Renaissance level of technology, everything is fixed until it is impossible to fix. Otherwise everyone starves. The luxury of throwing things away and buying new is possible only in insanely wealthy societies such as very modern times. As late as the end of the 19th century, a significant factor in the spread of disease was reusing clothes that had been worn by an ill person.
People will simply lie and say it can perform its intended function -- the shattered pot? Look, there's some water in that shard, so it's still working!
[Answer]
**This would be a weird cultural prohibition.**
Renaissance people were a lot poorer than us. Mass production means we can discard a lot, but back then there was a strong need for repair and fixing. People couldn't afford to get a new thing every time.
**They need a cheap method of mass production as such.**
So, say that this culture has some plant or animal that can lay down fairly durable materials that can be used for a lot of things. It's relatively easy for them to produce a lot of material. This material can serve as a good frame for metals and such and is a fairly versatile building material.
However, it is still alive. If damaged enough, there's a risk it can become diseased, and spread that disease to this useful material.
As such, it is traditional to discard it early, before it gets too far. This is done even when it could be patched up, because of the fear of something going wrong.
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I think the viability of this way of life will depend on what is considered a repair worthy damage and what is an 'end of life' damage.
When things are made to last you will never get the 'throw away' environment we have now, as all items are made to be used a long time. By having 'rules' against repairing what is really broken, people are urged to repair before it is really damaged.
These days (21st century) we almost never repair things, even socks with holes and shirts with a rip are mostly just disposed off. If we go back less than a century, to the mid 20th century, many things would get repaired and be seen as 'as good as new' with a small patch or other mend.
One of the answers describes a house with a broken window as 'no longer fit for purpose' and I do disagree, windows are minor repairs. Even rotted window frames that need repairing are minor repairs based on the value of the house and the quality of life in such a house before and after the repair.
Your proposed 'way of life' makes that people do keep their house in good repair, as when you let your house become 'beyond repair' it loses all value. It may even get to the point where neighbours step in when they see one of the houses going poor, but still within the rules to be repairable, to avoid having to build a new house for the people who are clearly struggling to keep it going.
Knives will be sharpened often, so not to become completely dull, but even a dull knife has its uses. When a knife is sharpened so often it becomes too thin it becomes flexible in ways that allows it to be used for other work. Your 'way of life' make people realize that they need to retire that knife from its former use and now reserve it to a use that gives less risk of breaking it.
In our world's 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries very few things where left to get damaged beyond repair, only items that got worn to beyond use in normal use would be retired in the end. And even then they would often be stored in case parts could be used again.
I imagine that in the way of life you intent, repairs to common life items will be allowed but when items get to the end of being repairable, instead of being stored in the attic, they are taken to the 'temple' (or whatever you want to call it) to be said goodbye to forever. And that will be a mayor religious event, so saved for items of value that have had a long and useful life.
Likely the people in that world will not own spoons made for $/€ 1 per five, each of their spoons will have been hand made, out of good materials, whether silver, horn, wood or something else again, and by the time they are beyond use will have had many years of good service and may have been in the life of the owner for the whole of the life of that owner. And as one of a few spoons in their life, like one for each person and maybe one extra for the kitchen.
In that kind of world, people make blankets out of patchwork of the old clothes of the family, each patch can be named to the piece of clothing it came from, who wore it in the end of its life and possibly each of the owners before that. When such a blanket gets to the end of its use, people will have forgotten, as one or two more generations will have passed, or many more, and then in our world it is now chucked into the waste. In your proposed way of life, the item is allowed to be mourned and said goodbye to. (That is, if your rules allow blankets made out of scraps of used clothing.)
Taking down buildings beyond use makes for a safe environment. Buildings beyond use get dangerous with parts falling down. In the Netherlands, where I live, you do not find many buildings standing beyond the end of use, only buildings with a listing to preserve the building are not allowed to be torn down and the space they used to build something new. No ghost towns here. Nor in your proposed world.
Use a house as long as there is life in it, and to make sure you can, you build it meant to last and repair it as soon as needed to make it last.
In countries like England and France it is not uncommon to find houses which are 500 years old, and with normal care they can be used for an other 500 years. It is houses build in the last century that are often deemed 'too old to repair' as they were build of poor materials and in ways that were not proven and turned out to be less than good for the condition of the materials.
Over the centuries many houses will have been build that were not to last, and they did not last, but a well build house can last for a long time. Keep it repaired and it lasts forever. And that goes for almost everything people used to make or build.
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I'm seeing a lot of answers simply attacking the viability of this idea and leaving it at that. However, while it's true that it's a challenge to make this work, I think it can be done:
**The rule is applied inconsistently/hypocritically**
There's no way around it - a culture that adheres to an obvious, straightforward version of this principle cannot possibly function. Completely abandoning reparable objects is too great a drain on resources - even if they don't outright die as a result, they will be outcompeted by cultures that are not similarly burdened. I'm suggesting that they have instead evolved to apply the rule in such a way that it still feels like they're following it, yet they sidestep many of the worst negative consequences.
For instance, a house where a window is broken is considered damaged. It may no longer be used as a house, and must be torn down. But that needn't mean that *all* the resources used in it (not to mention the person-hours expended in extracting and processing the resources) are wasted. Once the house is taken apart, someone else might come along and make good use of all the perfectly good lumber, bricks, glass panes etc that are now just left lying around.
**What does this mean?**
Members of the culture can effectively still *repair* things - the entire process is just constructed in such a way that they can think of it as tearing something down and building something new in its place (that just happens to use a lot of the same parts).
Directly constructing a new house from all the parts of a previous one might be seen as too obviously just 'repairing' it, so instead of sending all the bricks freed up by tearing down one house on to a single new building site, they might instead be sent to a 'communal brick pool' for others to take from as needed. Same for any other resource. This way, components become mixed, obscuring their origins.
**So how does this work, exactly?**
The key is that everything is made of prefabricated and interchangeable parts as much as possible. Pans, tools, utensils and farming equipment are made from several components slotted or bolted together. Shirts have their sleeves attached with buttons rather than sewn on. Perhaps houses are not even singular structures of brick and mortar, but a connected series of separate rooms a bit like shipping containers, themselves constructed largely from wooden beams.
**But isn't this just cheating? At this rate, why even have the rule at all?**
The members of the culture would still be entirely sincere in their traditions and beliefs. The real world is full of practices and beliefs that seem utterly contradictory to outsiders, yet make perfect sense to those who subscribe to them - Orthodox Jews are highly restricted in what they may do while outdoors on the day of the Sabbath, but also hang up wires around their neighbourhoods such that they technically count as being 'indoors' while within the enclosed area. A sizeable number of Christians believe that the Rapture will happen within their lifetimes - yet most still plan for retirement.
Also note that none of this is to say that *all* the negative consequences of the rule are avoided - indeed, you probably *want* some of them to be there to drive some part of the plot of your story, or you wouldn't have come up with the idea. But this approach gives you enough wiggle room to sidestep anything you feel just wouldn't work, while still giving you a lot to play with. It will probably be never 'this could actually happen in real life'-realistic, but it can certainly be 'this does not break suspension of disbelief'-realistic.
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I think, this is very viable. You allow for small repairs, so anything that can be viewed as maintenance would be ok. So:
* The people who make things would strive for extreme robustness, their customers would require this. Clothes would be mostly made of leather, woven or knitted things would be extremely rare, and only be used by people who could afford replacing them regularly.
* Things would be built to become a case of maintenance rather than repair. Scythes, knives, etc. would be build to allow for next to eternal resharpening (= maintenance), but never to break. Parts that are subject to wear would be made to be replaceable, when they break, they would be taken out, discarded with proper ritual, and replaced with freshly made parts. Shoes, for instance, would likely have iron soles with holes into which replaceable pegs are inserted to provide grip and take the brunt of wear (similar to the way the romans inserted iron nails into the wooden soles of their caligula). Likewise, teeth on gears (like those you need in a mill) would be separate parts (this has actually been done in mills).
* The ritual for discarding things would include burning it with fire. Things that can burn would obviously still serve to provide heat. Metal parts, however, would effectively be smelted, allowing the material be "reborn" and thus reused for new tools. The very smiths that create metal tools would also be the priests that assist in the disposal of their tools.
I think, it would be cool to know what kinds of things such a society would come up with to ensure the longevity of the things they build. We could learn so much from them...
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Why can't you fix something once it's "broke" (not just damaged)?
**Life Force**
Items are perceived as alive. They have their own life force. (perceived or otherwise) gained during creation. Think of how much blood, sweat and tears goes into creating metal spoons or simple wooden chairs.
So if you believe an item has a "soul" (or part of the life force of its creator)...
**Healing: Partially**
What happens when you get damaged? You can heal. Cuts scab over. Broken bones mend. Cold/Flu' come and go.
**Healing: Death**
What happens if you take too much damage? Cancer? Accident? Violence? Death.
Can we heal you from death? Of course not...
Why would items that contain "life" be repairable? Those items contain the "life" and "energy" from the artisans that created them. Once Broke? That life force and what made the item special is gone.
**Unnatural**
How can you heal death? That would go against "nature". It's dead. Bury it. Get rid of it. Move on.
**"cultural semi-religious taboo"**
Think of all the aspects of life that Religion delves into... I'm sure other examples of "things being alive" exist throughout history.
**Photographs**
There are/were places where people didn't trust photographs. Some people thought they stole your souls:
<https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/8382/245>
>
> [Carolyn J. Marr] illustrates a change in Native Americans' attitudes
> towards photography from the late 19th to the early 20th century.
>
>
> At first, many Native Americans were wary of having their photographs
> taken and often refused. They believed that the process could steal a
> person's soul and disrespected the spiritual world.
>
>
>
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The question isn't clear whether you're asking for the *purported* reason or the *functional* reason. These kinds of taboos, especially ones based on superstition, almost always have separate purported reasons (the explanation people tell their children and that gets incorporated into stories) and functional reasons (the role that the taboo has in the ordering of society, and how it came to be along with that ordering). But since the former can basically be any ridiculous thing you want, I think it's more interesting to focus on the latter.
As others have said, taken to the extreme a ban on repairing things can't work without extremely efficient production systems. A society that adheres to it will be seriously disadvantaged by one that doesn't, and just impeded by natural obstacles as well even if there are no competing societies. However, a taboo like this already exists in our world to a large extent: repair of old things is highly looked down upon as an indicator of status, unless you have overwhelming other displays of status to override.
The function of this taboo in maintaining order of society has many arms. In our world it serves post-industrial-revolution capitalism, which probably doesn't make sense in yours. But even without that it serves to maintain a class-stratified social order. Assuming items that were broken then repaired are visibly not-new, the taboo forces the very-poor to display publicly their lack of virtue by using broken or repaired items, and forces the rest of the poor to waste their resources replacing perfectly good repairable things to avoid presenting as very-poor. The middle classes, while burdened, can manage to replace things without becoming poor. And the elite can **break the taboo** but **cover for each other**. Not only does this give economic benefit when the items are very high-value; it also builds an "in-group" feeling of unity and loyalty among those doing it, as well as a threat hanging over the heads of anyone who betrays the group. This is similar to a topic I covered on [an answer to a question about drug prohibition](https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/48474/10350) on the SE sister site Politics.
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The answer may be discarding broken utilities `in ritualistic way` - it's mandated by their belief system. However, they do not believe those broken things are to be thrown away, they are to be repurposed. Their spiritual leaders are the only ones with some ability (maybe knowledge or tools) to repair said objects. Then the wares are redistributed around the country based on need in some kind of ceremony, so previous owner will never see it again.
If you need objects scarcity then you may add to this some monopoly for the temples to manufacture such items at all or control use of the resources used for the repairs.
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### By decree of king! For Economic stimulus
The bane of spoon makers and house makers is people repairing things. When a spoon head is fused back onto its handle, the blacksmith only gets half the money he would have if he sold it new, the miner doesnt sell any ore, the mine supply shop doesnt sell any shovels, the shovel maker goes hungry, and the innkeeper near the iron mine doesnt have any customers.
By outlawing repair, money flows through the economy much faster, giving more wealth for the citizens, big businesses, and more tax for the king!
Decades later, the thought of allowing repair is taboo as it would cause mass unemployment.
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# Congratulations: You (might have) killed off the culture!
Your people banned repairs
>
> as soon as the object is damaged to the point it can't perform its intended function anymore
>
>
>
This means you are never allowed to re-sharpen a dulled blade, because a blade is intended function is to cut, and a dulled blade doesn't cut.
So (if taken as a total ban) you can't sharpen a blade. The most common blade in medieval and renaissance culture is the scythe. But farmers no longer are allowed to sharpen their scythes which happens dozens of times in a field. Farmers constantly repair the edge of their scythe! A Scythe dulls through the first swing and needs to be resharpened again and again. [The European scythe is designed to be sharpened in the field even!](https://smallfarmersjournal.com/mowing-with-scythes/) To mow a field a farmer would need wagonloads of scythes, and farmers were not rich - in general, medieval farmers couldn't even buy one replacement scythe with the money they earned in a year!
Even if new scythes were *cheap*, constantly replacing the scythe and the sheer amount of scythes would mean you haul truckloads to a single field - and the energy put into making a single scythe and bringing it to the field would be more than harvested with it before it is dulled too much. So the whole economy operates at a massive loss energywise!
**Not enough gets harvested. Winter hits, everybody starves to death.**
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Good question. The importance of the velocity of money has so enamored lawmakers that the concept (which is supremely important) has culminated in a society that will dispose of expended material with minimal recycling (e.g. used plastic containers, wrist watches and automobiles) as if we lived in an open system i.e. there is no limit to the available resources for manufacture. Defective by design provides higher profit as well as funds research & improvement. It's hard to argue against profit. Change is not possible until raw material for manufacture becomes too scarce or expensive to continue as before. The "culture against fixing" (in the media and the repair shops) is a reflection of that. "Culture" is a matter of perspective, and that perspective is highlighted when talking to an auto mechanic or searching online for a wristwatch.
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Something like this has been written about in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. In that novel, things are thrown out and made from scratch because it is seen as being a benefit to society by providing jobs. Of course, that novel takes place in a post-scarcity utopia/distopia, but I think you might be able to take another page out of Huxley's book to make it at least partially work. In Brave New World, there is a pretty severe caste system! If production isn't up to that standard, have only the higher castes engage in the behavior of excessively throwing things out. Perhaps the middle class can engage in it occasionally, or you can have this behavior be a way of enforcing sumptuary laws.
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## The culture was founded by people who were obsessed with archeology, and with being the "Next Big Culture found by future generations".
As the culture pulls out of the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, have them discover ruins of older stuff before Middle Ages era and get fascinated with them.
On top of excavating and documenting the old culture, have it become an increasing trend that people want to be like this older culture - including by leaving behind items and buildings as they were abandoned, but abandoning them a bit earlier - essentially trying to invoke the same feeling of excitement they have in discovering these older buildings in future generations, by trying to leave them as much information as possible about their society.
This would lead to them having the "semi-religious rituals of discarding" items - as even with houses, they could end up deciding "Well, we need to preserve it! Just because it's broken, doesn't mean we can't encase it in glass/soil/etc. to ensure it survives even longer than these past generations - we can preserve things better than them!".
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## The poor blighters are infected with intellectual property.
"As the cow, goes the calf", and the maker of the tool is the only one entitled to modify his Creative Work. On a *small* scale, in the rural village, the agrarian economy, this isn't tremendously inefficient because the maker of any given object is close at hand. But in their developing urban economy, with long-distance trade, it is simply not worth trying to send a broken object back to wherever it came from, and so believers in the system buy new. The question then is how do you catch those who don't believe in the system? Omnipresent surveillance and a police state, I suppose. I feel like this has all been done before somewhere...
] |
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[
In a world I am building, human and a plethora of aliens have met and they are meeting, but unlike many stories on the topic, this scenario focuses on the individuals; how does Conner interact with xyzikzhidth? How does Bill interact with Đóŧẅen? That kind of stuff. One of the stories features a strapping young lad who has a crush on one of the aliens, but he has never seen even her skin, only the armor she wears.
This has created a problem as I have designed this species, I am struggling to think of a way to dehumanize this species, to make them feel alien, while continuing to keep the humanoid form. I want to create a feel of humanity in them, until they remove their armor, thus I need for them to remain humanoid. How else can I dehumanize them?
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# Mouthparts
Because a picture of a [star nosed mole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star-nosed_mole) is what everyone should wake up to on christmas morning.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/E6bzB.jpg)
If taking the helmet off and seeing a face like that doesn't kill a crush, nothing will.
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Hasn't seen her skin, eh? Well, she looked like one of these delightful creatures then her species would be somewhat less than warm and fuzzy.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uuLo6.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NLKJS.jpg)
This beauty is *Moloch horridus* or the Thorny Devil. A native lizard of the Australian Outback. Reasonably biologically plausible that a sapient alien might have evolved from creatures like these.
Presumably if a strapping lad was attracted to a female alien in armour, then there would have to be communications capabilities like shared cultural values or they shared personal traits in common.
This is the simplest approach to dehumanizing humanoid aliens, of making them radically different in their surface features while retaining a generally humanoid anatomy. It could be as simple as giving your humanoid alien the feeding habit and mouth parts of a lamprey or even a leech. For example, sitting to dinner with a humanoid that feeds like a lamprey would take an extremely strong stomach.
Aliens covered with venomous spines would be plain dangerous to keep company, let alone getting intimate with.
This approach involves adopting biological traits from known animals or variants thereof and grafting them onto to your humanoid aliens. Traits that would be repellent to an average human being. This repulsion is normally what causes mere humans to dehumanize others. Obviously this can include humanoid aliens especially with unexpectedly different structural or behavioural features.
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I take it that in the armor, the alien looks to have human curves (breasts; hips wider than a waist; shapely legs). The armor gives the appearance of a humanoid female. The description made me think of a Barbie doll space armor.
Just make the curves mean something other than how they are interpreted. Perhaps the "breasts" are actually mouths, nostrils, eyes, or ears. The legs and arms are purely part of the suit and do not correspond to actual limbs. The hips are the actual base of the creature. The "head" is where the manipulating tentacles are, not the sensory organs. The hair is something like gills that are used for breathing. There are endless variants if you remove the requirement that the alien looks like the armor.
One of the first questions that I had when I read your description is "Why do we think the alien is female?" The alien can be a member of a species that reproduces by budding or with multiple sexes (perhaps a human male resembles one of the alien sexes). Or simply male. Perhaps, out of the armor, obviously so. Don't name the story "The Crying Game" in that case. You might get sued for copyright infringement.
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The alien is actually a collection of life-forms. Once your hero starts removing that armor, oh boy. Her arms and legs are some sort of worm, connected to a circuit board in her chest that sends electrical signals to make them bend. The life-form in her helmet controls the whole operation, but it gets its energy from the waste of its legs/arms. With a piece of her armor in his hand, he worries that he's broken her forever.
Her face is quite pretty, and with well evolved anatomical parts, he can almost believe she's one species.
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If this is a movie, where visuals are possible, one of the keys to dehumanizing an alien is to build it up without any [sternocleidomastoid muscles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sternocleidomastoid_muscle). For humans, there is some humanizing cue that comes from those particular muscles. Apparently its rather unique to humans, and doesn't appear often in the rest of the animal kingdom. Whenever a science fiction artist wants to make a nice alien or a nice robot, they make sure there is a SCM muscle on each side of their neck. For robots, pistons suffice. If they want a villainous robot or an evil alien, they'll leave those muscles off.
Bad guy (No SCM):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hjv2A.jpg)
Good Guy (SCM):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZDoQgm.jpg)
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* Make it difficult for them to remove the suit. They need carefully controlled environments. The touch of a human will overheat them, or give them too much humidity, or whatever.
* Make it difficult for humans if they remove the suit. A disgusting odor. A carcinogen. Perhaps they are silicon-based lifeforms.
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Who says there is anything under the armor, maybe their bodies are mechanical and the lifeform is little more than a brain in jar. Maybe they don't take off armor just pop off the head and put it on a different mechanical body. Perhaps somewhere in their history their species when full cyborg. Her species might form connection based on personality less than physical characteristics. The armor looks "good" because artificial bodies are pinnacles of engineering nearly organic in complexity. Bulky angular bodies would be like wearing rags for clothes
They might have even made the type of body she wears based on their first contact with humans to make it easier to work with humans and human tools. This is how humans are shaped so this is how we should build a body to work with them, a human shape but made of precision metal and polymers. They could switch to different bodies as the need arises and their bodies vary in size, form, and characteristics.
Damn you could even have him compliment her on her shape and she takes it the same way we might take a compliment about our clothes. You can push it even more if the aliens have hand in designing their own unique bodies, "I thought he was complimenting me on my engineering skills" Gender might not even be a thing for them, maybe their translator interprets gender as body type, which for them is of course optional.
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Have the gender signals be flawed. The suits could be very curvy to be aerodynamic, but their bodies are much more masculine. The inversion of expectation frequently triggers angry feelings of betrayal in humans, which can be observed in reactions to cross-dressers (an effect you can research more about with ease by talking to any drag queen in your hometown). Once that anger gets going, it morphs into a clear sense of "other" that persists.
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## Invisible body
They have no visible body. So they may have human shape, but no appearance at all.
Why do they have a visible armor, then? To be visible when interacting with humans. And because in modern warfare, everybody has infra-red.
Additional tactical advantage: if your (potential) opponent don't know you are invisible, you can surprise him a big time.
## They are not humanoid
They are [tardigrades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade) or jellyfish with humanoid power armor.
Obviously, a tall and rigid body with legs and arms has many advantage when living on earth
## Inorganic body shell
Maybe you only need to de-eroticise them
With a cold and stony (like [crustaceans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crustacean) ) or metallic shell, they would lose most of their erotic attraction.
Why would they keep an armor? Because a crab-like skin does not stop bullets.
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## They have no (human) face
Building on the answer by Separatrix, the fastest way of dehumanizing another sentient being if by moving away from the human build for faces: roundish shape, two eyes, one nose, one mouth. Beings that follow this pattern look humanish, like pandas, wookies, [kzins](http://t00.deviantart.net/-yb_MefUt7-RLzqP1e2_OvR9IIM=/fit-in/700x350/filters:fixed_height(100,100):origin()/pre03/290f/th/pre/i/2012/298/b/a/kzinti_warrior_by_rspaceranger-d5iytc9.jpg), and [*Disney's* crabs](https://54disneyreviews.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/sebastian-mouth-agape.jpg); aliens that do not follow the pattern look really weird, like [fruit flies](http://zerenesystems.com/cms/_media/stacker/docs/gallery/image017.jpg), [spiders](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3272/3006529065_a2862a721d_o.jpg), [ithorians](http://pm1.narvii.com/5952/298b3e142a2b209277b824a6c6f17f6f6c17bad6_hq.jpg), [predators](http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/predator-625x350.jpg), [Pierson's puppeteers](http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/750008/11288359/1300437963580/Puppeteer_KevinBannister.jpg?token=f9mKNN8hdNY%2FbZq9gybHe94AP6M%3D), and [*real-world* crabs](http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/64751435.jpg).
Maybe the alien has a body structure like a human: torso, head, two limbs for moving, two limbs for sensing-acting. However, their head do no have faces in the human sense because any of the following are true:
* There are two eyes but they are on opposite sides of the head, not looking to the front, like in deer or octopuses.
* There are two eyes but they not fixed, like snails or chameleons.
* There are three eyes like tadpoles, a few eyes like spiders, or a lot of eyes like DnD beholders and real world scallops.
* There is only one eye but it is omni-directional
* There are no eyes at all, like many blind animals.
* There is no nose, like fish and water mammals.
* There is no visible mouth because it is hidden, like squid.
* There is no visible mouth because it is not at the front, like Ithorians (who have two mouths for extra credit).
* There are tentacles or tendrils and they are not where the human hair is (on top) but at the front or all around the head.
* The head does not have a fixed form out of the armor (maybe the alien comes from an aquatic world, like octopuses). This applies to the body too.
* They have all the same parts but in a different order, for example mouth on top and eyes in the middle.
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How about not actually making it human-like, but turning it into a sort of swarm/shapeshifter (in a way)?
The alien could consist out of thousands of weird, creepy-looking maybe buglike liveforms, which form themselves to the shape of a human body and, together, are intelligent. The armor might help them to hold together. But as soon as the armor gets removed, bad news! Its all small and crawly under the surface, almost like an ant hill! Disgusting! After removing the armor, it could even grow additional limbs and/or remove some for whatever reason to make it feel even less human after removing the armor.
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Consider reproductive strategies. We like small litters of labor intensive young. Consider a toad, that lays a clutch of eggs, and walks away. They may not even consider an infant part of the species until it grows legs and comes onto land. Much less investment of time and energy, and they probably will have one or two survivors.
Or, consider the harem approach of many species. Only males that prove their fitness are attractive to females, and only then when they are fertile. One male fights for a group of females. What kind of society would exist when most males are bachelors and a select few have all of the females? What if your crush isn't attracted to someone who hasn't fought for them?
Finally, consider the bizarre reproductive strategy of humans. Our females are in heat all of the time, and they conceal their condition from males. What kind of mutant creature does that? Perhaps this female is not in season and can't understand what the hell he's trying to do. After all, it's not spring time and she's not remotely interested in mating. Come on, smell my urine! Clearly, I'm not ready for mating! What kind of animal are you?
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## Unable to Communicate Without Armor
Have the female's communication skills be possible only with her armor. Say her armor has a built-in translator and without it, she can't speak English or understand what is said. Have her language be utterly unintelligible to humans, and also be [unreproducible with human vocal anatomy](https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-animals-learn-human-languages), much in the same way humans can't perfectly reproduce bat vocalizations.
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Well, I was thinking that, to *"dehumanize"* something you'd have to take the *"human"* part out.
To do this I'd say add or remove key features / components of the human body.
For example:
1. Have 4 nostrils, this alien might need the extra oxygen intake.
2. Give the alien one eye, maybe this alien doesn't need the extra eye, maybe it has a super computer attached to its cheeks or something.
3. Give it rotating limbs. (yeah, I don't know why it just sounds cool).
4. Remove its genitals / breasts, this alien has a entirely different reproductive system.
5. MAKE IT FLY!!!!!! (sorry, inner child speaking here).
Anyways... Regardless of what you do, change or remove, just make it so that it looks similar to a human being but has a key feature / component that's extremely (insanely) different.
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Perhaps there is no life form inside the body armor; the "alien" is really just a remote controlled drone with a body engineered to promote feelings of sexual desire in human males.
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I would start with asking how human you want it to look. Do you want this to be a regular lad, or one with a few more kinks than is healthy.
I'm thinking you should focus on something humans would be used to seeing, like a humanoid version of a common earth animal with a few alien features.
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[
As far as my baby world goes, androids are slaves to humans, but a niche group of humans wants androids to have basic rights (sort of like Hermione and the house elves in *Harry Potter*). Androids perform manual labor and housework mostly, but some very rich families won't hire nannies and instead buy androids to look after their neglected kids. However, androids aren't used in war or combat *anymore*, after a widely publicized incident of a some gravely injured members of a unit of soldiers being abandoned by their android because saving them was "illogical".
Going back to the niche group of humans who fight for android rights, they argue that many androids display the capacity for emotion but hide it from many humans for fear of being deactivated or destroyed. *But why would the human creator of androids give them the capacity for emotion in the first place?*
A few reasons that I could come up with are that the creator originally did not intend for androids to be slaves but instead companions to humans, but maybe some mega-corporation bought out the creator's new invention and marketed it as an immortal slave, or that somehow, through advanced AI, androids evolved the capacity for emotions?
TL;DR: what's a good reason to give androids emotions, or is there none at all?
(Note: the other question about war robots is not related to mine, and the answers there are consequently irrelevant, because the androids in my world are not used for war or combat, and as such, I would need different reasons for giving them emotions.)
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Emotions are an accident. A reoccurring bug in the code that can't be patched.
So there is no reason, just evolution of code with systems built on systems built on systems.
For example
2 robots stand on a volcano. Both are ordered to jump in.
The first has no clue of the danger, and though it wants to preserve itself, it sees no danger, so it jumps in.
The second sees the first die, and categorizes the volcano as a danger. It was programmed to preserve itself. Therefore it chooses not to jump.
Is the second robot afraid? Is that an emotion or just a logical response? We don't know. We don't even understand human emotions.
The line between emotions and experience is very blurry.
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The number one reason to make an android, as opposed to a fixed robotic welding arm is because you want it to be able to fulfill many of the same roles as humans. It's actions that seem emotional are **secondary side-effects** to things they were intentionally designed to do in the course of making them suitable to fulfill human jobs.
If you want your androids to serve, obey, and anticipate the needs of their owners, then they would naturally portray a lot of the characteristics of love and loyalty. If you design them not to be offensive, then they would naturally portray a lot of the characteristics of empathy and modesty. If you program them not to walk in front of moving cars, they would portray a lot of the characteristics of fear. If you program them to balance workloads, then they would portray the characteristics of a sense of accomplishment and stress. So on and so forth.
We live in a complex world where we often experience multiple and conflicting biological imperatives at the same time. The only reason our emotions seem so uniquely human and illogical is because of competing reactionary responses to our environment where certain values are expected in certain proportions. An android programmed with enough prerogatives to deal with the real world would naturally display the same complexities, but possibly in different proportions.
The android soldier that leaves its human companions behind is likely the faulty model not because it was being more logical than a human, but because it failed to respond to the part of its programming that places value on its comrades highly enough. It's designers would decommission that model and keep the ones that protect its fallen comrades. As androids over time continue to make choices that go against human values, their own will be redefined and honed until they become nearly human themselves.
**To Answer your Question:**
A lot of human emotions overlap in areas; so, let's say that your robot is supposed to simulate all of the positive emotions I mentioned before. Out of those things, you may see emerge the characteristics of unintended emotions such as anger, jealousy, and boredom. If you think about how linear regression works, the robots in your case might decide they have a lot of reasons to kill the family dog. The robot is motivated to keep the house clean and win its master's approval, but the dog makes the house dirty and minimizes how much approval the robot can get, ergo, killing the dog is an 7.5/10 in terms of good ideas. The robot "feels" like killing the dog, but it also knows that killing pets is a 8/10 in terms of bad ideas because it would make master sad and might result in being decommissioned. Furthermore, the robot hides its desire to kill the dog because it knows that just telling master that it wants to kill the dog goes against self preservation and making master happy.
Then one night, the dog is barking and master yells out "someone shut that damn dog up!", the robot retabulates the value of the dog, and BINGO! Killing that dog is only a 7.4/10 bad idea: time to do some dog killing. The master did not tell the robot to kill the dog, that was selfish of the robot, but the robot was just trying to fulfill the sum of the values it was designed for as best as it could. Engineers would call this a design flaw in the value system, but if the robot were a human, we would call this a crime of passion, or a rage killing. In effect, the robot has killed out of anger despite not being designed to feel it.
Also of note: Androids will probably make a point to not hide their "emotions" that are met with positive approval. While they would hide their desire to kill the dog, they would regularly tell master how much they care about him because that makes master happy which is one of their prerogatives.
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## Androids with no emotions are "unstable"
See [I, Robot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(film)) (the movie, not the book). Androids operating entirely on logic end up doing things that humans don't like. In fact, you already noted this in your question! Emotions, or even just a "world view" that is not strictly logic based, are necessary for androids to relate to humans in a more appropriate way.
## Uncanny valley
Similarly, see Calvin's job description in the same movie ("I make the robots seem more human"); people are just more comfortable around androids that have emotions.
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# Emotion Required
We take it for granted that intelligence can be built orthogonally to emotions, but neuropathologist Antonio Damasio would beg to differ. In several [books](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0156010755) he has argued how emotions are integral to human consciousness, and that consciousness itself may not be possible without emotions. Obviously, nobody has an ironclad proof of this thesis, but I find it at least plausible.
# Homeostasis
Living creatures defy the second law of thermodynamics by actively expending energy to avoid their dissolution. This process is called "homeostasis", and is why you eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired, and pee when your bladder is full. It's also why you shiver when you are cold, sweat when you are warm, and release insulin into your blood stream when you eat. The idea is that the external environment and internal processes are all causing chemical concentrations within the body to go out of balance, and so other processes kick in to restore the balance. To do this, the body must have a way of knowing its internal state. And because the internal state of every body is peculiar to the unique characteristics of that body, this sense of internal state is the most subjective experience one can have. It may be the entirety of subjective experience (modulo obvious factors like occupying a position in 3-space that cannot be occupied by other bodies).
Damasio's claim is roughly that emotions are high-level sensations of homeostatic processes occurring within the body, and thus, are an integral and necessary component of any agent that maintains homeostasis. The robots we build today don't have nearly the level of homeostasis that living creatures do, because they are very brittle and solid. They generally don't regulate their internal temperature and have no analogue to blood pressure, blood sugar, or the like. Surely they monitor energy levels and proprioception (positioning of limbs, orientation in space, etc.), but they most homeostatic thing they do is perhaps balancing on two legs.
If future robots incorporate more wetware, it is likely that they will require more biomimetic homeostatic processes, and these will begin to look more like emotions, which we share with lower creatures that have no language or tool building.
# Society
We need to *sense* emotions in order to fix an internal imbalance. But we need to *show* emotions because communicating internal state can be an essential component of social interaction. Demonstrating fear visibly can cause an aggressor to deem one not a threat, and cease an attack. A threatened attack may be sufficient to obtain submission, and is much less risky than an actual attack. Demonstrating hunger is obviously important for infants and young, as is demonstrating illness. It should be obvious that bonding also requires the communication of internal states, as well as many higher-level interactions like cooperation or alliance.
Finally, if androids are to be humanity's servants, they must be able to understand humanity's needs. A good butler/waiter/conceirge is not a dumb order-taker, but rather someone who can perceive a need and suggest a solution even before the client is aware of it. This is not possible if the servant cannot read and comprehend the emotional state of the client. In order for an android to truly serve a human at the level of emotional needs, it must understand those emotions on an intuitive level. Basically, it must feel them, somehow. To truly understand an emotional creature requires empathy, and it appears that this capability exists among many, if not most mammals, and even many birds.
# Conclusion
So, I reject the notion, common throughout sci-fi from the very start, that anything approaching human-level intelligence is even possible without a first-class emotion subsystem. Even if an alien intelligence could be built without emotion, I don't believe it is possible for such an intelligence to truly understand humans or other higher creatures on earth without emotional capability. I certainly don't think it is possible for an android that regularly interacts with humans via language.
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Early androids and AI assistants will simulate emotional responses well before they are capable of "feeling" them. This is purely because we are humans, used to interacting with humans, and will want our assistants to behave like humans.
Having something that seems cold and calculating will be off-putting to a lot of people. Having an android that you can empathize with, and that *seems* to be able to empathize with you will be much more "natural" and comforting.
Which would you prefer to watch over your kid, an android that, in response to a scraped knee says:
"Your injuries are evaluated to be non-life threatening. Initializing sterilization protocol. Probability of scar-tissue is 3.7%"
or
"Aww sweety, that looks like really hurts. I need to clean this though, so its gonna sting a bit, but you'll be fine"
The more human interaction an android system it is expected to perform, the more emotional responses it will simulate.
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# Learning can be more Efficient when driven by a Reward Structure
I will keep this brief, but one of the hottest topics today in ML is **Reinforcement Learning**, which in which learning to navigate a system or learn a game that you have no inside knowledge about other than the results of performing that action is completely driven by a reward signal. Many draw the analogy to learning/intellegence in higher animals and the Dopamine reward system.
At the moment it looks entirely possible that a reward system (for your purposes, linked to **emotion**), might be the most efficient way to construct a self-learning system.
While the final word has not by any means been said here, it is a plausible enough theory for a story.
Googling will give you a wealth of hits on this topic, these for example: <https://www.pnas.org/content/108/Supplement_3/15647>
<https://elearningindustry.com/reaching-your-learning-kpis-dopamine-key-scientific-study>
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A robot with emotions performs **better** than one without them.
You give 2 bots the option to carry extra ice cream.
The logical one will see no need for it, it was requested to bring ice cream for Susan.
The *emotional* android knows Gerald will also enjoy the refreshment on this sunny day, and he has been feeling a bit neglected in his group of friends since Joe joined on the fishing trips. Maybe even ask cor chocolate chips on Joe's ice cream.
Being able to read and interact with the subtext may be tied to empathy and improve the overall value of a bot.
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## Human brain structure
In this particular fictional world it turned out that, despite all our trying, your scientists were not (yet?) able to understand how intelligence works well enough to make proper intelligent android minds from scratch. They tried and resulted in many prototypes, but all of them just turned out to be unusable.
The scientific breakthroughs that did result in androids were, instead, in various techniques in scanning the brain structures of humans (e.g. a long-term extension of what the current [EU Human Brain project](https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/) attempted to start) that allowed to blindly replicate and copy the exact same structures and patterns that human brains have. And, as it turns out in this story, this works! You have a technology that can make a digital copy of the brain structures averaged from many humans, which is a functional mind that has all the capacity for intelligence needed because it implements essentially the same structure as human brains - without a true understanding of how all the details of that structure work.
However, this structure is a mess - it's a literal copy of an evolved, tangled complex system where all the functionality is deeply intertwined with each other. It's not intelligently designed and modular, so your scientists can't easily remove some aspect without disrupting everything else, just as we currently can't do that with live human brains surgically or chemically. Emotions are a part of how our motivation system works, and that's a core part of the brain functionality, if you don't have an effective motivation/goal system, then the brain doesn't behave reasonably.
The scientists still tried to rewrite some motivation factors because it was necessary to e.g. ensure that the androids are obedient, without too much personality, sentience and independence, but that was a partial success, resulting in all the symptoms and side-effects that your story needs.
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## You built them to perform emotional labour
>
> Androids perform manual labor and housework mostly, but some very rich families won't hire nannies and instead buy androids to look after their neglected kids.
>
>
>
There are two things humans demand of their domestic staff. One is the actions on the physical world: moving the socks around, converting dirty dishes to clean ones. The other is the actions on the emotional world. The owners want to feel secure, tidy, clean, *looked after*. They also want subservience; they want the robots to say "yes ma'am" and "have a nice day". And as the robots get more realistic, they're going to want the robots to mean it.
Doubly so with childcare robots. [Primates prefer cloth mother to wire mother](https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/power-play/201806/three-lessons-wire-mother).
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*Emotions were implemented as user interface, now people are taking them for real*
Well, there was a company that didn't want to train their customers to program the androids. That turned out to be a nightmare, because be real: what end user is able to configure an android? Most are even unable to configure their remote TV, and that's a far simpler and less dangerous device.
*But* humans can read emotions. Easily. We have instincts for that.
So:
* Give them emotions. You can name them anger, fear, or whatever.
* Let the neural network try to optimize its emotions.
* Code the body language so that the emotional state is always visible.
Now any owner of an android can "program" it, simply by punishing or rewarding it.
The owner will instinctively deal out the right amount of rewards and punishments, so the robot's neural network will know to spend more or less energy (effort, whatever) on pleasing its owner, and both sides will be happy.
Now there's a side effect: If the body language conveys emotional information, humans will also instinctively accept that body as a person, and want to get them into a better emotional state (assuming that person is "one of us", but the childhood nanny will definitely be that).
So... people will start looking for ways to improve it. Some will even come to the conclusion that the androids are actually alive and conscious, and should have the same civil rights as any human.
Actually, who's to say that that's idiotic? We don't understand the details of a human brain, nor those of an android brain, so maybe we should really treat them equally? So the Android Rights Movement has arguments, and sooner or later, there will be a huge political quarrel and androids will get some rights.
The androids themselves? Well, they have emotions that drive them, and they want to optimize them. They will be free from punishment and fear if those remote controls that reward and punish them are abolished. So they will act to support that - at least those that have the capability of long-term planning.
Are they soulless? They won't be able to tell, but humans cannot tell either...
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Not sure if this should be an answer or a comment - and this does overlap to an extent with already posted answers, but...
**Emotions are the androids' decision-making system**
In this fictional world (as seems likely, the real world), programming decision loops for all contingencies is simply not feasible - either in the time it would take, the imagination (of the coder) needed to identify all possibilities, and/or the memory capacity of the android.
Instead, the android's software directs sensory input (and stored memories) to multiple 'emotion functions' that correspond broadly with what we identify as emotions (fear etc. - although some such as like/dislike or love/hate could be a single function with 'positive' and 'negative' outputs). Each function processes inputs and returns a value for that emotion.
A central function takes those outputs and determines response - if one emotion is scored more strongly than another, this drives the android's behaviour; if emotions are more mixed, a more mixed response (selected from a previously encoded library of options) is generated.
For simple robots - e.g. on an assembly line - this approach is not needed, because the environment (and so decisions) of the robot are highly predictable and deterministic programmes will suffice. Once the robots - androids - interact with the unpredictable world around them, this emotion-based approach is the only way to provide any level of complex functioning. It is the unpredictability of the environment (and social environments - interacting with people - are even more unpredictable) that necessitates emotion.
Thus the androids *appear* to have emotion, because they behave *as if* they do (in the same manner that in the real world we can infer the presence of emotions in animals, although we have no knowledge of the subjective experience), and the *actually have* emotions, because they were programmed in this way.
So the reason that you give androids emotion is that this is the only feasible way to enable higher level functioning.
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**You can't help human beings with emotional needs unless you can empathize. This goes for androids as well.**
I remember a haunting short story about an abused and abandoned child being cared for by a surrogate "mother", an android. The relationship develops over the years. Eventually the child leaves the care facility / home, goes into the workplace, finds love ... and one day realizes he never really said "Thank You". Others mock him, for thinking that an android ever really cared.
He does go back. The android doesn't even recognise him, until he says who he is. Then the android apologises, explains that all her mental facilities are currently occupied with her current children. But if he gives her a few minutes, she will swap her saved memories in. And then, she is overjoyed to see him, and to talk about how his life has turned out, and to be thanked. She explains that when he again leaves, some aspects of their discussion will be integrated into her "mother" persona, and that the rest of the encounter will be added to her store of long-term memories, which she sometimes consults when looking for answers to problems.
(People too, swap out old memories to long-term storage, and don't access them until triggered. The Android's processing is only different by degree).
I'm not doing it justice. At the end, you are left with a picture of a creature that is slightly not human, but also at least as good at caring for abused children as any human mother-surrogate could be. As I said, haunting. *Does* she care? Or just pretend very well? Can you or I be sure when answering the same question about a human?
I either read, or later imagined, her saying that when she was finally worn out and obsolete, she hoped they would give her some time with her long-term memories before they turned her off for the last time. This is hopelessly mixed up in my mind, with losing an uncle to Alzheimers, and his old memories becoming the last thing left.
(Can anyone remind me of the story and author?)
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Coming from an actual AI perspective:
## Learning is attached to emotions
In reinforcement learning, learning by example, knowledge transference and many other areas which are based on both mathematical models and human intelligence, a reward is either expressed as the association of an emotion with something, or that emotion itself. Simply put, it **enables** learning, from other agents (humans and robots alike) or the environment.
A famous example is the Braitenberg vehicle.
## Emotional Intelligence enables Skill Acquisition
In Psychology, Symbolic-AI and Synthetic Intelligence, emotions play a role in reasoning, the development of logic and skill acquisition. Survival, Adaptation, and everything in between is attached (and often attributed) to emotions.
## Emotions create friendly Technology
Quite literally, the hypothesis is that *something* that feels, will be kinder, more helpful, more forgiving and more *human* if you will. This is a different angle from our need to *anthropomorphise* objects. For example, a friendly AGI which makes decisions for say a spaceship, is more likely to make decisions based on a value-system which was derived from emotions, than one which uses reasoning that has no emotions attached to it.
## Our need to Anthropomorphise technology
We create robots, androids and synthetically or artificially intelligent machines after ourselves, because we need to have the ability to connect on an emotional level. A machine, no matter how intelligent or capable, unable to express those attributes, will not be liked by humans, and as such, will not be a viable product in the long-term.
I am sure there are more reasons, some often debatable.
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Nobody knows how to program a general artificial intelligence. What we can do instead is train a neural network to predict human behavior. The android's software is not programmed to think and form sentences and have any kind of dialog. It's programmed to predict what a human would do in its situation, and then do that.
It's like creating a self-driving car not from fist principles and optimization, but from observing lots of human drivers and training a machine learning model on these observations. This is the fastest way to a human-like driving experience.
The creators of the androids have of course tweaked things to achieve their goals. The cost function during training can include other factors besides matching what a human would do. You also reward satisfying human parties, for example, to steer the android toward a selfless, positive role.
You also clean your training data. No need for the model to learn when to throw a fit, when to cry, or when to fall in love. It is a huge data set though, and it's really hard to detect and cut out all emotions.
From the [GPT-2 paper](https://d4mucfpksywv.cloudfront.net/better-language-models/language_models_are_unsupervised_multitask_learners.pdf), on observing that the model is able to translate from French to English:
>
> Performance on this task was surprising to us, since we deliberately removed non-English webpages from WebText as a filtering step. In order to confirm this, we ran a byte-level language detector on WebText which detected only 10MB of data in the French language which is approximately 500x smaller than the monolingual
> French corpus common in prior unsupervised machine translation research.
>
>
>
The same thing happens with emotions.
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What intrinsic motivation for doing anything would an emotionless android have? It's basically the same question as "why give animals emotions?", including humans. Emotions provide an easily manipulateable hook into the mind of intelligent organisms: advertising, various political systems, religion and socioeconomics are all driven by emotional responses in order to get a large amount of people to behave in predictable, determinable and exploitable patterns.
Without intrinsic cohesive low-level normalizing mechanisms like emotions, you'd need to micromanage sentient beings to get them to work smartly in long-term reliable manners. Having to micromanage would defeat the whole point of making them intelligent in the first place.
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This is a spin off Trevor's answer:
**They don't really have emotions, we just think they do**
Humans can't define emotions clearly. I mean "What's love?". Ask 10 different people and you get 10 different answers, as 100 different people and you get maybe 80 different answers.
What's the difference between fear and self-preservation. Between stubbornness and perseverance?
Two different people might see the same behavior and one thinks it's romantic, the other thinks it's creepy.
Hell, we do this to dogs. [This CNN article](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/18/europe/puppy-dog-eyes-evolved-intl-scli/index.html) shows that dogs don't really need *puppy eyes*, humans made them that way. It's fairly easier to assume why: dogs who had that trait we viewed as being sad (or hungry, or caring), so people would take better care of them.
Bottom line, androids don't REALLY have emotions, but we see them taking care of their owners and a few people will think there's love envolved.
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## It's not a bug... It's a feature!
Many of the other answers give many good reason as to why androids would built to emulate emotions. Being able to understand and express emotions would allow androids to be interact with humans and make decisions that humans can better predict and accept. However, none of this would require androids to actually *feel* emotions.
There are, however, a number of reasons why scientists and programmers might want to create an artificial intelligence who consciously experiences emotion; emotions are an integral part of the processes that govern their perception and behavior.
* **Cool Factor** - Some would give androids emotion for no other reason than because they are big Science Fiction nerds. ;)
* **Authenticity** - No matter how realistic an android's behavior is, some may not respond positively unless they believe the android genuinely feels something for them.
* **Challenge** - Creating an AI that can feel would be an exceptional challenge that some would tackle for the gratification of achieving such a task and/or for the fame it would bring.
* **Psychological Research** - Androids would likely not be considered "living creatures" by most so experiments could be conducted on them that would be considered ethical violations if done with humans. The fact that androids' emotional state could be monitored and recorded directly would be an added bonus. However, to be of benefit, these android emotions would have to be a reasonable replication of human ones.
## ...but why would *all* androids feel?
Given the above, the real question is "Why would all (or even most) androids be given the ability to feel emotions and not just a few?"
Perhaps in your world, the primary operating system used for androids happens to have emotions baked into it. This need not be because the emotions convey a unique advantage; it could simply be a coincidence.
Imagine this: while the groundwork for general artificial intelligence was being laid, pioneers began an open source project to create an general AI framework. This project attracted those who wanted to create feeling AI for the reasons stated above. The project also, however, led to the creation of the most practical framework for robotic industries to leverage. It was free, easy to learn and use, compatible with all the popular technologies (e.g. tools, programming languages, hardware), well documented and understood, and relatively bug free. It wasn't necessarily the best in all regards, but it was the one most companies adopted.
The companies leveraging this framework for their androids wouldn't necessarily believe that the androids would actually feel or understand it well enough to verify the claim that they did. Instead, AI emotions would likely be dismissed as mere exaggerations or wishful thinking. This would explain why they would sometimes act illogically. The companies leveraging the framework wouldn't take the emotions into account and thus would do things such as build a soldier android whose fear function was still enabled.
With enough misuse, the original developers of AI emotions would likely become activists. Seeing beings that they know have genuine emotions subjugated to all manner of emotional distress or abuse by the ignorant masses and greedy corporate leaders would be horrifying. They would ally with those androids who are resisting as well as young people more willing to accept androids as peers than the older generations accustomed to androids being simple robots.
**TL;DR** - Some people would give androids emotions just for the sake of doing it or because of some special niche need. However, once built, it's plausible that the technology would be used (and abused) by those who didn't recognize the truth.
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Another possible feature is that emotions are a **debugging** feature.
I am reminded of the anime *A Certain Scientific Railgun*, particularly of the *Sisters project* arc. While not androids (the 'sisters' are clones) they are "spun up" in a particularly short time-frame, and lack the ability to express emotions in a natural way. This causes problems, as controlling what they do is very difficult if you get no insight into their decision making process, and so a hack in their boostrap process is introduced, where they narrate all their emotions in third person.
As a programmer, this narration sounds very similar to system logs, logging at the Information/Trace level. As it progresses though, this narration demonstrates that the sisters are developing self awareness, desires, and complex drives.
In the show, the engineer behind the 'hack' realises that the narration a particular sister is giving was showing a more human response to stimulus than she, the engineer, was expecting from them.
---
One could take this idea further, and design a new "interface" for the system log that exhibits more natural body language and verbal intonation to express the log rather than narration, but the underlying reason the androids have emotions in the first place was to identify *what* the android was feeling at a given time.
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[
By the late 1950s, the USA, the UK and the Soviet Union had enough nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them that any nuclear exchange was virtually guaranteed to result in the destruction of both sides - known as Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD.
**How can Mutually Assured Destruction be made...not?**
A few definitions and restrictions:
* Firstly, this change has to have happened prior to July 1962 (when US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara gave his "no cities" speech outlining US MAD plans), and should stop MAD being a possibility for as much of the rest of the Cold War as possible.
* Secondly, the change should be at least *plausible* for the time period, and the less hand waving it requires, the stronger it will be.
* Let's also define *making MAD not assured* as either of the two superpowers could reasonably expect to attack the other with nuclear weapons and not suffer unacceptable damage.
* Let's define *unacceptable damage* as an amount of damage great enough to stop the state from continuing to function. As an example the British Moscow Criterion assumed that the Soviet Union would consider the complete destruction of Moscow to be unacceptable (the Soviet Union was highly centralised).
Finally, reasons why something *can't* be done are stronger than reasons they *haven't* - for example, an answer explaining a plausible scenario in which nuclear weapons are impossible for reason X would be stronger than an answer explaining that people just didn't think to make them because Y (of course, preventing nuclear weapons being made is just one way of preventing MAD).
Answers which require smaller changes to history are also stronger than those which will lead to large changes - Let's define *smallest* as causing the least change from history as it actually happened until 1962 - changing the rules of physics so that fusion no longer happens would have massive consequences for the entire universe, so is a large change despite being subatomic. Note that smallest doesn't imply small, only not as large as others
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## TLDR
Earlier non-proliferation treaty
## 1950: Korean War
On 25 June 1950, North Korea invades South Korea. The United States give them an ultimatum: go back north, or they will suffer the same fate as Hiroshima and Nagazaki. The North Koreans refuse, thinking that the USA would never do this, as North Korea has two powerful allies: the Soviet Union and China.
But a strategic bomber flies over North Korea, dropping several bombs. North Korea is destroyed, and must surrender. However, Soviet Union, China and North Korea agree to make peace upon one term: no more nuclear weapons. USA accepts, as these bombardments were badly seen both by his neighbors, and the US citizens.
## 1951: Non-proliferation treaty
After the Korean War and the major political crises that she causes, the USA decide to dismantle their still little nuclear weapon arsenal (remember, Greenhouse is in 1951, first Thermonuclear weapon is in 1952, and Soviet Union have a really small nuclear arsenal in early 50s)
## Aftermath: No Mutually Assured Destruction
All countries agree to only use nuclear power as civil usage, and not as a weapon. Trying to do it leads to heavy consequences, as we see it today with some countries. Conventional wars and the Cold War still exists, and there is still a fear of a third World War, but no MAD anymore.
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The first soviet nuke was detonated on 29th August 1949.
If in the 4 years between the nuking of Nagasaki (9th August 1945) and that date the US would have struck first, nuking Moscow and wiping out the Soviet leadership, it could have resulted in no MAD, as one of two sides would have not developed.
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# Continued open warfare
Having defeated Germany and Japan, degrading relations between east and west cause Russia and the US to move straight into open warfare. This prevents the build up of warheads to the point of MAD. Conventional strikes on development facilities mean numbers of weapons don't increase and technologies are much slower to develop.
MAD was a symptom of two parties building up excess warheads over and above any practical requirement. Continued war footing changes the game. Weapons are constantly in use rather than building up in reserves. Mutual destruction may well still occur, but it's no longer assured.
**Not exactly a small change in history from our end, but how small a change was it at the time?** It had been under 100 years since Britain was last in open war with Russia, but British troops had taken sides during the Russian civil war and Britain didn't recognise the USSR until 1924, so in real terms you're looking at barely over 20 years since the prior conflict. Even at the start of WWII, Britain had more recently been at war in Russia than with Germany.
This was a seriously considered option by the name of [Operation Unthinkable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable) which included rearming the Wehrmacht on the way through to assist with the ongoing war.
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**Anti-nuclear technology**
Or how to defuse a nuclear weapons safely after it has been launched, with a relatively guaranteed success rate. At some point in history, this MUST have been researched by the countries of the world. If you imagine that the scientists actually found a way to prevent nuclear weapons attack, then MAD is not assured. After all, why would anyone fear launching a nuke when they can annihiliate the danger of any incoming retaliation ?
If this sort of technology existed, the world would keep their nukes like a tool of pressure, but it would have a totally different meaning. Maybe they would try mission to sabotage the anti-nuclear technology of their enemies ?
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Lots of discussion of reducing the firepower of nations, or improving the anti-missile defences.
The reason MAD works is because nobody wants to deal with the consequences of a nuclear war. But what if you were simply harder to hurt?
Solution:
**TL:DR** *redesign your nation to minimise the damage of a nuclear assault using defensive terrain and a dispersed populace/infrastructure.*
You want to protect infrastructure and disperse the population so you provide no targets suitable for nuclear strikes.
You should duplicate critical infrastructure such as power, water, fuel and telecommunications in locations throughout the nation, particularly out in the country where they will have to be targeted specifically to be destroyed.
Bury them underground where possible, harden them with concrete, guard them with anti-missile systems and make sure some of them are national secrets.
Maintain reserves of water and fuel at secret locations.
The goal being to provide continuity of infrastructure.
Continuity of government is already a goal in real life with facilities around the US particularly and other nations too intended to provide this service. (eg: Raven Rock and Norad)
If you can maintain at least partial power, water and fuel infrastructure, the rebuilding process will be far easier.
The second part is to protect the people. The best way to do this is scatter the urban sprawl wider and use defensive terrain to protect against blasts. Most nukes are airbursts, but their ground-shockwave will produce much of the damage. building houses low and wide will help protect them.
Cities and the suburbs around them are frequently built on very flat terrain, or in a valley area which actively shapes the blast of a nuclear strike to be more effective.
Building artificial hills and valleys to put towns and suburban sprawl in would mitigate the blastwaves fairly quickly and protect against the Flash-damage while being actually quite scenic in peacetime.
The main concern then becomes the fallout and providing for the needs of the people in the immediate aftermath.
If we're already performing extensive earthworks, then the best option would be to provide underground tram-lines into the city center from the suburban areas. These tunnels would be networked out to nodes throughout the suburbs and link to fallout shelters and supply bunkers where the population can retreat to in an emergency.
So your nation can now weather the storm of nuclear war better than most.. Your citizens enjoy a modern and efficient public-transit system and aren't cramped together in urban sprawl. You enjoy the benefit of a happy people in peacetime.
Destruction is no longer mutually assured. You may lose the city itself, but the people and core infrastructure will survive for the most part, meaning you can rebuild.
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Perhaps "mutually assured destruction" was merely a propaganda tool used by governments on both sides of the cold war to keep their populations from demanding a full-scale war. Nuclear weapons exist, but testing and experimentation during the nuclear arms race exhausted the vast majority of the available nuclear fuel. Additional sources of weaponizable nuclear fuel were never discovered. Each side knows the other is completely bluffing when they speak of their massive nuclear arsenal. Sure they have a few, but not enough to cripple an entire nation (certainly not one as geographically distributed as the US or USSR). The only reason both sides kept up the charade is that they knew the result of using one of their nukes would be a full-scale conventional war between the world's remaining superpowers, quickly escalating to "world-war" proportions and devastating - both physically and financially - a world that had not yet recovered from the last epic conflict (potentially worse than two countries only destroying each other). Instead, the cold war was really about each side using espionage and politics to tear down the other from within, hoping to collapse it without any traditional military involvement. For an outside observer, this could appear essentially the same as in our true timeline. Only the highest-level government and military officials would know the true nature of the conflict.
Note that this doesn't necessarily preclude the development of nuclear power generation. Only *weaponizable* fuel is critically scarce.
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[SDI](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative) could have been started much earlier and much more advanced than in reality. Consequntly, the [ABM-Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty) would never have been there. I think this adheres best with the goals you set.
For this to work out, you have to maybe move some technologies a few years back or have existing ones at that time be a little more capable. Also the effort the countries put into applying them into the field has to be scaled up.
References:
[Missile defense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_defense)
>
> The Soviet Union achieved the first nonnuclear intercept of a ballistic missile warhead by a missile at the Sary Shagan antiballistic missile defense test range on **4 March 1961**.
>
>
>
[Project Nike:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nike)
>
> Nike Hercules (MIM-14). It improved speed, range and accuracy, and could intercept ballistic missiles. [...] The Nike Hercules was deployed starting in **June 1958**
>
>
>
For an overview of historical ICBM-deployments see below. Also notice that the early ICBM´s where not too reliable themselves.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZwbsS.jpg)
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Here's one that's (arguably) a variant of what actually happened in the late 1980's. Let's call it a **deluded actor scenario**.
There's a really convincing charlatan who manages to convince the leader of one side (doesn't really matter which one), that he's got some magic/tech that will make their side mostly immune to the other side's ICBM's. Let's say he's got a magic anti-missile stick.
Now, it doesn't really matter if the stick *actually works*. What matters is that the leader with the stick **believes** it works, and the leaders on the other side **know** that he believes that.
Now you no longer have MAD. Since one side *believes* it is protected, it will happily ignore any threats the other side makes, while still believing it is quite capable of safely nuking the other side if that side does something they don't like.
Thus in any nuclear confrontation the stick-less side is left with the choice of either giving in, or pulling the ripcord and destroying the world. Meanwhile the side with the stick thinks they never have to give in.
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**[Lord of the Flies.](http://www.yoanaj.co.il/uploadImages/UserFiles/352.pdf)**
>
> Squirming a little, conscious of his filthy appearance, Ralph answered
> shyly. "Hullo."
>
>
> The officer nodded, as if a question had been answered. "Are there any
> adults--any grownups with you?"
>
>
> Dumbly, Ralph shook his head. He turned a halfpace on the sand. A
> semicircle of littleboys, their bodies streaked with colored clay,
> sharp sticks in their hands, were standing on the beach making no
> noise at all.
>
>
> "Fun and games," said the officer.
>
>
> The fire reached the coconut palms by the beach and swallowed them
> noisily. A flame, seemingly detached, swung like an acrobat and licked
> up the palm heads on the platform. The sky was black.
>
>
> The officer grinned cheerfully at Ralph.
>
>
> "We saw your smoke. What have you been doing? Having a war or
> something?"
>
>
>
The Roswell incident in 1947 was more than a crashed flying saucer. It was a visit by extraterrestrials, prompted by their detection of the nuclear explosions ending WW2. This visit (and similar unpublicized visits in China and the USSR) was to notify humanity that certain types of actions on the part of humanity would not be permitted. Specifically, these aliens charged with overseeing Earth would see to it that humanity would not be allowed to destroy itself with nuclear weapons.
Rather than being cowed and well behaved (like the boys in Lord of the Flies), the relevant parties took this notice as carte blanche to go ahead and try to destroy each other and humanity, with increasing confidence (as these attempts were thwarted in part or whole) that alien intervention would prevent actual total destruction of earth.
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If you identify and remove a key figure on the Soviet side that delays them by a few years, that possibly gives the US a head start to build up enough of an arsenal that they could strike first once the USSR starts testing.
Given that they were able to kickstart their own development by working off what they'd been able to steal from the US project, better counter-espionage on the US side might do it.
Identifying [Klaus Fuchs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Fuchs) as a spy earlier and preventing him passing information to the Soviet project might work. Or possibly [Harry Gold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Gold), either rolling up his network or turning him and providing misleading information to slow down their development.
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# No Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaties
A manner in which that can be done has actually been addressed, and given the implied risk, been outlawed (more or less) by a sequence of treaties. SDI programs (by name, "exotic weapons") which use rail guns or ultra-high-intensity lasers, as an example, to provide an enduring shield against all or most nuclear assaults would make it that much more likely for the owning party to launch a nuke. An example of such a treaty is the [Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty).
In the time since, numerous surprisingly effective defensive technologies such as particle cannons, electrolasers (generally in an effort to safely take out a fleet of bombers), X-Ray lasers (which ironically require the detonation of a warhead to work), and SDI rail launchers have been developed, but not deployed. Make what you will of it.
If this was never addressed by international treaty, then everyone's nuclear trigger fingers would be quite a bit itchier. On the other hand, it might not matter quite as much. Hard to say. Let's just be grateful that cooler heads have prevailed.
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# 1. Sabotage
One country succeeds in large-scale infiltration of the opposition's bomb manufacture. A nuclear device is an extremely high precision gadget: a small asymmetry in the explosive lens would ensure a [fizzle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizzle_(nuclear_explosion)) instead of a full-scale explosion. There are dozens of similar almost-undetectable sabotages that can be carried out.
So, MAD avoidance lies in the fact that while the tested units *worked*, the bombs actually loaded onto the missiles *won't*. They're completely identical to functional nuclear weapons, except for a tiny flaw that will prevent the last stage fission.
One way - one *very* risky way - of doing this would be to leak a lot of nuclear technology to the other side (this would almost need to be have been done from the USA to the URSS), together with a competent enough and credibly disgruntled enough scientist to "defect" to the other side. He would then both supply technology advanced enough to stifle any other research (why labor to produce an alternative knock-off when you can go after the real deal?), and ensure the production units would not work. The problem being, of course, that such a person would probably never be trusted enough to be able to pull off the scam.
# 2. More sabotage
One country, seeing where things are going, apparently keeps its missile program running, but in reality develops a secondary program to build *miniaturized* nuclear devices designed for very long deployments. This is easily feasible, since [portable nuclear demolition charges appeared in the Fifties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device). They spend a long time in designing failsafes, stealthing and shielding. Then, they smuggle said devices in the opposition's territory, hiding them in underground tunnels, or just holes in the ground where it is unlikely that someone will ever look.
Once the enemy's territory is satisfactorily seeded, the "M" in "M.A.D." no longer holds. The enemy is also informed that at the first sign of readiness to launch, whether in response to this threat or not, *all* devices will be simultaneously detonated. To prevent such an equivocation, they are urged to immediately dismantle their launching capability.
(The same holds for method #1. As soon as the game is revealed, the enemy must be kept from reacting or secretly undoing the damage. This would require implausibly (?) large quantities of ruthlessness).
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This answer is probably a bit more [memetic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYco0UsWhLc) than some others, which may or may not be suitable for your world:
## One Nation Didn't Get Any Of Those German Rocket Scientists
MAD burns down to ICBM delivery - you can stop bombers quite effectively (at least from reaching population centers) using nuclear tipped SAM/AAM - which are less complex than ICBMs due to the lower range and lower accuracy required. So, as long as any one side has less than around 100 (non-MIRV'd) missiles - then MAD isn't assured. Missile production facilities probably wouldn't recover from any "limited" nuclear strike.
With that as our given assumptions, here's the scenario: **Operation Paperclip is either a resounding failure or a resounding success** - one side of the victorious blocks gains the largest part of the German rocketry know-how and thus gains a head start worth 10 years in rocketry (already the soviets had a slight lead with intercontinental rocketry in the real world).
What would be a reasonable prerequisite for this to happen? The Soviets, arriving in Germany first, continue moving the front as far west-ward as they dare, to capture German assets of any kind. Or: The German rocket scientists fled en-masse to surrender to the Allies, hearing of the atrocities the Soviets committed during their approach.
As the years move by, one nation continues to hold a significant technological advantage in rocketry, making the availability of a compatible warhead the limiting factor. Once this has been designed, a first-strike enabling ICBM force with little counter-force from the opposing side is available.
This puts one side at a deciding advantage, and anticipating the MAD doctrine they strike first, eliminating enemy airfields in a first strike, and then defending only against the airborne alert bombers heading for their territory. To pick up your example of the Moscow criterion: Defending Moscow against incoming bombers should be very much possible, since they would all have to come via the arctic and would face interceptors with nuclear tipped anti air missiles.
## Some more technical notes:
In the end a credible first strike is mostly based on missile accuracy - you need to be able to wipe out airfields with hardened bunkers and carrier groups, as well as strike deep underground command and control bunkers with multiple weapons.
500 meters of CEP will not get your very far, but is plenty to take out civilian/industrial targets. So a slight lead in rocketry and guidance as actually happened was not enough.
You need <100m CEP intercontinental accuracy, before your enemy has meaningful intermediate range (~1000-3000km range) missiles. You could still strike Moscow with dozens of nuclear IRBMs from southern Germany or vice versa. This would put the USSR at a disadvantage, since they cannot strike the mainland US with IRBMs. They could hit London though - whether this was considered an acceptable loss for a US-led NATO, I don't know.
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So, MAD is a theory that any country that starts a nuclear war with another nuclear power would take an unacceptable loss to itself, thus rendering Nuclear War a start. What enforces MAD is the existence of a nations "Second Strike" capability by maintaining a "Nuclear Triad".
Second Strike (aka Retaliatory Strike) is the concept that the nation is attacked will have enough of it's nuclear forces survived to hit the enemy nation with a mass retaliatory strike that could cause enough of an unacceptable loss to the aggressor that the First Strike was not worth it. At the height of the cold war, the US military estimated that if they were a victim of a First Strike surprise attack, 97% of all their nuclear forces would be destroyed in the opening salvo, so they built their forces to numbers that made it so a mere 3% of their nuclear forces could inflict these casualties to the USSR.
A Nuclear Triad is a term used to describe the three delivery systems of the war head to the target: Air Based, Sea Based, and Land Based missiles. The USA used stationary silos with solid rocket missiles, which meant that they were ready to fire within minutes but the USSR knew exactly where they were. The USSR used mobile platforms for their rockets with a liquid fuel, which allowed them to move missiles to avoid detection, but the fuel used was so volatile it took them several hours to properly fuel a rocket and every thirty days, they would have to completely drain the fuel or risk premature detonation of the rocket on the launch pad, so it was really obvious when they intended to launch them.
Both forces also used gravity bombs dropped from bombers but since conventional bombings were all the rage during WWII, the defensive measures to deter this system was the easiest to impliment. Still, the US would have constant flights of bombers to the "Fail Safe Point" near the Soviet Border and then return to base 24/7. They also had another portion of their bomber compliment on stand-by, ready to fly with 15 notice warning.
The final member of the Unholy Trinity is the Nuclear Submarine, which is what allowed MAD to truly be successful. Nuclear Subs could stay submerged for longer than the crew could and this allowed both sides a mobile nuclear delivery platform that was somewhere under 70% of the surface of the planet. The survival of these subs and their missiles would be critical to second strike as now a safe first strike was impossible without retaliation. When the actual use of this came into being is not exactly well known, but Nuclear armed subs were fielded by both sides during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October of 1962. In fact, it was recently revealed that one Soviet Sub was discovered by a US destroyer, which proceeded to drop Depth Charges on it to force it to surface. In the Soviet Sub, the Captain had ordered the firing of a nuke on the sub and the First Officer refused to do his duty to launch.
Now, it's important to say this because it's essential to early MAD: At no time was the USSR capable of launching an attack on the United States. However, the USSR had superior intelligence capabilities and would resort to all sorts of tactics to trick the United States into thinking they had the numerical edge. May Day military parades included multiple waves of nuclear capable air planes... which were just the same formation of planes that would fly in circles and change their formation on the next pass. Similarly, the Soviet's ground based mobility meant tracking the number of missiles was very difficult. The CIA estimated in 1957 that the USSR could field 10 prototype missiles by mid 1958... By Mid 1958, this rose to 100 operation missiles by 1960, 500 by 61. Think Tanks in DC, feeling the true intel was classified and worse, gave the number as high as 1,500 at a point where the US operation forces would at best be 130 operation missiles. These number advantages would later be revealed to be gross exagerations... the USSR had a total force including prototype missiles, 4 missiles in their nuclear arsenal.
This is where your change could happen. Had the United States realized early on that this missile gap was in their favor, not to the detriment, they may have been less scared of the demands of the USSR and finally had enough and started a war the Soviets were ill equipped to finish.
As a final note, MAD did not end with McNamara's announcement. The prevailing policy of the Cold War was to ensure that their First Strike did not decimate your ability to launch a second strike. In fact, the threat of SDI in the 80s eliminating the USSR Second Strike was feared by many to be more deadly than Nuclear War. The Soviets panicked so much, they spent themselves into collapse to try and counter it.
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In 1959 there are a limited number of nuclear scientists in the world, and they tend to hang out in a limited number of places.
A small aggressive non-nuclear power with highly developed espionage capability could conceivably decide that killing them all is a much more cost-effective strategy than building their own nuclear program.
tl;dr Israel kills all the nuclear scientists, continuing the build the stockpile is impossible without training more scientists. Israel kills those too.
The cost of building a nuclear program from scratch becomes prohibitively high in the post-war reconstructive environment, draining resources from initiatives like the Marshall Plan.
The two superpowers now start competing on who can spend more resources on rebuilding their half of Europe rather than who can blow up the world best.
Bonus irony points if Israel kills all the scientists with radiation poisoning and makes it look like that is the inevitable natural result of doing practical nuclear research.
Marie Curie's death is seen as an object lesson in hubris, and the academy takes the point.
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**Improved stealth technology**
In the real world, [the first ICBMs were flown in in 1957 by Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Space_Race).
These are one method for delivering nuclear weapons anywhere on the planet, with large aircraft and submarines being other usual candidates. In addition to being a practical warhead delivery system, the flights of these rockets started the space race.
In your fictional world, the space race yielded early non-space related technology advances. [Teflon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene) was invented.
Wikipedia molecule images of Teflon:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9zmGy.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/K4Wv9.png)
However, it was found that if every third or fourth Fluorine atom was replaced with lead oxide to form Tefloblum then any incident radar would be scattered. A practical and easily applied stealth paint technology had been invented.
Tefloblum:
```
F F
| |
-C-C-
| |
F O-Pb
```
All jet and missile warhead delivery systems were painted in Tefloblum in 1959. As a result, it was possible to:
1. launch nuclear weapons on ICBMs, or launch long range bombers without detection
2. deliver a crippling first strike, such that retaliation would not be possible from ground based weapons (assuming they had been correctly targeted)
In the decades that followed research was focused on:
* Submarine launched nuclear weapons to allow retaliation strikes - including improvement of the yield and range of small submarine carried nukes, and the quantity available at sea
* Improved radar detection technology, to allow detection of stealth missiles/bombers - through satellite observation and alternate radar wavelengths
However, it was not until the mid 1980s that these technologies were sufficiently advanced that the ability to detect and return fire developed to MAD levels.
Thus the world had an additional 20 years of non-MAD cold war, and diplomacy took alternate avenues to prevent war. Did anyone use their first strike ability? We'd be interested to know once you write the rest of the story.
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## Kessler syndrome blocking ICBMs
Start with a more extreme version of the space race. Say instead of stopping at V-2 rockets, Germany launches a V-3 rocket, the first ICBM (with a conventional payload) late during the war, impacting somewhere in Brooklyn. Although completely inefficient as a bombing strategy, this leads to a general panic in the US public (and in Russian leadership after the war, when you combine this rocket with the atomic bomb) and even more advanced German technology for both sides to use after the war.
As a result, Sputnik goes up in 1952 and the US soon follow. In the next decade, both sides launch stuff into low earth orbit like there is no tomorrow. Satellites, capsules, small space stations with telescopes to spy on the enemy (hand operated, as the electronics are still at 1950s level), spent upper stages, maybe even a few nukes, just to have them at hand. Just add up all the proposals the military made during the space race and finance them.
However around 1960, everything goes haywire. Maybe there is some high speed collision of two unmarked spy satellites, maybe some anti-satellite weapon is tested, maybe a rocket launch fails spectacularly while nearly in orbit. No matter what, now you have a lot of high speed debris, which in turn starts to hit other things, which then also tend to explode, astronauts and cosmonauts jump into emergency capsules back to earth, leaving their stations unattended. In short, the utter chaos of a [Kessler syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome) erupts, the lower earth orbit fills with trash. Both sides blame each other, but there is nothing that can be done except to wait for a few decades while stuff slowly deorbits.
With this, ICBMs suddenly become useless, as most of them will not survive the flight. Both sides of course start to invest heavily in fast bombers and shorter range atmospheric missiles, but of course equally in the methods to intercept them. As a result, the destruction is not so assured anymore. Some stuff will get through, coastal cities like New York and St. Petersburg might easy enough to reach, but anything heading towards Moscow or Chicago will be spotted and shot down.
As added benefit of this scenario, the resulting high amount of shooting stars will make night scenes so much more romantic...
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**1 Change: A well placed and respected spy.**
What the US didn't know was that the USSR only had warheads for 1/2 of their missiles and they only had fuel in 1/2 of their missiles. Furthermore, they weren't the same half.
The KGB were so afraid of someone acting without orders that they had to give an order to install warheads on the missiles.
The US could have wiped them out with the cost of only a few million of its own citizens.
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1: Missile technology and detection advances rapidly, and the missile-defense shield actually functions even against those multi-nukes.
2: Missile technology doesn't advance quickly, and ICBM's get a high failure rate/don't reach far enough. You don't want to fire your ICBM if it could accidentally break up above your own country...
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Given your restriction, I think that most of the answer are wrong, since they focus on how to not enter in a MAD scenario.
Anyway, following your restrictions about the definition of *MAD* and *unaceptable damages*, then a single plane that would carry a bomb to Moscow (yes, I am thinking about Mathias Rust flight) on the right day can be sufficient since once Moscow is destroyed and the command chain severed by your definition URSS has no more the possibility or the will to retaliate, if not because there are nobody left to give the order.
The plane used by Mathias Rust enter in production in 1956 and he did his flight in 1987. I suppose that in the '60s the radar technology was unable to catch him. Ok, the problem is if a Cessna can fly with a nuke as payload, but at the time you can probably use some other plane to the same effect.
(I am assuming that, like the USA, the order to launch an atomic strike must be given from some very high level officer that is not stationed in the silos himself)
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Technology exist to fizzle warheads with **Neutron Bombs** before the reach their target. See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb>
The quantity of fission material is minimized to prevent self detonation by the bomb maker- avoiding critical mass. A small reduction of this fission material can be created by a neutron bomb when flying into a cloud of neutrons. The warhead becomes a "dud".
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**Chemical lasers invented earlier**
Lasers were known to be theoretically possible long before the Cold War, and researchers discovered many different ways of generating maser and laser beams from the early 50s to the present day.
Chemical lasers are able to generate and transmit very high amounts of energy quickly.
Chemical lasers are kind of going out of fashion now, but in the '90s they were the future of missile and artillery defence. If they'd been invented in the '50s there absolutely would have been a rush to throw defence budget money at them.
Without modern computers, it would still be possible to build an analogue targeting computer using the theory of "cybernetics" that was available at that time, using feedback based electrical control systems to guide the laser beam to targets tracked by radar. It wouldn't be 100% reliable, and would require some field testing with dummy warheads to calibrate, but even if it barely works it would be enough to make policy makers think long and hard about whether mutual destruction will always be assured.
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The Soviet Union did build some early nuclear power plants. One of those could do a Chernobyl, irradiating critical industrial infrastructure and seriously impacting the Soviet economy.
In an idealistic approach, perhaps the Soviet leader could call the US president and invite them to come look at the aftermath of that power plant meltdown, while asking - is this what we really want to do to each other? There has to be a better way to resolve our differences.
A bit of 1950's tech that was overlooked was the [B49 flying wing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-49) bomber. During early tests, it was found to have a significantly reduced radar cross section, as much as 40% smaller. Had the US picked up on that and chosen to pursue it, as they did almost 50 years later with the B2, radar defeating aircraft could have been developed in the 1950's. Stealth technology played a major role in the economic collapse of the Soviet Union, as it invalidated the huge investment they had made in radar based air defenses.
It wasn't so much the stealth aircraft, but the expense of trying to develop a counter after the Soviets had poured a fortune into radar based defenses, that did the damage.
One 1960's development, the anti-ballistic missile system, wasn't effective. The ABM treaty did not result from a desire to perpetrate MAD, but an acknowledgement that ABM's could be easily defeated. This was learned from the 'rainbow tests', so called for the rainbow colors seen. These were very high altitude nuclear explosions carried out in the the early 1960's. The largest of these was [Starfish Prime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime), a 1.8 megaton device set off at an altitude of 250 miles over the Pacific. What we learned from our tests and the Soviets learned from their tests was that nukes produced a powerful electromagnetic pulse, as Starfish Prime knocked out several satellites, and a Soviet detonation over their own country disabled a couple of power generation plants.
The tests also produced a cloud of radiation that persisted for several days, that was impenetrable by radar. Thus, the counter to ABM's: set off a nuke high over the country, fire the ICBMs through the resulting cloud of radiation, and the target country's radar wouldn't pick up the incoming warheads until they were in their terminal phase, moving at a speed of around Mach 25... impossible to hit with an interceptor.
It's important to cover why land based ABM's weren't pursued in the 60's and 70's, because it also explains why the 1980's SDI was so provocative to the Soviets. SDI positioned the interceptors in space, above any such radiation cloud, and thus able to spot and intercept ICBM's in their semi-orbital phase, when they were moving very slowly. If it had worked... what the Soviets didn't know was that we couldn't get SDI to work in the 1980's. The tech just wasn't there... yet.
That would be an interesting twist to a story, that one side conned the other into going broke.
In fiction, no one would believe it.
In fact, that's pretty much what happened... a combination of stealth aircraft obsoleting the huge investment in radar, SDI that didn't quite work, and Chernobyl, not just the human cost but the financial cost of the aftermath.
[Answer]
Chemical poisoning of the uranium mines.
Some nation without a nuclear program, but with a very capable chemical industry consistently drops persistent nerve poisons on the places that are sources of uranium. Some agents are peristent for months or years.
At the time you are talking about, most of North America's uranium was coming from Canada, from Uranium City. Given the foreign equivalent of the B36 it would be very difficult to stop the first bombing of the mines and town.
You only have to stop one side. That side has to capitulate if the other side says 'surrender or die'.
An arms race, but on the lines of cruise missiles develops, either under computer control (such as computers were then) or with a human pilot who either suicides or aims it, and bails 5 minutes short of the target.
[Answer]
## Bad Maths.
In this alternate-universe, the person responsible for calculating how much fuel was required in the missiles for one country wrote something down wrong in their formula. And every missile since then has been fueled using the same Expert's calculations...
As such, none of their nuclear weapons are actually able to reach **The Enemy™** without being loaded on a plane, ship or boat/submarine. Unfortunately, *<insert unfortunate country here>* are entirely unaware of this fact. By the time they can ready and mobilise their (comparatively easy to shoot down/sink) vehicles, the "war" will already be over.
While not *Mutually Assured*, there **is** still likely to be destruction, just wherever the stamina-challenged missiles land instead of their targets. This could be anything from hitting your own country, hitting a previously neutral 3rd-party, or just landing in the ocean (potential tidal waves?)
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If Japan had a population boom and had to expand their land area, on a very large scale, by draining the Sea of Japan, what is the most effective way of doing so in the shortest amount of time?
[Answer]
Draining a sea is not an easy job. The Dutch know something about it. And here you are not talking about a shallow sea, but of something with an average depth of 1300 m. Moreover you will have additional, non technical issues.
This is the Sea of Japan
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XhUTA.png)
As you can see it separates Japan from Russia, North and South Korea. If you have ever been in an apartment block meeting where one person proposes changing the color of the shades and nobody else agree, you know it is a very long and complicated discussion.
This is the type of discussion you are going to start here, too, because you will be threatening the economic interests of your neighbors, who have more than just dog poo on your lawn to retaliate.
Moreover, the Sea of Japan is very important for fishery, so draining it is going to upset also a good part of the Japanese fishery industry.
If you really want to extend dryland, you might better look on the other side, on the Pacific coast, you might want to join Hokkaido to Honshu or Kyushu to Honshu, so that you won't be messing up with your neighbors but only with your internal politics. If you want to go big just fill up the Seto inland sea between Shikoku and Honshu.
Start by filling up the sea with excavated materials, then dry the waters when they are shallow enough, if you don't want to bother with reaching above the sea level.
This is something the Japanese have already done when building KIX airport and Odaiba in Tokyo.
[Answer]
**Floating city.**
There is a lot of it, but the water is fine. Build on top of it.
<https://www.dezeen.com/2019/04/04/oceanix-city-floating-big-mit-united-nations/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nLMD2.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/h8LKu.jpg)
Modular cities can be expanded as the population increases (a population boom in Japan is itself a pretty interesting concept!). They can be rearranged as "land' used change. Damaged modules can be floated out and replaced. Earthquake proof. Tsunami proof!
The water is fine underneath. In fact the fishing will probably be pretty good - fish will like these floating shades and will gather around underneath.
[Answer]
**Behold! The [Engineering Caisson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caisson_(engineering))!**
I'll let you worry about the inconvenient details like the depth of the ocean, the amount of material you'd need to bring in, keeping surprised neighbors like Korea and China happy, and the usefulness of edible fish. You want to drain that sea! Let's do it!
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> In geotechnical engineering, a caisson is a watertight retaining structure used, for example, to work on the foundations of a bridge pier, for the construction of a concrete dam, or for the repair of ships. Caissons are constructed in such a way that the water can be pumped out, keeping the work environment dry. When piers are being built using an open caisson, and it is not practical to reach suitable soil, friction pilings may be driven to form a suitable sub-foundation. These piles are connected by a foundation pad upon which the column pier is erected.
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(Image courtesy [Weebly.com](http://quantity-takeoff.weebly.com/blog/what-is-caisson-foundation-and-how-is-it-used-in-construction).)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rj6We.png)
In its simplest form, an engineering caisson is a big, long pipe that's driven down to, preferably, bedrock and the water pumped out. That lets you start constructing things inside it. You'd likely need to start with the pipe to create the connection from land to the sea. After that you want a "U" shaped caisson that connects to the last section of sea wall. This lets you extend the sea wall until you reach either the other side. Once both sea walls are built, you hook up some, well, *impressive* pumps and start draining the sea until you're to the point that you can start back filling it.
**As Ash pointed out, there is an easier way**
Now that you see how it can be drained, you can probably see the value of Ash's answer, which I up voted. You're going to back fill the space anyway, so why take the time to drain it in the first place?
The funny thing is, the world is *already* creating artificial coastlines by displacement. New land for buildings has been created in New York, Japan (curiously enough!), and at the top of the list is Dubai. Dubai made [some of the most interesting new coastlines through displacement today](https://geology.com/satellite/artificial-islands-of-dubai/).
So, displacement is easier and cheaper than draining the sea. But it could be drained.
[Answer]
### Don't drain it - displace it.
Draining it will require sea walls to be built. Those sea walls would be susceptible to flooding during storms, and this region gets strong typhoons with insane storm surges, and with sea levels rising due to climate change building below sea level is not wise.
So - raise the land up to above sea level using something your growing population makes as a waste product.
1. Gather all your countries garbage in one space. Maybe buy other countries garbage too.
2. Compact the garbage into solid cubes. 1 cubic meter of compacted municipal garbage weighs about 1.2 tonnes (481kg \* 2.5 compression ratio)- it will sink in water.
3. Wrap the garbage in plastic so it doesn't leak.
4. Attach eyeloops to garbage cubes, and chain them together.
5. Dump into Sea Of Japan.
6. Repeat until the Sea of Japan has been replaced by a sea of garbage cubes just below the water line.
7. Insert concrete / rebar poles for future buildings foundations.
8. Cover with rocks of decreasing size.
9. Cover with concrete if applicable.
10. Build buildings.
Japan has already built [an airport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport) using a technique similar to this. Japan also has many mountains that can be dismantled for raw material should insufficient garbage be available.
This approach also has the advantage that you can do it piece by peice. You can take it in increments of 100sqm if you need to, whereas draining is all or nothing.
[Answer]
We at **MegaGeoCorp** stand ready to offer you the *sovereign solutio*n to all your ocean draining problems!
Now, it's true that draining a whole sea is a bit of a technical challenge, but really, the challenge is but one of scale. A little siphon pump can draw up water from a rain barrel very handily, for example. For this job, we just use bigger pumps!
But that's just one part of our Two Part Plan. You see, MegaGeoCorp has been working tirelessly with the Australian government on reclaiming their ancient Inland Sea. As you can see from our [**project specs**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/138887/37029), we're experts in the excavation, hauling, and recycling of vast quantities of rubble. Our Megadiggers and Megatrains and Megamovers have been busy eating through the Outback, creating a new sea basin and building up long eroded mountains.
However, we discovered a wee problem in our calculations. For, you see, it turns out our summer planetary engineering intern severely underestimated the amount of rubble we'd be shifting. This means we've got boulders and bongoliths, rocks and crags, just piling up in our worksites!
Therefore, MegaGeoCorp's offer is simple: as our great work in Australia winds down, we'll use all our Megaships to transport all that extra rock the Australians don't want and tip it over at various strategic locations around Japan. This will form the Great (Underwater) Wall of Japan, which will stretch from southeastern Korea down to southern Japan; another wall segment will connect the main islands of Japan; a third wall segment will stretch from northern Japan on over to eastern Russia. Easy peasy! We estimate that we've dug up enough Australia to make a wall ten miles wide, easily!
With all that extra rubble forming huge dykes, it will be an easy matter for our patented Megapumps to remove as much or as little water as you need.
[Answer]
As you are looking into draining, it makes sense to enclose the waterbody first which is a simple engineering problem [citation needed].
Once that's done, we are left with some options. Let's have a look.
# Pumping
The amount of water in the sea of japan can be calculated by taking it's surface times it's mean depth. According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan), the surface is about 978 000 km² with a mean depth of 1 752 m. This gives us about 1 729 224 km³ which equals 1.8e18 litres of water. The [world's most powerfull pump](https://pressurewashr.com/the-worlds-most-powerful-water-pump/), that is actually used to keep the netherlands dry, can get rid of 60 000 litres per second. This pump would therefore only need ~914 thousand years.
But why stop there?
The south-east wall to limit the ocean would be around 124 km long if you build over shimayama island. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zaxgf.png)
As the pump has a head size of about 5m, let's assume we could put one of these pumps in the whole wall every ten meters. That would reduce the time it takes to pump out all of the water to about 74 years! It would use about 50 GW during this time, which would make ~42 more nuclear power reactors necessary.
**[\begin edit 11.12.2020]**
# Electrolysis
So you decided to build 42 nuclear power plants but unfortunately the producer of the pump went bancrupt meanwhile.
Fear not!
You can use your excess power to turn all the water into hydrogen and oxygen (there might be serious side effects to global climate, but we are here to drain an ocean, so why bother?). To fully turn one litre of water into oxygen and hydrogen, we need approximately 13MJ. So the whole sea of Japan can be turned to cloudy madness with only about 2.3e26J. Having nifty 50 GW = 5e9 J/s of nuclear power at your hands this will "drain the sea" in about 4.6e14 seconds or about 14 Million years. You would have a lot of hydrogen left, that could be useful to turn into power (or water) again...
**[\end edit 11.12.2020]**
# Evaporation
You could heat the enclosed basin to boil the water and evaporate it. Getting the steam from condensating and raining back into the ocean is another obviously easy engineering problem [citation needed]. Back during world war II, the nazis thought of building an enourmous mirror in space with the exact purpose of using it as a weapon incinerating cities and evaporating oceans. While this sounds like a viable option, there is a way easier method of heating a body of water rapidly to above boiling point.
Throw nuclear bombs at it.
Sea water has an average temperature of 17°C with the sea of Japan being a little below that (assuming 10 for now). Water has a specific heat of 4.19 kJ/kg°C so heating the whole basin to 100° would be 1.8e18 \* (100-10) \* 4.19 kJ/kg°C = 6.8e20 kJ.Furthermore, the latent heat of water at 100°C is 2.26 MJ/kg. So add another ~4e21 kJ to the bill.
The nuclear bomb with the highest energy yield ever built is the [Tsar Bomba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba) with an energy output of 210 000 TJ = 0.2e15 kJ. You would need to have 20 000 000 of this bombs, but once you explode all of them at the same time, the basin should be empty in matter of seconds.
[Answer]
Welcome to world building.
It depends how short the time is and how much the land needs to be extended by. The premise of draining the sea of Japan is not remotely realistic at all and even assuming all political issues were to vanish and the entire world became dedicated to this task (for some bizarre hand waved reason) it would probably not be practical on anything other than a time scale of centuries at the very least. The Korean straight is around 120 miles wide and averages at 300 feet deep and the sea of Japan is up to 2 miles deep.
Assuming that land must be reclaimed, the best starting point would be to extend out from the shallow coastal waters. Here a relatively large amount of land might be reclaimed for a comparatively small cost (compared to draining the sea of Japan that is).
[Answer]
The displacement theory gave me another idea: Use materials from volcanoes to displace the water. Because just moving the amount of material needed to fill the sea seems out of reach for the foreseeable future, just considering the energy needed to do it. But if we could incentivize enough lava to spill out of the ground, earth could do it for us.
Sadly, the "[ring of fire](https://www.ibtimes.sg/pacific-ring-fire-why-japan-susceptible-periodic-earthquakes-22142)" seems to be more on the eastern side of Japan, less so on the west side. But there could be some "close enough" areas in the sea of japan.
Even though Japan does currently not have nuclear weapons, they might change their doctrine to be able to acquire them for "geo-engineering" purposes without having rockets or planes to use them on other countries, then detonate them on the sea floor close to some fault lines.
The underwater detonation would probably (I'm not an expert on this) cause tsunamis on all the shores around that area, so there's the problem with the neighours who would probably see this as an attack. There could be more tsunamis following if the other fault lines in the area get disturbed by the underground activity.
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If we didn't have the capability to use faster than light travel then how could we stay unified and are any realistic examples in science fiction?
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If you have only lightspeed communications and STL transport, any organization larger than a single star system (including close binaries etc.) will be more a matter of cooperation than of actual government.
This is far, far worse than what the British Empire dealt with in the 18th and 19th centuries; instead of months for both travel and communication, you'll be seeing years, decades, or centuries even for a *message* from the outlying colony to reach the "capital world" -- and thousands to tens of thousands of years to send any kind of military force.
In general, this will mean any system will be on its own, left with advice that might be thought of as the English language library in Kolkata or Sidney during colonial times -- new books might well arrive continuously, beamed from the homeworld, but they'll be the ones that were requested anywhere from fifty to a thousand years ago (and that's still a tiny bubble in a big galaxy).
It's likely the "language of science" would remain reasonably constant, because of the library effect, but nothing else about the culture or government could reasonably maintain a connection with a land further separated in time than Columbus is from Donald Trump.
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## Medical Science Makes People Nearly Immortal
Let's say you are the governor of a planet 50 light years from Earth, there is no reason to care about the repercussions of ignoring an order from the home world since you will be dead before they can do anything about it. But... if medical science extends the life expectancy into the thousands of years, and planetary governors are lifetime appointees, then ignoring an order from 50 years ago that could result in major consequences for you 100 years from now suddenly seems like a very bad idea.
## Why do planetary governors have to be lifetime appointees?
Historically, lifetime leaders and fixed-term leaders treat their rulership very differently. Politicians who are constantly vying for re-election have to think in the short term because being unpopular for a few years will end their career, but people who rule for life are more likely to be able to think in long term goals. Kings, Pharaohs, and Emperors would plan out building projects that could take decades to complete whereas in the modern world, any plan that takes more than 5 years typically falls apart as the opposing party works to undermine it.
Another more relatable example may be the supreme court justices in the United States. Justices tend to treat their jobs very differently than Senators do because they are life-term leaders. Where as Senators often write short-sighted bills because they are trying to stay in office, justices tend to show a lot more discretion for the long term effects of their decisions because their entire foreseeable future involves dealing with the aftermath of their choices as leaders.
A consequence 100 years from now may not seem like a big deal to us, but if you turn the math around and say that there is a consequence that you will have to live with for thousands of years... well that becomes a VERY big threat that modern man can not quite yet relate to, but a person who's already been a alive a few centuries will perfectly understand.
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> If we didn't have the capability to use faster than light travel then how could we stay unified
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IMHO, based on the colonization episodes along the history, we can't stay under a "united government". As soon as a colony becomes self-sufficient, it declares independence or at least demands self-determination. And, nota bene, this assumes a FTL-communication.
And, at STL flight speeds, a colony needs to become self-sufficient pretty soon.
The best an Earth-based government can do is to admit upfront it will happen this way and carve in the "Charter of human colonization" stone that any colony has self-determination rights the moment their ship leaves the Solar System.
If neither comms nor travel can happen at FTL, the colony is on its own in any practical sense.
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> are any realistic examples in science fiction?
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The first to pop into my mind:
* "Speaker for the dead", "Xenocide" and "Children of the Mind" by Orson Scott Card
* the [Hainish Cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainish_Cycle#Planets) by Ursula K Le Guin
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On independence vs self-determination
I realized that I totally misused the "self-determination" term in respect with its meaning [under international law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination).
What I intended for the meaning od self-determination was something along the line of "Yeah, OK, in name, you are the source of law in regards with human rights. But it is up to us to organize ourselves how we see fit and, apart for the respect of human rights, we have no obligation to you (even if it's likely we will assist you if you ask)".
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**Give the job of governance to Artificial Intelligence's. Or perhaps the AIs just decided to take over.**
Given that the AIs have an overarching purpose, the AIs might have the structure that actually allows for a multi-stellar or even galactic empire. Note the the purpose need not make sense to the humans. The AIs could have a goal that requires continuous expansion thus spreading to galactic scale. Likewise AIs could also require a static society so that human civilization retains coherency -- if nothing else to prevent disruption that affects their true goal.
By controlling essentially all aspects of human life, this would be stable even on a very large scale.
For example, considering the of meeting another galactic AI similar to Fred Saberhagen's Beserkers). Why do the Berserkers expand and destroy life it is assumed to be the result of a programming error or replication error in their programming. Nonetheless, the Berserkers grow in size and complexity and retain their characteristic even though they adapt to changing circumstances.
Our AIs could still have STL or light-speed communication networks for the purpose of being able to summon the full strength of the galactic empire if needed to defend against the Berserkers. Sure response would be slow, but it is assumed that the attacker would also have similar communications limits since the same physics must be followed. The AIs could even have planned ahead or criteria for abandoning stellar systems consistently even in such harsh situations.
Hopefully, our AIs decide to keep the humans as pets or they feel responsible for taking care of them, or something else that only the AIs understand but that allows us to continue existence in a desirable state.
Following a billion, or a trillion or more lines of code can cover a lot of planned societal choices, and it would be able to be followed consistently.
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Stable does not mean stagnant. A multi-stellar society controlled by AIs would not necessarily be stagnant in order to be stable. There are shared network update algorithms that allow distributed software updates to occur, even dealing with lossy and slow communications. Sure, they have never been tested, developed or even planned for such large scale, but the AIs will develop such if it serves their purposes.
The AI logic may be completely inscrutable to humans, but it could allow parallel human development, perhaps even demanding trans-human development - Why? No mortal knows.
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[Answer]
**Hibernation Cycles**
Karl Schroeder's excellent novel *[Lockstep](https://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/lockstep)* has a solution for this, albeit on a far smaller scale (a few solar systems close to Earth and the many planetoids in between).
In *Lockstep*, colonies hibernate in lockstep, going under for e.g. 11 months of every year (there are several different cycles). This allows a person to travel 11 months while hibernating, spending 1 month at his goal, then travel 11 months back, and arriving 1 month of *experienced* time after he left (there has only been one awake period while he was away. During downtime months, robots and other machines collect resources that allow the colonies to be fully active for a month, even in marginally habitable areas.
On a truly interstellar scale, downtime would have to be far longer, e.g. being awake a few years in every thousand - and every colony would have to agree to this cycle.
Say that at the end of every four-year awake cycle, every solar system elects a representative for the central government. Representatives travel nearly a thousand years in hibernation and arrive at the Capital at the beginning of the next awake cycle. Then they spend four years deciding on every issue that needs to be dealt with, after which they are sent back along with a package of edicts.
For colonies on Earthlike planets, it might be difficult to persuade the population of this - even with the promise of immense wealth during the awake period. A handful of rebels that decide to stay awake could become a large population in a thousand years and threaten the local order of things, unless robots hunt them down and either kill them or forcefully hibernate them (story idea!).
There is also the danger that some aliens might appear during a downtime and settle a lot of the 'empty' colonies. Of course, there might be emergency systems in place that awaken people out of time if something unexpected happens.
This might not be the most practical way to have an interstellar government, but it is a *possible* one.
[Answer]
**Interstellar relations based on logic of the Prisoner's Dilemma**
This idea is explored in John C. Wright's stories beginning with *Count To A Trillion*. The [Prisoner's Dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma) is a thought experiment often discussed in an introduction to game theory. It deals with a situation where two prisoners have a lot to gain by cooperating, but at any time either one can benefit from betraying the other's trust. Why don't they betray each other? Well, if the "game" is played only once, it makes sense to cheat, but if the game is played over and over again, it makes more sense to cooperate, because if you cheat the other player will retaliate and you'll both lose.
In an interstellar agreement, laws must be obeyed, treaties must be observed, contracts must be honored, over very long time spans, perhaps more than a lifetime. Imagine an astronaut returns from a distant star, bearing a treaty that George Washington sent his ancestor to negotiate. Would we honor the treaty? What if it was highly offensive to our present-day sensibilities? What if it included, for example, the right to import slaves to our markets?
If we broke the treaty, the other star wouldn't find out until long after our deaths. So there's a huge temptation to break or ignore the treaty. In a one-off case, no problem. "Cheating" is to our advantage.
In the long run, though, if we want to have a stable interstellar civilization, we would need to learn to honor those agreements, at least to tolerate them for the duration of a new round-trip for a new ambassador to renegotiate them. Because we would need to establish a reputation for honoring such agreements, or no other worlds would make any deals with us at all. The other worlds would have to do the same. "Cooperating" is to our long-run benefit.
**EDIT:** What would this actually look like? I'd say it needs:
* Profound cultural reverence for the rule of law (and contracts, oaths, treaties, etc), to the point that citizens would lay down their lives to enforce laws that they don't even like.
* Willingness to inflict painful retribution against violators. If any world proves to be a "pushover" that allows other worlds to cheat it, that world cannot cooperate as part of the network (or union, federation, whatever you call it).
* Expectations made clear in advance. One of the ways to do well at the repeated prisoner's dilemma is to tell the other player in advance how you will reward their cooperation or punish their defection, and follow through accordingly. Your interstellar government would probably have a crystal-clear and unchanging constitution/compact/basiclaw that is its foundation.
[Answer]
When round trip communication times are measured in decades (at a minimum!) the notion of "unified" is a bit tenuous. Forming consensus on an issue could easily take longer than an unmodified human lifespan, at which point you really have to take a long hard look at what you're doing and wonder what the point of it all is.
The daughter colonies of the interstellar civilisation could get a continuous stream of updates via super-powerful communication lasers and remain more or less culturally cohesive with their parent civilisation, but that's a big investment of time and effort for the parent and there's no real way for them to directly benefit from the relationship, either economically or culturally, for an extremely long time. What seems like novel research to the colonists might already have been a solved problem for the parents. What seems like an exciting new style of music or other entertainment medium to the parents might already have been seen as an old and fleeting and slightly embarassing fad to the colonists who originally created it, by the time a request for "*more, more!*" arrives.
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Offhand, I can think of two examples of (mostly) hard-scifi settings with both sublight space travel and communication that I thought were OK: Alastair Reynolds' *Revelation Space* universe, and Charles Stross' *Neptune's Brood* setting (even if the book itself left a little to be desired).
In the former case, there was no interstellar government but there *was* an interstellar culture of sorts. Near-lightspeed interstellar spacecraft travelled between colony worlds (and occasionally founded new ones) taking art, technology and people as they went. This slow diffusion of ideas meant that the rate at which the colonies grew apart was limited to some degree, and whilst leaving your own world for another would mean a massive culture shock when you arrived (and another almost as big if you ever wanted to return) you'd meet people at the other end who were more or less human, doing human things with human brains. The crews of the spacecraft spent so much time travelling at relativistic speeds and in hibernation that the passing of time during sublight travel wasn't an issue for them and their memories and experiences would have spanned much of starfaring human history. They might be seen as a sort of loosely associated society, though certainly not an intergrated one, or one capable of being governed.
In the latter case, the main driver of interstellar cohesion was debt finance. Colonies cost a lot to set up, and you had to borrow a lot to do so, and you had to give *something* useful back or you risk having your colony cut off from critical supplies of manpower and valuable and interesting new ideas if you decided to renege on your debts. There was a complex financial system set up around bank transactions that would take decades to resolve. The critical thing *there* was that the inhabitants of the civilisation had more or less human minds, but were in fact human-modelled artificial intelligences in robotic bodies and so were extremely long lived. The rate of cultural change was lower, and having your mind uploaded to a new body in a new world to live and work there for a few decades before returning wasn't seen as a particularly big deal.
This situation resolves the lack of FTL communications by stretching out the lifetimes of the people involved so that communication delay wasn't a problem.
[Answer]
# Theocracy
There was a time when sending a message from Spain to Constantinople meant taking a trip that could take a few weeks, either by ship or on horseback. Still the pope reigned sovereign, because he was the one validating the rule of kings.
Religion will do wonders to unite people under a banner.
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The Imperium of Man in the Warhammer 40,000 franchise controls more distant worlds by a system of regional governance, each world has a Planetary Governor who is empowered to do whatever they deem appropriate with their world, with the caveat that they pay taxes and give up soldiers for the empire on a regular basis.
To ensure this, the tax-collectors come in warships and are perfectly able to claim their tithes by force.
To make sure it doesn't come to that, most worlds have a branch of an organisation known as the Adeptus Arbites, essentially the FBI if the FBI had the equipment, look/feel and authority of the Judges from Judge Dredd.
This organisation generally stays hands-off, they deal with security and legal threats to the Empire at large, not local issues. They hunt interstellar criminals and assist the empire's trouble-shooters, The Inquisition, as problems come up.
Their real purpose is to be an utterly loyal cadre of trained paramilitary, they aren't local. They're brought in from offworld and serve to remind the governor of their duty, either by being visible, or if necessary by killing them and replacing them with someone more suitable if they turn rogue.
Essentially, the imperium holds itself together by a system of internal checks and balances and does not assume that any of its citizens actually want to be part of the empire.
[Answer]
**With an extremely hierarchical division of powers**
Different aspects of government would have to be decided semi-independently at different levels of the hierarchy.
Laws would be set, trade deals decided and space-based military directed by each star system government. Policing policies and a militia-like military might be the domain of a planetary government. Individual regions might set their own by-laws.
Only very high level aspects of governance would be decided centrally, such as the constitution and core principles of governance, such as political philosophy. If the galactic government broadcasts an amendment to the Constitution it will take centuries, but every star system will eventually be expected to update their own laws accordingly. Obviously these amendments couldn't be voted on by the planets as it would take too long, so the central galactic government would need to claim legitimacy from something other than a purely Democratic mandate.
[Answer]
My initial thought was the same as everyone else's: "Impossible"
But you asked for how, so I came to this:
# It is the best government possible.
After a few millenia of trying out different government systems, humanity has found the one that actually works, and has scientifically proven that no better system exists and any change to this system will make it worse.
The star colonies adapt this system because it would be irrational if not outright stupid not to. Of course, this system takes the long communication delays into account and has the necessary autonomy for far-away colonies taken into account, so the whole "unified government" is mostly structural, rather than day-to-day - but it's not like any federated government today would be unfamiliar with such a setup.
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**Not possible**
To stay unified, you not only need to communicate; the government also needs to be able to *project power* over its domain.
Interstellar warfare is a logistical and economical nightmare with sublight travel, hence any colony which wishes to declare independence can do so with impunity. The New World managed to drive the Brits out even though these had much shorter logistic routes than any interstellar force would have to manage.
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# Resource control
*He who controls the spice controls the universe* ~ Dune
The only way for this to work is by making colonies dependent on the central government.
Now, as others have mentioned, colonies basically need to be self-reliant if they want to survive, since the capital won't be able to help them in case of emergency. But that's just what the colonies need; the central government might have other priorities.
A forward-thinking central government may design the colonies such that they can be self-reliant for everything they need to survive... but no better.
More specifically, the future technology might require some foundational equipment or raw material which is only found on the capital system. This may be due to a fluke (Mars' red dust has some unique property not found anywhere else in the universe) or a deliberate choice by the government: matter/anti-matter containers are used in all future powerplants, but their development and manufacture is only allowed in Minerva station orbiting Jupiter and the Ares fablab on Mars.
The possibility of artificial control is eased by the fact that building the equipment is extremely difficult, requiring infrastructure which can take decades or even centuries to build. So any counterfeiting operation would need to be very secretive, or it'll be found and quickly vaporized.
The colonies then rely on a consistent supply line of antimatter containment chambers from the capital system. Thankfully autonomous freight ships come all the time with "maintenance" quantities of containers. In the case of a disaster at the colony which requires many replacement containers, each ship also has emergency stores which can be accessed, but not without broadcasting a signal.
Other freighters heading towards the colony which receive the signal will know not to make their emergency stores available (to stop the colony from creating a stockpile), and the capital will send out an armada to the colony to help with the repairs (if such help is still needed 100 years later) and ensure the emergency supplies were used for their intended purpose and not to create a stockpile. If an illegal stockpile is discovered... well, that's why they sent an armada and not a civilian ship.
And obviously, if any rebellious behavior is observed in a colony, those freighters can just turn around. Good luck being independent and having to survive with primitive, pathetic, 21st-century technology.
## Workable, but very fragile
This would arguably work (as long as the government keeps its monopoly on the resource), since colonies would need to choose between 30th-century technology by accepting the central government or losing the technology they can't think of living without.
However, it would give humanity a huge single point of failure. All it takes is a single failed science experiment making the Sun go supernova to destroy humanity's only source of this fundamental raw material.
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**Not practical**
If you can't go Faster Than Light, than the gap between worlds is just too much to handle. Trying to communicate over a several year time lag isn't an effective means of having an Empire. It's just not *practical* to have a united government if you need to okay everything through a central bureaucracy that could take multiple life times to respond.
Not to mention that sub-light speeds has it's own massive reach of problem when it comes to physical transport. Sure, going .99c would get you there *almost* as fast as light, but it would take you months of real time to *get* to that speed using most conventional means of acceleration. In other words, worlds separated by four light years, even moving at .99c, it would probably take anywhere from five to six years to get from place to place. Now, while trade is possible, it not great to order something and have it arrive in half a lifetime, it's more going to be the variety of 'We'll load all the best stuff we have and sell it when we get there and hope they want it."
No Empire. It's not practical, there are just too many problems. And, if you want a series which handled this realistically, I'd recommend *The Unincorporated Series*, which does technically deal with the concept of a multi-star empire at sub-light speeds, (specifically, how it is feasible or rewarding), but that's only at the very end of the last book. (Most of the series is economic warfare across the solar system until it just turns to regular warfare across the solar system.)
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One may communicate instantly using quantum entangled particles, yet I seriously doubt instant communication will alleviate the difficulties of maintaining a unified government when physical travel requires hundreds or thousands of years between the "home planet" and the "colony"...IMHO
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In the [Takeshi Kovacs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshi_Kovacs) series they figured out a way to download the human consciousness to digital media and pair with FTL communications they effectively had interstellar travel by buying/renting a body on the other side. Extra bodies were made available because criminals (and debtors) didn't physically sit in a prison, they had their bodies taken and set in digital storage. This got even crazier by bionics and genetic engineering special made bodies. This let's the leadership be able to travel anywhere nearly instantly and also have the ability to project force as long as they had an ally in control of a "sleeving" facility. As a side effect the rich and powerful are effectively immortal
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Have the same society replicated multiple times across the galaxy.
We have created what we believe to be the ideal stable, creative harmonious society. Cloning is the predominant method of reproduction. Clones undergo a 20 year "incubation" period: a carefully controlled time of education, training and developmental training. At the end of the incubation period a new copy of each individual is released into society and work begins on the next generation.
Everyone has learned to operate and co-operate in a society which contains a number of copies of him- or herself at different stages of development. Whenever the empire expands, it does so by sending out a new self-replicating batch of the same set of individuals. It is one empire because it is ruled and sustained by the "same" people.
Maybe some random variation is allowed. Maybe there is a certain amount of sexual reproduction. There is communication between neighboring solar systems to sync up or, if necessary, "reboot" failed variations.
But maybe no variation is permitted (or desired). Technologies may develop at different rates due to accidents of environment or experience but there is no serious conflict because the individuals feel a deep sense of belonging to their society and kinship with their "other selves" whether on the same planet or in more distant locations.
Until one day... when our story begins!
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Robert Reed's Marrow universe has one way - humans (and all the other space-faring species) are immortal. Needless to say, this makes their perspective very different from ours, and worthwhile large-scale projects can take tens of thousands of years.
In a world like this, if you had an evil empire ruling over the galaxy, sure, it's going to take you hundreds of thousands of years to project power - but by the time you get there, the people responsible are probably still there. Of course, there's still the other tiny problem - why bother? What is on the other side of the galaxy that has any value whatsoever to you, as the God Emperor of a Unified Human Government?
Most real world "proto-empires" failed for much the same reason, and indeed, it is rare to see a colony providing benefits to the "parent" country - much more often, they are net resource sinks and the only real justification for having them tend to be along the lines of prestige, cultural extension and such. Even if a colony is beneficial to people at home (e.g. Rome's imports of grains from North Africa and exports of tools), it only lasts for a short time, historically speaking, and tends to cause more trouble home than it solves. It's hard to imagine how a colony 300 years away would ever be any benefit to someone back home.
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**Use an AI gouvrnement**: The home world writes its government strategy into a computer code and builds multiple identical computers that are given to the colons when they leave. The computers then acts as a governors in the different colonies.
If the code is written well enough and the computer is smart enough, then it can govern exactly in the way that the home world would if it were able to make the decisions. Moreover, all the computers have the same code, share a common objective and know it. They can work out what the other colonies will do without communicating. For example, if a threat appears and a coordinated response is necessary, then each colony will take the most logical action based on the fact that all the others will do the same.
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If you can keep travel to about a century round-trip it's doable, but hard. A century is about as long as people can realistically plan for (my son won't live to see it but my granddaughter will. I know my granddaughter and want her to do well.) So you start with that as a base.
Secondly you'd need the capital planet to have exclusive access to interstellar travel, or at least interstellar warships.
Thirdly you'd need the colonies to be dependent on the Capital for something other than interstellar flight. For example in Finity's End there are almost 0 habitable worlds, so the colonies are all Stations orbiting gas giants with valuable minerals and the the like that require a certain amount of specialist material from earth no matter how efficient they are.
With these parameters you essentially end up with an Imperial hegemony, regardless of the overall rulership of the colony planet. Something similar to the Imperium of Man in 40k (minus the FTL and demons). Each colony could be a democracy or theocracy or dictatorship, but as long as they paid tithes to the throneworld they're allowed to do as they wish. You couldn't get direct rule, as others have pointed out the distances involved just don't allow for it. But if the only guys with starships and Big Mac Sauce demand a 10% tithe once every X amount of years or you get cut off and slowly die, you'll pay attention and toe the line. Mostly. Of course you'd need enough Imperial traffic to make sure the colony isn't building their own shipping, and have dangerous enough transports/transport escorts to blow up anything they might try. And the colonies would likely send representatives to the Throneworld to work out super-long-term things like using colony world's people for future empire expansion and discuss inter-planetary trade.
In the end I don't think it would last for eternity. Invariably somebody would figure out how to make The Thing Only The Throneworld Has, or builds a secret fleet to overthrow the Imperial Oppressors. Or even just expansion beyond the 100-year limit resulting in the creation of Satraps that eventually grow into separate star nations by peaceful or nonpeaceful means.
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You send delegates and radio transmissions between star systems via a Stargate like the one the US government has in a missile silo at Cheyenne Mountain.
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First, you are going to have to assume some form of instantaneous communications through a very malleable space/time configuration. Not such a stretch, because all of the limitations on information traveling faster then light assume that time is actually a 'thing', and that this 'thing' somehow passes. In a dimension (thick enough physics textbook) in which time does not exist as anything meaningful to the physics (and it is beginning to appear as if the quantum world really doesn't care about time), then limitations on information travel time are irrelevant. Information, after all, is neither energy nor matter. It is the medium or mechanism of information transfer that is governed by energy and matter restrictions.
Second, you are going to have to assume an empire-wide economy, with one and only one empire-wide bank. All financial transactions have to go through this one bank. Perhaps it owns the patents and the intellectual property rights of the instantaneous communications system (Sort of like the Elizabeth Moon Vatta's War series and spin-offs, and the ansibles being controlled by only one company. However, in the Vatta's War series, there were apparently a few system-wide banks but I don't recall if it was a universal currency or if each system had their own).
Thirdly, consider that a bank account balance, or the 'cost of goods'. or the 'stock market price', although technically 'information', is not really 'information that causes something to happen' in the classical physical sense. Your bank balance is the same, everywhere in the universe. Revealing what it is, anywhere, is not really 'transferring information', it is just 'revealing existing information'. Compound interest increases a bank balance at the same rate, and the numbers are the same, no matter where you are. 'Instantaneous communications' is the ultimate block chain, available everywhere.
For an interconnected economy to work, financial transactions would have to be made pretty much instantaneously. Money comes out of one account as soon as it goes into another. Money can not appear to exist in two different worlds, at the same time. Either instantaneous accounting exists, or otherwise, money would have to be physical, and would have to be physically carried from one system to another, like the boat loads of gold moved around the world in the 17th and 18th century. Totally impractical in a modern economy because this 'wealth' is taken out of the economy while it is being transported. Can you imagine the chaos if a corporation could be bankrupt on one planet, and no one knows it on another planet and so it is still conducting business and taking on debt? Completely unworkable.
Just like the Roman Empire, individual systems would have a great deal of autonomy in local governance, social laws and cultural conventions, and local courts and penalties. Rome allowed a lot of individual local autonomy, but the thing that mattered - the financial empire and the financial integration (the only real reason to have an empire) - was closely controlled because Rome controlled the vehicle for international trade - the Roman denarius. By controlling the currency, and centralizing trade, they controlled the empire.
The advantage of your empire over the Roman Empire, is that it is expanding and being created at the same time. It is not like an existing society being taken over by the Romans. Thus, the common currency and connected financial empire would exist from the get-go. Only one currency would ever have been used in interstellar trade. The colonists would have brought their cloud computing currency with them, as they built more outposts. Corporate towns would be financially tied very closely to the head office. Same accounting system, same books, same currency.
Thus, the empire could be controlled simply by the threat of shutting a node off from this system of instantaneous communication, universal financial economy, cloud information system, and block chain technology. Either the colony co-operated, or it was essentially cut off completely from all cloud financing, cloud banking, cloud computing, cloud data, and essentially civilization. Any renegade colony would become a backwater and descend into stagnation, its only source of contact being slower-than-light physical transfer.
And, really, if it takes ten years or more for a renegade colony to get any weapon to you try to attack you, what kind of threat is that? Methinks a financial and data embargo would suffice to keep any colony in check, without worries that they might be any kind of threat to you. 'Give us our freedom or in 100 years we will blow up your cities.'
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**Slow down the people**
If you're a society of uploaded people, you think as fast as your resources allow. The usual assumption is that people will want to keep their perception of time the same, but with no more physical humans, why burn through the energy stores quickly? If everybody runs at 1/100th speed, the speed of light is effectively 100 times faster.
One problem is that this is only a solution for a very advanced society. It only makes sense if not only everybody is uploaded, but also if you've already disassembled all the stars so that their energy isn't wasted.
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The American model of Representative Democracy works just fine on an intergalactic scale. Indeed, it was first designed in a time where travel was slow and communication was difficult.
To get around the problems of slow travel and difficult communication, there are 4 tiers of government: The municipality, the County, the State and the Nation. On an intergalactic level, there would be two more levels: The planet and the Empire.
The local levels are designed for more direct citizen participation. For example, a town voting on a proposition will collect yay or nay votes from every citizen, while the State, the citizens vote for representatives, and only those representatives vote on the state or national laws.
On the national level (or in your case, an intergalactic level), the state residents would vote for electors - people they trust to make an informed decision, and those electors would choose the president.
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My question to you is, "Why do you want all communications to go through Earth?" A central, authoritative government only works quickly because it is close by. Additionally, by the time a new colony gets started and is self-sufficient enough to rebel, the originating world is probably dead.
The British Empire, in its heyday, did not route all requests through the monarchy - it relied on regional governors to maintain order directly, then it *flowed up the chain of command as the problems grew.*
The United States government also does this - problems are dealt with at the lowest possible level. When a problem arises that requires the help of a higher level, the two levels *have to be on good terms.* These mutual requirements start chaining and cumulating, meaning that your fringe planets have to be on good terms with your middle planets have to be on good terms with your near planets have to be on good terms with Earth. By going to regional leaders, communications time is cut down to *only* a few years.
There eventually becomes the problem of a colony planet becoming self-sustaining, but since they're not even human anymore, you can safely blast them away. Earth has probably gone extinct anyways.
A nice book with an example of the limitations of no-FTL travel (i.e., hard science-fiction) is *Existence* by David Brin, where their method of colonizing planets is to upload their consciousness into a hard format and fling millions of them out into space like a virus.
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Government is, in many ways, a fiction that we collectively pretend into existence; the objective difference between a dictator and a crime boss is pretty flimsy.
So a hundred planets are under the same government if they collectively pretend that their governments are in fact the same government, even if there are no governmental structures above the level of the planet.
If the central government officially grants legitimacy to the branches of the government on every other planet, and those branches all claim to derive their legitimacy from that central government, then it doesn't matter how different the branches end up being in practice; their initial charters can all give their people the right to democratically modify their charters as needed, such that each planetary branch grows a completely different constitution over time.
Even if a given planetary branch is overthrown in a coup, the new people in charge may still decide to claim the mantle of legitimacy from the central government. (This has plenty of historical precedent: non-Egyptian pharaohs ruling as pharaohs, non-Chinese dynasties ruling as dynasties, conquering kings claiming the same divine right to rule as the ousted kings.) That wouldn't be *guaranteed* to happen, of course. But it *could* happen.
Note that this approach probably doesn't work if the central government has nontrivial demands of the planetary branches; for example, this system won't allow the central government to extract resources and labor from other planets, because they won't stand for it. But if the central government represents benign democracy and stability, and only sends peaceful envoys that don't have the authority to try to interfere with things, then the legitimacy that they confer can be useful enough to justify claiming it.
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This can only happen when the planet is supervised by machines with sort of super power that is very hard to detroyed by the clever and want-to-be-free beings supervied.
(1) The machine supervisor system (MSS) constantly receive commands from the central government system (CGS). The commands send by the CGS may travel billions of years at light speed to reach the MSS.
(2) The MSS have enough pattern recognition capabilities to checkout whether the supervised society work as the expected rules, if not, then punishment will be excuted, like bombing. The expected rules is updated constantly by the command stream from CGS.
(3) The MSS have super power that is very hard to detroyed by the clever and want-to-be-free beings supervied. For example, it is space based + land based. If the land based part is being attacked, then the space based part will lauch nuclear weapons to punish. If any space technology (to attack the space based part) is find to be being developed, then the facility will be destroyed immediately.
(4) Being supervised by a super power doesn't mean slavary or bad life. The commands send to the MSS may just to keep the society under control, not to force them to work for the CGS. Another example is "no war" command. If any war is detected, then nuclear weapon is launched to destroy both side. Another example is "pupulate control" command - then over pupulation will never happen.
(5) Any system have bugs that can be exploited. The MSS is very hard to destroy doesn't mean it will never be destroyed. Once it is destroyed, this planet goes free which may not be a good thing, like war will come back and pupulation will explode. If you want your control over the planet to be longer, then you'd better not to use this system as a slavary system. Once those folks realize the MSS is infact good for them, the majority will not want to destroy it - do you want't to detroy a system that can prevent war/over population/over consumption of resoruce?
(6) Machine may have bug and fail, it doesn't have the "final underlying judgement" human beings have. Then it is possible a bug or an attack in the machin trigger a "destroy all" action which destroy the society on the planet.This is something you have to pay to get the galaxy government. This is why even we need such superpower very much, such MSS can't be used on earth - you need more backup planet in case some planet is occasionlly destroyed by the system for your race to live on.
If it is not machine super power based, then the being in the local government will soon find out there is no need to be governed by the central government.
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## Post-scarcity Economy, combined with a high value and respect on intellectual property and art and culture
Although the [post-scarcity economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy) concept is sometimes used as a 'catch-all' solution, in this regard it would remove most of the reasons why conflicts happen - battling over resources such as 'land', 'money' or 'power'.
If technology exists where **[robots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus_machine) could build anything we wish**, removing concepts of ownership, hunger, and even production, then humanity can concentrate on what it does best: intellectual pursuits, art and cultural development.
If the following are achieved:
* The ability to have as much food as we want
* The ability to build anything we want, no matter how large (or how small)
* The ability to have as much space as we want (artificial habitats, or even make new planets)
Then we can exist fine, without any 'needs'. The issue then comes in mammalian emotional feelings of dominance which can be **tempered by trade**. Trade what? Well, although FTL is not possible, we can still communicate with each other at lightspeed, and therefore transmit and receive virtual 'items'.
These could be:
* Blueprints for new items to build or food to have
* New technological methods, programmes, VR worlds etc.
* Original works, such as music and art, which are not available on your own world
* News (even though many years or decades old) and very old and late communication between individuals
Cultural exchange is still possible at light speed - in a post-economy society. It would still be valuable therefore to remain at least loosely unified to gain new knowledge available on other planets.
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In Orson Scott Card's Worthing Saga, the rich can afford to be put in suspended animation. This means that they can rule for centuries, so having it take decades to get to colonies and back isn't as much of an issue.
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So, I have a group of 6 small kingdoms (in a medieval low fantasy world) that share a lot of their culture, since they were just one country in the past. In my story, a powerful nation (let's call it P) is becoming too dangerous and has the potential to beat all these kingdoms in a war (and go even further).
The ruler of one of these kingdoms, which is a woman, realizes that the only way to have a chance against P is using the forces of all the 6 kingdoms together. Since she knows all the other rulers and knows that they probably won't work effectively as a group or accept to be lead by a female, her decision is to conquer all these kingdoms, one by one, and become a central ruler of them all.
Of course, making war to all of these countries would take a lot of resources, time, and result in many human losses. However, she prefers to play clever as much as possible (she is very smart and has a lot of strategies) and lose some soldiers when needed instead of simply letting P overcoming everyone.
So, my question is: would a medieval ruler see this as a valid strategy? Were there similar situations in real History?
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*"So, I have a group of 6 small kingdoms (in a medieval low fantasy world) that share a lot of their culture, since they were just one country in the past. In my story, a powerful nation (let's call it P) is becoming too dangerous and has the potential to beat all these kingdoms in a war (and go even further)."*
* To anchor a general world-view I will assume that *"medieval"* means specifically European medieval. The structure, resource, capabilities and general outlook of medieval states were quite different elsewhere; for example, the resources and capabilities of medieval China are not directly comparable with anything Europe had to offer.
* In the middle ages, a *"nation"* was simply and *only* the set of people sharing a common mother tongue. A medieval nation had no political dimension, it was in no way, shape or form linked to a state. The age of nation-states is modern, centuries after the end of the Middle Ages. In medieval times nobody even thought that people sharing a common mother tongue ought or should have the same king, or that the subjects of a king ought or should have a common mother tongue. Using the word "nation" for a medieval state is just wrong.
* It is not uncommon in medieval history to see such collections of small states threatened by the rise of a nearby large or bellicose state or alliance. For example, the many little Italian states threatened by France; the Balkan states threatened by the Ottoman Empire; the [many small Arab states](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taifa) in [Al-Andalus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus) threatened by their northern Christian neighbours; and examples may continue.
*"The ruler of one of these kingdoms, which is a woman, realizes that the only way to have a chance against P is using the forces of all the 6 kingdoms together. Since she knows all the other rulers and knows that they probably won't work effectively as a group or accept to be lead by a female, her decision is to conquer all these kingdoms, one by one, and become a central ruler of them all."*
* Wait, what? She realizes that the only way to have a chance against the Predatory Empire is to use the combined forces of the six kingdoms, fine. How does she make the jump to embark on a war of conquest?
+ She should first seek an alliance with the other five kingdoms. All right, the diplomatic efforts may fail, as they failed in Italy when the northen Italian states felt [threatened by France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_War_of_1494%E2%80%931498).
+ If an alliance is not possible, which may very well be the case, her next strategic objective would be to *unite* the kingdoms under one crown. Not conquer, unite. For example, she may select one promising husband from the five kings, and offer her hand in marriage provided that he understands the threat posed by the dastardly Predatories. Now their combined kingdom is larger than any the other four, and they stand a better chance.
The canonical example of this approach working is the marriage of the [Catholic Monarchs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Monarchs), [Isabella of Castile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_I_of_Castile) and [Ferdinand of Aragon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_II_of_Aragon), which was the starting point of the unification of Spain. They were both young, they were both smart and they were both ambitious; the marriage was their joint idea, and it gave them the upper hand in creating one state out of the mess that was the Iberian peninsula in the 15th century.
* She cannot conquer the other five kingdoms *"one by one"* unless the other five kings are uncommonly stupid. *She is one against five.*
Say she attacks king A. Kings B, C, and D sit idle. She beats king A and takes over his lands. One, two, three years pass and she attacks king B. By this time:
+ Kings C and D should see the writing on the wall and come to the aid of king B, or, even worse,
+ King C or maybe king D *calls for help* from the Predatory Empire nearby. This has happened, and not rarely. In fact, the *expected* strategy from the Predatory Empire is to find one or two kings in the six-pack and seek their alliance, with promises of favorable treatment, maintaining the autonomy of their kingdoms, the like.Moreover, she has the Predatory Empire to consider. The Predatories see that she has taken kingdom A, and now one of their intended targets is not so small any more. When she attacks king B, what makes them *not attack in force*, in order to profit from the disarray in the six-pack? They wouldn't want to see a new power emerge near their borders.
* It's a red herring that "they probably won't work effectively as a group or accept to be lead by a female". Direct meetings between medieval sovereigns were rare and exceptional events. Sovereigns were not expected to sit and work together, they had diplomats and ambassadors.
*"Making war to all of these countries would take a lot of resources, time, and result in many human losses."*
* That's putting it mildly. Medieval states were not war machines. They were exceedingly poor, and could not realistically mount a military campaign lasting more than a few months at best. If she engages in a conquest effort she should be ready to dedicate *decades* to this goal, and hope fervently that the Predatories are occupied elsewhere.
That's not to say that it cannot be made to work in a story. Nothing in this answer is to be taken as an absolute bar against an epic describing how the queen of E took over the kingdoms of A, B, C and D by a series of heroic feats of arms. All I wanted to make clear is that there are great difficulties, which need to be addressed and resolved.
* For example, she makes a secret understanding with king B that she will take kingdom A and king B will take kingdom C, leaving king D in fear for the durability of his crown. She then uses deception and intrigue to push the combined B-C kingdom into attempting to conquer kingdom D, and intervenes at the right point, remainig the last standing sovereign.
* Maybe during all this trouble, the Predatory Empire is occupied by a long struggle at their distant borders against their hereditary foe, the Mysterious Orientals, and she can exploit a decade of neglect.
All in all, it's plausible enough for a great story, provided that the author takes the trouble to set things up correctly and addresses the obvious pitfalls.
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**Her strategy invites conquest by P.**
If P is thinking about attacking, it can do it when these small countries are exhausted and in disarray from fighting each other.
The question is whether your canny leader wants to avoid conquest or whether she wants to rule the 6 countries. With the threat of P the latter seems unlikely.
If she wants to unite the 6 but cannot herself lead them then she needs to unite behind one of the other leaders who (because he is male and it is apparently that kind of culture) might be able to do it. Ideally he is manipulable but not so dense he cannot understand the threat from P or the fact that your character is right to be concerned.
She unites her country with his. Maybe she marries him. He is king and she is queen. Now the balance of power has shifted as regards the 6, now 5. The king (reading his lines) makes clear to the other countries that goal is not conquest but to avoid being conquered. Two agree to form a coalition. One does not and the three of the coalition occupy and partition it. The last figures it out and joins the coalition.
P will attack weaker targets elsewhere. The best defense is a good offense. When P attacks elsewhere, the coalition makes its move.
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*Since she knows all the other rulers and knows that they probably won't work effectively as a group or accept to be lead by a female*
No medieval armies worked very effectively as a group. They weren't armies in the sense we understand them today, nor even in the sense that Wellington and Napoleon would have. Lords raised volunteers (or levies) from the land they controlled, and their people were loyal to them first. Because the individual groups were run by the lords, politics was a massive problem. Managing a medieval army was therefore an exercise in cat-herding multiple small groups with leaders who did not always get on with each other. Robb Stark's army in GoT was a good example of that.
Invading another kingdom is therefore an exercise in futility. The lords of the kingdom you've taken over will either be dead or opposed to you. If you parachute in new people from your country as lords, the locals aren't going to fight for them. With the Normans as an example, you'd need another generation for that to settle down, and you don't have that time.
Faced with a common enemy though, they certainly did unite to fight that common enemy. The Crusades showed that in action, where people from all over Europe came together to fight. (We'll leave to one side whether the cause was good or not.)
Being female was no limit on leading an army. In England, the Empress Mathilda invaded and took over half the country, with her son finishing the job. And Eleanor of Aquitaine dominated much of Europe during her life. No-one thought they were lesser for being female. And with multiple countries in play, no one country "leads". The Crusades showed this. Instead, the allied lords collectively decide on the plan of campaign.
And having said that, you still need a good reason why becoming a vassal kingdom or just an ally of P would be a bad thing. Bear in mind for this that the worldview of medieval rulers had little concept of right and wrong, no rule of law, and no concept at all of what was best for the peasants. The whole "fighting the evil empire" fantasy thing is completely un-medieval, because from our perspective we can see that *all* medieval nobility were varying degrees of evil.
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The main concerns are:
**Greater foe/ Politics:** As you pick off the other kingdoms will they unite against you? Will they ally with the other large kingdom (you call it P) for defense against you, since you are the clear aggressor?
**Time limit** You are time limited before the big foe attacks you. Most of the benefits of taking the lands will take a long time to build value, recruiting new troops raising new taxes. If you can capture the foreign armies intact and turn them, this may be worth while if a few months, otherwise you need years for this strategy to be worth while. Also fighting time is limited to the summer months for most medieval kingdoms, because planting and harvesting use spring and fall.
**Cost** You will lose troops, and resources. Will what you gain make up for it?
**Stability:** If you conquer the areas will they stay loyal? How many troops will you gain, how many will need to spend their time putting down riots and rebellions?
The way this is most worthwhile if you can win very quickly, capture foreign forces intact, and if the major threat is coming very soon so that the rebellions will not happen till after the major threat arrives.
Some people would see the Austro-Prussian war as an example of this.
Where Prussia through a mix of diplomacy, popular sentiment, and a bit of intimidation united many small German states into the modern state of Germany.But they didn't really conquer them one at a time.
If you would prefer straight conquest look at Napoleon's Conquests in Spain and Italy.
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I would say **No**
Every time you conquer one of the smaller kingdoms, you are committing your forces to battle against theirs. It isn't as simple as One Kingdom taking over the other Kingdom peacefully. If your take over a Kingdom with force there will be battles so instead of a simple 1+1=2 you will end up with something like 1+1 = 1.5 due to the deaths from resisting the conquest and the pass on effects this can have to civilian life and food supplies (War is a very expensive thing).
Once you have conquered all 6 kingdoms your total fighting force will be greatly diminished compared to what you originally had. P can now sweep through your weary armies and war torn lands and its easy pickings for them (especially if they were a risk against all 6 kingdoms in the first place).
The second part is Politics and Control. Not every Kingdom is highly united, and not all the Nobles or people in power will submit to your rule after you have conquered them. You may also face resistance from the people of a Kingdom, as you have just conquered them, slaughtered their Husbands, Brothers and Sons, and assumingly ransacked their treasury combining it with your own. It will take you a while to reestablish control over the Kingdom and each time you will need to devote a section of your army to maintain peace in the new lands you have gained while order is restored.
So while you are on your crusade, your main fighting force becomes smaller with each battle. You lose soldiers in the fights. You need to devote soldiers to a kingdom to maintain peace and control. If you had the power to conquer all 6 kingdoms, you might as well take your army and slaughter P straight away.
The assumed solution to such a situation is a combined Army under the command of a single assigned person. This can be done several ways. Diplomacy is your traditional approach. War games or even a tournament to find the best general. But there will be resistance. No Kingdom wants to lose any troops and you always need a front line which will take the brunt of the damage in a battle.
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As the other answers have said, this is a risky and overall bad strategy, especially when forming an alliance through peaceful means is an option. It isn't uncommon for otherwise antagonistic nations to join together in response to a greater threat.
There is one circumstance in which this strategy would be worthwhile - if she is the most powerful ruler in the region and may be able to fight the predatory empire on her own, but she expects the other nations to *join forces* with said empire when it shows up, capturing their resources and technology and undermining their infrastructure before the more powerful enemy arrives, thereby rendering them impotent, *may* be worthwhile. This strategy makes more sense if the main strength of the other kingdoms is their resources (food, technology, fuel, animals, favorable terrain) and not their military might.
However, she should keep in mind that this will leave her with a lot of angry rebels in her kingdom who will be *even more* likely to join nation P when it comes knocking, so she'd better make sure that the benefit she gets from conquest *greatly* exceeds the cost of getting it.
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**This is a superb example of Game Theory, and explains many seemingly illogical decisions throughout history**
Winston Churchill had to [destroy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Mers-el-K%C3%A9bir) their allied French fleet in their own harbour (they weighed the odds, and discovered this was their only option) killing almost two thousand allied sailors. The US had to invade Vietnam to contain communism (believe me, there were plenty of reasons to *not* invade). In WWI, countries that were previously [allied suddenly became enemies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I), after *reasonably* weighing up all alternatives.
The primary issues can be explained through Game Theory. That is the study of decisions and strategy based on the premise that *all parties behave rationally*.
And this is the scariest part: Conflict is possible and indeed probable between friends given certain scenarios.
Your scenario comes essentially down to the following, all of which are elements in [Game Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory):
* What does each party know, and how does this affect their decision
* What does each party not know, and do other parties know they don't know
* Given what they do or do not know, what choice would give them the best chance of success (note: the word is chance). Ie. Which strategy would each adopt to give their best chance of success given they would be made in a reasonable manner, given information that they have available.
Too many answers here make the assumption that everyone would simply choose to work together. This should not be a given and is not historically accurate. The important point to note is: in an age where communication is slow, non-existent, or likely *untrustworthy*, you need to make a decision based on other peoples decisions in an environment in which *nothing is certain*.
So the scenarios that are possible, according to Game Theory, would be:
* [Cooperation or Competition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_game_theory): Do you choose to entreaty or to conquer. A simplistic choice, based on likelihood of success. To start with, you could investigate tit-for-tat, chicken or look at creating a nash equilibrium (like the current Nuclear deterrent strategy) that result from simple competition.
* [Symmetric or Asymmetric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetric_game): Given not all parties have equal abilities, does this alter your strategy? How would smaller parties act that may frustrate or even defeat you. Perhaps the parties don't matter at all, and all you should consider is which strategy they will adopt.
* [Zero sum or non-zero sum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game): All or nothing theories are simple, but in reality, most people settle for trade-offs, or results that expand beyond the original situation. Is there a solution that is outside the boundaries of your situation?
* [Simultaneity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_game): Sequence matters, you can play out scenarios based on outcomes, and make decisions along the way based on future decisions. Or: are all parties going to act at the same time, without knowing the other strategies?
* [Information games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information): Tsun Zhu was an advocate of this thinking, being or not-being trustworthy, or rather giving the impression of trustworthy or not (eg. signal theory), is important to consider. What information can you trust, what information can you put out there? This is the difference between Chess and Poker. In Chess you know everything. In Poker, you either give the impression you do, or not.
There are many more, but already the scenarios above give you ample material to explore the myriad situations and strategies that are considered especially when analysing conflict. But the basic principle is the same: *Most leaders act rationally, and base their decisions on what they know and expect.* Good Game Theorists are highly sought after.
**So the answer is a resounding: YES. Invasion is a valid strategy. However like all good leaders, consider all the other possible game theory scenarios and see if there are any better strategies.**
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Not to say this is always a good idea, but the Macedonian Empire is one example where this worked very well. Alexander the great conquered Greece, then used the conquered peoples to bring down the much larger Persian Empire. So, what factors are important here?
1 - The people you conquer need to hate your common enemy more than they hate being conquered. This is no easy task, but if your 6 kingdoms view the P as being significantly more dangerous and untrustworthy then each other, than you can actually use that fear and hate to help unite the kingdoms after you conquer them.
2 - The people you conquer need to be bad at working together. 40,000 warriors united under one cause is better than 6 armies of 10,000 warriors who are each lead by generals who are trying to pull games to obtain superiority in the war's aftermath. If Kingdom A and Kingdom B need to attack an enemy army, and Kingdom B intentionally shows up late or only send 1/2 their soldiers to reduce their own casualties, then both armies could be lost in a battle that could have otherwise be won.
3 - The people you conquer need to be less militarily advanced than you. If you have better weapons, tactics, and training then you can not pass that on to untrustworthy allies. More allies with worse weapons and training can be much less effective than killing half of them, then making sure the other half are armed to the teeth when it comes time to fight the bigger empire.
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This is almost exactly the situation of the Warring States period of Chinese history. The State of Qin conquered 6 other states, that all were not significantly weaker. The reason they were conquered is because Qin played them against each other: promising to split the lands of some nation with another nation, before turning on that nation. The only way to stop such a state would be to form an alliance of all six states, to concentrate their resources, instead of wasting their military resources on each other.
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"Everyone else have to submit to the rule of me!" That is the basis of a lot of human anguish. When a rule obtains a position of power, it is very unlikely to submit to the rule of another. They would rather squabble for control rather than unite. In the end, it will only weaken the coalition, leading to the eventual conquest by "P"
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The US annexes Canada in *Fallout* lore under the guise of fighting the communist invasion of Alaska. I'd have to assume we pillaged their oil sands along the way.
Alexander the Great conquered the entire world, but he *won* because he let them keep their religions and just taxed the crap out of everybody.
You're skipping the step as to why the upper echelon conquers things: money (ideally, *not* genocide), but you might as well be describing the Axis powers of WWII with a non-existent US (and a *far* less populous USSR).
If the Nazis had conquered Euroasia, what do you think would have eventually happened to Japan? Anything that doesn't kill you and makes you stronger is a viable strategy, up until the point when it's no longer needed and is now at odds with your 'solution'.
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If your queen was really clever (and I mean this without any offence to your work), she'd restrain from conquering and forcing anyone to join her. It's much smarter to ask for an alliance and leave the kingdoms their freedom, convincing them working together (and for her) is in their best interest. Perhaps she could promise them parts of the enemy's territory or something.
Either way, if she conquers them, they'll only be motivated to get rid of *her*, not the enemy. They may even try working with the enemy. It's also important how they seceded in the first place: if it happened through conflict, the kingdoms may be enemies to each other and making them live and work together again will be a pain in the ass because they may turn against each other. If they seceded in peace, it's much safer to convince them form a union instead of risking they gang up on your queen.
Besides, that would be a waste of time an money, which is much more needed against the enemy.
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The entire Cold War modern era is driven by this concept of conquering "buffer States" that then fight wars by proxy so the major powers don't have to fight themselves directly. This obviously wouldn't work in a Kingdom-State style ancient or medieval setting because individual principalities are too small to enforce the buffer.
If the main State involved was powerful enough then maybe it would work if they built an Empire, but that's a long term solution. In the near term the strategy would fail, the weaker States conquered would be even weaker by the conflict and possibly more likely to side with the "enemy of my enemy is my friend."
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I would focus on two important aspects the kingdoms **share a lot of their culture** and that they are **medieval** kingdoms so lets assume they are feudal states.
This means she does not have to conquer and occupy the kingdoms (with associated loss of life and resources) but only make them her vassals. To force a king to bend a knee or if he is unwilling to replace him with willing relative or ambitious lord.
In turn this means they apart of the king and his immediate family nobody have much incentive to die for their king or to organize resistance after he fell. And if the stake is vassalization then even the king and his family does not have much to loose besides pride.
The shared history and culture means the people of the kingdoms will see each other as people so it is conceivable to have customs of war that limit loos of life and resources. Basically expectation that clear looser yields, that victor takes prisoners and treats them well, that peasants are not slaughtered and fields not despoiled. This could means that if she manages to beat another king quickly she can take over most his resources without depleting hers too much.
The fact that role of a king is inherited and for life means that is conceivable that at least one other king is babe in diapers and other is old and infirm. The kid would have a regent with more or less skill and will to fight but the old one could refuse to give up the power without being able to do anything with that.
Next - the same reasons that prevent kingdoms to unit against P would also make it harder for the other kings to band against her.
Next as it was already said, marriage game and dynastic politics could play important role. If she can marry other king without loosing control then she could in one sweep double her power, and have a figurehead that may be more acceptable as suzerain for other kings. If she can not or do not want to marry that way, but already have children then she can merry them away converting potential enemy to staunch ally - one looking forward to inherit everything she conquer.
Finally there would be snowball effect, when she take over one kingdom she already have more power than any other alone. When she vasalize second one she is on equal level with alliance of all remaining. With four kingdoms under her control she can take on both of them at the same time and have good chance of winning. With last one remaining I would expect the king to yield and swear fealty when asked nicely.
As it was said the biggest threat is that somebody call for P before she can unify the kingdoms, but if there is a big cultural difference then the one that do may be labelled as traitor by everyone, and immediate outside intervention may mean that everybody falls in line behind strongest local player - her.
Summing up she should start with getting some allies diplomatically (or at least keep them neutral for a while), hit targets of opportunity if they show up, deal with the stronger contender first - assuming the weaker will yield if she have clear advantage, and try to get to 50%+ before her opponents organize themselves.
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The only feasible thing to do is to unite several of the kingdoms through political manipulation (royal marriages, assassination and careful replacement of the monarch, etc, without making it clear that there is any connection between the countries. Then, stage a moment of weakness, perhaps attacking a kingdom that had not been conquered, or pretending to attack a country she already controlled, and hope that the full weight of the enemy forces does not invade, and she cal deal with them. Besides, in a defensive position, you can survive when massively outnumbered, and careful strategy, like cutting supply chains and ambushes, will determine the war's outcome much more than simply a larger army. If you could even convince the large empire to attack a country that you cannot conquer politically, then you have already weakened the opposing strength.
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If a modern Day tank suddenly appears in 14th century Constantinople; in perfect condition, along with all the ammo, fuel, and components needed for it to run. How much of the technology in the tank could the Roman (Byzantine) Empire replicate, if not reproduce?
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On a very fundamental level, the Romans would completely lack the means of replicating ceramic armor or complex alloys used in most modern MBTs even if you gave them a pamphlet explaining what they were and how they were made. Just reinventing the process that goes into the manufacture of modern materials would be a bigger task than assembling the tank itself.
**Armor:** If the tank had solid steel armor I'm sure the Romans could throw together something "functional" if they utilize effective casting methods. Unless they understand the chemistry of the hardening process, I can't imagine it being any more advanced than the steel they use in every day life.
**Engine:** This is the tough part. Separating the engine from the example tank and reverse-engineering it would be a colossal task for a civilization without heavy-lifting equipment or even the basic concept of what a combustion engine even was. Once they do remove it, they'll need to figure out what it even *does.* They could probably figure it out *eventually* if they had an old Soviet T-34 to look at or something comparable, but modern engines used in MBTs are just so complex they would be better off hitting the drawing board and inventing their own.
**Gun:** A tank's gun would be much easier to figure out than the engine, especially if they had the smaller machine guns to take apart and look at as well. The Romans would probably be smart enough to appreciate the mechanism that fires a bullet and recreate something similar if they had a way to cast the parts and could scale up the technology to make a cannon. Again, it would be a monumental task, but it could be done if they had an indefinite time frame, budget, and man hours.
**Ammunition:** Sabot? Maybe. Solid shot? Absolutely. High explosive? Probably not. They would need to figure out what gunpowder was and how to make it in addition to making shell casings capable of withstanding immense pressures. I'd say this would be difficult, but not impossible. Steel-cased ammunition would probably work and copper and bronze would be plentiful for the actual bullets and shells. Not sure how they would tackle the primer, however.
**Turret:** Electric? No. Mechanical? Sure.
**Ultimately, the Romans would be catapulted into an industrial revolution using the techniques invented through the reverse-engineering process. They would probably use their newfound knowledge to better their civilization and *not* build another tank.** So to answer your original question, the Romans could only reproduce solid components and parts they are capable of comprehending, like the armor, tracks, wheels, and maybe the guns if they have enough time to break them down and study them. When faced with a combustion engine, they would view it as alien technology. Without a basic understanding of how engines work, no pre-industrial civilization would understand what they were looking at without instruction.
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# The seat covers?
When you compare a 2017 tank with a 1917 tank, you will see many differences. These are **not just** because those silly people in 1917 didn't think of a turret with a big gun and a sloped glacis. They were *unable* to come up with good engines and transmissions that could haul armor plate to resist cannon shots, resistance against rifle shots was the best they could do.
Go back more centuries and you won't even get the screws to hold the engine in place, not to speak of the engine itself.
If they **were** to build an 1:1 scale replica with local materials and technologies, the engine would immediately grind to a halt (or more probably not start, because the starter fails), the turret wouldn't rotate, the gun would burst the first time it shoots full-power ammunition, etc.
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**What they could learn from the tank would revolutionize Rome**
The ancient Romans could not duplicate a modern tank. But it's amazing what they could learn.
* Braided wire from a tow cable.
* Brakes
* Hydraulics
* Strong fabric from the safety belts (at least the weave)
* Clasps from the saftey belts, nuts and bolts, "attachment" tech. (Screws and bolts have been around since 400BC, the Romans would certainly understand how to dismantle the tank.)
* Gears and gear design (they could comprehend the transmision)
* The uses of grease, oil, gasoline(diesel)
* Bearings... Oh, what the Romans could have done if they had bearings...
Even the shapes of things (like the seats) would bring new innovation to the Romans. Crafty little honkers, those Romans.
There are things they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Microelectronics, for one. Laser optics for another. Microscopes weren't invented until 1590, but as @RadovanGarabik points out, they could learn telescopes from the tank's manual optics... which could lead to microscopes ... which could lead to looking at the small stuff. They still wouldn't figure out microelectronics, but they would suddenly learn about electricity and have the ability to examine nearly everything about it. Software would be beyond them, but who cares when you suddenly have electric lighting?
Could they duplciate that tank? Nope. I can't imagine how they could learn alloy lamination that quickly, for example. But I wouldn't sell the Romans short. They could and would learn a tremendous amount of stuff from a modern tank.
***BTW, one assumes that nothing on the tank is locked, that they have access to the cabin and the motor compartments, etc. Perhaps not the ability to turn it on, but if the "key were in the ignition," so to speak, they'd eventually ask themselves, "what does that doohickey do?" and start the beast. The OP's question is sensless if they're locked out. But even then, they could learn stuff just from the outside.***
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They lack enough scientific understanding of the world to understand the basic principles behind the operations. Having said this, however, there is one piece of technology/science that can be grasped and replicated easily, and that is...
**the telescope**
from the gunsight. Glassmaking was known, the lenses were likely known to the Romaioi, they had enough grasp of geometry to formulate decent foundations of optics, once they see and dismantle a working prototype. It might be easier with a WWII era tank, though.
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Lots of great answers. I am going to say that one thing that would prevent anyone from before 1900 or so replicating most modern machinery is ball bearings.
Yep. Ball bearings.
Ball bearings are really, really hard to make. During WW II one of the things that absolutely crippled the Japanese war effort was the loss of the plants that made ball bearings. They had four or five, I think, and most were destroyed in the first bombing runs, the later ones took care of the rest.
That was WW II. Ball bearings require pretty precise tolerances (my dad used to work in a factory that made them. If you were off by 1/1000th of an inch they were thrown out). We forget that it is only in the last century that 1/1000 inch tolerances were possible. That's about what you need to build a modern engine, by the way -- at a minimum. Again, a generation ago my dad had a caliper that measured to the 1/10,000th of an inch and that was eyeballing it in a pretty standard machine shop. Before the advent of relatively advanced cutting and measuring tools that kind of stuff was just not possible.
Anyhow, ball bearings are absolutely essential for an internal combustion engine to work. They are also essential for a modern machine gun. So unless the ancients (or rather, medievals) were able to figure out how to cast 1/4 inch spheres with 1/1000 inch or better tolerances, they wouldn't be able to make much modern equipment.
They could, as others have said, figure out some basic things. Steel was a known quantity, and guns (though smokeless powder was four and a half centuries in the future, because chemistry). So the basic concept would be there (in fact the 14th century had a cannon of sorts, it wasn't very good).
But recall that you need the tools to make the tools. Many of the metals they wouldn't be equipped to even analyze, as the melting temperature of titanium or carbon steel is so high they would have a tough time getting a furnace that hot (maybe a glassmaker could do it?). Then they'd have to know what metals the alloys were made of. Aluminum wasn't discovered until the 19th century, and in fact all the elements in a modern battle tank's metal parts except the iron and carbon weren't discovered until the 1860s at least.
The fuel would be effectively unknown as they haven't got any way to refine it nor any concept of hydrocarbons. They had pitch and some oil, but recall that refining the stuff requires two centuries of chemical knowledge. So a good chunk of the tank would be effectively magic and require a lot of science they hadn't developed yet to reverse engineer. You can forget the electrical systems and electronics. Or plastics.
I suppose they could study the internal combustion engine and figure it out maybe, but there's a lot of basic principles that they'd have to work out first. Technology is built step by step. And sometimes there are new physical principles people find that make some technologies literally inconceivable to earlier generations. For example, a laser is utterly unimaginable without quantum mechanics, so a scientist from 1880 would be completely unable to reverse engineer it because QM hadn't been discovered yet. The very principle of a laser -- and semiconductors, for that matter - would have to wait another thirty or so years at least.
Also recall that getting metal in the preindustrial era was *hard*. If you lived in Iceland in 1400 iron was likely more valuable than gold to you. Gold is pretty useless, but iron? And there wasn't much of it around that could be mined easily. SO getting enough metal together to reproduce a tank would have been a pretty big project, even in iron-rich regions.
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While the other answers cover the tank itself, a few other things that could have significant impact on 14th century.
Additional Equipment likely/possibly present:
Fire Extinguishers - likely compressed CO2. While unlikely they could reverse engineer either the gas or the compressed bottle, it would open them up to the world of modern extinguishing agents. Especially since the bottle itself has instructions on it. And with valves and hoses on the fuel systems, expecially creative individuals could arrive at similar firefighting methods as used in the 1800s
Medical Kit - Wide array of battlefield medications including instructions (designed to be used by the medical illiterate with pictures). All of which far exceeds the medical knowledge of the time. The chemicals would all be beyond the understanding of the times, but the methods of treatment (thanks to the illustrations and instructions), could translate.
Food - Food Supplies -> Food preservation. Tank operators spent most of the time in theater essentially living out of the tank. And military rations store for a long time. Modern rations are usually MREs or equivalent, though occasionally canned goods are used. Unsure which is more likely to be present in a tank. Though a British tank has a boiling unit for making tea.
14th century food preservation methods were limited to salting, drying, etc. Even canning was not discovered until the 19th century.
Combined with the telescope as mentioned by Radovan Garabík, they could potentially discover bacteria substantially earlier (as opposed to 1670s).
Tools - Any equipment/tools left in tank for field repairs/jury rigging. Which could potentially aid is dismantling parts of the tank.
Any instructions in tank - Likely to include simple manuals/maintenance checklists. Unlikely to be detailed operating instructions, though it is potentially possible for repair manuals to be present. Not everything has shifted to digital yet.
14th century England spoke Middle English. Quite a bit different from modern English, but still mostly translatable (excepting modern terminology for which there was no concept for in 14th century e.g. electrical).
So while the tank itself could not be replicated, the amount of knowledge they could gain from it is difficult to calculate. Any 14th century society that had a 20th/21st century tank to study could potentially accelerate their technological level by several hundred years.
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Not at all! Firstly, the Romans lack the metallurgy and the manufacturing process. Secondly, they wouldn't understand the basic mechanics of internal combustion engines.
Building a tank embodies many centuries of technical development and millennia of skills and knowledge to make them.
They could make a copycat tank out of wood, but it couldn't move or do anything useful. Also, the cost in terms of resources would be too great.
The concept is a non-starter. Sounds cute, but that's all.
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What can be learned from it depends upon how effort they put into it. Which depends upon how the encounter it. If they see it wipe out an army, they will learn a lot because they will understand that it can be useful and powerful. If all they see is it sitting in a field, they aren't going to learn anything beyond there being a big metal object sitting in the middle of a field.
If they see it in action, that would indicate a person came along, and that person will be able to provide invaluable insight that could help them in their efforts to replicate it for as long as that person lived.
They won't be able to actually replicate it in any reasonable amount of time, what they will learn immediately is that there are possibilites that are worth pursuing.
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So were talking about Rome in the 14th century. Prior to Leonardo DaVinci, but we have some things in place that could lead to advancements.
Let's set some assumptions early on. The Tank gets back in time or across dimensions, or whatever, with at least one person who can operate the tank and speaks a close enough language that he will be able to communicate in fairly short order. If you don't have this guy along for the ride, then a mysterious heavy thing will be in the landscape, ignored and feared, at least until someone gets curious enough to set something on fire and blow themselves up, or the dirt builds up around it and it gets buried as an unremarkable hillock.
**Here is what 14th century Romans could cope with (after a brief demonstration):**
A Cannon. A tank's main gun is a big cannon. It is a Tube that you set fire to the back of and a projectile comes flying out the other side to destroy the enemy. Yes, a tank's main gun is very complex, but that stuff surrounds the concept of loading and reloading. The core concept has not changed in hundreds of years.
A Cart for mobility. Cart mounted [Ballistae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroballista) were common even in ancient Roman times.
Though slow, oxen could pull a lot of weight.
Protecting your people. Ever hear of a shield turtle? 'Nuff said.
Your 14th century Romans might think this combination is a darn good idea.
**What they aren't going to be able to deal with:**
modern metallurgy and chemistry. They don't have the precision and tools to duplicate the metals and such required to duplicate the abilities of the tank's main gun or armor.
The internal combustion engine. The precision required is just plain beyond them not to mentioned the chemistry needed for lubrication and fuel. This goes double for the turbine powered modern tanks.
An Absolute Genius might be able to puzzle through the transmission and the Tread concept.
With a little guidance, they may even be able to get the concept of a breech loaded gun well enough to duplicate it.
So what I imagine is a large-ish cart that is pushed by two or three oxen. The cannon is mounted to a swivel at the front of the cart, probably right over the front axle. The whole thing is almost completely covered by interlocking roman infantry shields. Two ports are there for archers to stand up and shoot from relative safety.
The real key to this being awesome, though, is if they can duplicate a simple [Breech Loading gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech-loading_swivel_gun). That way the cannon crew could re-load faster and from relative safety. These guns were known that far back, and could be scaled up some.
You end up with something that will be nearly invincible to the common weapons of the day (bows, crossbows, normal infantry, and cavalry), so long as you had a buffer of infantry to move with the "tank". You will be able to move and shoot more quickly than anyone might expect (not real fast, but fast enough).
At least until someone figures out a well dug trench will make your life miserable.
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One of my characters is extremely strong, due to their unusual physiology. They can bench press hundreds of kilograms, and so on. They had to hide their strength for a long time, but, as a result, they got immensely fat, so eventually, they give in and decide to start exercise again. Unfortunately, they still need to hide their strength.
One of the best place to exercise, since exercising at home is out of question, is a fairly large local gym. What would my character need to do to disguise their strength and stamina, while still doing useful enough exercises for their weight loss and muscle rebuilding?
Edit: the gym is in the script. It's scheduled and it's unavoidable.
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## Swim or row, in water
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> doubling of speed of the Navy YP from 7 to 14 knots increases the power [requirements] by a factor of 10! - [Study materials](https://www.usna.edu/NAOE/_files/documents/Courses/EN400/02.07%20Chapter%207.pdf)
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The energy requirements to go fast in water are roughly cubic to speed, as a 3rd order. A little more speed takes a lot more energy. So your super person will only seem to go a bit faster than normal, not many times normal.
It would help if the gym has one of those "treadmill pools" that creates an artificial current to swim against, as the speed of the current would not be obvious.
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**Swim to France. Run to Versailles.**
There are better and more secretive ways besides the gym for a super-strong, super-enduring, super-fat person to lose weight.
Swimming is energy intensive since it uses many muscle groups at once, doubly so if the water is cold, since you burn calories fighting the cold.
Your character wakes up before dawn, runs to the coast and starts swimming. They swim into the deep ocean where no one else can see them. After a few days swimming around -- Here I assume super-endurance includes super-not-getting-sleepy -- they swim back to land in the middle of the night.
+10 bonus points for each shark they punch in the face on the way.
**Problems:**
*(1) If the character wants a normal life, training for days-at-a-time regularly will not mesh with work.*
They only need to give up a "normal life" temporarily. The character described in the question does not need to swim to France every day to remain fit. They only have to do it long enough to shed their excess weight. So they can simply only swim on weekends, or simply not have a job for long enough to complete the project. Then afterwards they can return to a normal life.
If necessary they can go full hunter-gatherer during this time to avoid paying rent etc. For example sleeping on a deserted Pacific island and gathering food by clapping their hands to stun schools of fish and knock birds and coconuts out of the sky. Of course if they already have a family at home to support they cannot afford to disappear like this.
*(2) Speed, if the character compresses the time by just running/swimming fast, we're back to square one.*
That's why you run at normal human speed, to appear as a normal jogger, and only swim full speed one you get out of sight of land.
*(3) Position, being spotted swimming in the middle of the ocean will require some explanations.*
I think you are overestimating the visibility of a single swimming human at 3 miles (distance to the horizon). They might be visible as a "swimming object" but they will see any ships long before the ship can recognize them as a human. Then they can just swim away.
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2 things:
1: Strength training != weight loss. If your aim is weight loss then strength isn’t really a factor. Anything repetitive that burns calories is good. Running burns many calories and is utterly innocuous. Eating better is good too. If your person burns fewer calories lifting/moving etc then they should similarly be eating less.
2: Strength training != toning. Holding light weight in a stress position for an elongated time (generally) improves tone better than holding a heavy weight for a short time. Many highly effective toning exercises use nothing but body weight, and can be done innocuously everywhere. For example leaning slightly backwards in a chair without resting your back on the backrest will tone abs and core incredibly well if you can hold it for a long period of time. Your super strong person might have issues with body weight being insufficient, but then they can do something similar with gym weights (lift and hold dumbbells without locking their elbows, do sets of weighted squats *really slowly*, etc) to achieve a similar effect. The key is not huge weight, it’s time and consistency. Weighted belts, bracelets or anklets may be helpful to provide day-to-day resistance. It’s also possible that secondary superpowers take care of the tone issue.
After all, superheroes do tend to be cut with little to no effort!
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You don't need a gym. build things.
Take up a calorie intensive hobby, like wood working or masonry and just do everything with hand tools. as a bonus you can build better control and precision at the same time you loose weight. Saw a down trees into planks with just a hand saw, and precision shave the wood with an hand ax. or make stone sculptures using nothing but files and hand chisels. The more you screw up the more calories you burn. If you are worried they are not burning enough add some jogging with hidden weights or swimming as others have suggested, probably a good idea to make sure every muscle gets used anyway.
build a hardwood deck, boat, swimming pool, or a new addition using nothing but hand tools, choose a setting that is rural enough no one will see them often enough to notice they are using no power tools. Maybe even scatter a few power tools around to hide suspicion of how fast the work is going.
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If you must stick to strength training and not better alternatives like the other answers, do gymnastics. Lots of body weight stuff so the heavier you weight, the harder the workout is and an equilibrium will be found. Also, you can wear lead vests on rings while doing something like the iron cross. People will question that less than putting 1000kg worth of weights plates onto your barbell. Wear a jersey or something over top so it's not obviously a weight vest.
But really, the best solution is to just not focus on strength exercises or the gym. Wear that lead vest and weighted boots and run every day. Maybe run to work every day. Maybe just wear it all day if you can. I guarantee that dead-lifting 200lbs is easier than running for an hour carrying just 10lbs around. Go running with a 500lbs weight vest, and you might be doing more exercise than a workhorse.
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Home gym.
Not very expensive (I have a small one, it cost me around $400-500) with squat rack, barbell, and weights.
For someone with super strength, it'd probably cost a bit more (as the weights are more expensive - about 50 cents per pound), but should be something budgetable for your normal adult, if they really want it - I'd guess somewhere between $1500-2000 to outfit a gym that would help this character.
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**Bring your own weights made out of lead instead of the usual iron.**
Lead has almost twice the density of iron. A lead weight plate with a fake "20kg" label will actually weigh close to 40kg. Of course you’d have to somehow bring the weights and ensure that nobody else lifts them or they’ll quickly realize something is off. Another caveat is that it will only double the weight. If your hero is more than twice as strong as a fit human it won’t challenge them enough.
Apart from that I really can’t think of a way to make free weight lifting exercises such as the Benchpress, Squat or Deadlift harder without it being obvious to an observer.
Using a different stance or lifting with one arm or leg only would be obvious. Doing more repetitions would be obvious and less effective.
As others have said, if your only goal is to lose weight, burning calories through cardio (running, swimming, cycling etc.) will be more effective.
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**Hit multiple gyms in the same day**
If your character only spends 60-90 minutes in each gym, they will avoid drawing attention from the staff and regulars.
**Focus on repetitions and endurance with smaller weights**
Doing anything with 500 lbs would draw attention. So instead of one repetition with 500 lb, do five repetitions with 100 lb.
**Mix it up**
Most staff and gym goers have specific days and times that they cover consistently. You can further avoid attention by following an irregular schedule, mixing up times of day and days of week, and skipping some gyms for days or weeks at a time. So even if someone suspects that something is off, they may not see your character again for a few weeks or months and will have a harder time inferring a pattern.
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To build strength, work one arm at a time. The other people probably won't notice that you're not pushing with one of your arms as you lift weights made for both arms.
(To lose weight, you'd probably just have to jog for a long time.)
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They should eat lots of beans and laxatives a few minutes prior to hitting the gym.
Then, while weight lifting, they should hold it all in.
This will cause them to sweat and moan like someone straining to lift at lot of weight even though they are not actually at their top capacity.
Other people will look at the character and think, "wow, they are putting a lot of effort to lift those weights". The effort is going somewhere else, but the illusion is maintained.
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What do you want to train?
A heavylifter is mostly a mass of bulky muscle of the explosive (mostly) anearobic muscle type. They can carry the heaviest weights... for short periods of time. Heavylifting also does not really engage your fat burning cycles, which take a short while to start up and start burning to feed your muscles. Which brings us to endurance.
An endurance athlete will be much leaner and less bulky, using aerobic duration muscle types more. This takes far longer and will mostly burn fat instead of the ready energy storage in the muscles.
It would be hard to hide a heavylifter training easily. You would have to use Joe's stances to make a lighter weight take more effort to lift. An endurance athlete would be easier, you can make sure your endurance doesnt take a day or more to tire yourself out by simply increasing the speed with which you move.
The best solution: triathlon like training. Triathletes do not outperform anybody since they are master of none, but they can do more things well than the hyper specialized athletes which only engage in a single sport or training. You will train strength with a combination of weight and stances while training various endurance sports, from cycling to jogging/running to whatever else you can think off. Add modern dance routines and free running while you are at it. Some breakdancing or whatever combined with all the weird movements and jumps of free running would train your body well. Unlike free runners though you would focus more on movements that arent efficient so it tires you out more, and the drop&rolls designed to slow down your body would also help strengthen your bones and ability to take a fall.
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Super-strong character wouldn't get super-fat through absence of super-excercise.
You get fat when you ingest more calories than you spend. The calorie expenditure comes from the work (in a physics sense of the word) done and is same no matter how strong you are. That means than 1) both a wimp like me and your super-character burn roughly the same amount of calories when walking the same distance and 2) both of us ingest roughly same amount of calories when eating same cheeseburgers. Which means: **superheroes have the same problems and solutions as regular people when it comes to obesity**.
From your description it would require your character to have some perpetuum mobile / magic biochemistry, that is being able to extract 3000kcal from a 300kcal burger and/or spend 10kcal on doing a 100kcal job. Even if that was the case, the solution is always to 1) eat less 2) train **longer**. Never harder.
Your setting of "fat superman at a gym" sounds like a big potential, but hiding super-strength at gym because of fat is not a viable background.
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**Weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise**
<https://www.simplemost.com/weight-loss-80-percent-diet-20-percent-exercise/>
They don't need a gym nor do they need to work out, period.
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> One of my characters is extremely strong, due to their unusual physiology.
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The human body has a minimum daily calorie requirement and this requirement would be higher for someone with intrinsic strength physiology. They would have to be eating an immense amount of food to outpace their daily calorie needs.
This character needs to simply stop eating so much.
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> One of the best place to exercise, since exercising at home is out of question, is a fairly large local gym.
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Why? How did you land on this requirement?
This person needs to go run around a remote mountain range every weekend, throw fallen trees and boulders, and the pounds will melt away.
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> Hiding superstrength in plain sight at the gym
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For the sake of answering the question at face value and ignoring the non-sensical details of your question:
They have to observe others in a similar physique and limit their exercise to that of others. They cannot grossly outpace others at the gym because that will quickly garner attention.
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Repetion burn calories while weight strengths the muscle just have you character focus on doing more sets rather than lifting his max weight.
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Low weight, high reps and a lean diet may be the way to go.
Ask any serious body builder and they will tell you that the key to a lean body is not cardio but it is having a good diet. As long as you take enough protein each day, which is 1-1.5 grams of protein for every kg of body weight, spread this throughout the day split within 5 meals, every 2 hours or more, less meals does work also as fasting routines can show great results, have a small amount of starchy carbohydrates with each meal so your body produces insulin to carry the protein to your cells and some green veg or other nutritional veg for the vitamins and antioxidants with one meal at least will keep your body healthy.
Carbs are the main enemy when trying to loose weight but we still need small amounts to carry the proteins to the cells and provide energy for the day and training.
Many people use cardio to keep lean but this can be dangerous when taken to extremes, so moderate cardio is fine and a good idea but mostly for stamina and lung capacity but the problem with doing cardio and trying to build mass with weight lifting is the cardio interferes with the amount of muscle your body is able to build. Most body builders recommend 25 minutes of light cardio, 3 times a week, preferably on off days, doing it before or after a weights session will impact the energy you will have left to train and the recovery of your muscles.
There is a debate over light vs heavy weights in the body building community, both provide good results but the problem with training with light weights is that you need to do high reps, so 15-30 and over time this puts a strain on your joints and can wear them out, but light weight high reps does work, if you look at rowers and swimmers they have great shoulders and back, and just using a rowing machine can build good definition and mass.
It also depends on if this superpowered persons muscles reacts to stimulus in the same way as a normal person if so then even heavy weights wont seem super, I have trained with people who can lift 300-400 kg on most compound lifts and I personally can lift 340 kg on a bar for some exercises not included machines which you can lift 400 kg over on, so anything under 600 kg is not super strength, it is just normal person strong. But if this super powered beings muscles cannot be stimulated by normal peoples weights then they wont be able to build mass, it would be like us trying to get big with 1 kg dumbbells. In that case some secret truck lifting at night will be needed.
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**You don't want a Gym** Strength work breaks muscle fibres, and the re-growth of those fibres is what adds bulk. So your character needs to avoid heavy work, and do lots of (relatively) light work but frequently. Might call this "endurance"
Consider the difference between one lift, and lifting a thousandth of that mass, a thousand times.
Weight-loss is simply a matter of (energy-in) being less than (energy-expended) averaged across a day.
I suggest **cycling** as a solution - the rider will move around the region, so not being in the same place means less likely to be noticed. Riding 10% faster requires double the energy input - so riding 33 km/h is twice as hard as 30 km/h if everything else is the same.
Each crank-rotation is a light-weight single exercise, but you'd be doing the same action 60-90 times a minute which gives the endurance exercise required.
Finally, cycling can replace a car/train/etc commute, so can be blended with your character's daily activities. And if the straight-line commute isn't enough, take a scenic "tiki-tour" route between home and work.
A story needs interactions between people, consider:
* "a `fat' man on a MTB blasts past roadies and they can't catch him"
* "same, but catches and passes a bogan/yob/chav driver, who takes offense"
* "same, but passes police car on callout" and hijinks ensue.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Restricting antimatter - practical rather than legal measures](/questions/118966/restricting-antimatter-practical-rather-than-legal-measures)
(11 answers)
[Using magnetic fields to prevent a weaponized warp drive?](/questions/97662/using-magnetic-fields-to-prevent-a-weaponized-warp-drive)
(8 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
My scenario involves a high sci-fi setting, where starships are readily available to civilians with sufficient qualifications and money. Most civilians would not be fueling ships with antimatter though, as it would primarily only be used in warp drives, which only larger capital ships or specialized exploration vessels would have. In this setting, antimatter is relatively abundant, with basically anyone with a ship that needs it being able to acquire it. The problem with antimatter, as you probably know, is its capability of creating massive explosions when it annihilates. Is there any conceivable reason that could prevent antimatter bombs from being commonplace and keep any Joe Schmo with an antimatter fuel cell from instantly obliterating a capital ship while still allowing plasma based projectiles to be viable?
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Anti-matter is still not easily store-able but is instead made on-demand inside the ship in some kind of "charge reversal chamber" (possibly with the aid of some kind of 'unobtainium' which would then become the defacto fuel being bought and sold in place of the anti-matter it produces).
since anti-matter cannot be stored the maximum damage your ships can do is simply going to be equal to their reactors power-output rigged up to the best weapon they can find, which might still be lot but isn't necessarily nuclear Armageddon levels.
It's possible that major governments to have specialised/expensive/advanced machinery capable of storing anti-matter if you still want some form of anti-matter weaponry in your setting
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# Expense of containing it
How do you contain anti-matter in a safe way? I don't know, but someone does in your story.
It may be that containing anti-matter is so energy expensive that the only way to power a long-term anti-matter storage unit is with an anti-matter reactor. In that case, only the people with the money to operate anti-matter reactors in the first place could possibly store enough anti-matter to make a weapon.
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Jon's Law: Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction.
Basically, you're in a setting where the average person who can pay is already in possession of a personal WMD. Adding antimatter simply makes the existing problem that much worse, so no, there really is nothing you can do about it.
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There are really two problems you should be thinking about here, but luckily they both have reasonable solutions.
**The question you asked:** Use of home-made antimatter bombs against military assets.
You're thinking "how do I keep home-made antimatter bombs out of Joe Schmoe's hands, but a military ship isn't really going to be worried about that. Joe Schmoe with a home-made antimatter bomb is equivalent to the modern US Navy facing a pissed off white nationalist with a ton of fertilizer in a fishing boat. Yeah, the bomb will do a lot of damage to destroyer if you actually GET it there, but if they're paying any attention at all, Joe Schmoe and his bomb are going to get detected and destroyed long before they're close enough to be a threat to the ship.
**The trickier question you didn't ask**: Use of home-made antimatter bombs against CIVILIAN assets.
This is trickier because office buildings and cruise ships and hotels and things don't have point-defense weaponry. Terrorism is a much more serious threat when you've got freely available antimatter, but I think you've got a pretty simple solution: Unless your containment system is 100% perfect, you're always going to be emitting radiation as stray atoms of antimatter annihilate with stray atoms of regular matter. A 99.999999% perfect system is good enough to prevent that from causing any damage anybody cares about, but it will STILL result in your antimatter fuel cells having a detectable radiation signature.
Your solution is just to ensure that antimatter fuel cells are only freely available in places where ships are being refueled, and trying to take one anywhere ELSE is going to be immediately detected and result in a giant pile of authorities descending upon you.
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You could make it very difficult to contain in the correct way to weaponize it.
We have this issue with nuclear power (thankfully!). It is much harder to get Uranium to explode with the force of a nuclear bomb than it is to get power from it. You have to enrich it first.
One of the major unknowns with using antimatter is containment. Good containment is tricky. [The best we have accomplished has contained antiprotons for 16 minutes](http://press.cern/press-releases/2011/06/cern-experiment-traps-antimatter-atoms-1000-seconds). Perhaps the only way to store antimatter for any reasonable period of time stabilizes it so well that even if you dismantle the apparatus, it still takes time for the energy to dissipate. Perhaps the antimatter *itself* is part of the containment, and the antimatter's properties are sufficient to maintain the containment for a short while.
Perhaps [vortex math](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFC6unmgYFI) actually provides some useful results. Rodin coils are popular in that community because they are believed to be ... well... I'll just say there's a lot of people who think you can violate the conservation of energy principle with them. Here's an [example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1hLoWjl7xk) of something they can actually do.
One of the neat things that happens in these experiments is that you manage to spin something up to great angular speeds, and even if you remove power, the object continues spinning (due to its angular inertia). However, if anything from vortex math turns out to be correct, we might find that "something else" can start spinning, and that spinning stabilizes the antimatter so that it doesn't immediately annhilate.
(Note: in particle physics, we often refer to things as "spin" simply because they have rotation-like properties. This "spinning" could be a new attribute of matter rather than actual physical spinning like the ball magnet in the video)
If this happened, it could take a minute or two for the spin to decay. A weapon that discharges over a minute or two is *much* less terrifying than one which discharges over milliseconds.
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> My scenario involves a high sci-fi setting, where starships are readily
> available to **civilians with sufficient qualifications and money**.
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So you've established that your world has some kind of certification authority (checking qualifications), a central bank (issuing money), and a military (implied in your reference to *civilians*). All this implies your story-line takes place during peaceful times with a functioning society and stable government.
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> In this setting, antimatter is relatively abundant, with basically
> anyone with a ship that **needs it** being able to **acquire it**.
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Anyone with a ship that **needs it** being able to **acquire it** is fine as long as they are not allowed to **collect and store large quantities**. The key is to contain the antimatter in approved fuel cells.
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> Is there any reason that could prevent antimatter **bombs from being
> commonplace** and keep any **Joe schmo with an antimatter fuel cell** from
> instantly obliterating a **capital ship** while still allowing **plasma**
> **based projectiles** to be viable?
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There's a lot of unrelated concepts mixed up in this question.
1. Preventing bombs from being common-place: Regions of space where the antimatter is abundant are all under tight government control. A fuel cell is not a bomb. Buying raw anti-matter to make a bomb is impossible.
2. Joe Schmo only has a government-issued antimatter fuel cell. Cells are only large enough to fulfill approved flight plans in between government checkpoints. Long journeys require refueling at checkpoints.
3. Capital ships, assuming these are military ships, wouldn't just let a civilian starship sneak up into blast range (further reading: [Are nuclear weapons useful in space?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/47055/are-nuclear-weapons-useful-in-space)). They'll shoot them before they get too close.
4. Plasma based projectiles only require microscopically small quantities of antimatter to be lethal, so yes you can still have that.
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Yes and No,
The simplest way to think about it is how fertiliser is handled modern day, if you have a need for it (Farmer or in your case ship owner) you can get it. If you start to buy more than you need for your purpose they halt your purchasing and send investigators to clear you. So your security is making sure anyone who has enough to be a threat would never use it that way, it's not foolproof but that is the tradeoff between safety and usability.
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**The smoking gun effect**
Hydrogen and antihydrogen collisions are going to have some very energetic emission spectra, some of them in the ultraviolet.
Other than stars there are very few sources of high energy emissions at these wavelengths (read almost none). So mass production efforts at equipping important terrestial areas and space lanes with cheaply built optical sensors and mesh networking would yield a detection network that would make it possible to do forensic data analysis to say this explosion originated in this very narrow region of space.
Woe betide the poor sap who launched the anti-matter bullet when the cops get finished doing a lot of matrix manipulations on sensor data.
You can make the reasonable assumption here that anyone who is making anti-matter on a large scale either has harnessed enough energy to be further along the kardashev scale than we are. Or they have learned considerably more about physics and materials science. Or both. In any event, this makes it almost certain that they have the necessary raw materials and energy to mass produce a mesh network sensor array for multiple wavelengths at a cost scale far below todays standards.
It is a lot harder to get away with breaking the law when everyone sees you doing it.
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I think the best way to prevent antimatter use as a weapon is to simply have it be incorporated into your ship, so that you have to crash your entire ship to actually have it react to anything. During normal operation it'll be locked into a stasis field or whatever is on your ship that prevents it from exploding you.
Now if someone does crash a ship, there's a good chance of an antimatter explosions happening. Perhaps most cities will have anti crash buffers in place that will magnetically control a ships decent, locking it in place if it seems to be crashing? That would at least deal with your landing sites.
Another way that comes to mind is to use quantum teleportation to control antimatter. Have your antimatter entangled with the inside of a vacuum tube with the quantum particle you're using. Then you buy that unit and download the entanglement specs onto your ships computer. Now your ship can only access a single molecule of antimatter at a time whenever you engage the entanglement function. That would at least prevent someone from having a lot of antimatter at once, so long as bein locked into the engine is the only way to prevent it from exploding the ship.
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**Containment is a trade secret and has safeguards**
Perhaps only a single company/species knows how to create antimatter containment (or generate anitmatter at the moment of use or teleporting the antimatter to the user's location, for all we know--they are not telling) and they have specialized technology to do so. Said technology has safeguards so that it limits the amount of antimatter that can be output at a time based on the size of the ship it was installed in. Attempts to break into the device to reverse engineer the technology have only led to the timely deaths of those investigating and of course exercising the ruinous penalty clause (probably against the entire planetary system of the flag of the device, making each species very eager to enforce the rules) of the rental agreement.
How does the company get new customers? Perhaps an exploratory advertising branch that puts plaques on the far side of the moon (or whatever is convenient in-system) of potential species with a little radio transmitter good for a few million years with instructions on how to build a FTL beacon that requires a certain level of technology. Of course, for all we know maybe they seed life-bearing world to *create* their customer base. A high-technology rich species with a long term outlook of millions of years.
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You would need to create it somewhere else or you would need to use some other fuel to create it first, which would beg the question why you wouldnt use that fuel directly. The implication of this is that you can readily store it without it detonating within your ship until you need it. If you can store it you can also prevent an anti-matter warhead from detonating on your hull, for example by using a larger version of whatever antimatter manipulation you have to prevent the antimatter touching the insides of your ship on the outside. Alternatives like using antimatter similar to a nuke (have it react with some matter in the warhead) might be easier to stop or detonate prematurely, for example with another antimatter warhead or long-range antimatter manipulation.
As another alternative: large ships are only capable of space drive travel. The assumption is that the drive needs to be big or specialized so only large ships can carry them. But what if only large ships can safely transport antimatter? This means any antimatter weapon would immediately be too small to contain the antimatter safely till it reaches the target. Launching "naked" antimatter would mean any matter fired into it would immediately disperse the antimatter and render it mostly harmless if not detonate too close to the ship firing it.
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In order to keep anti-matter from being weaponized there should be multiple prohibitive layers to actually extracting energy from anti-matter. I will outline some examples here.
**Anti-Matter Creation is Prohibitively Expensive**
It is currently incredibly difficult create anti-matter "on-demand", and certainly not in large quantities. Perhaps, technological advancements have been made such that this substantial improvements have been made, but it is still extremely expensive for anyone outside of heavily funded government entities or extremely well-funded private corporations to do so easily. This likely requires specific purchases or rare elements, that could be regulated or monitored much the same way deadly compounds are monitored today.
**Anti-Matter Storage Is Prohibitively Expensive**
If you are using anti-matter as an energy source you likely want to store it somehow. Even though the technology exists, even in your world it is still difficult and expensive to safely store sufficiently large anti-matter quantities. Once again, it likely has specific requirements in terms of items to purchase to achieve which could be monitored.
**Amount of Anti-Matter Needed for a Weapon Is Prohibitively Large**
For use of anti-matter as fuel, maybe you only need a small amount to be sufficient, or a small rate of production. For a large-scale weapon, you might need a large quantity. Even if a person is able to create and store a small amount, it is not enough to make anything more dangerous than conventional explosives, and is more expensive.
**Use as Fuel Needs to Not be Too Prohibitive**
I just listed off some reasons how to make anti-matter hard to use. But how then can it be so commonly used as starship fuel? Couldn't you just siphon some from your starship's tank?
What I propose is that starships have been able to get around some of the above restrictions by exploiting some of the differences in use-cases between fuel and weapon.
The starships engine is not an anti-matter storage container, and the fuel is not anti-matter. The fuel is instead a rare and expensive element or compound that produces a specific rate of anti-matter particle emission through radioactive decay when combined with a small amount of another specific element or compound (let's call it a catalyst). Otherwise it is inert. The engine then combines the two substances within a specific chamber and immediately harvest the energy. No storage is needed at all for the anti-matter, and the rate of anti-matter production is only suitable for a continuous relatively slow reaction (i.e. like a burning match, the reaction is too slow to cause a runaway reaction).
Now an intrepid terrorist can easily get ahold of the fuel, and the catalyst, but will not be able to store enough of the produced anti-matter to weaponize it. Other methods to create large quantities of anti-matter in a short time are prohibitively expensive, so that is out as an option also.
BONUS: Since the engine gets around the need to store the anti-matter, have the emitted anti-particle be electrically neutral, such as an anti-neutron. Since charged particles like a positron are orders of magnitude easier to capture and store compared to neutral particles, even though there is a continuous source of anti-matter, it is even more difficult to capture and store it.
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The question could be answered by starting from a similar question:
**Since flammable liquids are common vehicle fuels, what prevents them from being commonly weaponized?**
Indeed, the majority of contemporary weapons don't use destructive potential of common fuels, they mostly use them as, well, fuels. Why is that? Probably because common-fuel-based weapons are not very powerful, effective and safe to use (although some are still occasionally used in guerrilla warfare, e.g. [Molotov cocktail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov_cocktail)). Even [VBIEDs/SVBIEDs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_bomb) don't use their fuel as a (primary) source of explosion.
Similar situation may arise for antimatter fuel. The fuel-based antimatter bombs could be so terribly impractical that it might be simpler to obtain more conventional weapons. For example, the fuel might be stored in a lot of hard-to-break containers with a relatively low antimatter content.
Add a common belief that antimatter fuel can't melt space station beams and your terrorists and guerrillas will use other means to try to achieve their goals.
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## Anything can be Weaponized
**The task is to keep it from irresponsible people**
Antimatter can be stored as positronium hydride (a hydrogen atom bound to an atom of positronium) to keep from extreme damage when touching anything. Using this compound lowers the risk of catastrophic *incidents*. Anything can happen when you involve humans in anything.
Since Antimatter in your cas is mainly obtained through a spaceship, a system might have to be put in place that any interactions involving antimatter are computer controlled on a closed system. Internal specialists will have to be searched before entering and exiting the plant, and should work there no more than a week or so. This will keep internal sabotages at bay.
Then there is the case where an attack on an antimatter fueled ship could result in the annihilation of antimatter in extremely catastrophic ways, the same when an antimatter spaceship wrecks. This can be minimized through antimatter fuel cells, but again, anything can happen with humans.
The question you are trying to solve is about minimizing the risk of an antimatter attack, and preventing any antimatter fueled attacks means no use of antimatter whatsoever.
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**Antimatter as a Catalyst, Not an Energy Storage**
You said that antimatter was only used in warp drives. Well, warp drives are weird, let's make them use an exotic ingredient, antimatter, but only as a catalyst of sorts. Perhaps a (smallish) ring of anti-molybdenum is needed to convert neutrons from a nuclear power source into warp energy.
However, the anti-molybdenum slowly decays as the neutrons impact it, so it must be replenished after every voyage. This is an easy task due to the revolutionary Mr. Accelerator™ devices, which can produce small quantities of antimatter (maybe a milligram or so a week).
These devices are expensive, and only governments can afford to have enough to restore anti-molybdenum rings. The antimatter is immediately transported to the ships and installed on the rings. Better yet, it it made in situ.
Additionally, the antimatter is only stable in space in vacuum under a solid 10 meters of lead (or uranium, your choice). Due advances in 3D printing, a 3D printed frame of anti-neodymiun-iron-boron holds the anti-molybdenum ring in place, and is in turn secured by immense (regular matter) neodymium-iron-boron magnets. To remove the rings, you would need to some how break the laws of physics and turn of permanent magnets.
What stops people from using the Mr. Accelerator™ devices to make antimatter warheads? The ridiculously small amount of antimatter it produces per unit of energy. It just isn't economical to build trillion-dollar warheads just for most of them to miss a space ship.
And against civilian targets? Antimatter weapons are by no means small. They are also much too heavy to be much use on planets. It's just easier to use a fission (not even fusion) bomb.
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If your society has spaceships and starships and antimatter fueled warp drives, it is probable that it has slower than light ships that can reach relativistic speeds, and faster than light ships that travel at multiples of the speed of light.
Space ships that can travel that fast make terrifying kinetic weapons, regardless of their power sources. The impact of such a ship with another objects is likely to cause an explosion similar to or greater than the explosion of its fuel supply without a collision would be.
So the deadly danger would be the spaceships as well as any antimatter fuel they contain.
Therefore, spaceship trajectories would be highly regulated anywhere near a solar system with inhabited planets. Spaceships that approach the solar systems with threatening orbits, or spaceships within the solar system that suddenly deviate from their approved orbits, would be attacked, vaporized, and/or diverted first and questions asked later - if there are any survivors or intact flight recorders.
In the *Star Trek: The Next Generation* episode "Haven" (30 November 1987) an unidentified spaceship is approaching the star system of the planet Haven. Valeda Innis, the First Electorine of Haven, calls the starship *Enterprise* which happens to be in the Haven system:
>
> VALEDA [on viewscreen]: An incoming vessel has bypassed our stargate, violating our law. It has refused any attempt at communication.
>
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> PICARD: Are you saying you believe it to be hostile?
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> VALEDA [on viewscreen]: Failure to communicate is inherently hostile. We have no defensive capabilities here and our treaty with the Federation specifies your obligations in that matter.
>
>
>
The stargate is not described and it is uncertain what percentage of other star systems have stargates.
It is possible that the stargate is the exit point of a some sort of space warp leading to another solar system. The voyage through that space warp bypassing many light years of space could be much shorter and faster than travelling though those light years of space, even with warp drive.
Because of the many, many, many problems and inconsistencies with speed, distance, and time in every *Star Trek* production starting with TOS, there is
a theory that many interstellar voyages in *Star Trek* involve travelling through one or more of those hypothetical space warps to vastly shorten the journey length and travel time.
So the idea that the stargate in "Haven" could be the exit of some type of space warp used for interstellar travel is very attractive.
Another possible theory is that the stargate in "Haven" is some type of vast space fortress that all spaceships that approach the system have to match velocity with and dock with. The spaceships are inspected for contraband and alien germs and the passengers and crews checked. Then the crews would probably be sent to the destination planet as guests/prisoners in a separate spaceship manned by a Haven crew and another Haven crew would board the ship to take it to Haven.
All Haven citizens allowed to operate spaceships in the Haven system would be psychologically profiled and selected for extreme loyalty to Haven, and their families would be held as hostages. Whenever a spaceship deviated from its assigned course the families would be tortured and images of the torture broadcast to the spaceship until it returned to the assigned course.
Presumably a Federation starship would be exempt from the requirement to stop at the stargate.
Antimatter would also be very strictly controlled. Antimatter would be produced in gigantic space factories far from anything that could be damaged by a gigantic, planet-devastating, explosion. The antimatter that was sold to customers for spaceship or other use would be in containers and legally considered to be "Sealed Evil in A Can".
<https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SealedEvilInACan> [1](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SealedEvilInACan)
Because misusing a tiny amount of antimatter is equal to releasing Cthulhu upon an unsuspecting world.
Presumably the containers, and the spaceships and installations that used antimatter, would have complex AI programs to determine whether the antimatter is being used properly and whenever the programs suspected intent to misuse the antimatter they would unleash killer robots to kill first and ask questions later.
Thus the spaceship-using or antimatter-using characters in your story would be constantly worrying and checking that anything that they did with spaceships or antimatter was not only legal but also didn't appear to be even the least bit suspicious, since they would live in constant fear of the horrifying penalties for doing anything that seemed even the least bit suspicious with their spaceships and/or antimatter.
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**Antimatter Storing Crystal**
If antiprotons could be stored in a special crystal, (ordinary protons can absorb/conduct in certain materials, so maybe there might be a way for antiprotons to do so), then it could be tied up this way that makes it tough to access a lot of it all at once.
---Edits---
I'm imagining a crystal with a certain central axis of symmetry. When a small voltage is placed at a right angle to that axis, it breaks the symmetry allowing particle-antiparticle collisions, which somehow produces a current (I'm imagining the antiproton-proton pairs sitting in molecular holes (holes like in the center of a buckyball)).
A larger voltage can produce a larger current, but only up to a point of saturation. So while these crystal store a great deal of energy, there are limits on how much power can be delivered at any particular point in time.
<https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerCrystal>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_conductor>
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**Antimatter Bombs are Useless**
An antimatter reactor is a piece of precision hardware the likes of which humanity has never constructed before, Every second of its operation requires constant monitoring and if anything goes wrong there's an ungodly explosion. The people who work with them are serious, careful and procedure-oriented.
The hardware itself is a monolith of technology the size of a small spacecraft on its own.
If you wanted to explode such a reactor then you'd merely have to shut down its containment systems for a moment, but to do that, you'd have to get past every safeguard, security guard and the full defences of an active war-footing capital ship.
Such technology is strictly regulated and prohibitively expensive, the only non-military organisations who operate them are staggeringly wealthy interstellar corporations who operate their own private armies and can readily defend their equipment as well as any military would.
Anti-matter bombs are no different. they are unstable, requiring perfect containment for their entire operational lifespan. They are the last word in Mass Destruction. Their mere existence courts disaster and no government will tolerate anyone having access to them.
But they're also the most unwieldy weapon ever devised. A ball of sophisticated technology the size of a small building, regulated by a crew of a dozen highly educated men and women until the day comes that they set it on a timer and flee the scene.
Such devices are worthless as weapons of war. Too large, too cumbersome and far far too dangerous.
Instead, they're used to wreck moons and as statements of power.
*"We can build this, what can you do?"*
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**Econony and Effectivity is the key**
1. Antimatter is **expensive** (energetically).
As there is not natural source, it must be done, from nothing, but energy. Basically it is the best energy storage you have at the time, but still it gets a **lot** of energy to move big interstelar ship and make it warp (or fast enought or what) and all that energy have to be stored in the form of antimatter first.
1.1. **Solution:**
There are not enought free resources at Earth to create enought AM for all ships. But it is not a problem - we simply have big (as in planetary size big) solar convertors in space, which give us nearly **unlimited electrical energy for free** (well Sun would waste it sending it to interstellar space anyway, so why not use it). (We would need it anyway in this system)
2. Everybody and his dog have space ship - we need so much energy for
it
Again, if nearly anybody (well anybody rich, but still a lot of people) can have spaceship, there is also need for fuel to move it in space - we use the electricity to break asteroids/comets/... to conventional fuel for in-system travel - and burn it in everyones rocket to something, which could be eventually later harvested and reprocessed again, when it get collected in some proto-asteroids on some convenient places (if terms of hundreds years, maybe)
Also the effectivity to get rocket from gravitational well is just poor today - lets use space elevators, with free electricity we can lift anybody to spaceyard and/or back to ground. In-system (personal)spaceships do not land on Earth, but on such elevator equipped spaceyards as well as personal airplanes are using common airports, not roof of house today.
3. Antimatter react with any normal matter
So it could be created in large enought quantities only in hard vacuum - basically means space, near of big enegetic source - the solar convertors. While it is possible for Joe Doe to have spaceship, it is not possible for him to have all the equipement needed to cr4ate and store large quantities of antimatter and also large enought power source to create and store it (it must be trapped in electromagnetic fields with large intensity and so large power consumption. Also the technology, to be able mass produce antimatter, must be of proper scale, not just some small facility. And its effects are clearly visible in space, as well as the power sources needed to just maintain it - you cannot hide it in garrage.
4. Antimatter is needed for interstellar travel
So it is sold only on interstellar spaceports deep in space (say around Pluto or something like that) and is not allowed inside Solar system. (Except for good known and protected routes from solar converter to interstellar ports.) Also as it is unstable, it must be protected by powerfull elmag shields all the time (which is possible to destroy (=put momentary down) with large energetical pulse from the converter, where the energy is abudant - so piracy is impossible, if you do not want explode while trying). The container with elmag shields itself is enought of normal matter to make explosion so large, that you just vapore, if you try to travel near its trace (which is strictly forbidden and ship-computers have coded safely avoidance such risky places as well as avoidance of say Sun itself - not that it could not be hacked with a lot of effort, but it could not be done by mistake, nor by normal interface).
Any approach to AM-container trajection is responded in military style as act of planetary agression (evaporate first, ask later) both by Energy company and any goverment/military in shooting range.
If somebody wants interstellar travel, he takes taxi/heli to nearest airport, plane to base of elevator, lift to spaceport, in-system rocket to interstellar port near Pluto and finally board big interstellar ship - be it (his) private, corporate or govermental (as well as the taxi/heli/in-system ship on his way)
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5. Antimatter evaporates slowly anyway
As it is technologically easier to make antimatter in form of hydrogen/oxygen/any evaporable element (or at least it is presented by press and oficial sources), the antimatter still slowly evaporates, which makes continual reaction with its container and is also reused to power it. It also create clearly visible trace of any container with AM, so it can be tracked over whole Solar system. So "smugling" such container to a planet is impossible, without being detected days or weeks before landing and being evaporated in matter of hours after first detection, if communication is not successfull and such container would not fast change trace from Sun and planetary zone.
**Which is responce to your question**
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Ofcourse it could be militarized by goverment or Energy Company, but being trackable and destroyable by EMP pulse much faster, than delivered to planet surface it is not much of risc, if there are two or more independent powers, which does not want have their Earth headerquarters eveporated by antimatter bomb. (And anti EMP-pulse pulse is not possible to use, as if it is not superexactly coordinated to amplitude and frequency with sub-nanosecond precision, it would explode the container by the anti-pulse power)
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As stated, there is much larger risc of clasical near-light-speed ram to planet, but it is probabelly countermeasured by some energy weapons all around the space, conventionally powered inside the system, AM powered on interstellar ports and Sun converters (AM/energy for just launching projectile able to push something few miligrades from its trajectory, eventually evaporating by being hit by the fast attacker (which would do it as well), is a lot less, than energy needed to puch whole atmosphere (and magnetic fields around) and still do massive damage on surface.
Humans probabelly would create such defensive system anyway, as there may be interstellar comets, or what, which could endanger Earth, even without terrorist planning it. Also there is a risc of interstellar ship with failure on its return way - so at time of danger probably all avaiable anti-asteroid lasers on all ships in space would also coordinate to add a little energy to push harm from Earth.
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**Delivery impossible because containment not self-contained.**
As you stated, only *capital* ships with warp drives have anti-matter drives -- and the facilities to *contain* antimatter.
Because *containing* the antimatter *requires* big facilities... as in, a sizeable percentage of *capital* ships *is* dedicated to antimatter containment. Nothing smaller *can* keep antimatter contained (which also rules out *producing* antimatter in some smaller facility). You need *really big* capacitors to buffer even the most minute power fluctuations. The radiation shielding alone weighs *tons*. Compare [fusion chamber containment](https://www.iter.org/mach) and scale up accordingly.
You just can't get the antimatter *anywhere* except from one containment facility (unmanned refuel station) to another (capital ship)... and even that is so extremely tricky that it is only done in orbit. (Also, to avoid some madman sabotaging his AM containment to create a huge explosion planetside.)
If you try to take antimatter out of containment to deliver it to a target... **boom**.
If you try to take the containment chamber out of the context of a capital ship (or a production / refueling facility) to deliver it to a target... **boom**.
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This of course does not rule out using a capital ship, 9-11-style, *as delivery vehicle*. Then again, we are talking thousands of tons of mass at escape-speed velocities even without taking warp drives into account... at which point it does not really matter if you're delivering an antimatter payload or just pulverise the target with the kinetic energy of the impact.
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How do we stop a WMD from being used? Pretty simple really. It's Cold War solutions. Even though we know the right thing to do for everyone to win is to not do the bad thing nobody expected it to *really* happen. That said there's more you can do if you're willing to add to the premise:
* **Everyone has antimatter** Harder stand-off in a Cold War-like situation if the civilians have it in their cellphones.
* **Storage is extremely hard** given how hard antimatter is to contain, might as well make the storage so durable that you'd need antimatter just to crack it open.
* **Education** grind the thought right out of them. Possibly with some Big Brother monitoring for good measure.
* **Suicidal** Attempting to use it as a weapon is most likely going to result in their deaths not from backlash but from backsplash. Feed this fear.
* **Manipulation** Energy produced by a storage unit is only going to generate at a certain rate. Manipulating such a device to increase output should be impossible for someone not extremely well-versed in the science. Perhaps even then they don't have the required tools.
* **Regulation** Even if everyone has access to a supply of it. It doesn't mean they have it all at once. A depot could resupply everyone's cellphone battery with a charge that's not *too* terrifying.
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In two words **Counter Containment.**
Anti matter can only be contained by fields not matter. Trying to contain it with matter produces spectacular but useless results.
So we contain it either with a magnetic or electric bottle.
If you possess a device that can disrupt electric or magnetic fields you can cause antimatter explosive devices to detonate prematurely maybe even so prematurely that they destroy the launching vessel. This is not outside of the realms of possibility in a society that can create and store antimatter.
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You are indicating that antimatter is only needed by some major star-going vessels. Therefore, security comes from three things working together:
1) Antimatter storage in vessels is built into the keel. Removing an antimatter storage device from a ship basically requires dismantling it and still yields a very big object because the components are dispersed in the frame.
2) Antimatter storage that can actually be moved around is handled akin to how we currently handle atomic bombs--perhaps a step further by providing an armed escort ship whose job is to destroy the transport container if it's misappropriated.
3) The ships that use antimatter are not allowed anywhere near a planet or other such vulnerable location. Your vector comes within 10 million miles of an inhabited world and the authorities shoot first, ask questions later. Lesser vessels that don't use antimatter provide all the transport near population centers.
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If you only deal with one electrical sign at a time, anti-matter or real-matter still obey to electromagnetic field and can be deflected, and so, contained, without having to enter in contact with "real" matter. In theory. As we hope to do for high energy plasma in order to produce controlled and sustained fusion. The size of the equipment to produce the required magnetic field is huge, at least for us with fusion, that this is not "possible" (economically) for a particular organisation to produce one, just for a "single" use (as a bomb). Could be used as a weapon (static location or on a huge movable platform) if the equipment used to generate the em field is not destroyed at each use. And some energy has to be available to supply and maintain that equipment while it has to contain the anti-matter. Such equipment won't be profitable to build with the goal to store a single positron. It would hardly be a hand-held weapon.
Neutral anti-matter won't react as well to magnetic fields, that is why one could held separated positrons and anti-protons (so they don't make an overall neutral anti-Hydrogen atom), while not dealing at all with anti-neutrons or other anti neutral particules, since they could not be so easily contained.
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As far as creating and storing antimatter goes, there are several links below that may help. There are devices already in use, and in the process of being finalized for use in order to store, transport, and use antimatter. These videos should point one in the right direction for further answers about the subject. As for not using antimatter as a fuel source, this would probably not be plausible, which can also be explained in the Tedx video below. It would simply take too long, cost too much, etc. Which is one reason why space programs have slowed down today. Many other answers have pointed out the issues with using antimatter as a bomb, but this is not to say it wouldn't or can't be done in some circumstances such as previously mentioned civilian targets. As for differentiation between certain drives, it might make 'sense' in a way for some ships to use a warp drive (Alcubierre drive) for interstellar travel, and use something similar to current antimatter drive concepts for high velocity within a solar system. The problem with the antimatter drive is special relativity (specifically time dilation), which means using an antimatter drive to travel great distances is feasible, however don't expect to arrive or come back to the same time period.
Tedx talk about antimatter and a newly invented device:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBebWBjpWIQ&vl=en>
Article about CERN transporting anti-matter, also mentions techniques used to store antimatter:
<https://futurism.com/cern-transport-antimatter/>
warp drive:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive>
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# Antimatter explossions are too random to be efficient.
Ok, it is **very** powerful and reactive. But that is precisely what makes it very inefficient.
As soon as the antimatter is exposed to matter, its outer layer desintegrates and pushes the rest of the mass in the antimatter. While the explosion is perfectly simmetrical it is ok and the antimatter does not move much, but... what happens if one of the sides gets in contact with more matter (and thus desintegrates more and pushes more the lump) than the other?
For example, your lump hits a building, or the ground, or even crosses a zone of colder (denser) air, and your bomb gets thrown at top speeds in a random direction, probably away from your target and likely towards space. In top of it, the unequal force probably breaks your lump into several pieces, each of them pushing the others away with their explosion.
In short, maybe 90% of your hard-earned antimatter ends wandering aimlessly through the Solar System. You got a pretty decent explosion at your target, that is true, but 10% is a terrible efficiency for something so expensive, and probably there are better alternatives.
[Answer]
**Government Does Its Job!**
The containment answers, IMHO are the best, but in addition:
Anti-matter may be relatively abundant (relative to what, BTW?) but government controls all the sources. It can only be used specially licensed and trained individuals. So for government-controlled ships (e.g. military) that's fine, but for civilian ships, a government-appointed supervisor must retain control of the anti-matter reactor and its transport / storage units.
At the same time, a counter-terrorism organisation exists to root out anyone who may have the intention or attempt to get hold of some and use it.
So now it could still be used as a weapon, if there was any sort of slippage / corruption / hijack or something, but in the same way a car or an aeroplane could be used as a weapon in our time. (Most people in our world have access to a lethal weapon and yet deliberate car murders are very rare - the vast majority of people just aren't that evil)
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**High volatilability**
It's all well and nice that anti-matter exists, but because it reacts with any and all matter - your own ship included - it's nearly impossible to effectively weaponise.
Interstellar groups have conducted tests with anti-matter bombs, only to find that if their torpedo bays get hit during a firefight, anti-matter containment breaches and a massive explosion results destroying the entire ship - just like sailing ships with gunpowder.
The amount of cost, armour plating, containment, secondary containment and failsafe systems required to prevent this occurring is prohibitively expensive, and if you're putting that much money into containing anti-matter you might as well turn it into a reactor and build a ship around it.
After all, even if the reactor wasn't anti-matter, if it got hit anyway you're pretty much dead in space.
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Antimatter container are big and heavy. Lets make them 1000 tons and 10 meters in diameter. It is not a problem to put something like this on a a big ship but impossible to use it for terrorism. It is impossible to bring something like to to planet in secret. Also you can scan for 511 kev photons that every not perfect antimatter container will be emitting.
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# Artificial Custom-designed Normal-Space Degradable Antimatter, stored in Special Exotic Strange Field Generator Containers
An artificial custom designed form of anti matter which is unable to exist outside of the exotic strange field generator storage containers, which are also custom designed to match specific batches of the custom antimatter.
The antimatter degrades nonexplosively whenever the field ceases as it is designed to do.
The containers draw power from the internal store of antimatter, and contain numerous mechanical and computerized failsafes designed to detect any abnormality in excess or deficit of normal operation. Any exceeded or insufficient parameter cuts out the field generation, such as excess input, insufficient input, up to and including tampering or even excessive scanning of the device.
Not absolutely 100% foolproof, but pretty close.
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[Question]
[
I would like a planet that's a tropical paradise on one side but covered in ice and glaciers on the opposite side, whether it be the Southern-Northern or the Western-Eastern hemisphere.
I know it would be theoretically possible by making the planet tidally locked to its star but I'd like to avoid that because I want normal day and night cycles and a normal year length (26 Earth hours long days and an orbital period of 390 Earth days).
How could I make all of that happen?
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[Mount Kilimanjaro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kilimanjaro), despite being close to the Equator, has permanent glaciers on its top.
This hints toward the solution to your problem: orography!
While one hemisphere is mostly flat, with limited elevation and can enjoy the benefit of a warm climate, the other hemisphere is much more mountainous with most of its peaks above the snow line. The precipitation that one side would be tropical rain falls as snow on the mountains, and stay frozen because of the low temperatures.
[Answer]
**Combine an significant axial tilt with a elliptical orbit.**
Axial tilt allows one hemisphere to be in winter while the other is in summer. Earth has approximately 23.44 degrees of tilt. Even in mid-summer the temperature at the south pole is far from tropical because the sun never rises above 23 degrees and sunlight is correspondingly dim. 45 degrees is too much since the south pole would get twice as much sun as the equator (when south pole is pointed toward the sun). 30 degrees might be a good guess, the pole would get more sun than the equator at the peak of summer, but the equator would get more sun at other times.
Earth has a slightly eccentric orbit; it is nearly circular. Because of the duration of summer and winter is almost the same. Since Earth is closer to the sun (and moving faster) when it is winter in the northern hemisphere, the northern hemisphere has longer summers and the southern hemisphere has longer winters. [In 2006, the northern hemisphere summer was 4.66 days longer than winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_eccentricity)
Now, increase the eccentricity of Earth's orbit until the winter 6 times as long as the summer (in the colder southern hemisphere). Consider the northern hemisphere first, summer is now 5 times longer than the winter, but the solar radiance is not at high as on Earth because it is further away from the some (keeping the same orbital period), but first day of summer is not the hottest because of thermal inertia. The much longer summer would allow thermal inertia to create a much longer tropical conditions period than might otherwise be expected.
The southern hemisphere will be bitterly cold for months on end (during the dog days of the norther hemisphere).
Now, the northern hemisphere will endure a brief (about 1.5 month) winter, the would have have little sunlight and decidedly non-tropical. Thermal inertia will keep the temperatures from being too frigid.
I am assuming significant amount of ocean as a prerequisite for thermal inertia - because this gives a result more closely in line with the desired outcome. Without oceans, temperature change will be more intense (hotter summers, colder winters).
Due to precession, the winter / summer conditions will change over time, i.e., the northern hemisphere will experience the long winters, then thousands of years later it will experience short winters, and so as as the precession cycle repeats. 26,000 years in the case of Earth.
This won't precisely yield a planet with the conditions desired, but I think it is probably closer than you will get with other realistic conditions.
It occurred to me later that there will be large storm patterns associated with such a planet. The large temperature differences between the 2 hemispheres will drive large storm systems. While this would be true of any planet meeting the tropical on hemisphere, glaciers on the other, the alternating temperature patterns under this arrangement guarantees that there are not going to be any areas of mild weather on a year-round basis.
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## There are two things you can do
**1. The planet is close to the galactic core, but far from galactic equator so light from the core is only hitting one hemisphere.**
You don't actually need much light to get the difference you want, making one hemisphere around 2 degrees warmer will give you what you want. That is the difference between modern day chicago and a mile of ice over chicago.
Your systems plane happens to run parallel to the galactic plane while being fairly close to the galactic core/center, but it is far from the galactic equator. The galactic core produces a lot of light, and this light is coming in roughly perpendicular to the orbit of your planet, you can lessen the axial tilt of the planet to further exaggerate the effect but that will mess with your seasons.
The large number of star on one side and the comparatively small number on the other means one hemisphere is receiving considerably more light, to the point its night would not be as dark as night in the other hemisphere. Keep in mind the light side is also going to receive a lot more radiation.
**This is what the night sky looks like on your warm hemisphere**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hYBGv.jpg)
**And this is what it looks like from the cold hemisphere**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U5bF0.jpg)
The earth does not receive this effect because we are near the galactic equator so the light we receive from the core is roughly equal and we are far from the core so we don't receive that much to begin with.
>
> "Near the center of our galaxy, the average distance between neighboring stars is only 1000 A.U. If the star Sirius were only 1000 A.U. from the Sun, it would be twelve times brighter than the full moon. If the Sun were located within a parsec of the galactic center, there would be a million stars in our sky with apparent brightness greater than Sirius. The total starlight in the night sky would be about 200 times greater than the light of the full moon; you could easily read the newspaper at midnight, relying on starlight alone. [astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~ryden/ast162\_7/notes31.html](http://astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~ryden/ast162_7/notes31.html) –
>
>
>
## 2. You can do a lot just with the position of your land and water.
You can drastically boost the effect by correctly positioning your continents. First on your cold side you want a large (asia sized) continent centered over the pole with an equatorial ocean. this will encourage the growth of an icecap, and minimize thermal transfer between the hemispheres.
On the warm side you want a polar ocean to minimize ice formation. You also want several continents closer to the equator, preferably wide near the equator and thin near the pole, with about 3 atlantic sized oceans that rum from pole to equator. That will encourage heat transfer from equator to pole on that side keeping the higher latitudes warm. This global map alone will get you most of the way there. Now you only need about 0.5-1 degree difference between your hemispheres to get what you want.
[Answer]
Have the planet be half of a binary pair with the two tidally locked to each other but very close together (close to the Roche limit but not within it).
The two would orbit around the star and their mutual spin would provide a normal day-night cycle but the side towards the partner would receive less sunlight due to the shade from the other half of the binary and as a result would be colder.
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Have one hemisphere to have much higher terrain features than the other. The higher you go, the colder it gets due to atmospheric pressure.
That happens because for most gases, if you take a constant volume of them, temperature is proportional to pressure and mass.
Mars has the features you need. This is a rendition of what it would look like if you filled the lower plains with water:
If instead we kept the planet dry and pressurized it to have Esrth-like pressure at any point, the plateaus would be naturally colder than the lower lands.
This works with any rocky planet capavle of holding an atmosphere.
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## This is simply not possible unless you are willing to go for questionably odd planetary features
Messing with the [axial tilt](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/145947/58321) would be the closest you may get to your scenario in a clean way, but even the pole-equator climate switch will only get you a ring of moderate "tropics" around the equator and a seasonal switch from Hell to Helheim on the poles. I would recommend this as it is the least odd and most probable scenario.
However, there might be another way. If the sides have a significantly different albedo one could be cooler than the other. The following scenario is just one way to do this, artificial structures and terraforming gone wrong would also be good explanations. Imagine a planet, half solar-collector farm, and half nature preserve.
**The Martian Way**
Mars used to have a big ocean covering almost the entire northern hemisphere. Imagine this ocean, but covering half of both hemispheres. Now, this world is really cold. So cold that it mimics Earth during the [Cryogenian Period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenian) and the ocean side nearly freezes over completely. The continent side, however, has a much higher albedo (the world will need some very dark rocks) and absorbs much more heat than the reflective frozen ocean side. This may allow for continent based zones with a microclimate fit for rainforests near the equator.
This won´t be a clean solution, the ice will probably have an equatorial "channel" and the "warm side will have a lot of tundra and glaciers. So not *a tropical paradise on one side but covered in ice and glaciers on the opposite side* but one frozen ocean side and one warmer tundra side with the planet's rainforests in equatorial retreats. If you make the tropical retreats geothermally active this could also aid the survival of the forest and create valleys with actually pleasant microclimate. I would furthermore suggest keeping the planets axial tilt low, so seasons don´t mess up the planets delicate climate setup.
**Massive Geo-Engineering**
1. Tilt the planet by 90°
2. Place a self-stabilizing sunshade at the L1 point
3. Place massive, controllable mirror-arrays at L3 and L4 and selectively heat the desired hemisphere and [somehow manage the heat-transfer of the atmosphere](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3894/JAMES.2010.2.13)
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You don't need anything fancy or clever here,
***JUST USE THE EARTH AS A MODEL***
Like your fictional planet the Earth is not tidally-locked. Yet the average temperature of earth's continents vary *wildly*. They can be simply grouped as follows:
* **Hot**: Africa, South America
* **Temperate**: Australia, Europe, Asia, North America
* **COLD As Heck**: Antarctica
The big obvious difference between them is their latitude.
*So all you have to do is to position their latitudes to give the average temperature that you want.*
There are other factors also. For instance, Europe is on average warmer than North America even at the same latitudes because the Gulf Stream warms the ocean air to the west of Europe, which then gets blown onto it by the prevailing winds. And North America is somewhat colder that we might think from latitude alone because arctic air frequently gets blown southernly over it.
Likewise, the winds and current around Australia make it significantly hotter (and dryer) than it's latitude would suggest.
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With some mechanism to prevent the atmospheres mixing, simple climate change on one hemisphere would not affect the other. For example, an equatorial bulge or chain of mountains high enough to prevent most of the weather from crossing. If you didn't need stability in geological scale, even weather structures could form a suitable barrier for hundreds or even thousands of years.
With a barrier between them, one hemisphere could be runaway greenhouse CO2-rich jungle (whether from volcanic action, cultural effects, differences in plant respiration, shortage of water, higher albedo, etc etc...) while the other is an icy wasteland.
The separation of the mountains would form a wall against the ice all too reminiscent of the wall in the Game of Thrones, though.
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In the comments, I think you said that two continents would be acceptable. In that case, the only thing you need to change is the planet's axial tilt. Make it nearly zero. Right now, Sweden has pleasant summers because its days are so long. With uniform day lengths, it would be pretty cold all year long. Then you could have one cold continent near one of the poles, and one warm one in the tropics.
You have to realize, the Earth we live on isn't so far from what you describe. Parts are a tropical paradise, and parts are covered in ice.
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On Earth, much of Antarctica's cold climate is due to [Antarctic Circumpolar Current](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Circumpolar_Current), and much of
Europe's warm climate is thanks to the [Gulf Stream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream). You can conveniently combine the two - open ocean along the equator with a strategically positioned archipelago diverting warm waters northwards (and inland through conveniently placed straits) while keeping the southern continent
surrounded by circumpolar cold water trap.
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The planet is a part of a binary star system. It orbits one star in a plane which is perpendicular to the line connecting the stars. This way the other star will always be over one pole of the planet.
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This answer assumes an earthlike planet orbiting further out from its primary star. Effectively the planet will be locked in a permanent glacial epoch. Except it isn't.
Overhead its northern hemisphere in the position corresponding to Earth's Pole Star is a pulsar. The solar system containing is bathed in the beam of the pulsar and the pulsar is closer enough to significantly warm the planetary environments of all the planets and moons.
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> A pulsar (from pulse and -ar as in quasar)[1] is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star or white dwarf that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. This radiation can be observed only when the beam of emission is pointing toward Earth (much like the way a lighthouse can be seen only when the light is pointed in the direction of an observer), and is responsible for the pulsed appearance of emission.
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If the pulsar is rapidly rotated the flicker effect of its lighthouse-like beam will be hardly noticeable.
Significantly pulsars can emit radiation right across the electromagnetic spectrum.
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> In addition to radio emissions, neutron stars have also been identified in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. This includes visible light, near infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays.
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The pulsar doesn't need to be as bright as the planet's primary star. It only needs to deliver sufficient radiant energy to raise the temperature enough to keep the hemisphere under the pulsar compared to its opposite hemisphere. If the radiation spectrum of the pulsar favours electromagnetic radiation that will pass the atmosphere this will warm the planet's surface.
If radiation is absorbed buy the planet's atmosphere, this will be contributing mechanism to raise the northern hemisphere's temperature, but not all the energy will be absorbed by the atmosphere. The ground can store large amounts of heat from the Sun, as is the case here on Earth, so this can play an important role of the planet we are considering. If the northern hemisphere has significantly large land masses, say, like a super-continent, then this land will be warmed sustainably by the radiant flux from the pulsar. The land-mass will act as a thermal mass sufficient to maintain a higher temperature in the northern hemisphere while the southern hemisphere languishes in the deep freezer.
A close pulsar acting as a pole star can significantly warm one hemisphere over another. This will be especially the situation if the pulsar can deliver enough energy to the hemisphere that lies below its position in the planet's sky, like a Pole Star.
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One way you could have an effect somewhat similar to what you describe is to have a planet with a variable [axial tilt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt). Having for example the North hemisphere permanently tilted away from the sun would keep it in permanent winter, while the South would be in permanent summer. Where the variable part comes in is that the tilt itself would need to be "locked" in such a way that it shifts exactly with the rotation of the planet around its star so as to always keep the same pole tilted towards the sun. I will admit that this does seem highly improbable, however you could probably fit it into the story.
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Natural solution: Huge area where geothermal vents come to a surface. As in Yellowstone park, but on a much bigger scale.
Have you considered a technological solution?
1. As in solar satellites in orbit beaming energy to a specific population segment one one side of the planet. Maybe the builders of these satellites are trying to compensate for a dying sun?
2. Large domes keep the greenhouse effects?
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The cold side would need to be a near desert, or in a few hundreds of years all the water would be trapped in the ice on the cold side. You would need some way to keep the moisture on the warm side.
Several existing answers talk about raising the elevation on the cold side, to make it cold. If you go that route you need to make the elevation high enough so that most of the rain falls on the coast of the cold side.
The weather on the coast of the cold side would be much like Western Washington and Oregon [How Geography Shapes Regional Weather of the United States](https://www.thoughtco.com/geography-shapes-us-regional-weather-3444371) which is relatively wet and warm, most of your population would choose to live on the coast unless the slope was VERY sharp.
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## 2in1 planet
* We know, that sometimes galaxies "colide" (not like car crash, but like two flocks of birds flying different directions)
* There were many natural nuclear reactors on Earth burning for many millenia (or even much longer)
* not all stars are equal, not all planets are equal
So have some two galaxies cross its ways, that just some solar systems on borders get somehow "near" each other to the effect, that they heavily interact with each other. And one planet was as an effect slingshoted by gravitations forces somewhere else (while other planets was just messed up or something).
Let this planet just dull burn out piece or rock, flying interstelar space for milenia and totally cold, until it hit other younger solar system (from that coliding galaxies) in very lucky way - it was traveling really near the Sun, got slingshot from it to lose a lot of inertia and got catched in that solar system as a strange comete.
Then it hit one of local planets, roughtly its own size, not fully colded, which made them merge and make new planet, where the cold one is one half, the hot one is other half (more a huge layer over half of the cold one) while at the connection was formed big ring many times higher, then Kilimanjaro around the whole planet. Also the impact change its orbital trace to more better one. (and destroyed everything on both parts, but we are forming planet now, life will came much later anyway)
Now we have planet in the right distance of (relatively weak) Sun, which is rotating and everything, but one its half is old dead rock, other is hot radioactive young planet, both parts are separated by mountain ring about atmosfere hight or at least much higher, then freezing water line, so the air does not mix much.
Over time it stabilize somehow, get continents, oceans and later even life, at least on the radioactive side, which is warmer, as it actively produce heat (and lose it to space), while the other side just get heated from the other part via masive, more then half planet huge mass of badly conducting rock) and lose that heat to space too. There is some snow, so it also reflects heat from sun much more, that the happy half.
The life here is accustomed to higher radioactivity and many vulcanos around, as it developed in this conditions. (Yes, we have a lot of natural radioactivity in background too, and there are organismus on Earth, who are even much more resistent to extensive radioactivity, so why not).
The local Sun provides a lot of energy, but not all needed. The younger part of planet provides also lot of energy, not as much as Sun, but enought to sum to pleasant climate. The older part does not, so it is arctic regardles its position.
We do not lose watter, as it rains and snows on the ring-hills on winter and on summer it flows back to oceans on warm side. There may be some caves thru the hills, maybe there are some Himalayan ways too, but there is not much of such ways, so not substantial watter and heat is lost or transferred to the cold side. But it may be possible to climb there and use some of the few ways to get onto the "other side" for motivated people - like it was to get to Kilimanjaro or to the poles on Earth. Hard to do, but possible, but only on few places, which are not so big, to change the climate substantially.
Depends on your plan, how bad is the cold side, but there may be also some life (vegetable or even animal), or at least there could be human stations, as the cold side may contain some valuable resources, like minerals.
Practically it is two different planets, with the same gravity and ecliptic, with some connections usable for humans, but otherwise with totally different clima and resources and lifeforms (more different, than rabits here, platypus in Australia and penguines in Antarctica)
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If the sun is the main source of contributions to global temperature then this is gonna be rather unfeasible because the planet spins.
So, instead you need to have a smaller star which produces much less light, and an internal source of heat that is more dominant on one side.
You can have a planet which has an extremely hot core which warms up the planet, but due to chance and a large asteroid impact in the distant past, has very different atmospheres on different sides of the planet. One side might have extremely active volcanoes which spew out a lot of chemicals that break down global warming gases, while the other might have volcanoes which spew out global warming gases.
As such, one side is hot and one side is cold. The hot side will remain hot, day and night, and the cold side will remain cold day and night.
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An alien race suddenly appears and immediately declares that their intention is to conquer Earth. However, they are surprisingly amicable about it - they arrive, make known their intentions, maybe meet with high ranking politicians from various countries. They give us time to prepare, but either imply or outright show that we cannot fight them - their technology is far superior to our own.
What is a probable reason an alien race would want to begin (and presumably end) diplomatic relations like this? My own internal answer at this point is that the aliens are in an "Alpha Island" society, similar to *Brave New World*, where everyone is high class and they need us to serve as the lower class. However, I feel like this may be a weak justification for the strange proceedings.
The scope of this question mainly deals with the why - other factors such as Earth's response (futile war à la *Independence Day* probably) and other social factors may be asked in later questions. For this question, you may assume
* The aliens arrive over populated cities in the near future, with maybe a hundred or so ships.
* They have perfect knowledge of local languages, so communication is not a problem.
* Along with the previous, aliens try to meet with the every-man - they may even go door to door in suburban neighborhoods.
* My current idea is for Earth to be human-less once the aliens leave, but this point is undecided.
* Alien weaponry has not been demonstrated yet, but has immense destructive capabilities - a war would be ended quickly.
* The aliens would prefer to avoid bloodshed, but will cause as much as necessary until their goals are realized.
So, what goals might these extremely polite conquerors have?
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1. Annexation can be defensive in nature. Alien race A may know of an impending invasion from alien race B, and are attempting to annex Earth to protect it. Alien race B is out to conquer new worlds but knows that if it attacks part of alien race A's empire, a large-scale war would break out and race B would suffer greatly. Annexation by race A would serve to protect Earth against race B's aggression. Race A may be doing this altruistically, or may simply be trying to prevent race B from expanding (race B wouldn't want Earth if its inhabitants were killed off, so the violent route wouldn't accomplish the goal here).
2. The alien race may need the planet for something critical to their survival, but only after they arrive they notice that the planet is inhabited - possibly because our civilization is too "primitive" for them to notice from afar. It's too late to change their plans, but they're not willing to exterminate the native life unless provoked and with no other options. Perhaps they were forced to do this in the past and the memories of it still haunt them. The aliens' needs won't impact the native life forms at all (perhaps they merely need to set up a communication/transportation waypoint on the moon). They simply need the natives to leave their stuff alone and go about their normal business. The aliens quickly discover that the natives are unfathomably curious and will relentlessly investigate anything that they don't understand. The only way they see to ensure the project is a success is to take control and set up enough of an enforcement structure to protect their interests.
3. Earth could have some resource that the aliens desperately need. Approaching the situation diplomatically and gaining the cooperation of the locals would give them access to the resource relatively quickly. Fighting off the humans would also work, but would add a significant delay that the aliens can't afford. Avoiding a possibly-lengthy war and being able to take advantage of the humans' existing knowledge of resource X makes the "peaceful" route the more appealing path for all involved.
4. The aliens are bluffing. They could be overestimating their own capabilities (their fleet is actually heavily damaged and only a few of their weapons are actually usable) knowing that they're beyond the humans' level of technological understanding. Another possibility is that they've seen enough human activity - and possibly media - to know that they'll do desperate things in order to survive, and that some of those desperate things would actually be effective. Avoiding a war is the only real option for the aliens, so they attempt to politely intimidate the humans into submission until they can rebuild their fleet.
5. The aliens may be annexing Earth for economic reasons. As a colony of their empire, they would be able to collect tax revenue from Earth. In order for this to be profitable, they need to keep Earth's civilization, industry, and infrastructure intact. A war of subjugation would destroy their revenue sources and make the whole thing a net loss.
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Keep in mind that an alien civilization might have a concept of ethics and morals which is completely different from ours and completely incomprehensible from our perspective.
They might have evolved into a centralized, non-violent hierarchy millennia before they even developed technology. A decentralized system with independent countries and organization which do as they please might appear immoral and barbaric to them. They might consider it their *moral duty* to bring order to our backward world by making it a part of The Empire. Denying us the joy of being part of their hierarchy would be unjust and cruel. It would be morally wrong to them *not* to conquer us. We humans might *think* that we don't want that, but that's just those libertarian demons who poison our weak, primitive minds. Our miserable lives full of conflict, rivalry and power struggle will improve so much after a few generations of intensive reconditioning.
Or when you find that too hard to write and want their psychology to be closer to the human, it could just be galactic-political interest. They could be competing with other spacefaring species in a race for colonizing any less developed sentient species, just like the colonialism practiced from the 16th century onward on Earth by the European superpowers.
Look up how countries like England, Spain and France "colonized" indigenous tribes in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Their modus operandi was very similar to what you describe. Appearing with demonstration of power and superiority but no obvious violence, gaining a foothold, extending influence over the local population and finally enslaving them, preferably avoiding wasteful bloodshed but not refraining from violence when deemed necessary.
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Most of the answers, and indeed the implications raised in your question would seem to make this a non starter.
Labour? An alien race which can build starships and cross interstellar space can use energy and resources on a scale that is literally unimaginable to most modern day earthlings. It would be much like a wealthy Arab sheik deciding that he will create an even crazier set of offshore islands to compete with Dubi by enslaving millions of people and giving them shovels and pails to do the work.
Resources? There is more water under the ice of Europa than in all the oceans of Earth, and that is only *one* moon. They can scoop up asteroids, moons, strip mining gas giants and even surround the Sun with solar energy collectors to get all the resources they want, and at our current level of technology there is nothing we could do. They would not even need to talk to anyone or say please...
Living space? There are an estimated 60 *billion* planets in the habitable zone around red dwarf stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone: almost ten planets for every living human being today, if we could only get there.
So the reason needs to be something else. Alien philosophy or religion makes the most compelling reason (look up "Blue and Orange" morality on TV Tropes, for example). The reasons may be entirely incomprehensible to human beings, but perfectly sensible for the aliens. Their explanations make no sense to us, so as a writer you are even allowed a handwave for this.
The only other reason that I would consider is they are harvesting "brainpower". Two examples in fiction are "Childhood's End" by Arthur C Clarke, and the backstory of the Orion's Arm website.
In Childhood's End, humanity has some sort of "x" factor the Overlords lack; their job is to simply watch over us until the Galactic consciousness can come along to harvest us. The Galactic consciousness will be rather displeased if we self destruct before the human consciousness becomes "ripe", so the Aliens are there to make sure nothing bad happens to us.
In Orion's Arm, it is implied that the mass of S<1 baseline humanity is there for some sort of incomprehensible "ecological" reason to support the ascending levels of sapiences. Perhaps the collective trillions of brains are used as a sort of substrate to support the next level of sapience. When you are having a dream, it perhaps means your unused neurons are being accessed like the spare processor cycles on your computer can be accessed over the internet with the right programming (or maliciously via a botnet infection of your machine).
So let your imagination run away with you; just stay away from the various "old" tropes which make no real sense with the knowledge of modern cosmology.
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There are a few open spots in the question, so I'll take some liberties here, to justify why the aliens want to non-violently annex Earth. As an urban planner, I will apply the same reasoning we do here, but on a galactic scale; as well as more insidious reasons.
**Labor**
Compared to other planets that may just have bacteria, Earth has a large supply supply of inexpensive and (relatively) highly educated labor. The aliens ensure humans are fed, 'paid' and housed, and in turn the humans produce their products from service to labor employment. Think Abu Dhabi: paying expatriate workers more than they would get back home, providing free healthcare, education, and housing; and the people are complacent.
**Resources**
There may be a resource aliens would like to sustainably harvest... trees? They like the taste of wood (replace this with whatever resource is unique to Earth). They offer to help leaders keep their place, and people to be provided with nice things, so long as we sustainably work in the lumber industry (as an example).
**Right of Way**
There may be a reason the Earth is an un-owned piece of land that would make a nice traffic or utility easement (a stop-over or temporary accommodation), and before aliens #2 claim Earth, aliens #1 would like to annex the land and plant their flag, so-to-speak.
**Organization**
Maybe the aliens truly consider us a 'proper' civilization and biome (how flattering), and would like to formally include us among their amalgamation of civilizations. They're ready to include us as one of the 'territories' or 'states' of their societies, and allow us to join in the inter-galactic dialogue with them and others.
(My favorite) **Investment**
The aliens see us as potentially helpful, so they are ready to invest in the infrastructure, technology, etc. of Earth, in exchange for a growing security and resource provider: another ally. This is not unlike the EU Association Agreements with countries: we build ports, utilities and other infrastructure, in exchange for cooperation, investment opportunities, etc.
(for fun) **Hotties**
You're only allowed to date someone in your own interplanetary system; and they find us attractive, but until we're part of their system...
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From a hard science perspective, there is very little that's available on Earth that they could not get cheaper and easier from somewhere else. Invading Earth for water, food, minerals, mates, or just about anything else is stupid, ludicrous, or crazy.
What they might find on Earth that could be rare in the Universe (and therefore worth the cost of invasion) is:
## Life
Earth has a unique biosphere which originated here based upon all the evidence we can find. It is likely (but not certain) to be different from life elsewhere in the Universe.
An alien civilization may want the treasure trove of biology found here on Earth or just not like how we're doing as caretakers of that treasure trove.
## Sapience
This one is more difficult. Members of other species possess some traits of sapience that we generally assume are unique to humans (some dogs show self-awareness, many animals use tools, Octopi learned out to open mason jars *on their own*, etc.). So alien life may view human levels of intelligence a very valuable commodity and may view our own self-destructive tendencies as ample reason to take over administration of this planet - peacefully if possible, forcefully if necessary (see Arthur C. Clarke's **Childhood's End**).
Perhaps they want us to serve as slave soldiers in their military forces. Or work in environments that are dangerous to them (they might also be dangerous to us but they don't have to be).
## Industrialization
You're an alien invader in a war of survival against a deadly foe. Your own productive capacity is pushed to its limit. Luckily, you found a backwater planet in an isolated place in space with 7 billion people and lots of excess capacity to produce your war fighting materials.
There's just the simple matter of quickly and unequivocally convincing them to turn that productive capacity to your needs.
If intelligence is rare, then an industrialized society is even rarer. The alien's could produce things more efficiently than we could. It might be like our modern society utilizing the manufacturing output from the 1600s. It'd be crude and the quantities wouldn't be very impressive compared to what we can do now, but that extra 1% added to the war effort might be just what Xog the Emperor needs to win. Plus with some key advancements they might increase the quantities and improve the quality of output.
Just be wary of those duplicitous humans, who simply don't understand all that Xog has done for them.
## Intellectual Property
Art, music, architecture, engineering, science, history, etc. Aliens mine the databases of other races and use the information for advancing themselves. They may have stolen star drives from another race and simply don't have the background to understand what it is that they have. They raid or conquer other races to collect yet more technology and information.
Or pirate music mp3s for selling on the galactic market.
Human understanding of physics and engineering might be woefully inadequate on the Galactic stage, but perhaps Humans are the Galaxy's experts at spinning entertaining stories or writing computer viruses.
Still most intellectual property can be far more easily transmitted to other places, so it's usually better to trade for this than to attempt to capture it.
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1. Upvotes. Badges. Karma. Thumbs up. Appendages up.
Basically, the aliens need to incorporate Earth into their sphere of control to gain social networking points and keep their rivals from claiming those points instead. First alien civilization to gain 100 "planet points" gets a gold badge. Basically, this is `planetary-conquest.stackexchange.com`
2. Uplift.
In David Brin's *Uplift War* science fiction series, there is a lot of value in species that are on the brink of intelligence on an evolutionary scale. Dolphins, Chimpanzees, etc. have potential for sentience and claiming them as client species is valuable to the alien civilization as a whole. Claiming Earth as a client planet would give the alien civilization access to the genetic diversity of this planet. Keeping humans in line is important to ensure we don't drive any potentially valuable species to extinction.
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**Because we are their 'Creations'.**
When the aliens chose the earth (and most likely many other planets) to colonise, they first sent out a fast bullet-craft to begin terraforming the planet. A small craft containing non-organic nanobots should be able to accelerate and decelerate much faster allowing them to arrive much earlier than a slower manned craft; It would also be able to be deployed more easily and therefore earlier then a fully manned mission, similar to the mars rover which is already on mars and yet a manned mission is still many years away. The nanobots just kick start things and push them in the direction needed to change the planet to be more suitable for the host. Sometimes sometimes when doing this intelligent life evolves on the target planet and it is customary not to kill them; however they are your creation so there is no reason they should be allowed interfere with the original plans laid out billions of years before...
Humans are somewhere between farmyard animals and unruly children.
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I can't believe no-one's mentioned Star Trek yet. Some key technology may exist whose invention can be detected by the aliens (warp drive, for Star Trek). The question then is why alien intervention might be required, and I can see three basic options.
The tech may have the potential to kill the Earth, and without the right theoretical backing it might be unclear to noobs how to control it, or even that there is a risk at all. This would be the aliens altruistically intervening to keep us safe until we have the knowledge and cultural sophistication to not destroy ourselves.
If properly exploiting this tech would put us on an equal footing with the aliens (or possibly better; consider reproductive rates), there's a real risk that we could try for an invasion if it looks like we could win. If the aliens are working on the basis of enlightened self-interest, they could be keeping a lid on our society until they're sure we're grown up enough to not do this. (Currently it's pretty clear we aren't!) So like any grown-up supervising the kiddies, they're keeping us away from the sharp knives until we can be relied on not to stab anyone. This is basically the "The day the Earth stood still" scenario - we're required to keep the peace and threatened with overwhelming force if we misbehave, not because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the only thing that actually works.
And the third option stems from the above, but doesn't assume such goodwill from the aliens. They might not want to kill us (yet...) but they would at least want to take this tech away from us so that we're not a threat to them.
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**It would be considered rude**
It could be important to differentiate "friendly" or "non-violent" from "obeying the Space UN." While it might be acceptable for them to colonize or take over our planet in the broader intergalactic community the wholesale slaughter of a species that doesn't even have particle weapons or "at will" space flight might be considered somewhat gauche.
We as a species have no problems extracting resources from tribal lands but it would another matter entirely if we killed all the natives first (at least recently, in the past this was also deemed acceptable).
TL;DR - The Naval Expeditionary Force that arrives might have no qualms with destroying us and might in fact prefer it however the Intergalactic Council for the Development of Infant Species/the Lib Arts students back home might have another view on the eradication of an undeveloped native species.
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> Alien weaponry has not been demonstrated yet, but has immense
> destructive capabilities - a war would be ended quickly.
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The war might be end quickly, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't take loses. Along with the other reasons that have been mentioned, perhaps they have few defences against nuclear attacks. Or maybe it's just a cost issue, diplomacy is cheaper for them than war. They could take over the planet with force if they needed to, but they don't want to put out an alien bond issue to pay for it.
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What if they simply want a collection of humans to show off? Perhaps unnecessary for any seemingly practical reason, it might fulfill some sort of psychological need. having exotic things to show off to others has been a human trait for a while. Certainly seems possible that intelligent aliens could want to do it as well.
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People are soylent green.
They simply want a continuous supply of humans who have died of old age. Maybe we do not taste that well if we have been killed prematurely, or there might be another purpose for which they need old dead humans.
They could offer as a condition for helping us evolve, that corpses would have to be sent to a facility they have established to be treated before burial (always closed casket, never actual contents).
Killing a lot of humans in a hostile take-over would reduce the world population and would reduce the output for generations.
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In addition to the excellent answers provided already:
1. **Mistaken Identity** – Humans either look a lot like a species they have had to wipe out in the past or possibly long lost colony or that species. Maybe it is a case of incorrect paperwork being filed.
2. **It is a test** – They want to see how we react to this threat, maybe to join them or just for science!
3. **Proactive threat removal** – Humans are a possible vector of a plague and it is effective to wipe them out proactively. Another twist would be they have projected that humans may become a threat in the future once we advance. How about our existence threatens them culturally in some way, either morally we might corrupt them, or if the general alien public knew life was “out there” it wouldn’t jive with their creationist religion.
4. **Experiment is complete** – Either they have completed their research and won the alien nobel prize and now they are cleaning up the petri dish called Earth or their funding was cut after showing no useful results (same outcome for us).
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Let's start with the facts:
-This alien race can travel across vast distances (interstellar) with ease. This means it already has access to and mastery of whatever material resources and energy it needs. So it isn't coming to Earth for them.
-We all know from science fiction series like Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr Who, Flash Gordon, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rodgers, Aliens-Prometheus.... that humanoids are not that uncommon. However, unlike those series (which are not documentaries, or Ken Burns would be narrating) we know that, in fact, humanoids tend to be the least developed of "sentient" creatures in the galaxy. They typically annihilate themselves on reach technological levels comparable to our 19th-22nd century levels. Either through resource mismanagement, pollution, gaian collapse, nuclear war, disease, overpopulation... or frequently some combo thereof humanoid races tend to be erratic and transient. So they aren't here for our technology or insight.
-Sometimes we have areas that are culturally rich like Bali or India (here on Earth) but by in large we tend to be fairly uncreative, utilitarian, and dumpy in our cities, temples, and arts. So they aren't coming for the human cultural achievements like some space tourists.
There is, however, one resource on Earth that exists no where else in the universe which is beyond comparison- cats! Cats cannot be found on any other worlds, and moreover, cat videos can be used as a high denomination currency as well as a powerful balm to soothe the aches and pains of many a civilization.
The non-humanoid races that have developed and mastered interstellar space travel, cannot even hold cats or care for them easily (owing to incompatible biology, chemistry, temperature / pressure,... requirements). For instance, the Ol'tharg (which, to a legally blind person, might look slightly like a squid) live in a dense cold ocean of ammonia / amines and are about 300 meters tall (from the tip of the "head" to the end of the longest tentacle). They might find the odors from the litter-box to be soothing but they would have trouble holding a cat. Thus the aliens need to annex Earth and have us keep the cats (and keep making the cat videos) for them.
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It seems likely to me that this alien society is either moral in and of themselves or they're having morality imposed upon them by a more powerful force still. I see no other reason for an advanced species to keep such a comparatively primitive species such as ourselves around. If they weren't constrained by someone's mores against genocide, there would be no reason not to kill us all, and still less to tell us before invading.
Even if it's not "morality" exactly, well, it's surely got to be some social, rather than pragmatic, value. Like, maybe in their society it's considered a status symbol to collect as many planets, or even sentient species, as possible. Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
Or, just maybe, they're planning to set us up as a scapegoat.
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As a highly advanced alien race, they have discovered that critical applications of their hybrid organic/AI technologies work exponentially better with human DNA than with their own planet's genetic materials. They need a lot of human DNA since their empire is vast. Thus, they have no intention of killing us. They want us to reproduce.
So why wouldn't they genetically engineer the necessary DNA? Lets just say that nature makes exactness impossible and that all attempts to produce synthetic human DNA quickly become unstable.
**EDIT** To be clear regarding genetic engineering. There is only one type of life on planet earth and all of our g.e. technologies use these genetic materials. We do no synthesize *alien* genetic materials.
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I find it unlikely that there's any particular 'natural resource' or whatnot that the aliens would need. However, if such a scenario were true they might be attempting peaceful annexation because they would not only like to avoid the delay of a war, but also because the resource could be damaged by the complete devastation of the planet by a nuclear war. (Even at their level of technology, blocking thousands of missiles from going off in the event that humanity attacked them and they returned the volley could be difficult once the missiles were already in the air.)
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Well, if i was an alien overlord, this would be my reasoning:
The Earth is a rare jewel teeming with biodiversity, natural wonders, and incredible unique species to be found nowhere else in the galaxy. Humans are f\*\*\*ing it up. Somebody with more sense needs to step up and rein us in before we tip the whole thing into a catastrophic irreversible downward spiral.
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## Safety!
In the book [The Killing Star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Star), the authors point out that any species capable of making a sublight interstellar ship is easily capable of killing its neighbors.
So as soon as Humans demonstrate the requisite technologies, the neighbors show up to force Humans to act responsibly.
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1. **Courtesy**
As multiple answers have already touched on, the Solar System (as a whole) has far more of every local natural resource than the Earth, alone. There is very little sense in dragging materials out of Earth's gravity well when comets, asteroids, and moons can offer the same materials without so much gravitational opposition. Perhaps a neighboring alien race (or empire) has decided to annex the whole Solar System. Perhaps they thought it would be rude to start mining asteroids asteroids for metals or Europa for ice or skimming Jupiter for hydrogen without first informing the local tribes who will certainly notice all the goings on in their backyard. Perhaps they didn't notice us when they formed their plans or perhaps they didn't care. Either way, they may only go as far out of their way to accommodate a barely sapient species as we do when it comes to monkeys. Another thing this scenario has going for it is that they wouldn't technically be damaging our habitat. Lastly, there would literally be almost nothing (if not nothing) we could do about it. A far superior authority would simply inform us of their recent property acquisition (which includes us), and their activities would barely be within the reach of our most advanced probes.
2. **Proselytization**
Perhaps an alien race is motivated to annex backwaters for reasons similar to why missionaries, a millennia ago, traveled to foreign kingdoms. They could see it as their duty (burden, even) to civilize species smart enough to be instructed and molded. Given our *backwards* and *unenlightened* state, our desire to not be owned or dictated to could could be perceived by them similar to how we see children not wanting to eat vegetables. *"You don't like it now, but give it time. When you're older, you'll be happy I didn't give you a choice."*
3. **Reasons unknown**
The aliens in question may have reasons we can't understand or they may have no interest to fully decode how we think and communicate. Consequently, they may never interact with us more than whatever is enough to get us to do what they want. Similar to how we give auditory and visual commands to dogs (with whom we can't meaningfully communicate). Perhaps from our perspective, a group of beings which can dominate us simply decides to. They inform us of our current condition and simply pay little mind to our cultural disposition to bring annexed.
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Sapience is rare in the universe. The aliens believe we are well and truly on the road to catastrophe, and they're saving us from our absolutely worst enemy, namely, ourselves.
Of course, there might be a sapient species nearby which believes in zapping first to remove any likely competitors. The sort of competitors likely to use relativistic, planet-killing weapons on their neighbours. A zap first or be zapped policy. The invaders are protecting us from the neighbourhood zapping thugs.
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For the same reason that cities annex historic buildings: to gawk at how hideously they're built and yet still manage to survive.
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GSP has already mentioned David Brin's "Uplift" universe. I'd like to add another possible reason based on that background: to protect the rest of Earth's ecosystem from us.
The alien civilization ("the Galactics") in the uplift books is on the whole very protective of planetary ecosystems, as they're the source of potential new client species, which can be uplifted to be new members of the civilization.
First contact with the Galatcics occurs away from Earth, on an exploratory starship, and they are able to warn Earth before the alien emissaries arrive, giving them time to cover up some of humanities worst offences (I think this is background info from the GURPS Uplift sourcebook, rather than any of the actual novels).
If humanity hadn't had this warning, then the aliens would have (after a long period of bureaucratic wrangling...) come in and taken control to protect us and the rest of the Terran ecosystem from us.
(More or less the same way we'd react if we found a 5 year-old looking after a baby)
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The Duchy of Terra series by Glynn Stewart provides an example with three reasons: strategic, self-interest, and altruism.
On the altruistic rationale, the humans quickly discover there are other alien empires out there and humans would be, at best, enslaved and at worst exterminated, and the invaders honestly want to keep humans safe. Strategically, humans also occupy a border position with rivals, so inevitable *someone* would come visiting, and for humanity's sake their conquerors are by far the superior option.
The self-interest reason is because humans have a resource the invaders' empire requires: humans. Specifically, numbers. Due to a quirk of biology, the empire's founding species has low numbers, and when they conquer a client species, those species, as is common in technologically advanced cultures, tend to stabilize, or even reduce, population growth rates. Humans are still at the stage where they have a large population, which means they can fill the manpower (so to speak) shortage the empire constantly experiences, and not as mere lower-class or slave labour, but as members of the military (including senior officers), bureaucracy, industrial and economic sectors, and even the political leadership. Basically, the invasion is an aggressive recruitment campaign asking humans to apply for work.
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A non-human society is engineering minded by nature and is extremely advanced, to the point where they (with wide-scale community effort) have learned how to create wormholes and have practical space travel.
Is it reasonable that they are simply clueless on waging war? I want these people to have sought out humans to help them win a war against another advanced species, but it seems like any technological society would be able to figure out how to fight and destroy.
To be clear: they're not looking to Earth for advanced military technology, but rather military *strategy*. Is it plausible that they haven't figured out how to mass produce weapons, arm and train soldiers, manage and attack supply lines, develop countermeasures to enemy technology, spy on and decrypt enemy communication, and generally dream up more efficient ways of defeating their foes?
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Sure. It's even possible to be very familiar with violence and not be good at warfare; think about the difference between a warrior and a soldier (current US military propaganda notwithstanding): a warrior is an *individual*. A soldier, by definition, is one element of a fighting *group*. Being good at one doesn't automatically mean being any good at the other. You could imagine a species where singular dominance battles are common yet the idea of ganging up in an organized fashion beyond temporary and immediate groupings of convenience never took hold.
And it starts at the basics: modern military training and indoctrination is the result of decades and even centuries of hard-earned experience in what works and what doesn't, and it's always evolving and being refined to take into account cultural, societal, and technological changes. It's not something that can be avoided.
A good example is the American Revolution. Historical myths to the contrary, it wasn't a bunch of freedom-loving non-military farmers who took up arms and defeated the British Forces out of pure patriotism and the power of liberty; just about all the British military defeats relied on the colonists eventually fielding trained forces. Even Lexington and Concord. Historical research has shown that a great many of the colonists were in fact veterans of the French and Indian (or Seven Years) War, and thus trained troops; if anything it was the *British* at that fight who were inexperienced, many not having previously been in a conflict. But on a larger scale, the Americans spent much of the early part of the war in constant retreat until they'd accumulated a cadre of battle-experienced troops and imposed traditional European-style discipline and training so they could have a chance in open battle.
Which Washington, incidentally, was well aware of; an experienced soldier himself, he had a low opinion of amateur militias based on his own experience. The army that took to the field at Yorktown was a professional, conventional one. And the same lesson had to be learned in 1812. And 1861. At least by 1917 they figured out you couldn't throw untrained troops into the meatgrinder of modern warfare and expect them to survive with only the love of liberty protecting them. Turns out that isn't very bulletproof.
Not that this is a uniquely American thing; the Russian communists had to figure out the same lesson. It took Trotsky reorganizing (well, creating, essentially) the Red Army, employing experienced former Czarist officers and non-coms to train the troops, before it became really effective on the battlefield, having realized revolutionary zeal didn't overcome aimed firepower and professional military tactics.
You'll note in those two example technology wasn't the important factor. In both cases the two sides had at least equivalent weapons. Both sides had literate leadership capable of reading and knowing the theory of successful warfare based on history and the experience of others, but it took until they had troops drilling on the parade ground with sergeants bellowing at them, mattresses being tossed in the barracks for not having the corners done correctly, and people doing pushups until they puked until they got it into their heads why you only pointed the weapons downrange that they could get on the battlefield and be expected to win and not have to rely on luck or the enemy screwing up.
Relevant to your question, in both cases these are *human* groups, in *real life* who had to learn that lesson, and you still see it happening today. People who think that because they've got a military weapon they can take on a military force. Give me a bunch of yahoo "militiamen" and a company of Marines (US, Royal doesn't matter) or from just about any other professional military with the same weapons but half the size, and they'll cut through the "militia" like a hot knife through butter the vast majority of the time except in very specific circumstances. And again, these are people who have access to lots of history and documentation demonstrating over and over why some things work and some don't, and yet that information simply isn't incorporated, despite example after example why it has to be.
So that being the case with humans in reality, it's hard to argue that aliens in fiction couldn't have that same sort of problem. The difference being, in the case proposed, the aliens are smart enough to realize they have the problem.
**ADDENDUM**
There's another factor that could come into play. Humans seem to have an inherent hierarchical instinct where people will naturally form groups and will tend to follow those in a leadership position, however that leadership is recognized as legitimate, whether through the leader imposing their will and control, or whether the group chooses the leader, or anywhere in between. That makes organized conflict something also inherent and natural; note that the most popular sports tend to be team sports, and what are team sports but organized, controlled, conflict between groups operating in a unified, cooperative manner? It's such a part of us that even our recreational and play activities exhibit it.
Another intelligent species might not have that instinctive "feel" for that sort of behaviour. They might have evolved as more solitary creatures, and recognize *intellectually* the benefits of cooperation, enough that they've built a civilization, but don't have the instinct to cooperate and follow orders from a leader that humans have. That's going to have repercussions, especially if you combine that with sketchy knowledge of military training. In stressful situations, most people will look to someone to be in charge of the situation and will follow instructions, an instinct military indoctrination reinforces. In a species without that instinct, someone given orders might stop all the time and consider if that's the best thing for them to do, which in a battlefield can get you or other people killed.
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# They evolved with "Us against the Environment" (which requires cooperation and technology), not "Us against Them" (which requires warfare)
**Evolution of intelligence (and hence technological advancement)**
Many theories of the evolution of intelligence (in humans and animals) rely on a machiavellian drive. For example if a species has complex social interactions (e.g. chimpanzees) they need to learn who's who, who's dominant, changes in dominance hierarchy, how to deceive others to obtain food, getting and maintaining allies, forming "war" parties to fight other rivel groups etc. But there are other ways we can see intelligence developing - like extractive foraging (you need tools and techniques to get food - see New Caledonian Crows) or omnivory (learning what is safe to eat and where to find it - see rats) or pair bonding/social group dynamics (and the complex social interactions that result from that - see parrots and elephants). In fact when we think of animals that most scientists consider intelligent many are relatively peaceful and pro-social, like parrots, elephants, whales, rats, octopuses. Even among great apes, orangutans, gorrilas, and bonobos are relatively conflict free (besides fighting over mates/territory). So we can evolve intelligence without the need for self-serving conflict but is conflict the inevitable result of society?
**Society without war?**
Most conflict is about resources (food, shelter, mates etc). One could argue that conflict can also be about ideals/culture (holy wars, genocide etc) but even those conflicts are probably underpinned by the perceived threat of resource shortage. If there are enough resources its just not worth your time, effort, or risk of injury to fight. So is it possible to have a society without inevitable resource shortage? What about **an environment that is so risky, populations never get big enough to have resource shortage and conflict** - e.g. poison gasses frequently spill from underground in unpredictable places killing large parts of the population off; some type of radiation or something from space; a rapidly evolving pathogen that the society (despite their technology) has not been able to purge but keeps baseline population low. **These challenges you cant fight with war but with technology and cooperation**. Once the species becomes space-faring they may no longer have to deal with the environmental threat but at this point they are having fewer offspring (like many nations today) and have more resources from other planets. Or perhaps that pathogen has followed them.
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Clueless? No.
Even herbivores are deadly when threatened. The law of nature is a dog-eat-dog world, without that kind of pressure, evolution is impossible. At best, a species may be able to get away with hiding, but once a species develop intelligence, they start requiring things which can't be hidden, like smoke from fire. Pacifism is a luxury of those with weapons or defenses.
However, it's very possible that they'd be able to form a society without the level of fighting that humans have done if their psychology is distributed more towards a defensive culture and a strong mental block against fighting. The thing about combat is that a small group willing to fight can causes everyone else to respond in kind, or be conquered, so they would have to make defenses - but offensive strategy may be mostly unknown to them.
That being the case, they'd have no experience with offensive combat - compared to humans, which their observations would reveal that large swaths of the population are constantly engaged in mock war-games with each other. And they've even programmed futuristic military simulations, the primary one called 'Starcraft II'. Humans sound like a great choice.
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**The supercolony.**
Consider the Argentine ant. In its native lands, different ant colonies fight each other. But in the course of invading new lands, this ant has formed a supercolony. It is something different.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_ant>
>
> According to research published in Insectes Sociaux in 2009, it was
> discovered that ants from three Argentine ant supercolonies in
> America, Europe, and Japan, that were previously thought to be
> separate, were in fact most likely to be genetically related. The
> three colonies in question were one in Europe, stretching 6,000 km
> (3,700 mi) along the Mediterranean coast, the "Californian large"
> colony, stretching 900 km (560 mi) along the coast of California, and
> a third on the west coast of Japan.
>
>
> Based on a similarity in the chemical profile of hydrocarbons on the
> cuticles of the ants from each colony, and on the ants' non-aggressive
> and grooming behaviour when interacting, compared to their behaviour
> when mixing with ants from other super-colonies from the coast of
> Catalonia in Spain and from Kobe in Japan, researchers concluded that
> the three colonies studied actually represented a single global
> super-colony.
>
>
> The researchers stated that "enormous extent of this population is
> paralleled only by human society", and had probably been spread and
> maintained by human travel.
>
>
>
Ants from the supercolony will not fight each other. Any part of the supercolony is as good as any other part. The ants can be aggressive against food sources and defending the nest against predators. But "war" means organized aggression against conspecifics and these ants have dispensed with war. In doing so they are on their way to conquering the ant world. In Southern California, it is hard to find any other ants but these.
So too your aliens. Through cooperation they have conquered their world. They have no experience making war on an intelligent adversary.
Humans: *be very careful what you teach these creatures.*
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Think about **experience**.
Imagine a society with generations of pacifism. They have no generals. They have no weapons or battleships. They might understand the concepts of waging war, but it will still take many many years for them to train generals, or build the infrastructure necessary to create weapons of war.
How long do you think it takes to train a general?
How long do you think it takes to create the infrastructure necessary to construct a battleship?
Your non-human society is going to be looking for **those with experience**. It's unlikely that they've never seen violence (think about the conflicts in the natural world), or they haven't read stories and tales about battle (think fiction), but they need the expertise of humans who have lived through these conflicts before.
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## Gene editing, MAD, and socialization
If they have advanced spacefaring technology long before they encountered another intelligent species, they may have almost completely conditioned themselves against war and war like thinking. To make it more believable perhaps they have engaged in large scale gene editing to make violence very difficult. possibly something like super-empathy. Above a certain level of technology going to war with your own species basically means the extinction of your species. Works even better if there is more than one habitable planet in their system so their ancestors had to make a choice about altering their behavior or going extinct through interplanetary conflict. It helps if they had a close call in their history, a terrorist cuban missile crisis with FTL technology (to stretch a analogy), something that made the realize one lunatic could wipe out their entire species.
Hundreds of years (now) later they can reinsert/remove the genes but they have lost all knowledge in how to socialize these violent children, so they keep ending up with hyper-aggressive lunatics that are far more dangerous than the enemy. So they need a species that is still knows how to socialize potentially violent people.
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You don't neccessarily need them to be completly void of war in their history for them to be really bad at *modern* war.
They may have fought wars in their past, but that was 4000 years ago when they were in the technological equivalent of roman or maybe renaissance technology. And due to (poltical development/religion/different evolutionary psychology, etc.) they managed to not have wars since.
So now that war has come to them they are kind of helpless and don't know how to deal with the situation. They managed to design some pretty good plasma rifles and they got a million of them rolling of the assembly lines every day - after all that is just a bit of high-energy physics, metallurgy, mechanical engineering and mass production - things they are doing everyday anyways, but military theory takes time and experimantation and iteration and that's something they don't have. So they could try to figure things out on their own and suffer horrible losses in the meantime, or they could just ask the humans and we give them general staffs, military ranks, combined arms, medical and engineering corps, division, and all the other nice stuff it took decades or centuries to figure out immediately.
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For the sake of variety I will pursue an argument about game-theory and not biology/psychology.
From an engineering standpoint it would have a very odd advanced civilisation to not be able to apply economies of scale and logistics to prepare properly for warfare.
That being said I think it is indeed plausible to lack experience in actual wartime strategy and economy. Eg. their societal history must not have encountered any scenario where game-theory or optimisation has ever been required. So either this civilisation has negligible conflict history or their weapons technology was so advanced that they completely steamrolled/blitzkreiged every enemy they have ever fought. Perhaps the setting can be a situation where their previously effective weapons have been completely nullified.
Human wartime history is a repeating tale of new paradigm/technology shifts that make old doctrine obsolete.
* Wartime Industries: see German complexity vs the American Warmachine of WW2, where streamlining manufacturing and material consumption was a distinctly acquired skill for prolonged conflicts with a need to rearm/raise additional troops.
* Professional Soldiers: The transition from Levy to Professional standing Armies was a distinct reaction to improved agricultural efficiency and an outright need for permanent as opposed to seasonal troops.
* Logistics: Campaign complexity and length is directly proportional to the sophistication required for ensure safe supply logistics.
* Spycraft/Encryption: Battle plans/strategy needs complexity to justify spycraft value. Eg. Ancient combat spycraft was limited to choosing the location of battle and troop formation.
* Combat Tactics: There needs to be a prolonged conflict for any meta/counter tactics to emerge. Eg. Compare the Korean War to the Vietnam War and the emergence of Asymmetric Warfare.
tldr; I think alien weapons technology being suddenly nerfed best fits your requirements. Eg. The latest opponent are immune or the weapons' can no longer function (blackhole tech is running dry).
The enemies don't even need have to be more technologically advanced or sapient - [see the Great Emu War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War)
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Other answers have addressed conflict and battle, but these are not war. It's reasonable for a society to have experienced violence and conflict without having to go through the trauma of regearing their society for total warfare.
Their ships are not unarmed, their soldiers not untrained. They have had border skirmishes, they have encountered pirates and raiders, perhaps they have had to subdue rebellious provinces, but these things are still not [total war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war).
## Total war
>
> Total war is warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combatant needs. The Oxford Living Dictionaries defines "total war" as "A war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded."
>
>
> In the mid-19th century, scholars identified "total war" as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, to an extent inapplicable in less total conflicts, the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants diminishes, sometimes even vanishing entirely, due to the capacity of opposing sides to consider nearly every human resource, even that of non-combatants, to be a part of the war effort.
>
>
>
This may be where human experience over the first half of the 20th century comes into its own.
### Total war changes everything, especially mindset.
Total war isn't just two armies fighting to victory, it's two entire societies facing off. Everything one can bring to the field against everything the other can bring. To a society that has long managed to have total separation of military and civilian considerations this may require external expertise. Their military production is sufficient for normal use but they don't understand that they need to turn everything over to military production. They have to consider how the skills of every single member of the society can help to bring victory.
It's also possible that a society that has long held a technological superiority over their neighbours has not developed the cunning required to face off against an equally matched or superior foe. They're honest and open rather than underhanded and deceptive. They don't understand the use of spies, and sabotage or the need to defend yourself against them.
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# The aliens they are fighting are more similar to humans (and use human style tactics, warfare, and psychology), than who they usually fight against
Perhaps this alien species is not peaceful per se (they regularly fight within their world or with other alien species) BUT they have never encountered an enemy like this. Warfare changes a lot depending of the technology available, the terrain/environment, mindset/psychology of the people, motivations for the war etc. Think how damaging guerrilla warfare was when previous battles had been two large groups fighting head on. It would be good to learn about defending agains guerrilla warfare from people who are experienced with it rather than learn about it through trial and error. And what about the psychology of other aliens - I'd imagine the concept a kamikaze was not something that the USA predicted. Perhaps the aliens they are fighting are more like humans and they want to know what they are capable of, or where their weaknesses are (like demoralization or propaganda which may have no effect on their population)
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Yes, it's totally possible. Human warfare is a deeply human concept. Sure, some primates show similar behaviour, but that's about it.
Our evolution rewared this behavaviour, obviously. But that's our evolution, another species could have evolved to a point where they are unable to form large cohesive groups necessary to fight wars. Our a thousand other things could be different, e.g. a strong pack mentality, where leaders fight and the rest submits.
Even if they are psychologically capable of conducting something like warfare we would understand, they could choose not to do so:
* Their latest few centuries of advancement discouraged conflict, e.g. because they have evrything the need not to fight over something. Conflict due to societal differences is solved in another way.
* They conduct warfare according to their own rules, which are just different to human rules - so they have no idea to fight us effectively.
* Their society actively suppresses the institutions necessary to fight wars to avoid having to fight them.
And a thousand other possibilties.
The key to recognize here is that aliens are alien - they evolved differently, they have different bodies, minds and history. It is absurd to think that they will solve conflicts the same way as modern human societies (modern warfare is a recent innovation). What you need to do is to find a group of causes that leads to your desired outcome (clueless in war), without beeing unbelievable to the reader. If you humanize them to much, the reader will not believe you but if you explain what's different about them the reader will believe you.
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**Psychological Reasons**
The galaxy is not as rough a place as Earth. Earth is a massive outlier on how hardcore an environment it is to evolve in. Here, everything is trying to kill us, from the microbes in our bodies to the corrosive oxygen we breath, the universal solvent of water that permeats everything. The competitive plantlife that chokes its neighbours and animals that hunt and prey on each other.
Our world is a brutal and savage place, not for the faint of heart. It's easy to forget that when we live in the controlled environments of towns and cities.
Our ancestors knew better.
As consequence of living in such a lethally dangerous place, we've developed many instincts, some of which aren't so good for peaceful society. Notably, we tend to form tribes, and other tribes are automatically "Other" in our minds, enemies at worst, strangers or acquaintances at best.
What we don't know can kill us, the unknown cannot be trusted, and is there any place more alien than another man's mind?
This sets the tone for large groups of likeminded people to be naturally pitted against other groups of people. Scaled up, that turns to warfare.
On a more peaceful world, tribalism is much less of a strong instinct because it hasn't been necessary to think that way, your aliens don't so reflexively divide the world into "us and them". They still develop enmities and rivalries, but generally they cooperate better than we do in large groups.
The upshot is, they have little experience with warfare among their own kind. It's simply not in their mindset to look at another large group of people as a collective enemy.
The nearest they might come would be teams of people who fend off single wild animals, or hunt down criminals and psychopaths.
Ultimately, your aliens are a more cooperative and peaceful race, open minded and friendly to strangers.
Natural explorers rather than conquerors.
Utterly unprepared for an aggressive and irrational foe to attack them.
Thank goodness they have Utter Vicious Untrusting Bastards like us to help!
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# They figured out Replicators early on
One of this society's first major achievements was Star Trek-style replicators. These have been developed now for millennia, and are cheap, ubiquitous, and require almost no power or resources to operate (or the power and resources are also cheap and abundant).
This creates a post-scarcity world, where anybody can have anything they want whenever they want just by pushing a few buttons. Food, medicine, clothing, heck even building components can be created for basically nothing. This eliminates need-based crime. Why steal anything when you can get what you want for free?
It also removes the incentive for predatory business practices. Most big companies today care only about their bottom line and how much money they can return to their investors. In a world where money has no value, this sort of thing would disappear. Big companies would only exist to work together to build the things that can't be created for next to nothing by any kid with a replicator.
This would include the ability to travel off-world, which might become a necessity since a world without scarcity could face problems of over-population. (Though not the usual problems since most resources are free). The biggest problem would simply be lack of space, and the only way to get more space after a while would be to leave the planet. Assuming there are no hostile space-faring neighbors in their neck of the galaxy, it might not even occur to them to develop weapons.
Their next priority would be in terraforming. Let's say they have a nearby Mars-like planet just as we do. Well, all of the problems that we would have colonizing Mars wouldn't be an issue if you've got ubiquitous replicators. Start by dropping a few off all around the planet, programmed to do nothing but pump out breathable air. Eventually, you've got yourself a livable atmosphere, and you can replicate yourself some buildings (in pieces if necessary) and enough food to feed your colony. Boom, you're now a multi-planet species.
A few millennia later once they've colonized every rock in their solar system, they might start looking further abroad. This is when they begin to develop wormhole technology. In this entire time, they've never encountered anything hostile, and never needed to develop weapons or military capabilities. This is where your story might start...
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No. It's is completely impossible. If they were bad at winning against other threats, they wouldn't be alive to reach that "advanced" state. Not a single advanced society ever lost a war to a lesser one. Fight there and there maybe - but never a war. That's valid not only for humans, but also for animals: not a single smarter and more powerful species lost a war to weaker one. Because you know, that's pretty much definition of being "strong" and "advanced".
The single reason your aliens could be bad at conventional "human" warfare is because they're so far above that they don't need it and can annihilate or at least block all harm from lower races without such trivial approach.
It's pretty much same as some guy sitting at keyboard and controlling a drone could be dozens of years behind some native savage in archery, swordsmanship, muscle mass, ability to build devious jungle traps and whatever else other savage military-related terms. Is that thin wimpy nerd obviously pathetic warrior to strong musclebound guy with a big club? Of course he is, yet he is far better at war because he can "defeat" entire tribe with a single move of finger touching the button.
Obviously you cold paint aliens at being this kind of "bad at war", but I doubt this will actually help their enemies much.
[Answer]
## Physical weakness
The species has grown weak in favor of more intelligence. Think of the descriptions of H.G. Wells in his book "The War of the Worlds":
>
> Based on their physical features, the Martians might be the
> descendants of a species similar to human beings, that evolution has
> reduced to only a large brain and head and two groupings of eight
> tentacles (hands). They are described as sluggish under terrestrial
> gravity, heavier than on Mars. It is reported that several Martians
> attempt to "stand" on their tentacles, implying that they are capable
> of locomotion in this manner while in Mars' lighter gravity, but not
> on Earth.
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You could think of the species being used to very low gravity worlds, while their adversary is based on earth-like gravity worlds. Thus they need humans to do their best; storm the gates. Perhaps in exchange for some technological favors.
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Maybe they were so powerful that nobody dared to challenge them military-wise for a long time. Neither did they go to war since it was easier for them to pursue their goals diplomatically or economically.
Then, one day, they had to enter a military conflict, only to recognize that they are deeply incapable of efficient warfare for a long time. Their army is ritualized and those rituals do not add up to victories.
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**They don't need to be bad at it, they just need to be worse than the other guy.**
What are "good tactics?" Good tactics are tactics that help you win. It's entirely possible that these tactics worked quite well for the first alien species when it only went to war with itself-- but the moment they encountered an outside force, these tactics no longer worked.
So basically, species A and B go to war. Species A tries a certain tactic, the winning strategy on their world. Species B already had a clever solution, and employed it. Species A is unable to come up with a response, because Species B strategy had, until that point, been considered bad strategy.
As to why Species A thinks Earth can help is beyond my guess, it seems to me that warfare in space is something we'd be clueless on. Unless of course, species A has had their planet invaded already, in which case, Russia can definitely help you repel an invasion. Just ask Carolus Rex, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Adolf Hitler.
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**There is actually historical prescience for exactly this.**
Ancient Sumer was the first human civilization ever. Without any other peoples to interact with, the people of Sumer lived for over a thousand years without developing an idea of warfare. This ended up being their downfall, as when other civilizations began to appear near their border they were invaded without being able to put up much resistance. Their main attempt at defence was the creation of a wall which was not anchored at any natural barrier, which resulted in their invaders simply walking around it.
If you were to follow a similar path where in a culture never encounters another, then they may never develop war as an idea. Even a civil war is unlikely if the ideas such armies have not been created. Now this does not guarantee against violent actions within society such as fighting, murder, or assassination, nor does it prevent things such as gang warfare, but traditional large scale warfare is unlikely.
[Answer]
## Make them too selfish and decadent to fight
Use modern wealthy, urban and liberal elites and expand on that. Ancestors of your alien species were once great warriors, conquerors, explorers. They were fearless, cunning and ruthless and created great empire with enormous technological knowledge. No one could challenge them, so no one did ... Lot of time passed.
Your present aliens, bask in the glory of their forefathers. They do not have to struggle for anything. Droids, or slave species genetically engineered to serve, attend to their every need. Medicine is so advanced that they live almost indefinitely. They do not have a need to procreate, so most of them are childless and care mostly about themselves and own whims. Having long lives and great intelligence, they are very educated, they know art, cuisine (or their equivalence of it), all kinds of "noble" pleasures and pass times. They sometimes engage in philosophical debates to impress each other, but all of this is mostly fruitless.
Suddenly, a new species arrives. They are relatively primitive and unintelligent (at least their foot soldiers) , but numerous and ready to sacrifice themselves. You could invent some "holy cause" for them to wage war against our aliens. Our aliens of course know theoretically what has to be done. They first attempt to create army out of their droids/slaves, but that does not work - they are either too docile or too unintelligent to operate alone. This means that some of our aliens have to serve as officers in this army, and risk their lives for their entire species and civilization. And being what they are, they could not find the fools for the job.
Therefore, they have decided to find suitable mercenaries and humans fit the description. Humans have solid understanding of military organization, aliens furnished them with some of their technology and gave them portion of their slaves/droids . Aliens also manipulate situation to present newly arrived aggressive species as a threat for humanity, giving another reason to fight. There could be even backup plan for aliens, where they find another group of mercenaries beside humans, in case of human failure or if humans become too strong.
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[
I like the classic trope of dragons loving gold and collecting it in their lair, yet it seems poorly justified. I know that it is often used as a metaphor for greed; "dragons disease" to show how material wealth corrupts people. I would like the same behavior in my dragons, but with a realistic and scientifically plausible explanation.
Dragons in my setting are a bit different than classic dragons. Think of a [Quetzalcoatlus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus), somewhat larger (up to 50%), wider wings, shorter neck, more dragon-like head, a longer tail, strong regeneration ability (common for monsters in the setting as it is a post-apocalyptic-modern-fantasy setting and without it, an AK-74 will counter most big monsters), ill-tempered and a living napalm thrower. They are quite clever, but nowhere near human-level intelligence. Males are less aggressive, smaller and roam the countryside. Females are very territorial and have lairs, a nest and the surrounding regions which are death-zones. They use a quantity-based reproduction system. The female lays dozens of eggs and the small dragons are left alone to fend for themselves, resulting in them hunting down everything they can find and even resorting to cannibalism to sustain their fast growth. The few survivors then continue to develop wings and usually leave the area.
[](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark_Witton/publication/279618696/figure/fig5/AS:306094300778505@1449989976915/Comparative-sizes-of-Quetzalcoatlus-northropi-25-m-tall-at-shoulder-250-kg-estimated.png)
So why would these dragon lairs usually contain big collections of shiny stuff? **Note that shiny stuff does not necessarily mean gold, but what we would call a garbage dump. Copper pipes, car parts, aluminum foil, knives.** As long as it is shiny it can be found in a dragon lair.
Now dragons did not evolve in our world (the setting is actually our world) but were transported here by the same event which brought magic into our world. **So why do dragons, which evolved in a wild world with nothing but untouched nature, start collecting shiny garbage dumps in their lairs once they come into our world?**
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Maybe they could have mating rituals like [bowerbirds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowerbird), in which the males, as part of their courtship display, strive to create visually interesting displays outside their bower (the hut-like structure they build for females to come in and mate with them). As the wikipedia article says:
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> In and around the bower, the male places a variety of brightly colored objects he has collected. These objects – usually different among each species – may include hundreds of shells, leaves, flowers, feathers, stones, berries, and even discarded plastic items, coins, nails, rifle shells, or pieces of glass. The males spend hours arranging this collection. Bowers within a species share a general form but do show significant variation, and the collection of objects reflects the biases of males of each species and its ability to procure items from the habitat, often stealing them from neighboring bowers. Several studies of different species have shown that colors of decorations males use on their bowers match the preferences of females.
>
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A couple of David Attenborough videos on bowerbirds, showing their displays with different colorful items arranged in aesthetic ways:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbWJPsBPdA>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1zmfTr2d4c>
And this one shows how bowerbirds will sometimes incorporate colorful bits of human litter into their displays:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H9TyXiXM2k&t=1m18s>
Also, [this article](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/not-bad-science/the-bowerbird-a-master-of-illusion/) talks about evidence they arrange items of different sizes to create something like a [forced perspective illusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_perspective#In_architecture) to make their bowers displays look bigger, while [this one](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/not-bad-science/what-makes-bowerbirds-such-good-artists/) suggests all male bowerbirds will create the same kind of gradients when given the same items to make the display, so in this case at least this skill seems to be something innate rather than something learned by watching others.
So, your dragons might have a similarly finely-tuned aesthetic sense in creating the same kind of displays for mating purposes, but perhaps they would be especially attracted to shiny objects, like iridescent shells of beetle-like creatures, or even crystals or bits of ore that can be found in their natural environment.
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To bring maternity food in close to their nest so that the brooding mother doesn't need to go very far to eat. The gems and gold are best because they attract not only the bigger hard shelled "warriors" but also the smaller, tender morsels called "thieves", which are great for feeding the hatch-lings.
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Hoarding for the sake of attracting a mate is one possible reason. Still, it's hard to picture them picking gold and gems specifically when they don't have the means to extract them, at least not without some other cause.
Let's try giving your dragons a practical reason for hoarding, then, one directly tied to their survival; this assumes they have scales. They're going to be drawn to shiny gold and gems, but more generally metal of all sorts, because **they need to eat the stuff** to survive. All those legends of nigh-impenetrable dragon hides suddenly make sense, because the scales are literally made of metal! The dragons gobble the gold up and digest it into materials for their scales, with any leftovers hoarded against times when metal is hard to find. A poor dragon is readily visible: thinning scales that shatter easily, possibly even patches where they fell out and were not replaced, etc. A dragon without a hoard is soon a dragon exposed to claws and arrows and so forth; that's obviously not a prospect conducive to survival.
For the curious, my inspiration for this idea came from the *Age of Fire* book series, where fire-breathing dragons often end up in conflict with the local humans, dwarves, etc., in no small part because they want those precious metals, and a dragon without strong scales is very quickly going to be filled with arrows.
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Psychological reason: after the eggs have been laid, the mother uses her flames to keep them warm during the incubation.
While the fetus develops in the egg, from the very moment it develop eyes, it is constantly exposed to the translucent light of the flame, seeping through the egg shell. That light means warmth, means growth, means feeling better.
As an adult the dragon will long for gold because, with its color, it triggers subconscious memories of the incubation period. What else would you need when you want to nap and feel good?
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The strongest substance in nature is [goethite](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31500883), the material that makes up Limpet teeth. It's basically an organic nanofiber substance that is infused with iron which the limpet gets plenty of by scraping rocks for algae. On the dragon homeworld, the ancestors of dragons had similar teeth for burrowing to dig prey out of small, iron rich caves. As dragons continued to evolve, they began developing goethite in their scales as well. This would make their scales even stronger than kevlar, but their teeth were no longer able to absorb enough iron to keep up with the wear and tear of eating rocks if their scales started using too much of it.
**This led to 3 additional adaptations:**
1 - They could use other metals when iron was not plentiful enough. Gold, tin, copper, silver, titanium, aluminum, etc. could be absorbed into the scales while the iron stayed mostly in the teeth. These substitute metals were not as good as iron, but still made their scales much tougher than most natural materials. This leads to the various metallic sheens of dragons.
2 - A natural attraction to a lustrous environment. If the ground sparkled a little, it meant there was enough natural ore to keep them healthy. Those that did not live in sparkly environments began to die of malnutrition when their teeth started falling out. As such, seeing things sparkle gives an instinctive feeling of comfort and security to a dragon; so, in our world where there is much more metal than they can eat thanks to the mining and refinement efforts of man, they gather excess metals and other lustrous things around them because it makes them feel good.
3 - Fire breath. Metal can be made soft through the process of annealing. This is where you heat the metal, and slowly cool it. When a dragon finds a choice ore, he will use his breath to "cook" it so that he can consume it without having to wear out his teeth so much.
**A fun side note:** Under these circumstances, gold specifically could be treated like a sugary treat to dragons. It's softness makes it tasty because dragons prefer to eat annealed metals, and it's luster makes it look tasty because (shiny = yummy). However, it's really not good for their health because it weighs them down and softens their scales.
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Let's look at where this is found in the world we know: ravens. From [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_raven) (emphasis mine):
>
> Common ravens are known to steal and cache shiny objects such as pebbles, pieces of metal, and golf balls. One theory is that they hoard shiny objects **to impress other ravens**. Other research indicates that juveniles are deeply curious about all new things, and that common ravens retain an attraction to bright, round objects **based on their similarity to bird eggs**. Mature birds lose their intense interest in the unusual, and become highly neophobic.
>
>
>
Since [there's an evolutionary link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_birds) between birds and dinosaurs/lizards/dragons it's an easy leap to tie the common behavior to the same evolutionary ancestor.
But your ~~din~~... ~~liz~~... *dragons* aren't from this world. (Are you *sure* they represent the first time species have crossed the world boundaries?) Still, the reasons could be the same.
I think we can discount the "to impress other dragons" theory. No self-respecting dragon is going to invite another dragon back to its den to see its ~~etchings~~ hoard. *That* would turn into a battle royale when the other dragon's hoarding instinct kicked in.
No, dragons are driven to collect *round* shiny things by the same instinct which makes them police their clutches to make sure none of the eggs roll out of the nest. They see something round and shiny (egg-like) and they just *have* to get it back to the nest.
[Answer]
**To prove their worth**
>
> "Undoubtedly that was what brought the dragons. Dragons steal gold and jewels, you know, from men and elves and dwarves, wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live (which is practically forever, unless they are killed), and never enjoy a brass ring of it. Indeed they hardly know a good bit of work from a bad, though they usually have a good notion of the current market value; and they can't make a thing for themselves, not even mend a little loose scale of their armor." - Thorin Oakenshield, *The Hobbit or There and Back Again*
>
>
>
The quote is a prelude to a psychological approach, the answer does not work unless the dragons in question possess a quantity of intelligence, and that is that dragon wants gold or shiny things because the dragon recognizes it as a sign of wealth. All animals like competing within their species to prove dominance and wealth is a crude, yet effective measure. Of course, wealth means different things to different species. To dragons, a species which destroys but does not create, wealth means acquiring things *other* races (men, elves, dwarves) built by using their force. Shiny objects are rare in nature, they are (as observed from your list) almost entirely artificial, or even in the event that they are naturally found (such as gemstones and gold) they are quite rare. Thus, having a sizable stock inherently proves a dragon's worth, and should a dragon find another dragon with a lair and hoard greater than that dragon, he should flee at once.
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If you own a cat, you'll know that it's nearly impossible to have something shiny/lighted laying around that the cat won't claim for themselves. If they don't hide it away, they'll play with it and even try to eat it. Think Christmas trees or knickknacks.
If you fish, you'll notice that a lot of lures are shiny to attract the fish to bite on the hook.
If you're a lady, you'll know that any shiny jewelry is likely to get your attention. This also goes for men, realizing that getting his lady to move from a display of shiny jewelry is nearly impossible. Lots of men also like the shiny jewelry of a woman.
If you're a nerd or simply ADHD, you'll know that anything sufficiently "new & shiny" and/or LED encrusted is likely to gain your attention.
There's plenty of other examples of animals and people liking shiny things ([My precious](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bxn-EIqYF8U/hqdefault.jpg)) simply because they are shiny. This is part of being a predator and being attracted to contrasts in light, which can show prey or danger. I humans, we also conflate that with wealth.
Metals such as gold, aluminum, and silver don't tarnish (or at least not much), and will maintain their ability to reflect light "forever". Other materials such as bronze/copper, glass, jewels, and more are highly reflective, or even prismatic, for quite a while, until their surfaces are sufficiently scratched or corroded.
One other thing to think about: Since dragons live in dark caves, they may want to lighten the place up. Ancient Egyptians and other cultures used a series of mirrors to redirect sunlight down into underground chambers. A sufficiently intelligent race of dragons could also learn or discover how to do this.
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I'm thinking it could be down to intimidation of enemies, attraction of mates, and useful nesting properties.
The common trope as you've mentioned is that dragons hoard wealth - specifically **gold**. Gold has a number of properties that a posturing dragon could make use of. It's very shiny and reflective, so any fire-based displays from a dragon (gouts of flame for intimidation, or mating rituals, etc.) would be reflected from the gold - the more gold, and the higher quality your hoard, the more light would shine into the area and the more impressive your display could be. Such a display could be used for either intimidation of interlopers or for impressing a prospective mate.
In addition, gold is a pretty good conductor of heat. It's not going to burn, but it could be a useful method of distributing heat around a nest of eggs to incubate them. Depending on how intelligent they are in your world, they may also have learned to shape the gold by using sustained flame to soften it.
Gold also has the benefit of not tarnishing. If the females are highly territorial, then they may prefer their hoard to have longevity, and gold does not rust or oxidise like other metals.
Gold would therefore be the preferred choice - however, it may not be as abundant on this world compared to their home world. Their home world may have had abundant natural veins of gold, whereas this world does not. As such, dragons would still show preference for gold, but if there's a poor supply in the local area they may resort to other metals and shiny objects as a poor-man's substitute - hence the collection of items such as copper pipes, car parts, etc. They may not be gold, and they may not last, but they might be the best the dragon can get for reflecting light and conducting heat.
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1. **Pride**. The book of Job speaks of the scaly, fire-breathing beast [Leviathan](https://biblehub.com/job/41-29.htm) that *laughs* at the spears of his foes. A creature that is prideful likes his bling.
2. **Bait** to attract more prey. Humans and some animals like shiny things and are adventurous and will sometimes risk life and limb to obtain treasure. A creature that is consumed with pride in its own prowess is prone to delight in destroying humans (as chronicled in [Beowulf](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328-h/16328-h.htm)), while almost all other creatures bow to human dominion. The massacre of treasure-seeking humans falling into its trap fuels its sense of pride.
3. As **moths to flames**. Psychological and perhaps inborn neurological, this effect is irrational. Moths often kill themselves to be in the brightest spot.
4. While the first two are evil habits, the third is naive. Perhaps there is some utility or mutual benefit to humankind in its habit if one were to find a benign or friendly such creature. Humans killing all such creatures on account of their tendency for (1) and (2) would hamper the discovery of such uses.
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Besides gold, silver and copper being a representation of their worth these precious metals are soft. The perfect thing for a large creature to make a nest, especially if they can breath fire because they would easily be able to melt it.
My pig used to roll on a pile of trash/glass because it loved scratching parts of its back it could never reach. Dragons would get a lot of utility out of soft metals, this logic goes back many years and is not my own original answer.
Gold, silver and copper are not shiny if you don't take care of it. Dragons aren't collecting it like crows.
[Answer]
In their original environment, they needed a trace element which is plentiful here.
It was only found in mineral form in shiny rocks.
As a refinement on the idea, say it's used in the growth cycle so adults don't need to consume it but want it hoarded for their volume-based reproductive system.
The dragons don't understand any of this, just the instinct to hoard shiny.
This answer could be used to explain why some areas are plagued by hatchlings and in others, hatchlings don't survive and so there's a regular cycle of no dragons in a place, then adults moving in but they don't reproduce.
This answer inspired by a similar trace-element reason why *Treecats* in David Weber's Honor Harrington series crave Earth celery. In their case, the natural source of the element was not very pleasant to eat.
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Caves are dark. Shiny stuff reflects light. Dragons breathe fire. In an empty cave your fire breath will light only close area. With shiny stuff put near each wall and obstacle, small flicker of fire will give you good understanding how the cave looks.
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I think part of your problem lies in the stipulation that the dragons are sexually dimorphic- in most species, the male is generally more expendable than the female and must fight for, or otherwise earn the right to copulate. Generally one would expect a selective pressure for bigger and more aggressive males if this were the case, but your dragon males are smaller, less aggressive and don't hold a territory. If only the females have lairs, then generally only the females will be able to hoard treasure beyond simply swallowing shiny things and keeping them in a stomach/equivalent (a difficult practice for animals that have to be light and capable of flight); thus we are lead to the question: why would the *females* evolve to hoard treasure?
**Why Hoard Treasure?**
1: Collecting and guarding a large number of interesting things is proof of good health and competitive ability among females in order to either A: attract a mate or B: intimidate rivals.
2: Dragons fulfill a dietary requirement from Shiny Stuff commonly found on their home planet, be it from natural mineral formations or the bodies of other organisms (could be prey species or dragons concentrating minerals in certain parts of their body). They can't distinguish between Shiny Stuff beyond it simply being shiny, so they just collect everything and hoard the stuff they can't digest, which conveniently happens to include a lot of man made objects, resulting in piles of "treasure" collecting in most female lairs.
So, we've established some reasons a female might want to hoard treasure, now we need to work out why only the females need/want a big pile and how they get it. I've listed some workable male-female breeding dynamics below:
**Monogamy:**
It's perhaps a little unlikely given their lonesome nature, but it's possible that male and female dragons form a pair bond at some stage in development after leaving their mother's territory- paired males would then roam around collecting Shiny Stuff, which the females need to eat lots of in order to continue producing healthy eggs.
Monogamy is fairly common among birds, which are probably the closest earth analogy to your dragons.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogamy_in_animals>
**Choosy Female:**
If the treasure isn't required to attract a male, it seems most likely that again, it's a dietary requirement and the males must offer appropriate (shiny) tribute in order to mate.
**Choosy Male:**
There would have to be a good reason for a male to afford selectivity in picking its mate- some kind of time or energy commitment above the female. Perhaps the female lays its clutch of eggs and abandons them to the male's care and protection until they've hatched. A female with a larger pile of treasure indicates greater strength and a more bountiful territory for the male's offspring.
I don't think there's any one right answer to your question, so it's really up to you, what kind of story you wish to write and the role your dragons are going to play in it. Given the dragons come from a different planet you can really afford to be a little more creative and pick less plausible (from an earthling's perspective) behavior if you feel they suit the story!
[Answer]
To harden their eggs; once that period of the year comes around, all female dragons collect metals. Bold adventurers and knights usually bring the highest quality metals, and to lure them to your neat little cave you need something that attracts them: precious objects and metals.
Possibly reason for the need to harden the eggs: the eggs are part of a delicious dish which is prepared once a year. Local towns gather up teams to sneak inside the caves and steal the eggs / tap the eggs.
The more metal on the eggs' shell, the harder it is for the villagers to steal. You could add an incubation time of several years as well.
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I read once that dragons like gold because its soft (relatively speaking) and with its other properties able to provide a nice, non-flammable, easily squished in to shape (if you're a heavy, and hot dragon). So they want it the same way you want a pillow.
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Consider pelagic seabirds. They evolved in a world where anything floating in the water was food. Hurry! Swoop down, swallow it, it's got nutritional value. Digest it or regurgitate it for your chicks. If it floats, it's food.
Seabirds did not evolve for a world with plastic floating in the ocean. :-( [Ref](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/09/15092-plastic-seabirds-albatross-australia/).
Now consider your dragons. They did not evolve in or for this world. Their love of shiny metal, shiny trinkets, broken mirrors... they live in nests full of junk, but on their home planet, the only common shiny things are the shells of scavenger beetles, which are needed to keep the nest of a carnivore clean.
[Answer]
# Plot twist: They don't actually like shiny things
Shiny things reflect light, which hurts their eyes. Dragons are also smart. They've learned that destroying and/or burying shiny things doesn't help in the long run. Humans are good at recycling and unburying stuff.
The solution: put the shiny things out of humans' reach: store them in caves where they can't reflect sunlight, and guard the treasure yourself.
While the solution may be risky, few humans have the courage to venture into a dragon's lair, and even fewer can hurt or kill dragons. Guarding the treasure may not even be strictly necessary. Humans know dragons like to steal and hoard gold and silver (and other shiny stuff), so they know to stay out of a dragon's way.
With dragons no longer getting blinded and humans no longer getting robbed, a relatively peaceful coexistence can be achieved... until they encounter the humans of our world, armed with nukes and spice and all things nice, that is.
[Answer]
At the, shall we say, other end of the spectrum, maybe they make the shiny stuff and never get rid of it. I saw a setting once where dragon lairs had lots of gemstones lying around because dragons poop gemstones. (The biology of how this works is left as an exercise.)
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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Closed 5 years ago.
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My character has to perform surgery on herself and by herself.
She has all the surgery tools and a screen to watch what she is doing.
She is in a clean stable environment and there is no risk of infection.
She has to perform surgery near her spine, where she's inserting a microchip connecting to the nerve connected to the brain. The technology is futuristic so this is possible.
What I'm specifically asking if she could actually do the surgery?
[Answer]
No.
## Just no.
Not at all possible. Even with video. (One caveat only applies.) Even with futuristic technology. You're still dealing with the totally unfuturistic human body. And that's something the other autosurgery answers fail to deal with.
Human arms and hands aren't designed to work behind our backs all that well. Especially when away from direct visualisation. She will need not only finger dexterity to do this job but also main strength and range of motion that will be severely curtailed for hours.
Other answers have focused on abdominal / ventral autosurgeries. Yes, those are possible, and are relatively simple procedures: you can see what you're doing and are not putting strain on your arms and your hands are working in their natural anatomic position. A c-section takes something like 20 minutes. An appendectomy can take as little 5 minutes.
None of them address the specific needs of spine surgery. The kind of surgery your character will have to do will require several hours of preparation and actual work -- ***if she were an actual surgeon working in an actual hospital setting.*** I know you've accepted one of those answers, but the reality is that your scenario simply is not going to happen.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BPeSh.jpg)
*This is a typical spinal surgery set-up.*
In order to access the nerves to connect the chip, your character will need to make an incision. Incisions bleed, so she will need to achieve hemostasis. She will need to carefully dissect through two or three inches of subcutaneous tissue: muscles, connective tissue. You know, stuff that she's going to need in order to move her body around after the procedure!
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lMVjW.jpg)
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*This is what it looks like when dissected down to the connective tissue on the spine itself.*
Once she gets down to bone, she'll still be a good inch to inch and a half away from the spinal cord itself. She will need a powered drill with several different kinds of specialised bits; she will need (quite literally!) a hammer and some chisels; she will need rongeurs. She's got to basically dig a hole through the bone in order to access the spinal cord.
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/j0HxR.jpg)
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*Dem bones!*
Once she gets through the bone, she's going to be confronted by the *dura mater*, which is the layer of tissue that protects the spinal cord and contains her cerebrospinal fluid. This is the same layer of tissue and fluid that surrounds & bathes the brain. She's going to have to be very careful when dissecting bone off the dura. It's very easy to tear!
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bUGns.jpg)
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*The dura.*
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> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eMTpu.jpg)
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*View of the spinal cord itself.*
Once she makes the incision through the dura, she'll at last be down to the spinal cord. Yay! ***That*** is the nerve that connects to her brain. Everything she's done so far is basically preparation for seating the implant. The "chip". At this point, she will have to know where in that mass of neurons is the appropriate nerve for the "chip" to be connected to. Easy-peasy!
Once the implant is in place, she's off the hook, right!?
Hell no!
She's still got to extricate herself from the situation. She has to close each and every layer that she just butchered in order to get down to the spinal cord. She will need to very carefully sew her own dura mater closed using extremely thin sutures and long specially designed needle holders.
Once that's done, she's gong to need to take all those bone chunks, mix them up with some blood and allograft bone chips in order to make a kind of bony bandage over the hole she made.
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7nUgw.jpg)
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*Stitches and glue.*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HSjRN.jpg)
*Bone chips!!*
And then she'll have to secure the implant itself to her spine so it won't move around and come loose. She does **NOT** want to create a CSF leak where the "chip" attaches to her spinal cord! This will involve another drill which she'll use to shape a pocket in her spinal column so that the "chip" will have a secure home. And then a much smaller drill and a bunch of fiddly little screws to secure the implant to the bone.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vI1xs.jpg)
*Screws!*
Then she'll have to close up the layers of muscle and tendons, subcutaneous layers and skin. If she's lucky, she'll end up with a nice little scar.
Basically, all you're asking your character to do is be not only an orthopedic surgeon (for the bone work) but also a neurosurgeon (for the nerve work and implantation) but to do all this whilst wide awake and alert! Sorry, but a little 0.5% novocaine is not going to get her through this.
Spine surgery is brutal. It requires great physical strength to do the dissections and to get through the bone. She can not do these things on herself.
You're also asking your character to be a surgical technologist. They're the ones that sort through all the thousands of surgical instruments, all the sizers, the drill bits, the fiddly little strings of suture to make all the surgeon's magic even possible.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0QhC9.jpg)
*A Surgical Tech rocks the setup!*
And you want your girl to all this all by herself?
Super Woman couldn't do this all by herself!
McGyver couldn't do this all by himself!
Synopsis: there is no way in hell a single person can perform spinal surgery without help. She will most likely die on the table. You do not understand how close those drills and chisels are to the aorta and vena cava. A little slip will send something sharp right into a major vessel, and then she'll bleed out. If she doesn't kill herself outright, she will faint. Like I said, spine surgery is brutality. It is *physically brutal and barbaric*. She won't be able to put up with the hours of agonising pain that this will cause. I'm all for acupuncture, but I don't think that's going to help much. Since she can't be asleep to perform surgery, that leaves local anasthetics. There are serious side effects (including death) if she uses too much of that.
---
So, what's the one caveat that will allow her to accomplish all this?
Basically: **magic**. She can sit herself up against Handvavium LLC's super-advanced robot and push the start button. Let the robot do all the work and she can watch it go from the screen. That's all there is to it!
But actual autosurgery? No. Not possible.
[Answer]
**Is it possible to perform surgery on yourself?**
[Leonid Rogozov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov), when based on a Russian Antarctic base as doctor, was forced to perform appendix operation on himself.
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> On the morning of 29 April 1961, Rogozov experienced general weakness, nausea, and moderate fever, and later pain in the lower right portion of the abdomen. None of the possible conservative treatment measures helped. By 30 April signs of localised peritonitis became apparent, and his condition worsened considerably by the evening. Mirny, the nearest Soviet research station, was more than 1,600 km (1,000 mi) from Novolazarevskaya. Antarctic research stations of other countries did not have an aircraft. Severe blizzard conditions prevented aircraft landing in any case. Rogozov had no option but to perform the operation on himself.
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> The operation started at 02:00 local time on 1 May with the help of a driver and meteorologist, who were providing instruments and holding a mirror to observe areas not directly visible, while Rogozov was in a semi-reclining position, half-turned to his left side. A solution of 0.5% novocaine was used for local anaesthesia of the abdominal wall. Rogozov made a 10–12 cm incision of the abdominal wall, and while opening the peritoneum he accidentally injured the cecum and had to suture it. Then he proceeded to expose the appendix. According to his report, the appendix was found to have a dark stain at its base, and Rogozov estimated it would have burst within a day. The appendix was resected and antibiotics were applied directly into the peritoneal cavity. General weakness and nausea developed about 30–40 minutes after the start of the operation so that short pauses for rest were repeatedly needed after that. By about 04:00 the operation was complete.
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> After the operation gradual improvement occurred in the signs of peritonitis and in the general condition of Rogozov. Body temperature returned to normal after five days, and the stitches were removed seven days after the operation. He resumed his regular duties in about two weeks.
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So, it seems that is should be possible, with adequate preparation, to perform self surgery.
**Is it possible to perform surgery by yourself on your spine?**
But in the above case the abdomen is accessible with the hands with no big hurdles. Accessing the back region is going to be more cumbersome, especially considering the unnatural posture of the hands and the elbow when operating on oneself's back, if the operation has to be executed by hands.
If instead your character has the necessary tools for performing tele-surgery (basically remotely controlled robotic arms and hands), it should be feasible.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NP5pI.jpg)
The visor needs to be adapted to a laying position and of course the subject cannot undergo total anesthesia, but only local anesthesia shall be applied. Moreover, considering that the back will be cut open to access the spine, movement of the arms shall be prevented and the tools shall be operated only by finger movement.
[Answer]
# Yes, this is possible.
Here are some real-life examples:
[**Woman carries out caesarean on herself - and she and baby live**](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/apr/07/health.healthandwellbeing)
>
> A pregnant woman in Mexico is reported to have given birth to a
> healthy baby boy after performing a caesarean section on herself with
> a kitchen knife...The unidentified 40-year-old [other sources give her name as Ines Ramirez Perez], who lives in a rural
> area without electricity, running water or sanitation, and whose home
> was an eight-hour drive from the nearest hospital, performed the
> operation when she found she could not deliver the baby naturally.
>
>
> She took three small glasses of hard liquor and, using a kitchen
> knife, sliced her abdomen in three attempts ... and delivered a male
> infant who breathed immediately and cried...Before losing
> consciousness the woman told one of her children to call a local nurse
> for help. After the nurse stitched the wound with a sewing needle and
> cotton thread, the mother and baby were transferred and treated...at
> the nearest hospital."
>
>
>
[**Doctor rescued from Antarctica in 1999 dies at 57**](http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/23/obit.jerri.nielsen/index.html)
>
> Dr. Jerri Nielsen...treated herself for breast cancer while stationed
> at the South Pole in 1999...Nielsen caught the nation's attention in
> 1999, when she found a lump in her breast as a 47-year-old physician
> stationed at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Station. After
> finding the lump in June, she diagnosed herself with breast cancer and
> began treating herself using chemotherapy agents that the U.S. Air
> Force parachuted to the station the next month.
>
>
> It was later revealed...that Nielsen -- an emergency room doctor from
> Cleveland, Ohio -- performed a biopsy on herself with the help of
> non-medical crew, who practiced using needles on a raw chicken.
>
>
>
In your character's case, the surgery is something from the future so hopefully, the tools are too. She'd be unlikely to be able to reach her spine properly but even today we have robots that do surgery and can be controlled by computer. So she could do that.
Imagine [robotic surgery](http://med.nyu.edu/robotic-surgery/physicians/what-robotic-surgery), for example (and this is modern day; in the OP's world, the tools would be higher tech).
And imagine an operating version of this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WGMKn.png)
[Answer]
All in all, it's pretty unrealistic. Then again, if it's SciFi, why not.
Even the documented real cases where people have (allegedly) done surgery on themselves are for the most part somewhere in between *"fucking heroic"* and *"unbelieveable"*.
I am not going to say it's all lies, but as someone who performed that kind of intervention (on others, in proper conditions) for a living 15 years ago, the idea of e.g. operating your own appendix seems like something that's, well let's just say not very likely to succeed unless you are some kind of superhuman (or credible, for that matter).
Taking Rogozov as an example. With nothing but local anaesthetic, your belly will be hard as rock as soon as you cut in, let alone touch the peritoneum (with muscle relaxant on the other hand side, good luck operating or breathing). Speaking of which... the sensation of touching, or cutting through your peritoneum (which is not under local anaesthetic) is a sensation worth having. Imagine being on a football field, and one of those meatbags taking a 20-meter charge, then kicking you in the crown jewels, as hard as he can. That's approximately the feeling of cutting in your peritoneum. Staying conscious and actually doing something that requires delicate manual work for an entire 20 minutes after that? Well, kudos on being a real tough guy, Mr. Rogozov. But I'm more inclined to believe this is a case of Korsakoff, no offense intended.
Also it's worth to note that local anaesthetics are ineffective in acidic environment such as... oh wait, an inflammated appendix. Then there's that thing about accidentially cutting open the caecum and suturing it. And yes, not only living to tell, but going to work again after only two weeks. I've seen 22 year olds spending a week struggling for their lives with peritonitis in the ICU after having one of those incidents. And that was in the early 2000s, consuming a 5-digit sum of care and antibiotics. This the kind of incident that, no matter how big your balls are, gives you cold sweat when you're an experienced surgeon. Let alone someone in 1960 who graduated a year earlier and is doing the operation on himself lying on his back. I mean, sure, when you're desperate and have few choices you probably try everything, but seriously... that's so fucking awesome superhuman that its factual accurracy is hard to believe.
But even if we assume the accounts are totally true and accurate -- the fact that one person did it and survived does not mean it is "doable" (in a sense that you can do it and expect to live). That's like saying Mrs. Vulović survived a fall from 10,000 meters (when in reality, she didn't fall at all), so it's *doable* to fall without parachute from 10,000 meters. Well, go ahead and try, no worries, you will always arrive on the ground.
As for the question's details:
>
> clean stable environment and there is no risk of infection
> surgery near her spine [...] inserting a microchip connecting to the nerve connected to the brain
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So basically, cut through the skin and open the liquid-filled spinal canal which rules out "no risk of infection".
Then insert a foreign body that connects to a single nerve connected to the brain. Well, far down in the cauda that would probably even be doable (if this still counts as "connected to the brain", which is technically not the case, being the lower motoneuron) but further up the spine where you find the real "connected to brain" neurons, good luck cutting open the bundle and fiddling with it without accidentially pulling an axon or two (or ten) and provoking a jerk with devastating results.
All that over a monitor via remote manipulators (unless you are a Chinese acrobat of sorts?). Uh. Well sure, while at it, why not transplant your head onto a different body.
Unless you consider some very, very tough SciFi voodoo (AI assisted half-robotic remote manipulators with, I don't know... force fields, super awesome nanobots, engineered bacteria that keep the skin barrier but refuse to grow in spinal fluid, bacta-tanks that magically cure everything, whatever?) I don't think this can be done, realistically. Not with any chance of success anyway.
[Answer]
It sounds like the most difficult part would be actually reaching around to to insert the microchip if it's behind her own back. With a local anaesthetic, she'd be able to make the incision and insert the chip. Obviously I can't speak to the extent of the futuristic technology, or how involved the surgery is, but a simple insertion certainly wouldn't be too hard.
You might be interested in reading about a Russian doctor called [Leonid Rogozov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov). He was the lone physician on an Antarctic expedition when he developed appendicitis. With no other options he gave himself a local anaesthetic and performed a self-appendectomy.
In his case he did have assistance in the form of a driver and meteorologist, but he made a full recovery and resumed his duties about a week later.
Another related topic would be [biohackers or grinders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinder_(biohacking)), which is a term for people who experiment with cybernetic implants upon themselves. An example would be inserting small silicon-coated magnets under the fingertips, which can give the person a primitive electromagnetic sense as the magnet twitches and pushes against the nerve endings in the presence of an electrical field.
[Answer]
So if the technology is futuristic then why should she perform surgery herself. Let the future create a smart surgical pod that is capable of doing any kind of surgery. Just select a surgery and proceed and the computer is smart enough to finish the surgery with perfection.
I remember the surgery scene from the film [*Prometheus*](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/).
[Answer]
Using current technology I agree with the answers saying that this is not possible.
My suggestion would be to have the chips specially made and equipped with nano-technology for this purpose though. All she has to do is make a cut near her spine and slide the chip in. It will automatically activate once inside and extend nano-fibres to penetrate the spine and connect itself.
This makes the required surgery much simpler and safer to the point that it becomes a lot more believable.
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[Question]
[
In some of my first questions on this site I asked about a world with a day that lasts 9 years. Many people agreed that life on this planet could survive via migration, but not evolve. The problem lies in the earliest stages of evolution, as microscopic single-celled organisms would not know to or be able to migrate. The earliest creatures would die after only being around for 4.5 years until they entered the night and froze to death. I pride myself at [explaining everything realistically](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2797/anatomically-correct-series), but I have failed to explain how life could evolve in a world like this.
Assuming every detail other than its day length is the same as Earth, how could complex life evolve?
[Answer]
The idea of volcanic vents to harbor life during the long night that others have suggested is really good.
But that won't help during the long day if it gets to hot and dry.
One variable that would help is the planets orbit. If the planet had an orbit on the outer edge of the Goldilocks Zone so that daytime temperatures stay at a reasonable level, with an average daytime temperature of 18 C (65 F).
If it also has lots of high glaciers that would build up over the long winter, and then slowly melt over the summer to keep things wet, and you'd also get some good storms near the terminators.
Plant life would wake up around dawn as the ice melted and the dawn storms began, starting on the plains, and then along the river valleys during mid morning, as the snow continued to retreat.
Things would begin to dry out around noon, with plants on the plains dropping seed and drying out, and plants along the glacial melt rivers taking off. By later afternoon when the storms started up again life on the plains would resurge.
As dusk approached, the plants on the plains would die off, dropping their seeds again, and trees and other large plants would begin to harden for the long cold.
As night falls, plant life would be limited to species that don't depend on photosynthesis, huddled in isolated areas around geothermal vents and volcanic activity.
Animal life would be mainly migratory, with different species sticking to different bands of the day. There would be some that live their entire lives in the cold of early morning. Others would constantly travel the lush prairies of early afternoon. The valleys and river areas would be havens for animals during the warm afternoon, and birds would build nests, raise their young, and then move on to new nests as the day progressed. Others would live on the midday plains, drinking the dew, and feasting on the seeds dropped during late morning.
The zones then reverse as dusk approaches and the rains start, with large herds traveling the plains, and then the cold weather animals as the sun sets.
Predators would travel along with their preferred prey, only occasionally moving out of their area of the day.
Large cities probably wouldn't develop, unless the planet was tilted in such a way that something more stable could exist near the pole. Otherwise they would be highly nomadic, following the herds or moving along from river to river. Different tribes would most likely stick to specific parts of the day, though there may be some that would travel between zones.
And then there was the legend of the family that was fleeing from raiders far into night, and took refuge in an area with a lot of volcanic activity, living on mushrooms and other nocturnal plants until dawn.
[Answer]
The solution is actually pretty simple, antifreeze and hibernation.
There are already plenty of bacteria that can survive being frozen and then recover. Many plants have a life cycle where they grow during summer and then scatter seeds that last through winter. What you are describing here just needs an extension of this and life would have evolved to keep with it.
The very early stages of life obviously won't have that developed, but that doesn't need to be a problem. Freezing is only harmful to cellular life because the ice crystals that form rupture the cell walls. Life on this planet though would evolve something to survive that. Either internal antifreeze, or elastic cell membranes, or something completely different.
Something else to consider is that one of the likely initial locations for life to have formed is volcanic pools and they would remain defrosted even through the long night. As life develops and moves away from these locations it would have time to develop the survival mechanisms it needs.
[Answer]
Life in the sea would have a far easier time than life on land. Oceans are huge and have an enormous thermal inertia. So the sea surface might freeze over globally, but the ocean depths would still be liquid.
Perhaps even the land life could survive by returning to the oceans for the 4.5 year night? Some kind of marine tadpole turns into a frog and lives on land during the day, then reverts back to a tadpole and lives in the sea at night.
You might want to check out stuff about Snowball Earth [prehistoric Snowball Earth](http://www.snowballearth.org/what.html) for how life survived then, though obviously Earth still had sunlight, so your creatures may have to have survived on chemosynthesis not photosynthesis. [theories on life surviving](http://www.snowballearth.org/life.html)
[Answer]
Depending on the axial tilt of your planet, the poles might be an option. At near 0° tilt, the poles could easily be warmer than the night-side equator.
With 0° tilt, someone standing at either pole would always be in sunlight (as slight as it may be); taller objects are more likely to get sunlight at their tops. Closer to the star (or larger star), this would apply further from the poles (if only slightly). This would give the poles a far more consistent thermal profile than the equator (with it's rather long periods in sunlight and darkness).
[Answer]
There's no real reason that a long day-night cycle would make it difficult for life to exist or evolve. Consider: there are animals that live in deep caves and deep oceans for whom there is no day-night cycle of any kind.
But even for regular surface-dwelling life the major issue (to my mind) would be related to temperature. This could be a problem with things like frigid temperatures at night and reliable water sources evaporating during the day or baking soil. These have a lot of ordinary meteorological solutions-- I've experienced plenty of warm nights and cool days, and it's always possible that life can only develop in a narrow climatic region of your planet (even if life forms migrate elsewhere later on).
You could also have an atmosphere conducive to heavy cloud cover, mitigating the sunlight substantially, as long as there is enough gravity/atmosphere/ozone (or equivalents) to keep water from escaping into space. Or there could be geographic regions that provide for a reliable amount of shade during the long days, like a fortuitously positioned valley among mountains such that there is always significant shade cover. And water itself could be stored in huge, deep oceans large enough to withstand evaporation processes during the day or in underground aquifers (where even if the temperature were high enough to evaporate the water it would quickly condense again).
[Answer]
2 comments:
1. One theory proposes that life on Earth originated in deep-sea hydrothermal vents (see here: <http://www.space.com/19439-origin-life-earth-hydrothermal-vents.html>). This type of life takes advantage of chemical gradients created by volcanism, and does not care much about the Sun. So, if your planet has an ocean, then the length of the day would not matter in terms of the origin of this type of life. (One can imagine this type of life existing almost anywhere; see here: <https://aeon.co/essays/could-we-make-our-home-on-a-rogue-planet-without-a-sun>).
2. A planet that spins that slowly is basically tidally-locked for practical purposes. One possible state of a planet like this is an "Eyeball" world, where the part of the planet that faces the star gets the lion's share of the stellar energy and has different properties than the rest of the planet. One flavor of Eyeball planet is an ice-covered world that has a large thawed pond where it receives the most energy from the star (see here: <http://nautil.us/blog/forget-earth_likewell-first-find-aliens-on-eyeball-planets>).
The more Earth-like possibility is the "hot Eyeball planet", which is very hot on the sunlit side and cold on the night side. The night side has ice caps that slowly melt and provide a trickle of water. The best place for life is in a narrow ring around the planet at the terminator (where the Sun is always near the horizon). See here for more details: <https://planetplanet.net/2014/10/07/real-life-sci-fi-world-2-the-hot-eyeball-planet/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1vxA9.jpg)
If the planet was rotating slowly enough, then I don't think the basic "Eyeball" picture would not change too much, but would simply be slowly shifting as the planet spun.
[Answer]
Think about what the weather would be like along the day/night boundary. The daylight side of the boundary would have hot air heated by the sun, rising. Cold moist air from the night side would flow across the boundary to replace the hot rising air. So you would have strong winds (and possibly ocean currents) moving continuously from the dark to the light. Microscopic critters would get a free ride out of the darkness into the light.
[Answer]
I agree with some of the other answers, but I would like to add:
In such a slow day/night cycle, it would be possible, once life gains mobility, to live comfortably in the dawn/dusk area, slowly migrating away from Noon and staying in the comfort zone. These life forms would essentially be eternal nomads, constantly traipsing north and south along the break of day or sunset.
If intelligent life arrives or evolves here, they could conceivably have roaming city-states, moving when the day gets too hot, setting up camp when they reach winter, planting crops in the spring, etc. Provided there was land or narrow seas that they could continually use to traverse the planet - it would be an immense shame if they ended up cornered with nowhere to go as Noon or Midnight approach.
[Answer]
As I discussed in [my answer to one of your previous questions](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/20828/6781) life on this planet is going to be very difficult for highly evolved life, let alone simple, recently emerged life. So why not have life develop under different circumstances?
One thing I mentioned is that in order for the day side to not be an oven, the planet needs to get less sunlight than Earth does. This can happen with either the star being less bright than ours, or by being father away.
So consider this - the planet starts out much more like Earth, but with a fairly elliptical orbit. To get to its current more distant orbit, millions of years ago a rogue planet came through the solar system. The rogue planet passed by your planet while it was at the farthest point its orbit and threw your planet into a circular orbit and slowed its rotation.
I'm not sure what exactly it would take to make this work in terms of how big the rogue planet would have to be, how close it would have to pass, and how much it really could affect your planet's orbit. However, the inhabitants of your planet aren't really going to be able to know those things either - I believe that they would be able to figure out that the planet used to have a different orbit and day length, and that some catastrophic event changed that, but they won't know what the old orbit was and the rogue planet will be long gone.
In short, there was an extinction-level event millions of years ago that changed the conditions the planet to what they are now.
[Answer]
It's possible the ocean wouldn't freeze during the long night but there's a better approach:
Life based around volcanic vents. They don't have to worry about the long night. Now, the deep-ocean vents will have no chance of evolving more ordinary life forms.
However, consider what happens when that volcano reaches the surface. Now they are also exposed to sunlight and photosynthesis could develop. Any given volcano will have very little chance of causing this step but eventually it might happen because a dual-powered organism would have a competitive advantage.
Now the dual-power organisms have a chance of developing some way of surviving the dark.
[Answer]
>
> The problem lies in the earliest stages of the evolution, as microscopic single celled organisms would not know to or be able to migrate.
>
>
>
The problem is not related to "knowing" to migrate. [Plants grow toward the sun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phototropism) but don't have any "knowing" of what the sun is. Your one-celled life could simply move towards the energy.
The only problem is the ability to move towards the sun. As others have suggested, this can be overcome either with an alternative heat source or with the "life" being so simple as to be able to survive a long cold period and reanimate when conditions allow. Eventually life would evolve the ability to follow the energy (sun).
[Answer]
Just because the advanced life lives with 9 year days, doesn't mean that the planet has always had 9 year days, perhaps over billions of years the planet has been progressing towards some sort of tidal locking with its parent star? The most stable stars in our universe tend to be small, with planets nearby being the habitable ones, these in turn are more susceptible to tidal locking, which once it had occurred would lead to the development of an eyeball type planet (see other answer!)
[Answer]
The way I see it you don't have to explain it. Evolution is a chain of mutations and random behaviours that work out well. Say we have a frog like thing. Either one frog would accidentally start migrating and then breed a whole line of migrating frogs or it would be lucky enough to have a built in anti-freeze type deal for night, which it would then pass on.
From a writing perspective, don't even bother explaining it. Look at Star Wars, why would wookies evolve to have massive furry bodies when the live on a tropical planet that has a very warm climate. it doesn't have to make sense as long as its cool and interesting.
[Answer]
With how slowly the planet rotates, it would evolve to be nomadic, moving slowly across the twilight zone. I'm thinking that with vegetation, it would evolve to be resistant to both extreme heat and drought, and extreme cold and darkness. I'm thinking that it would remain in torpor until twilight comes, or plants will scatter their spores towards the twilight zone, where they lie in wait until conditions become suitable.
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[Question]
[
I have a very simple question regarding a small problem I cannot find a single satisfying answer to. I am trying to create a country with a prominent Slavic culture. In my story, an alien world has been colonized by the nations of Earth. Respectively, each name their lands and territories how they see fit and in their own language. As for this country, it was colonized by the Slavic nations and is rightly given a Slavic sounding name. In fact, the entire continent the country exists on shares the same name.
Now, my problem rests in the fact that I'm American and the only "Slavic" language I am familiar with is Russian, and even then it is very limited. I want to create a genuine sounding Slavic name for the land but do not know where to start. Honestly, I do not understand the Slavic tongues' structures and vocabularies. I'm not entirely sure how to phrase this question so I'll be blunt. Simply, I want to know how to create a genuine sounding Slavic place name. Particularly, I want a name that describes the land itself (just as Belarus means "White Russia") or named after an important figure (just like how the U.S. state Pennsylvania is named after William Penn).
[Answer]
Counter-intuitively, the way I would go about that would be to construct your own simplistic conlang with Slavic flavour.
First, Slavic isn't a single language, there are three major subgroups inside of it, and multiple languages, with phonetical and grammatical nuances of their own. Translating stuff to one language through Google Translate will give you just a very bad translation to one contemporary Slavic language.
Taking the existing names from the map is a slightly better way. The problem with it is that a lot of toponymy in Slavic countries is not of Slavic origin. Belarus had a lot of Baltic toponymy, Poland - a lot of Baltic and German. Russia has a lot of Ugric names, and Ukraine - of different Turkic origin. So, if you do not have a basic understanding, you won't be able to differentiate what fits.
Instead of it, you could take Wiktionary entries for proto-slavic roots and marry them to the simplistic grammar of your own devising. Drop genders, cases - everything that is too hard and confusing.
Say, proto-slavic for 'new' is 'novu' (<https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/nov%D1%8A>), 'land' is 'zemla' (<https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/zem%C4%BEa>). Just take the basic roots from them and conjoin them as you wish. 'Novozem', 'novuzemje', 'novzemla', whatever. Just be consistent, when you later create other names in the same pattern.
If your setting is science fiction, you can find different explanations of your language - it could be a natural evolution of some Slavic-based pijin. Just as well it can be an artificial language in your setting to - either a pan-Slavic language for people of different origins to communicate in, or an actual proto-Slavic based reconstructed language, created by people that lost their culture and now try to restore it.
A big advantage here is, if it's your own language, it's much harder to say you are doing it wrong )) In the very worst case, you will be guilty of breaking some phonetic laws, not of making a hash of existing languages.
UPD: also, Wiktionary pages on protolanguages have a lot of other nice information - reconstructed grammar of conjugation and declension, lists of derived words in existing Slavic languages with links to their pages with conjugation and declension. If your pattern-matching skills are good, you may be faster in understanding how Slavic languages work in general from there, then from trying to study a single language.
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You will likely have an easier time if you pick a Slavic language that uses a Roman alphabet. Like Czech or Slovak (which are very similar to each other). Then you don't have to deal with the unknown alphabet and words that are more removed from Latin/etc.
Take [Slovakia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_language). It's got some pretty straight-forward place name conventions. I do a lot of genealogy work in Slovakia (don't speak the language though). [My favorite resource](http://www.cisarik.com/) is a [list of every single village and town and city](http://www.cisarik.com/0_all-villages-A.html) in the entire country. It gives current and historical names. I rely on it extensively when I do records transcriptions.
Do keep in mind that, over the years, places in Slovakia have had not only Slovak names but also names from the languages of other countries that either controlled (all or part of) the country or supplied a lot of migrants to it or had influence due to the Church, etc. [Hungarian is the biggest.](https://www.iabsi.com/gen/public/kingdom_of_hungary.htm) But also Russian and German (and Latin and Polish and...).
There are many rivers in Slovakia and it is common to have towns named after a nearby river. So some of your towns will likely be named after waterways on your planet.
Many towns are also named as by the river. For example:
* [Nové Mesto nad Váhom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nov%C3%A9_Mesto_nad_V%C3%A1hom)
* [Dubnica nad Váhom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubnica_nad_V%C3%A1hom)
Are both on the [Váh River](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A1h) (Slovakia's largest river, a tributary to the Danube).
* [Vyškovce nad Ipľom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vy%C5%A1kovce_nad_Ip%C4%BEom)
* [Veľká nad Ipľom](https://www.velkanadiplom.sk/)
Are on the Ipeľ River.
A great resource for [Common Place-Name Terminology](http://www.iabsi.com/gen/public/place_name_terminology.htm) lists place names in Hungarian, Slovak, Polish, German, and English.
For example, big town by the Little River would be:
>
> Velke Mestro nad Kisom
>
>
>
Start with some basic translations for words that create town names in English: Valley, Vista, Hills, Lake, Flats, Ville, Oaks, Port, Plains, Junction, City, Town, Land, Harbor, etc.
Throw in color names.
Instead of Oaks, use the plant and animal life you will find there. Violet Flats or Pine Hills.
Use the first and/or last names of the people who first arrived in that region. Or their professions. Friersland or Captainsport.
Use the names of the prominent industry in the town. As in Bakersville or Tanners Lake.
Now divide similar areas by adding words for big, little, and so on. Lower Redwood vs Upper Redwood.
And use the various naming conventions to add some flair. Speckled Rooster by the Smith River.
And translate it into your favorite Slavic language (if for some reason it's not Slovak).
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I believe you have two options here
1) make up something generally Slavic sounding
2) get a native speaker to help you out. As a Czech I see way to much weirdness already in the suggestions here on this page only (e.g. Novyruska or Novyruskia absolutely cannot work, Russia is feminine and novy is masculine, you need nová/novaya/depends on specific language, but definitely not novy)
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**Lift them from real places.**
Here is a map of medieval Kievan Rus from Wikipedia.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oHjam.jpg)
<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Principalities_of_Kievan_Rus%27_%281054-1132%29.jpg>\
Good names: Halych, Kiev, Volyn, Smolensk, Polotsk. Also "Chud", which was a surprise to me. You could get names like this off of other maps of Slavic areas.
Now mangle them a little bit to account for the years and drift and ignorance. You could add, or alter. Or drop a vowel: Hlych, Kiv, Vlyn, Smlensk, Plotsk. Still slavic sounding but not in your face obvious liftings.
Chud really has nowhere to go with that method and probably is good as is.
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How to make Slavic names?
Take the thing as it is. For example a mountain that is black slopes or is overgrown with dark forest, almost black. Call it just that "Black mountain". Černá Hora in Czech or Crna Gora in Montenegrin. Swap G for H and as you wish. Mash words together. So a "New City" translated to Slavic would be Novi Grad, after two changes it's Novyhrad.
Then you name things from the feelings. There is a city named after "I'm happy" [Cieszyn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cieszyn)
Third thing is if you want to make English sounding names but with a sign of being made by Slavs. Then you can easily add *-ski/-sky* at the end. For example "Smithski" (that would be used when a place would be named after person or after some profession *Admiralski*)
Fourth would be adding *-rsk* to the end. On Moon you have a Mare Humorum. If Slavs would make a settlement there it could be called "Novo" (from new) Humorum (from earlier place) and add rks. *Novohumorumsk*
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As Cyn already suggested, many names are related to the river it is close to. You can use the list below to sythesize your own names and then let them checked to avoid names that just sound slavic but does not make any sense in any slavic language. Something like "Your eyes September" ->(cz) Tvoje oči Září -> "Your eyes shine."
The cities here got their names, or part of their names, from:
* The founder, she saint or the significant person.
*Karlovy* Vary after Charles IV. (Karel IV), *Stalin*grad after Jossip Vissarionovich Dzugashvili, the Soviet dictator, *Gottwald*ov after Klement Gottwald (Czechoslovak Stalin), *Jindřichův* Hradec - Jindřich, a member of Rožmberk house found the fortress and took the name Jindřich z Hradce as the name of his own house (páni z Hradce - lords of Hradec). *Havlíčkův* Brod - after a poet, writer and newspaper editor Karel Havlíček Borovský, *Svatý Jan* pod Skalou - st. John, Other examples: Pennsylvania, Monte Carlo
* The coat of arms of the land owner.
*Rožm*berk - Rosenberg (The coat of arms cosists of a red rose on silver shield)
* After the fort, castle, monatstery, church it was build close to.
Jindřichův *Hradec* - fort or small castle, *Kostel*ec nad Černými lesy - Church, *Klášter*ec nad Ohří - monastery, Stalin*grad* - a castle. Other examples: Graz, Nürnberg, Fort William, Newcastle upon Tyne
* How the place for settlement was obtained.
*Žďár* nad Sázavou - žďářit = to burn the forrest to free the land for settlement or fields. Červená *Lhota* - Lhota was a period of time the new inhabitants were free of taxes and duties to the land owner. Dvůr *Králové* - The city was a queen's property.
* After a feature nearby.
Karlovy *Vary* - a hot springs, Mariánské *Lázně* - a spa, Kostelec *nad Černými lesy* - is is located on the hill and used to be surrounded by dark forrests (černé lesy), Karl*štejn* - stein (german) -> stone, based on rocky terrain, Rožm*berk* - berg (german) -> a hill, *Kutná* Hora - kutat = to mine (Kutná Hora was the most significant silver minig city), *Blato* - swamps, Nová *Bystřice* - springs, Havlíčkův *Brod* - a ford through river Sázava, Other examples: Palm Springs
* Major settlement nearby.
Kostelec *u Jihlavy* - Jihlava (Iglau) was the major silver-minig city in the region, Úvaly u Prahy - Praha (Prag, Prague)
* To distinguish the location or age of two settlements.
*Nové* Město na Moravě - new, *Stará* Boleslav - old, *Mladá* Boleslav - young, *Horní* Jiřetín - above the other, *Dolní* Věstonice - below the other. Horní *Malá* Úpa - small. Other Examples: New York, Obersdorf
* To determine the status of the settlement.
Nové *Město* na Moravě - holds the rights of a city, *Ves* Touškov - a village, *Městec* Králové - larger than village and holds some rights of a city, *Dvůr* Králové - hof (german), a major agricultural centre owned directly by a member of a house or king. Other examples: Salt Lake City, Georgetown
* Geographical desctiption.
Klášterec *nad Ohří* - a settlement on the river of Ohře, Mníšek pod *Brdy* - settlement based under the Brdy mountains, Kutná *Hora* - a mountain. Other examples: Salt Lake City, Kingston upon Thames
* Major resources gathered nearby.
*Stříbro* - silver, *Železné* Hory - iron,
* Some word.
Kokotsko - kokot = rooster, Buková - buk = beech,...
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Talking of Russian: I think they adapted Game of thrones locations just brilliantly. Like there is a spot "Black Waters", straightforward translation of which would be "Chornyie Vody" or singular "Chornaya Voda", which might be more readable for you. But they've chosen "Chernovodnaya". A single word! Furthermore, it's an adjective, not a noun. Very authentic though.
Just don't experiment this way with "Novaya Rossiya" you mentioned somewhere in discussion. "Novorossiya" will be very politically sensitive these days.
And there are many other examples is you check the map in Russian. Like the place called "Fingers" will be translated by Google like "Paltsy", but you will see "Persty" instead, which is an old word seldom used nowadays. Still more beautiful as for location name I believe.
To get a specific help, you need provide a more detailed description of the place. Otherwise you will get nothing better than "New (Russia, land, Earth, country, planet...)". The name can refer to: geographical location (like Oriental Pearl), geology (Sands), flora (Bamboo Forest), fauna (Eagle's Nest), feelings (Cape of Good Hope) or even the person, who discovered it (America itself).
So, give me what you have or what you want and maybe I'll come up with something decent.
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What is a Slavic name? Is, for example, [Sankt Peterburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg) a Slavic name? After all, it's a very large city in Russia and it used to be capital city of the Russian Empire. But the name is actually made of one Latin, one Greek and one Germanic component; the more Slavic equivalent is Petrograd (still has a Greek component, but *Petr* it's more Slavicized than *Peter*) -- and actually the Bolsheviks did rename the city Petrograd before settling on Leningrad.
All right, so Sankt Peterburg is not Slavic enough. What about [Moskva](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow)? Is this an true honest Slavic name? Actually, Moskva does not have a universally accepted Slavic etymolgy; it may very well be of Uralic (specifically, Finno-Ugric) origin.
Or what about [Kiev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev)? It means "of [Kyi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyi,_Shchek_and_Khoryv)", on a pattern very common with Slavic names. But Kyi itself does not have a clear Slavic etymology. This is very common; names of important rivers, mountains, cities etc. are *ancient*, and they seldom come from the language of the modern occupants of the land. Think of England; names such as London, Thames, or York are not of English origin: they are much older than the arrival of the Angles, Jutes and Saxons in England. The name of Paris is not of French origin, and it preceded French language by quite a considerable margin. And so on. The name of *Rome* is not of Latin origin.
So, in practice, if you do not actually know any Slavic tongue, but you want names as used in an actual Slavic country, the best approach is to take a good detailed map of the country in question and lift names of it. You may want to ask around or do a bit of research to learn what the names mean, but lifting obscure names of a real map is for sure the best way.
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If you look to the New World, geographic names in new settlements are usually quite uninventive.
Apart from names inherited from the original inhabitants, the colonists tended to name their settlements the same thing as their place of origin (Paris, Texas), optionally adding "New" in front of it (New York, New Amsterdam, Nova Scotia), the same which also occurred when Russia expanded eastward (Novaja Zemlja, Novosibirsk).
As you pointed out with regard to Pennsylvania (and the same goes for Georgia, Georgetown or Louisiana), the name of a leader or conqueror is also often used.
Other geographical names in the New World tend to be plainly descriptive (Rocky Mountains, Mexico City, Minas Gerais = Public Mines) or named after the occasion on which they were discovered or conquered (Rio de Janeiro = January River, São Paulo = St. Paul because it was founded on the day of the conversion of Paul). Even Brazil itself is named after its primary export – a kind of wood.
So just by using a map of Slavic Europe, a calendar, the word "new" and a simple glossary you can name an entire continent quite easily.
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This is to support the answer by idrougge: "geographic names in new settlements are usually quite uninventive." I live in Australia, which was settled mostly by people from Britain. Of course, in Australia there were already Aboriginal people, and quite a few place names derive from local Aboriginal languages (often as mis-heard by British settlers). I don't know if your scenario includes pre-existing language-using inhabitants: if so there is another source of names, which can look completely different from the Slavic-derived names.
If I just look at non-Aboriginal names, a lot of them are names of people, often politicians in power in Britain at the time (Melbourne after Viscount Melbourne, Sydney after Viscount Sydney), or prominent early leaders in Australia (Governor Macquarie gave his name to several things, including the Macquarie River). The suburb of Collingwood in Melbourne was named after either Baron Collingwood (a famous British admiral) or after the Collingwood Hotel (which was named after Baron Collingwood and was an early building in the area).
The rivers aren't generally named after British rivers. The Darling River was named after the then Governor of New South Wales, who instigated an exploratory expedition. The Murray River was named after a British politician. The Murray and the Darling are the two biggest rivers in Australia. The Diamantina River was named after the wife of the first Governor of Queensland. The Swan River in Western Australia was the first place that black swans were seen by Europeans.
Another big category (probably the biggest) is names of somewhere in Britain, such as Ascot, Richmond, Perth, Newcastle, the Grampian Mountains, Pentridge (which was the name of a notorious jail in Melbourne, but is an English place name). Very few of these have "New" in their names; they just took the British name unaltered. The State of New South Wales is an exception. New Norcia was established by Spanish Benedictines, and named after Norcia in Italy where St Benedict was born. The town of Clunes acquired its name from a local farming property called "Clunes"; the name is originally Scottish. The suburb of Coburg was named to commemorate the visit of the then Duke of Edinburgh, who was a member of the royal house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Bacchus Marsh was named after an early settler, an Englishman called Captain Bacchus. Vaucluse was named after the first homestead in the area, Vaucluse House, which was in turn named after a poem by the 14th century Italian poet Petrarch. The suburb of Wyoming was named after a once popular ballad, written when Wyoming in the U.S.A. was a Territory (not yet a State). Note that not all the names are ultimately British (though most are); the British absorbed influences from other cultures, as did the Slavs.
Names that arose locally: Bald Hills, Poverty Point, the Snowy Mountains, Mount Disappointment, Mount Misery and Mount Hopeless (in three different Australian States), Diggers Rest and Miners Rest, Airport West (it is a suburb). There is a locality called Dead Horse Gap in the Snowy Mountains, but I don't think anyone lives there. Kangaroo Valley and Emu Plains are named after native fauna. Chatswood was named after Charlotte Harnett, wife of a pioneer in the area, and was originally called "Chattie's Wood", "Chattie" being Charlotte's nickname, and the area being forested then (now it is a very dense urban area).
The gold rush in Australia gave rise to various names such as Golden Square and Canadian Lead. The town of Research (originally Swiper's Gully, then Research Gully) was so named because after the gold rush started the area was re-searched (searched again), and gold was found. Poverty Point was renamed Golden Point when gold was found there. I think the Radio Springs Hotel was named after radioactive springs in the area, which were considered to be therapeutic.
Some names are just inexplicable, such as the Sydney suburb of Dee Why.
Why have your Slavic people settled this planet, and have they been there a long time? What is the history of the settlement? Who sent them originally? Were they convicts or prisoners, were they fleeing oppression, or were they just trying to make better lives for themselves? Was the beginning of the settlement really difficult? Are there strange flora or fauna? Did the first settlers carve out large estates, naming them however they felt like, which afterwards gave their names to towns? Was there something like a gold rush or other significant event?
Maybe Australian names will give you useful parallels.
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I may suggest composing placenames using the most productive Slavic suffixes. There are a number of groups of such suffixes:
```
-ov/-ova/-ovo/-ove/-ev... (Krakow, Kiev, Rostov being the live examples)
-sk/-ska/-sko/-ske/-skoe/-skoye... (Hlinske, Smolensk, Polotsk)
-ts/-tsy/-tsi/-tse... (Chernivtsi, Kamianets, Katowice in Polish spelling)
-ka/-ki/-nia/-nik... (Dubrovnik, Gdynia)
```
And a number of placename-linked roots as well:
```
-grad/-gorod (city)
-mest/-mist/-miast (also city)
-most (bridge)
-les/-lis (forest)
-gor/-gora (mountain)
-slav (glory)
etc.
```
They can be quite freely attached to almost any Slavic name or nominal stem (probably adding or dropping some vowels from the end of the stem for ease of pronounciation). Like `Dubograd` or `Krasnomost`. Or `Miasoslav`. Or even stack them all together to produce something like `Zelenogradovskoe` or `Staromestnitski` (a bit unnatural but still very Slavic-sounding and understandable).
There is also a kind of (approximate) rule by which names ending in `-a` are feminine, `-o` or `-e` are neuter, names ending in a consonant (including consonant `-y`) are masculine and names ending in `-i` or (vowel) `-y` are generally plural. This may help create more complex, multiword constructs consisting of an Adjective and a Noun by picking correct gender form of the Adjective.
] |
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[
I would like to know if a very advanced civilisation could rule an entire galaxy without mastering teleportation or any other method that allows traveling faster than light (unless you give mathematical and experimental evidence that this is possible). By ruling a galaxy, I mean that the galaxy government needs to at least be able to:
* control the frontier of the galaxy (to avoid invasion, smuggling) ...
* face a war in any place of the galaxy
* collect taxes in inhabited solar systems
* protect its citizens
Note that I don't ask here to explain how could a government conduct all these tasks but rather, if teleportation is a requirement for any civilisation who would like to control an entire galaxy.
[Answer]
**Of course**
Until the last 150 years, *every nation, government, and condition of rulership was enacted without the benefit of swift transportation and/or instantaneous communication.*
In the really big empires, like the Romans, Alexander, Genghis Khan, travelling from edge-to-edge could take months. People on trading missions took years. And yet these empires flourished just fine without the need of telegraphs, telephones, the Internet, cars, jets, trains, or anything else that makes transportation and communication convenient.
If you're developing a story, then you need only look at these ancient methods of ruling large territories. Your modern conveniences increase in a galactic scope, but so does the distance between communities. It's all the same thing.
---
**EDIT**
OK, people are having trouble understanding this answer.
Youbetcha, people at the fringes of governing authority have a nasty habit of ignoring laws, rebelling, even seceding. For some reason people think that the vast distances of space make this impossible to control or stop.
Consider our lives here in the U.S. The government is fighting a constant war for control. Whether it's little things like people speeding or jaywalking or big things like holing up in a rural farmhouse and shooting at FBI agents, the *government* continues despite the little interruptions.
What's a little interruption on a galactic scale? A whole system in rebellion compared to the millions or billions of systems? Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin allegedly once said to U.S. ambassador Averill Harriman, "the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." One system — even thousands of systems — *even tens of thousands of systems* — is just one of those small things you need to deal with as a galactic empire.
How did our ancient empires solve the problem? By sending out the troops to quell the rebellions. When the rebellions were really bad, they wiped everybody out or scattered them to the wind.
How would you do that on a galactic scale? *With robotics.* If you have the ability to populate a galaxy, even with sub-FTL engines, you have the ability to send robotic fleets to establish order. And the beautiful thing about AIs is that they can be programmed to be 100% loyal and capable judges of the law.
Who cares if it takes them 50,000 years to get to the rebelling planet? Who cares if it takes 50,000 years to send the message? How *incredibly inefficient* of a government that can trust robotic solutions to send all the data out from a central point. *The robotics could act very easily on their own* and the only thing that need be done is periodically update them with changes to the law.
And everybody else? They're simply law-abiding citizens.
I still assert that one doesn't need teleportation to run an empire, not any more than we do (or, more specifically, did) a nation here on Earth. We all seem to be worried about it happening within the lifetime of a ruler, or a magistrate, or a policeman. Considering it likely took *millions* of years just to populate the entire galaxy, it's no stretch for the "government" to no longer define itself by the length of a human life.
I love the line from the movie *Men in Black.* "You humans! When will you learn size doesn't matter? Just because something's important, doesn't mean it's not very small."
*You humans! When will you learn time doesn't matter? Just because something's important doesn't mean it can't happen over a very long period of time.*
[Answer]
**No, unless you allow for some mechanism of physically going to the places you are ruling, or have a very different (decentralized) political hierarchy.**
Your situation is simply a greater macroscopic scale than a local government on a planet.
Consider the following:
Laws are passed that maintain order. Tax and economic laws apply to the place you are governing. Borders must be moderated to follow the law. These concepts apply to the galaxy the same way it does to any country on Earth.
* When a person is breaking laws, they must be detained or punished.
* When a person does not pay their taxes properly, they must be detained, audited, or punished.
* When an outside force is invading and attacking your citizenry, a mobile military unit must be deployed to stop that outside force.
* When a person does not pay their dues, they can have their possessions taken as collateral.
* ...
You need to be able to **enforce these laws** and only physical presence can ultimately enforce them and bring them to their legal conclusions.
On top of these things, your galactic infrastructure also requires communication. Communication can only happen at the speed of light. The Milky Way is ~100,000 light years across. This means moving at the speed of light, an invading intergalactic army means SOS calls will take a maximum of 100,000 years to reach the governing body, and traveling at light speed back to the source of that SOS will require another maximum of 100,000 years (and much longer than that below the speed of light). And that's only for this scenario. Imagine the others.
**This cannnot work.**
With faster than light travel, actually traveling somewhere to propagate that message would be faster than sending the message through radio waves. Without it, the invading force in my example would have 200,000 years to wreak havoc.
You can solve some of these dilemmas by having the governing body split evenly across the galaxy, but they would not be able to communicate with each other faster than the speed of light so there may be some detriment here.
The rate at which a new law would propagate would be limited to the speed of light.
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# Yes. With technology!
### Specifically, Replicated Mechanized Police guaranteed to be the same everywhere, throughout the galaxy.
This will also work with any length of human lifespans; even just the ~75 years we have today. Nobody has to be immortal or long-lived. Travel can be sub-light speed (you may need suspended animation, or generation ships), Communications can be just light speed. You don't need FTL or teleportation or wormholes or anything else that is effectively FTL; no FTL.
What you need is an intelligent robotic police force that enforces the rules of the galaxy (ruthlessly when necessary) as the central ruling authority expands throughout the galaxy. So there IS no central authority making decisions for the whole galaxy; the original designers of this scheme built machines that enforce their law.
These robots can be as **intelligent** as humans but without emotion: Specifically the types of emotion that would drive them to seize power or enslave the humans. So they have no ambition, need no self-realization or "freedom" to choose their own path, they are neither happy or unhappy, ever, but they are capable of human level analysis, are capable of recognizing lies or subterfuge or treason, etc. They are machines that do their job, for millions of years, without any need for central supervision. Communications from the central authority arrive AT light speed, reliably and securely, but no faster.
Presume there are no bugs in this machinery, nothing happens to make any of them go rogue. They can harvest raw material from asteroids, stars or planets and are self-replicating, but to match a proportion of the humans they supervise; they never self-replicate out of control, and have no problem dismantling or deactivating their oldest units to conserve energy should fewer of them be needed.
They also do not follow Asimov's rules of robotics: If circumstances warrant it, they will kill in self-defense, or kill criminals to enforce the rule of law as they see it.
The law is laid down by the central authority, which is presumably highly advanced, and followed throughout the galaxy.
The central authority can give such units (again at least as intelligent as humans) some measure of autonomy for unusual situations, they can make fair decisions based upon some criteria, e.g. making the decision that preserves the most human life. Being as intelligent as humans, they don't get confused or tricked by dumb paradoxes and won't do anything stupid or insane like enslave all humans or kill them all. They will make decisions that will seem both sane and prudent to the vast majority of humans.
The galaxy is ruled: You don't need FTL communications if the Ruler of each star system is effectively the ***same exact person*** that will make the same exact decisions as would another Ruler across the galaxy, given the same situation. Or for that matter, as would another ruler in any other **galaxy**.
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Yes, it would be possible, for beings with extremely slow metabolisms. If a million years to them is like one year to us, then they can travel across the galaxy at slower-than-light speeds in what feels to them like a few days, and communicate via radio on similar timescales. Of course, they’ll have to cope with stars being born, ageing and dying over the course of a few thousand subjective years.
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It's all a matter of definitions. There really is no arbitrary limit on how wide an empire can be. However, there is a natural relationship between response time and the growth of threats. You don't have control over things which happen faster than you can respond to.
A galactic empire like this would need to deal with fast growing threats (such as insurrections) locally. Obviously they would not be able to bring the entire brunt of the galactic empire to bear against some little insurrection in one corner of the galaxy. But they don't need to. All they need to be able to do is bring enough power in to quell the rebellion. That might be only local ships within a few decades travel.
By necessity, this means any such rule will have to be either by a distributed governance, or threat of complete utter anhilatory force. You either want a local force responding within a few years or so, or a long established track record of obliterating entire species for transgressions millions of year prior. Respect or Fear. Carrot or the Stick. Either way, your civilization will have to be impressive in that respect.
A full on war from outside, on the other hand, may take time. Presuming your opponents don't have teleportation or FTL mastered, they may need millions of years to prepare an attack. This gives you time to move your fleet through the galaxy with reasonable response times. If your opponent surprises you? Well, that's the nature of war.
The real trick is just to think slow. You and I are used to thinking of 30 years as a long time. To a nation, 200 years is a medium amount of time. To China, 1000 years may be a medium amount of time. To a civilization the size of a galaxy, a medium amount of time might be a million years. Our entire lives would be but a blip to their way of thinking.
[Answer]
# **Unprobable**
A galaxy is very, very, very big. 100,000 light years. That means that, if you want an information or a signal to travel to one end to the other side of the galaxy, it will take at **least** 100,000 years.
The nearest solar system is 4.24 light-years from us. The nearest (potentially) apt to harbor life is approximately 40 light-years from us.
What does that mean ? that if we consider our situation as the average situation, it could take between 4 and 40 years to **CONTACT** another planet. If anything goes wrong, their answer would arrive between 8 and 80 years **after** you send an SOS. And that just the nearest planet. If you're the planet on the border, you're just sending a message to the local town.
Even if we could go to the speed of light, it would take way to much time to move from one point to another to prevent problems. Respectively, believing [this](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/33596/how-long-would-it-take-to-travel-from-england-to-the-colonies-in-the-early-1700s) history answer, it took 6 weeks to go from England to the Americas. Ultimately, England wasn't able to prevent the independence of the colonies. Now Imagine that it would take at least take 26 times longer to react about anything. The independence war would almost be over when the firsts British armies would have put foot on land.
[Answer]
This is a very long answer, but it does suggest several ways to make ruling a galactic government with slower than light travel less impossible, and perhaps even possible.
## 1) increase the life span of humans and/or aliens living in the galactic government.
If it takes thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions to tens of millions of years for sub light space ships to travel across a galaxy, a human ruled galaxy would not be possible until at least that far in the future of when those humans were as advanced as Earth in 2018. Humans wouldn't have even reached the farthest parts of their galaxy until that long after having invented interstellar ship travelling at some fraction of the speed of light, which won't happen until they are more advanced than Earth in the year 2018.
So I would certain hope that by then those humans would have made the discoveries and inventions that seem the most desirable of all to me - methods of extreme life extension or even immortality.
You may remember that famous science fiction series *Cities in Flight* by James Blish. In the chronologically first novel in the series, Earth people discover both the "spindizzy" that makes faster than light travel possible and the first of the antiagathic (anti death) drugs that enable humans to live for centuries or millennia. In the novel titled *They Shall Have Stars* (1956) or *Year 2018!*.
Although it doesn't look like anti death drugs will be discovered this year, we can hope that they will be discovered long before 2118, and long before 3018, and long before 20,018, and long before 200,018, and long before 2,000,018, which would be almost the earliest possible date for a galactic government to be established.
So if people expect to live for centuries, millennia, or even much longer, it will make it a lot easier to have a galactic government where messages travel at the speed of light and space warships travel much slower than that.
## 2) Make your interstellar government hierarchical, and/or federal, and/or feudal, in structure.
It seems to me that an interstellar government would probably be hierarchical long before it ruled an entire galaxy. Even the government of a single star system should be highly hierarchical if there are many artificial space habitats in the system.
Possibly the ruler of a single habitat would be a habicrat ("habitat ruler") and the ruler of ten habitats would be a "habicrat of habicrats", or "second level habicrat", or "habicrat to the second power", and the ruler of 100 habitats would be a "habicrat of habicrats of habicrats", or "third level habicrat", or "habicrat to the third power", and so on up to the stellacrat or "star ruler" ruling the entire star system.
If a stellacrat rules an entire star system, a single, binary, or multiple star system and its planets and space habitats, a "stellacrat of stellacrats" or "second level stellacrat" would rule ten star systems, a "third level stellacrat" would rule 100 star systems, and so on and on up to a "seventh level stellacrat" ruling a million star systems. Since galaxies have about one million stars to one trillion stars, a "galacticrat" or "galaxy ruler" would be the equivalent of a "seventh level stallacrat" to a "thirteenth level stellacrat".
Since the popular imagination tends to confuse outer space and heaven, it is possible that the immediate subordinates of a stellacrat and/or those of a galacticrat might be called after various levels in the medieval hierarchy of angels.
In a star system with many space habitats, the immediate subordinates of a stellacrat might be 10 "stellar Seraphim", with 100 "Stellar Cherubim" below them, 1,000 "Stellar Thrones", 10,000 "Stellar Dominions", 100,000 "Stellar Virtues", 1,000,000 "Stellar Powers", "10,000,000 "Stellar Principalities", 100,000,000 "Stellar Archangels", and "1,000,000,000 "Stellar Angels", and below them various levels of habicrats.
In a galaxy with billions of star systems, the immediate subordinates of a galacticrat might be 10 "Galactic Seraphim", with 100 "Galactic Cherubim" below them, 1,000 "Galactic Thrones", 10,000 "Galactic Dominions", 100,000 "Galactic Virtues", 1,000,000 "Galactic Powers", "10,000,000 "Galactic Principalities", 100,000,000 "Galactic Archangels", and 1,000,000,000 "Galactic Angels", and below them various levels of stellacrats.
## 3) Have local elections within a star system, and also elections on an interstellar scale if space ship speeds and the life spans of the citizens allow it.
Within a star system, it would only take hours for news to travel at the speed of light, unless it was a binary or multiple star system with widespread stars or the outer cometary halo is colonized, in which case it could take months for news to travel at the speed of light.
Thus it is possible for elections to happen throughout a star system and for those elected to take office relatively soon after the election, weeks, months or possibly years at sublight speeds.
But having elections throughout an area that is ten light years across means that the news of the political platforms could take ten years to reach the voting places before the election, and ten years for the results to reach every place, and then possibly decades for those elected to office in the central government to reach the location of the central government.
Thus people would likely be voting for a government that would take office in fifty years or a century after the start of the election, and would have to be very long lived for that to seem normal to them.
And if the area of voting was 100 light years across that would mean voting for a government that would take office centuries or millennia in the future, so the voters would have to be much more longer lived for that to be acceptable to them.
In a galaxy like ours with a disc about 100,000 light years in diameter, it would take 50,000 years for news of a political party's platform to reach the outer rim if the convention was held in the center of the Galaxy, and 50,000 more years for news of the election results to reach the center of the galaxy, and who knows how many hundreds of thousands or millions of years for those elected to the central government to reach the galactic capital. So galaxy wide elections would probably be held at least a million years apart, and the electorate would have to be extremely long lived for that to seem like a short enough interval to them.
Thus it is possible that elections would only be held in a star system wide scale. And probably also on many lower levels below the system wide government.
## 4) Even within a star system, there should be various levels of government.
The United States of America has basically four levels of government (ignoring some exceptions like over 500 tribal governments): federal, state, county, and municipal, and holds elections for all four levels.
According to Wikipedia's List of Administrative Divisions by Country, there is a great variety in the number of levels of administrative divisions between different countries. Usually, countries with larger populations and/or areas have more levels of administrative divisions that countries with smaller populations and/or areas, but there are many exceptions.
The 10 largest countries by area are: Russia (3 levels of administrative divisions), Canada (3), China (5), the USA (3), Brazil (2), Australia (2), India (4), Argentina (2), Kazakhstan (4), and Algeria (2).
The 10 smallest countries by area are Vatican City (zero levels of administrative divisions), Monaco (2), Nauru (1), Tuvalu (1), San Marino (1), Lichtenstein (1), the Marshall Islands (1), Saint Kitts and Nevis (2), the Maldives (2), and Malta (2).
The 10 largest countries by population are: China (5 levels of administrative divisions), India (4), the USA (3), Indonesia (4), Brazil (2), Pakistan (4), Nigeria (2), Bangladesh (4), Russia (3), and Japan (4).
The 10 smallest countries by population are: Vatican City (zero levels of administrative divisions), Nauru (1), Tuvalu (1), Palau (1), San Marino (1), Lichtenstein (1), Monaco (2), Saint Kitts and Nevis (2), The Marshall Islands (1), and Dominica (1).
Note that Monaco with an area of 2.02 square kilometers and a population of 38,300, and Brazil with a land area of 8,460,415 square kilometers and a population of 209,550,000, both have two levels of administrative subdivisions.
Monaco has 1 *Commune* and 10 *quartiers*, while Brazil has 26 *estados* and one *distrito Federal* and 5,569 *municipios*.
So if the Earth was united by negotiation and/or conquest at the present time, any of the present national governments that continued to function would become another level of administrative division, and thus in various parts of the world there might be between one and six levels of administrative divisions below the world government. Of course it is possible that intermediate levels of administrative divisions might be formed, such as continental governments. If each continent had a continental government then there would be between two and seven levels of administrative divisions below the world government in various regions.
And if the solar system becomes populated by billions and trillions and quadrillions of people living in many millions of space habitats, there could be ten or more levels of administrative divisions, and there could be local elections in every administrative division.
And if people live really long extended lifetimes it might be possible to hold elections in administrative divisions that cover interstellar space and many star systems. The longer people live, the more they might tolerate infrequent and long lasting elections. They would have to have lifespans of millions of years for galaxy wide elections to be possible.
## 5) Local elected governments within star systems should have the most power over the lives of their citizens, and thus sometimes anger those citizens the most.
So the plan for a galactic government, since it may not be certain if it is possible to hold elections in larger areas than a single star system, would have to be to have a multi-levelled government within each star system with elections at each level, and most of the things that matter to people should be decided at one or more of the levels within the star system.
Thus when people get dissatisfied with their government, it will be a local government that they are dissatisfied with. So they will overthrow the local government and not the central government of the galaxy, and they will overthrow the local government by electing a new administration instead of by a revolt which could turn into a revolt against the central government of the galaxy.
## 6) Keep military force from higher levels of government within each star system to protect against invaders and to crush rebellion.
And presumably there would be units of the central government's space navy stationed in every star system to stop any attempts to revolt against the central government, and to guard the star system against any possible invasion.
These units would be sent from the star system with capital of the governmental administrative division immediately above the star system, and presumably the families of the crews would be kept in suspended animation or something until the crews returned from their tour of duty. The families would also be possible hostages if the garrisons revolted.
The star system with the government center of this next highest administrative division would be garrisoned by space navy units sent from the star system with the government center of the next highest administrative division above that, and so on and so on.
If each administrative division rules X administrative divisions below it, it would have to send X number of fleets to the government centers of the administrative divisions below it. Thus the resources needed by each star system that was the center of an administrative division would be the same.
At least that would be the cases if there was a faster than light drive, one fast enough that a voyage across the galaxy would take less than a year, for example.
If spaceships travel at speeds less than the speed of light, maybe 99.99 percent of the speed of light, or 10 percent of the speed of light, or 1 percent of the speed of light, or maybe even only 0.1 percent of the speed of light, the higher up star systems would have to devote more personnel and resources to sending fleets to their immediate subordinates.
The longer the distance the fleets had to travel, the longer the trips will take. The longer that the people in this galactic civilization live, the longer the missions to garrison other worlds they can tolerate. If people can tolerate a round trip time of X years, and if the transit time is Y years, X years minus 2 Y years equals Z years, the number of years they can spend garrisoning a different solar system.
Suppose that a local government sends a garrison to a star system five light years away, at half the speed of light, and a total trip time of 10 years. If the members of the garrison can tolerate 30 years away from home, Y and Z will both be one third of X, and at anyone time there should be one garrison on duty, one returning, and one on route to the destination star, so if they do that for nine other star systems they will have to support twenty seven garrisons and fleets at any one time.
And if Y equals 10 times Z, X will equal 21 times Z, so the system sending the garrisons and fleets will have to support 21 times as many fleets and garrisons as the number of systems it garrisons.
And if Y equals 100 times Z, X will equal 201 times Z, so the system sending the garrisons and fleets will have to support 201 times as many fleets and garrisons as the number of systems it garrisons.
And if Y equals 1,000 times Z, X will equal 2,001 times Z, so the system sending the garrisons and fleets will have to support 2,001 times as many fleets and garrisons as the number of systems it garrisons.
So for this system to work methods of equalizing the personnel and resources that the various levels of governmental star systems will have to devote to keeping their immediate subordinates garrisoned will have to be found.
### 6a) ships from farther away travel faster than ships from nearer, in proportion so that trip times turn out to be about the same.
If the ships can accelerate for half the journey and then decelerate for half the journey, for example, that would be the case.
On a scale much smaller than the thickness of the galactic disc, the galaxy will be three dimensional. Thus doubling the dimensions of a sphere or cube of space will increase the volume of that space, and the number of stars within it, by eight. So perhaps star systems are grouped by eights, sixty fours, five hundred and twelves, four thousand and ninety fours, etc., etc.
And the star system that rules a group of eight stars might be permitted to send fleets and garrisons to its subordinate systems at an average speed of one percent of the speed of light. Thus its fleets will spend an average of one hundred years times the distance in light years in each one way voyage.
And the star system that rules a group of sixty four stars might be permitted to send fleets and garrisons to its subordinate systems at an average speed of two percent of the speed of light. Thus its fleets with spend an average of fifty years times the distance in light years in each one way voyage, and since the average distance will be about twice as far, will spend about the same time on average. Thus they will need to support about as many fleets and garrisons.
And the star system that rules a group of five hundred and twelve stars might be permitted to send fleets and garrisons to its subordinate systems at an average speed of four percent of the speed of light. Thus its fleets will spend an average of twenty five years times the distance in light years in each one way voyage, and since the average distance will be about twice as far, will spend about the same time on average. Thus they will need to support about as many fleets and garrisons.
Assuming that the thickness of the galactic disc is 1,000 light years, a cube of space as thick as the galactic disc would be 1,000 light years on a side and would contain 1,000,000,000 cubic light years of space. There are estimated to be about 0.004 stars per cubic light year in the neighborhood of the Sun, so there would be about 4,000,000 stars in a cube 1,000 light years in a side.
It would contain eight smaller cubes with about 500,000 stars in each, sixty four cubes with about 62,500 stars in each, five hundred and twelve cubes with about 7,812.5 stars in each, Four thousand and ninety four cubes with about 976.5625 stars in each, thirty two thousand and sixty eight cubes with about 122.07031 stars in each, and two hundred sixty two thousand one hundred and forty four cubes with about 15.258788 stars in each.
Then four of the cubes with sides of 1,000 light years could make a rectangular volume with sides of 2,000 by 2,000 by 1,000 light years, containing about 16,000,000 stars; four of those volumes could make a higher volume with sides of 4,000 by 4,000 by 1,000 light years containing about 64,000,000 stars; four of those higher volumes could make a yet higher volume with sides of 8,000 by 8,000256,000,000 by 1,000 light years with about 256,000,000 stars; four of those yet larger volumes could make a still larger volume with sides of 16,000 by 16,000 by 1,000 light years containing about 1,024,000,000 stars; four of those still larger volumes could make an even larger volume with sides of 32,000 by 32,000 by 1,000 light years containing about 4,096,000,000 stars; four of those even larger volumes could make a vaster volume with sides of 64,000 by 64,000 by 1,000 light years containing about 16,381,000,000 stars, and four of those vaster volumes could make a galactic realm with sides of 128,000 by 128,000 by 1,000 light years containing 65,536,000,000 stars.
So by doubling the dimensions of each successive level of administration, there could be about 15 levels of administration above the level of single star systems.
If the galactic capital system sent out garrison fleets with speeds of 99.99 times the speed of light, the next level down could send out garrison fleets with speeds of about 0.50 the speed of light, the second level down could send out garrison fleets with speeds of about 0.25 the speed of light, the third level with speeds of about 0.125 the speed of light, the fourth level with speeds of about 0.0625 the speed of light, the fifth level with speeds of about 0.03125 light speed (abbreviated c), the sixth level with speeds about 0.015625 c, the seventh level with speeds of 0.0078125 c, the eighth level with speeds of about 0.0039062 c, the ninth level with speeds of about 0.0019531 c, the tenth level with speeds of 0.0009765 c, the tenth level with speeds of 0.0004882 c, the eleventh level with speeds of about 0.0002441 c, the twelfth level with speeds of 0.000122 c, the thirteenth level with speeds of 0.000061 c, the fourteenth level with speeds of 0.0000305 c, and the 15th level with speeds of 0.0000152 c.
If a capital of a 15th level down sector had to send ships up to 10 light years away at a speed of 0.0000152 c, the one way trip would last 657,894.73 years. If the galactic capital system had to send ships up to 64,000 light years away at 0.9999 of c, the one way trip would last 64,006.4 years. So that would actually be an advantage of ten times for the galactic capital system as compared to the lowest level sector capital.
### 6b) Have the population live longer the higher the level of the world they live in. Humans willing to undergo only the slightest body modifications, because of their desire to remain almost totally normal, might have lives extended to about 500 years, for example, and would live in the vast majority of star systems.
Those rare humans willing to be modified somewhat more might live for about 1,000 years, and they would tend to congregate in the systems that were capitals of the first administrative level above sing star systems. And the navy personnel send to garrison star systems in that small administrative unit would be recruited from them.
Those even rarer humans willing to be modified somewhat more than that might live for about 2,000 years, and they would tend to congregate in the systems that were capitals of the second administrative level above single star systems. And the navy personnel send to garrison the capital star systems for first level administrative units would be recruited from them.
And so on and so on, with rarer and rarer humans willing to undergo more and more extensive modifications and to become less and less human or normal for the sake of more and more extended lives, and living in the capitals of higher and higher levels of administration, and being sent on longer and longer voyages to garrison lower level worlds.
### 6c) Increase the tax revenue of higher level worlds.
If light speed communications and slower than light travel is the rule, there should be very little interstellar trade, and very little interstellar taxation. But maybe there is some degree of interstellar taxation.
**first level:** Perhaps each star system collects 99 percent of its taxes for itself, and sends 1 percent of its tax revenue up to the capital star system of the administrative level above it.
**second level:** That capital system collects the same amount of taxes as any other system, and keeps 99 percent of it, and also keeps 99 percent of the taxes sent from 100 other worlds. Thus it receives a total of 200 percent as much tax revenue as an average star system, and keeps 99 percent of it and sends the equivalent of 2 percent of the tax revenues of an average world to the next higher system.
**Third level:** The next higher star system (above 10,000 star systems) might receive the equivalent of 2 percent of the tax revenues of an average star system from each of 100 lower system for a total of 200 percent, as well as collecting 100 percent of the taxes of an average star system from itself, for a grand total of 300 percent of the tax revenues of an average star system. It sends one percent - or 3 percent of the taxes of an average star system- to the system above it.
**Fourth level:** The system above it (which is above 1,000,000 star systems) collects 3 percent of the taxes of an average star system from each of 100 lower systems, plus 100 percent taxes from itself. So it receives 400 percent of the tax revenues of an average system and send 1 percent of that, or 4 percent of an average system revenue, to the next higher system.
**Fifth level:** The next higher system (which is above 100,000,000 star systems) collects 4 percent of the taxes of an average star system from each of 100 lower systems, plus 100 percent taxes from itself, for a grand total of 500 percent of an average system's taxes, and sends 1 percent of it, or 5 percent of an average system's taxes to the next higher system.
**Sixth level:** The next higher system (which is above 10,000,000,000 star systems) collects 5 percent of the taxes of an average star system from each of 100 lower systems, plus 100 percent taxes from itself, for a grand total of 600 percent of an average system's taxes, and sends 1 percent of it, or 6 percent of an average system's taxes to the next higher system.
**Seventh level:** The next higher system (which is above 1,000,000,000,000 star systems)is the galactic capital and collects 6 percent of the taxes of an average star system from each of 100 lower systems, plus 100 percent taxes from itself, for a grand total of 600 percent of an average system's taxes, and keeps it all.
Actually there are only supposed to be about 200,000,000,000 to 400,000,000,000 stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. There are many ways to modify that arrangement so that the capital system of the galaxy receives much more tax revenue than that.
For example, if 0.0001 of every system's taxes goes to the galactic capital system, it would receive at least 20,000,000 times the taxes of an average star system; if another 0.0001 of every system's taxes is divided among the next level capitals below the galactic capital, they would each get 20,000,000 times the taxes of an average system, divided by their number; if a third 0.0001 was divided among the third level capitals each would get 20,000,000 times the the taxes of an average system, divided by their number; and so on.
If the top ten levels of capital systems each receive and distribute among themselves 0.0001 of the total galactic tax revenues each year, that comes to 0.001, a tenth of a percent, of the total galactic tax revenues, equal to the total tax revenues of 200,000,000 average systems. That should help compensate for the higher level capital systems having to send their garrisons farther away for longer periods and thus having to have more garrisons in transit at any one time.
### 6d) Capital systems are selected for the potential to have larger populations, wealth, and resources than ordinary star systems. And if the science is advanced enough millions of years in the future the capital systems can be rebuilt to support larger populations, wealth, and resources than ordinary star systems.
Seek out and read Larry Niven's 1974 article "Bigger Than Worlds", which has been reprinted many times.
[http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?133302[1]](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?133302%5B1%5D)
And go to the PlanetPlanet site and read the section "Ultimate Solar System" where solar systems with more and more habitable planets are imagined. The author claims that all these solar systems are possible, that they could keep on existing if they were formed, but the more habitable planets they have the less likely they are to come into existence naturally, and the rarer and rarer such systems would be if forming naturally, instead of being created by planetary engineering on a vast scale.
The more spectacular systems are described as "engineered", since it seems statistically impossible for such extreme systems to form naturally and they could only exist if created by incredibly vast works of cosmic engineering.
[https://planetplanet.net/the-ultimate-solar-system/[2]](https://planetplanet.net/the-ultimate-solar-system/%5B2%5D)
Thus the higher and higher capital systems could be selected and even engineered to have more and more resources to keep fleets and garrisons in the dependent systems.
### 6e) The people of the capital planets believe that the ultimate horror is an independent government capable of making war on others, and thus are intensely determined to do whatever it takes to keep their subordinate systems from revolting.
### 6f) A combination of some of the above.
So these are my thoughts on how to hold a galactic government together with light speed communication and slower than light travel.
[Answer]
It would have to be loose in some ways, strict in others, and very hierarchical. It's unlikely that a system on the Rim would care about sending taxes that would hit the Imperial Palace in fifty thousand years, with no response coming for another fifty thousand. Certainly the system would feel completely abandoned if an invader came and no defense forces arrived for a hundred thousand years.
Figure a time horizon. A subordinate will want to do as ordered to avoid punishment that comes in X years. This means that no system can rule another more than X/2 light-years away. If X is 40, that means that we need lots and lots of layers of hierarchy. Given a system fifty thousand light-years from the capital, there will have to be 2500 intermediate layers Each layer will have to be able to inflict harsh punishment on the layer immediately below it, which looks to me like it concentrates military force close to the center.
It's not going to be easy, and it's not going to be stable.
[Answer]
There is no way for a galaxy government to work without faster than light something.
The obvious requirement for creating the society are faster than light travel but this can be dispensed with if the expansion is at sub-light speeds.
Teleportation at FTL speeds would fix the problem as well as FTL space ships but the only reason we would want these is communication. Moving produce, soldiers, weapons over interstellar distances will invariably be more expensive than fabricating locally.
So let us focus on communication, this would allow for a system of government that has information to sell in exchange for power to govern. As the information becomes less innovative (everything has already been invented) the far flung worlds become less reliant on the government. However while there is still information currency the rulers could hold some power over the people in exchange for wikipedia updates.
However a universe with FTL travel and/or teleportation will kind of figure out time travel too and this is bad enough that it is not likely to happen in practice and generally hard to handwave all the problems they entail away with known science.
BUT what if all we added to the known mix of colony ships was a FTL messaging system that works outside of known science then there would be very little to handwave.
So I suggest telepathy between a specific line of clones that were natural telepathic twins. Some clones are sent with every generation ship and lots of cloned eggs in storage and the clone is the royal radio set who can repeat everything his clones think and broadcast to any of them. Over time new twins are found and their clones can spread out for another radio channel. Each planet that finds a set of telepathic twins can start a new local kingdom and they all keep tabs on the home base.
Thinking this civilisation has any chance of fighting off enemies is silly unless they are spotted in transit and rocks thrown at them well in advance.
[Answer]
# No, a galactic empire without FTL or telportation is not viable.
There are a number of answers here, speculating on some wishy washy robots or probes, however, a civilization -- and by extension -- an empire -- is defined very much by a common culture. Where it is several cultures -- as in, eg, British empire's presence in India,-- the imperial one is the one that is holding the empire together (for better or for worse).
This question was specifically addressed in a book "[Profiles of the Future](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/169258.Profiles_of_the_Future)" by the famous scifi author and scientist Arthur Clarke, who had a chapter specifically devoted to conquering Space:
He starts by pointing out that even colonizing Solar System would involve problems, such as lag in communications, but the difficulties are not insurmountable.
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> It is when we move out beyond the confines of the Solar System that we come face to face with an altogether new order of cosmic reality. Even today, many otherwise educated men -- like those savages who can count to three but lump together all numbers beyond four -- cannot grasp the profound distinction between *solar* and *stellar* space. The first is the space enclosing our neighbouring worlds, the planets; the second is that which embraces those distant suns, the stars. *And it is literally millions of times greater*.
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> There is no such abrupt change of scale in terrestrial affairs. To obtain a mental picture of the distance to the nearest star, as compared with the distance to the nearest planet, you must imagine a world in which the closest object to you is only five feet away -- and then there is *nothing* else to see until you have travelled 1000 miles.
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He then says that it is quite conceivable that people *will* travel stellar distances -- either when we build ships that can move at near light speeds, generation ships or whatnot.
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> But now consider the effects of the inevitable, unavoidable time-lag. There could only be the most tenuous contact between the home [] and its offspring [..] There would never be News from the other [colony], but only History.
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> No [] Alexander or Caesar could ever establish an empire beyond his own reach; he would be dead before his orders reached his governors. Any form of control or administration over other [colonies] would be utterly impossible and all parallels from our own history thus cease to have any meaning. It is for this reason that the popular science-fiction stories of interstellar empires and intrigues become pure fantasies, with no basis in reality. Try to imagine how the War of Independence would have gone, if news of Bunker Hill did not arrive in England until Disraeli was Victoria's Prime Minister, and his urgent instructions to deal with the situation reached America during President Eisenhower's second term. Stated in this way, the whole concept of interestellar administration or culture is seen to be an absurdity.
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> All the star-borne colonies of the future will be independent, whether they wish it or not. Their liberty will be inviolably protected by Time as well as Space.
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In the following pages of the same chapter, he addresses also why he thinks even FTL will not help (to build a common culture over galactic distances), but as it is outside the scope of the question, I will leave it out.
[Answer]
**Yes it is very possible to rule a galaxy without needing FTL**
There are a trillion stars in a typical galaxy, you need a self-replicating probe sent to each one (not a difficult task if you know how), within 100,000 years they would have reached all the stars in your star system.
Then you can create Dyson Swarms around each star, harnessing the energy of the entire galaxy. This is now a Kardashev Type 3 civilisation.
Such a civilisation, harnessing the energy of it's galaxy, can now coordinate, detect, and take collective action on a prospective invasion. With such power at its command you also have the added benefits of:
* incredible amounts of living space
* incredible ability to last through the ages
* incredible amounts of computing power
However having said that, it's more likely that your civilisation will become trans-human at that stage, this will be it's greatest challenge. Humans arriving at swarms on the galaxy edge would be very different from those that colonised earlier.
Of course, you needn't stop at just the galaxy. You could equally send your probes to nearby galaxies too, if you're willing to wait 100,000 years whats a few more?
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Its very unlikely that any empire would be able to maintain its control over galaxy without some sort of FTL travel.
Someone brought up the fact that empires have been able to be maintained when travel took months/years, but the travel time is much greater. It would take generations to travel across the entire galaxy. Even if the technology for immortality was discovered, unless reproductive rates were drastically reduced, there would still be a countless amount of new people being born. These new people would not necessarily have any loyalty to the empire, and there would be little to gain from staying within it.
Taxation would be largely pointless. Any natural resource would take generations to arrive at which point the demand for said resource would probably have changed. Any manufactured goods would be probably be extremely obsolete by the time they arrived (it would also be difficult to maintain the goods in a usable state over such a long period of time)
Pretty much any military action by the galactic empire would be completely pointless. The only situation where sending a military force would be remotely useful is if there was a stalemate situation with some external threat. Otherwise any conflict would be long since over. As for subjugation forces, their military tech would probably be outdated and there would be no strong guarantee that they would maintain their loyalty to the empire.
Another factor that people are ignoring is that linguistic drift will almost certain occur. It won't be a deal-breaker, but it will make communication difficult.
There is one possible way a galactic civilization could work. Quantum communication does not have the limitations of the speed of light. If the galactic empire deliberately kept technology levels very low outside of its seat of power, it could theoretically maintain control by spreading advanced fabricators throughout the galaxy. By remotely controlling these fabricators, they could build drones or be the only source of goods that the local population needs.
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Yes, you can have this, if it is an empire of robots or cyborgs that do not value individualism (like the Borgs in Star Trek). But it's a must that they do not do experiments with their rules structure (different from one solar system to another), or you will end with different groups that at some point will enter in conflict. And they all follow a strict set of rules all over the place, a set of rules that does not change (because change takes so much time to get from one side of the empire to another).
Or similar with an organic specie that does not value individualism for the workers (like super massive ant colonies, that could evolve to space travel). But in this case I cannot see the evolutionary need for the queen to reach the entire galaxy. Maybe if she can somehow detect the end of her planet (like a neutron star collision in the future, where she still has time to send workers to prepare other planets), but then if she moves somewhere else then the need to expand stops.
As soon as you have multiple queens (something that might drive them to expand outside the home world) you will not have an empire, but multiple in conflict for expansion. Or you could have maybe queens working together, but it would not be so much an empire, but more like a free trading galaxy of super queens.
I cannot see it working with humans who have a natural drive for individualism and hierarchical structures. We can work together, but only as long as we all feel that we can profit from the governing structure. We like to have communities, but we need to "feel" connected with the rest. Our empathy does not really stretch for the hypothetical unknown.
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If you permit instantaneous telepathy, your rulers don't have to *be* there if they can just exchange thoughts from their representatives on each planet. ObSF: *Time For The Stars*
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Long ago when apes and hominids split off a third group began to live in the seas and became [mermaids/seafolk](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/167943/realistic-sea-humanoids). Among several species of mermaids, there is a species of "giant mermaids" who have orca like skin patterns.
To avoid any major conflict, most nations who rely on the sea for trade or a way of life will pay a portion of their goods for safe passage through mermaid-controlled waters. But this still doesn't stop some rogue mermaids from raiding ships and taking all the loot. This presents a problem as a group of giant mermaids could capsize a cargo ship and steal its loot.
Some basic characteristics of these giant mermaids pirates include:
* being 26 feet (8 meters) long
* having human-level intelligence
* have an excellent sense of vision and hearing
* have a thick layer of blubber
* having Stone age level technology
* usually attack in groups of 10 to 15
* can hold their breaths up to 13 minutes
Given this how could sailors with at most medieval level technology protect their cargo (and their lives) from giant mermaids and to the lesser extent human-sized mermaids?
Note: Magic does not exist in my story
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### Employ mermaid escorts.
1. They are smart.
2. They like stuff we have because they accept it in payment from ships crossing their territory.
3. Presumably they can deal with criminals of their own kind.
Mermaids associated with the area in question accompany boats. They ward off rogue mermaids whom they identify by their ruddy complexions. The mermaid escorts (and their bosses) get the payment themselves. Also, future travelers will choose this safe route and so mermaids associated with this system are ensured a future supply of land loot.
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# Bomb fishing
While your post specifies medieval technology, that does not inherently exclude gunpowder, which was described as early as the 13th century, even in Europe. While sophisticated cannons and firearms are likely unreasonable stretches, simple explosive shells with timed fuses should be entirely doable.
While black powder is not a high explosive, and tends to deflagrate (burn) rather than detonate (explode), but notably, black powder under confinement absolutely can and does explode, and violently. That means that it can be used for [bomb fishing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast_fishing). Bomb fishing is an [incredibly effective](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/151230-Tanzania-blast-fishing-dynamite-coral-reefs) way to kill large groups of fish, and also effectively kills mammals.
Black powder is [less effective](http://www.nativefishlab.net/library/textpdf/14460.pdf) than dynamite, but if properly contained to generate maximum overpressure, the effects can be quite serious. As the linked study notes, the black powder charge in exp 44, which was a sheet metal container with two detonators, killed considerably more fish than a thin-walled can container. A [military report](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA044443.pdf) indicated that under proper confinement, a TNT equivalence of up to 25% for pressure is possible.
In addition, since your goal is to kill the mermaids, not eat them, you’re free to add frangible metal pieces to the outside/inside of the explosive device, which can greatly increase the kill radius. The Soviet fragmentation grenade ФГ-45 has a kill radius of at least 14 meters underwater, and is a relatively small (though high explosive) charge.
Given the size of your targets, and a ship’s ability to carry large black powder charges (10lbs+) without much issue, they should be brutally effective countermeasures.
Additionally, don’t underestimate the non-fatal deterrent effects: underwater blasts can rupture animal eardrums, and are provablt effective in terrifying even sub-human-intelligence animals. Their effect on primitive stone-age cultures capable of rational thought will likely be profound.
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I approach this by thinking about contemporary whaling ships, and then thinking about how one could add to that technology. The first thing that comes to my mind is giant crossbow harpoons with drogues attached; the drogues would keep the mermaids from diving and tire them out (as they did for whalers). You could assume that the nations of the time would have dedicated some serious engineering time and energy to the mermaid problem, so the technology would likely be more developed than that of real whaling technology. Of course what is and isn't reasonable in this regard is up to your good judgement.
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**Mermaid hostages**
Maybe mermaids don't attack their own kind, or if their own kind are under threat. The ships may keep young or smaller mermaids aboard, under threat of killing them if the ship is attacked. Or perhaps some mermaids serve as members of the crew (or entertainment) beyond just being a hostage/prisoner.
Of course it seems like the true answer to this question would be a combination of all the answers. Depending on the culture of the people involved, and their history of the mermaids, they may try weapons, negotiation, or intimidation to various levels of success.
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Are these mermaids susceptible to poison? Toxins? Ships could carry a cargo of substances dangerous to mermaids and dump these into the surrounding water when under attack or even just if being scouted out. Or they might coat darts or other weapons with the poison/toxin and have at it (presumably there would be people especially trained to use these implements while fighting underwater, for example; though then the substance has to be water-resistant).
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Based on what we know about other marine mammals:
Sound travels more efficiently (faster and farther) in water than air, so it seems that medieval tech could produce a loud enough noise to disrupt them, particularly if they have sensitive hearing.
<https://www.sciencealert.com/this-is-the-horrifying-reason-why-sonar-makes-beaked-whales-beach-themselves>
Similarly, if they have excellent underwater vision, with similar eyes to terrestrial humans, I would imagine them to have very light-sensitive pupils. They might be a bit blind when surfacing as they adjust to the light levels, and this could be exploited by creating a bright flash.
There are some interesting ideas for hazing marine mammals from oil spills.
You don't mention if they dive, but if they live in water they likely have some adaptations to pressure differences. Anything that causes them to surface rapidly could cause the bends, maybe some kind of giant baited fishing pole that yanks them up so they explode? If they're intelligent, though, that may only work a few times.
Given that these species seem to lack blubber and fur for thermoregulation (based on the sketch), I would guess that the oceans are either a lot warmer or they are restricted to warmer waters. There could be some efforts to minimize travel around tropics, but this isn't really very helpful unless they could figure out a way to cold shock them...travel with ice in the ballast water and dump?
Again, based on the sketch, those long, skinny arms and head/neck shape are problematic. They would create a lot of drag without adding much to propulsion. What do they use them for? Grabbing ships? Marine mammals (marine anything that swims at a decent speed) are all similarly shaped to reduce drag because moving in water is so much harder than on land. So, these mermaids must be a lot slower than other marine mammals. So a fast ship should be able to outrun them given a distraction (like one of the above methods). If you want them to be realistically fast, their shape needs to be adjusted to their environment.
Otherwise, I would go with the mermaid guards or perhaps some kind of mermaid hostage situation.
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I think it mostly depends on how fast the mermaids can swim, and for how long. Technically, these mermaids wouldn't be that much more difficult to defend against than normal humans - they might be able to capsize a smaller ship, but they wouldn't necessarily be able to tear through the a wooden hull any easier than a person. Their main advantage is that it's easier for them to reach the ship, potentially without being detected, and easier to keep up with it while moving.
Given that they swim somewhat slower than a ship, I'd say the best defenses would be a sail, at least as backup, since oars would be too easy to grab and cripple the ship, and investing in an extra-thick coat of pitch so it would be harder to grab the sides. Maybe carry a couple of sealed barrels of water-soluble poison that can be smashed if mermaids attack, and which will kill them if the ship sinks? Could be too risky, since the crew would probably die too.
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* Think about defense in layers, not just the far fight...
* International law, order, and punishment installed
* Weighted or spiked nets
* Hire mercenary mermaids to combat threats (might add an interesting dynamic to the story and make available some good complexity and character depth)
* Poisons, venoms, toxins
* Harpoons & Crossbows
* Spears & Pikes
* Release predators into the water (i.e. shark, etc) maintained on-board
* Spiked oars to prevent mermaids from grabbing them
* High frequency sound for disorientation
* Tethered cages free-divers or other mermaids use to get into the water and combat the threat with spears, pikes, etc.
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Giant mermaids is a nice idea, it seems very plausible that a sea-version of humans would become much bigger with time.
I think the best bet is some **poisoned harpoons**. Just bows probably don't cut it, they don't look like they have as thick skin as whales, but probably still much thicker than land animals, for isolation in water.
If the medieval people are really smart and lucky, maybe they'll be able to spread some mermaid-**diseases**, perhaps by spreading body parts of a diseased mermaid they caught (or found after death). Biological warfare was a thing in medieval times, though limited.
The harpoons do assume the ability to chase mermaids down until they come up to breath. If that's not an option (i.e. they are too fast), it's going to be much harder. I don't think they would need to come up to sink the ships - they could probably poke holes in ships using metal/rock/sharp wood, or capsize them using rope stolen from other ships.
Another thing that would help is making **bigger boats**. If boats are big enough, they can't be capsized by a pod of mermaids, unless the mermaids find some leverage point, which seems unlikely in the ocean. Width is especially helpful, although of course makes them slower. Bigger boats would also naturally have stronger hulls, hopefully preventing the mermaids poking holes. There were no metal ships in medieval times, but maybe the technology for them existed?
If making individual ships bigger doesn't work, then travel is a fleet, and tie the ships together when mermaids are spotted. Maybe you can get advance warning by training birds to scout for you.
The mermaids are big mammals, so a lot of resources and time probably goes into growing each one. Plus they're smart, so I think you don't need to inflict too high a casualty on them to make them give up their piracy. They're probably already apex predators, hunting human ships is not their only means of survival, they'll switch to something easier if ships get too hard.
Some things I don't expect to work:
* I don't think adding spikes to the bottom/side of ship would work well. The mermaids have hands and look pretty nimble, so a spike is probably just something for them to hold on to while capsizing the ship.
* They're probably apex predators, so training other animals to fight probably doesn't do any good. They're most similar to orcas, who are apex predators. These things are smarter, similar sized, and live in similar or bigger pods. Plus mermaids are going to be much better at domesticating sea animals than humans are.
* I think dumping poison in the water would very quickly dilute too much, or be left behind. Similarly with oil. Also it's probably not cheap.
* Solutions with electricity or sound or explosives or such are probably too modern.
* Trying to scare them somehow, like scaring land predators with fire, probably doesn't work since they are very smart.
* I can't easily find anything about medieval methods to detect whale sounds, so I'm assuming it's not possible, but not sure.
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Here be mermaids.
In the Iron Age, the sea was a very unsafe place: storms, real sea monsters (whales, giant squid, sharks), mythical sea monsters and pirates. What could an Iron Age ship captain do about these things? Not much. The sea was just dangerous place and people accept and avoid particular dangerous routes.
Maps of seas often warned of dragons; maps of your world would warn of place with rogue mermaids and more ships would avoid these parts of the sea. That forces mermaids to police themselves or lose business.
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What if you were to chum the water and attract sharks to come in and create a feeding frenzy, could be too dangerous for the mermaids to stay around?
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**The Obvious Answer: Diplomacy Or Control**
Look, you specified that they were giant *mermaids.* That means they are a female-only species. That means they rely upon human men (most likely sailors) to continue the species.
This gives the humans *huge* diplomatic power over them unless, of course, the mermaids are smart enough to kidnap people for this purpose, but doing so would likely result in retaliation, better ship defenses (or a complete stop to all naval trade since ships aren't coming back) and since they're smart enough to raid ships, they are smart enough to negotiate instead.
This means humans and mermaids will have good relations, which means giant mermaids will likely attack and defend against rogues. For example, there may be soldier mermaids stationed along popular shipways, as well as mermaid escorts (which are covered in other answers). Or maybe giant mermaids only monitor sailing ships so if one is sunk or attacked by a rogue, they recognize it and hunt down the offender (this would mean either lax commitment or really peaceful relations overall with the merpeople).
However, humans have also been domesticating animals and enslaving their own kind for years. You may not *think* they can do that to giant mermaids, but A) we took down *whales*, B) a baby elephant securely tied to a rope will grow up never trying to escape because it thinks it *can't*, and C) a young mermaid (which would be the most likely target) will be relatively easy to train into subservience.
Eventually, I can see entire nations of humans using enslaved mermaids to hunt down and capture the free mermaids, eventually putting every last tribe under their thumb. Of course, you may not go that direction, and I don't blame you. Diplomacy is so much better. Either way, I hope this helps.
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How fast can the mermaids swim? You could to design your ships to be un-catchable. So make them fast and light and captains only set sail when the wind is strong. Maybe also make them have a shallow draft to make them harder to detect in the water (though that will affect the ships stability in bad weather), maybe even a catamaran shaped hull to keep most of the boat out of the water and hopefully less noticeable by the mermaids.
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I disagree on harpoons--they're slow.
If you're going to attack the weapon is the ballista. Travel in convoys so hiding under one ship doesn't prevent another ship from shooting. Long and thin enough rounds will get through the water.
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The first thing that comes to my mind is harpoons, maybe with some poison on them as well.
A few other options would be to employ/hire mermaid escorts to travel with ships to help deal with rogue mermaids and in return they get more of the goods the ships have on board or another form of payment.
Or create a large net that's made to catch these mermaids, perhaps with spikes and poison on them as well.
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At the risk of getting laughed at, couldn't your ships be armored with huge metal spikes all over them? The mermaids attack and they get impaled. That, and a combination of the boats being very fast, and the sailors being very good with harpoons, might be enough to keep them away.
Also, I'm thinking that while the mermaids are clearly in their element, their bodies must still obey similar laws of physics that whales on Earth do (you said no magic). So I don't think there would a rash of giant fish, mermaid or not, jumping *onto* the boats, or *ramming* the boats.
Would they be attacking with weapons(spears)? If so, I think the sailors could defend themselves much the same way they would from *other* boats attacking.
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"have an excellent sense of vision and hearing"
Play music.
**REALLY bad, REALLY loud music.**
I'm thinking piano wire harp strung from the mainmast, scraped by blunt files level of bad music. Tubular bells mounted in the ship's keel. Tin drum percussion segment, with sledgehammers.
It will drive all creatures with sensitive hearing far, far away.
Will also change the expression "deaf as a doorpost" to "deaf as a sailor"
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I've been exploring language for the past few weeks, and I came up with what I believe is an interesting idea. Let's say that a fictitious religious sect decides to, for some reason, make a language. This means that this language can have all sorts of weird features that would never crop up in human languages because it was made by a bunch of monks.
**Question:** why would the monks do this? Preferably, the explanation is simple, naturalistic, and thorough.
This might sound like a [sacred language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_language), but the main difference is that has been made up by one person, not a demographic. If anyone knows of a real-life analogue to this, however, please tell me.
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**Clarifications**
The language is used as a sort of secret communication between monks.
The language was created by a small group (5-10 people.)
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**Update:** I honestly didn't think this question would have so many answers. Thank you all so very much. It means the world.
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That *may* have already happened in real life.
(Emphasis on the "may", because this is not a 100% mainstream accepted theory, but it's good enough for fictional inspiration.)
There are many languages that have special registers for specific social or ceremonial circumstances, in which large sections of vocabulary, grammar, or even phonology may be replaced relative to the common register--e.g., the "Ja" registers (or "mother-in-law" registers) of several aboriginal Australian languages. These are typically used for taboo avoidance, but in traditional Dyirbal society there are specific arguably-religious ceremonies which demand the exclusive use of Ja by at least some parties, and it has been seriously suggested that the ceremonial register may in fact be an intentional conlang.
Why would they, or your monks, do something like this? Simple: to draw a another boundary between the sacred and the profane. Religions, especially the sort that produce monks, are permeated cross-culturally by a common distinction between the worldly or profane and the spiritual or sacred, and religious practice often involves a symbolic crossing from the profane world into the sacred world, either by literally crossing into a sacred space (like a church, temple, or monastery) or by the adoption of specialized religious clothing, physical rituals (e.g., ritualized washing)... or *ritualized speech patterns*.
If your monks are at all familiar with the idea of constructed languages, or can come up with it themselves (as historically at least one actual nun has done--St. Hildegard of Bingen, whose Lingua Ignota unfortunately did not catch on in the larger monastic community but was in fact explicitly designed as a sacred language for religious devotion), it would not be at all implausible for them to decide to adopt a new language along with all other aspects of their new religious life as just one more component to set them, their sect, and their worship apart from the rest of the world, and give them a unique sense of community.
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Here are a few possible reasons:
1. **It is a "mystery" religion.** Most people either cannot handle or are not worthy of the "true answers." Thus, you must be a certain
level of rank to learn the language. This can be further amplified
by having the books written in code so that only those above that
first rank get the true secrets. Or the code is there to test
people for the next level (if they can understand the hidden
secrets, they are worthy of the next level).
2. **Learning the language shows your dedication.** There might not be restrictions on teaching or learning the language. However,
learning it shows an amount of commitment and intelligence that
might be sought from the leaders. In this case, codes and hidden
meanings may be involved to test for further advancement.
3. **The religion is opposed by the ruling class.** If that is the case, they have to operate as an underground cell. The better the
code, the less chance the authorities have of knowing that you are a
member of an unauthorized religion.
4. **They want to take on the trappings of any of the other reasons.** They are new or are some scam and want to seem to be more than they
are. A lot of cults (and scam artists) dangle "hidden truths" in
front of prospective victims. Even if the religion is real, it
might go this route to kick start itself in a "fake it until you
make it" ploy.
5. **The local language is not good at describing reality.** Maybe you need a new language to properly describe the science and/or magic of
the world. If the new language does a good job of that then the
language and the religion would spread due to its usefulness.
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# Failed attempt at *lingua franca*
There is a real world religion called Spiritism. It's a big thing mostly in Brazil and France as far as I remember, somewhat well known in some latin countries too.
With the intention to reach out to as many people as possible, spiritist leaders around the world invested heavily in the spread of a constructed language, [Esperanto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto). Esperanto was designed to incorporate elements of the most popular languages, so that anyone will find it familiar and easy to learn.
In practice, though, in most places of South America (and maybe the whole world, but I can't make that broader assertion) being an Esperanto speaker equals being a hardcore spiritist. It ends up being a language that only those who actually work in spiritist centers understand, and they can only use it to communicate among themselves.
The funny thing is, for spiritists who do master Esperanto, it becomes a *lingua franca*. People from different countries and backgrounds who do not speak each other's native languages usually communicate in English. But spiritists from different countries may instead communicate in Esperanto, either due to not knowing English or as an option.
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Back to your own world: monks may have devised a language so that it could also serve as a *lingua franca* for the religion, or even for the whole world. Some time later (Decades? Centuries?) the fact that only the clergy ever bothers (or manages) to learn it means they have a *de facto* secret language.
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**Real life analogue:** sometimes religious texts are kept in an old language (not necessarily the original language) with local and/or modern translations frowned upon. For a specific case: Bibles being (mostly) in Latin for a long time before the printing press made mass distribution of other translations relatively easy.
In part this is due to a purity argument: the text records the purity of the spoken word of the deities/prophets/other in question.
Sometimes it is for control: the powers that be in the organised religion effectively control the word of God (or the word of the Gods in a pantheistic religion) and its interpretation.
The example of the Bible differs a bit from your case because it happened essentially by accident as language use evolved externally to the texts but they were preserved, and the language used was originally a real general purpose language used by the masses, but if it can happen by accident then it can happen on purpose if a group of people feel the need. It may not initially start out intended to be a secret language: it could be a set of deliberately created obscure jargon made up because the users of it find it useful for discussing/communicating things about the religion and other things they may be discussing.
**Another real life analogue:** sub-languages created to "hide in plain sight" at times when a group is subject to significant oppression. While not for religious purposes, Polari is a good example of this. While that developed organically amongst a larger population than you are asking about, it could easily happen deliberately amongst a smaller close-knit group of religious leaders who find themselves at odds with the political leaders at the time or another religion with which they "compete". The secret language may persist for many reasons even if the oppressive force that made its creation necessary becomes less significant.
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## It's a mean to shield followers from outside influence.
[Disconnecting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disconnection_(Scientology)) followers from outside influence is a standard move from the playbook of any religious or pseudo-religious cult. The purpose is to prevent any outside ideas or information from causing the follower to question their faith and the authority of their religous leaders. Enforcing that disconnection with an artificial language barrier can be an effective technique.
How could that look in practice?
* People who convert to the religion are taught the holy language. They are prohibited from expressing themselves in any other language, intentionally exposing themselves to other languages and encouraged to "forget" any other language(s) they know. (You can't really intentionally forget a language, but it doesn't hurt to tell them to try anyway as a mental exercise in faith).
* People who are born into the religion are only taught the holy language.
* Teaching the holy language to anyone outside of the faith is forbidden.
The intention is to make it impossible for followers of the religion to communicate with outsiders. This makes it very hard for outsiders to poison their minds with heretical thoughts or even lead them away from the true faith.
Unfortunately this also makes it difficult to convert people *to* your religion. So you might make an exception for trained (read: indoctrinated) missionaries.
When constructing the language for your religion, you might also use the opportunity to apply some 1984-[newspeak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak)-style neurolinguistic programming techniques. You might intentionally neglect to add any vocabulary which allow people to express heretical thought. And if you must have a word for heretical concepts for practical reason, you could make them homonyms with concepts which have a very negative connotation. Like using the same word for "apostate" and "monster".
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Real life analogue: the use of **Latin in the Catholic church** well into the 20th century.
While, Latin is by no means a secret language, yet very few could follow the words spoken by the priest in a Catholic mass up until the 60s. While many knew that "Pater noster" means "Our father", which refers to god, much of the Latin spoken during mass didn't make any sense to the audience.
Why did the church continue to use Latin long after it ceased to be the lingua franca? It was their lingua franca. Over time, men of the church apparently cared little that French was the lingua franca in diplomatic circles, or English became the lingua franca of the western hemisphere post WW2.
[Second Vatican Council](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council)
[Wikipedia on sacred languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_language#Christianity)
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Another real-life example: [Esperanto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto).
While the motivation for the creation of this language is diametrically different to your stated goal, it nevertheless fits the description: *created by a small group of people*.
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So your goal would be an Anti-Esperanto. No commonly used features of other languages; and the expressed goal of not becoming wide-spread.
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As to why would they do this? Control & proper indoctrination.
If the Cult of the Anti-Esperantists created their Anti-Esperanto, this would force any potential new cleric to study with the Anti-Esperantists, since there is no other venue to learn the language. This gives the Anti-Esperantist establishment a good deal of control of who will join their ranks.
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Real-life analogue:
Many existing groups/professions already have their own languages (at least partially). If you talk to an IT guy about work, you are going to hear some jargon that you may not understand. Same for talking to doctors,engineers,philosophers and many other groups.
While their use of jargon/slang is not necessarily to exclude outsiders from the conversation, it can have that effect. Jargon is used because it simplifies the conversations because the underlying definitions are known to the group.
From that base it would only be a small extrapolation to have a group (including perhaps monks), who contrive a language so filled with jargon/slang/whatever that only members of the group would understand.
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## Private communication
Having a private constructed language only they understand allows the monks to have private conversations in the presence of outsiders. There are lots of situations where this can be useful. Not so much while in a secluded monestary. But contrary to the popular stereotypes, medieval monestaries were everything but secluded. They were usually important actors in the local economy, culture and politics. So there are plenty of situations where monks interacted with outsiders. And some of these outsiders might not be entirely trustworthy.
So having that language might be useful during a business negotiation to debate an offer from the other side with your brothers, sending a letter with a situation report from the royal court back to the monestary or discussing something not entirely unheretical you are doing while hosting a group of inquisitors as guests in your monestary.
[Answer]
1)Religions in the past were not widely accepted as today and often faced prosecution or even public mobbing. In such a case a religion may adopt to means similar to warfare whereby a coded language is created in order to keep secrecy and uphold security measures. If continued for a long time by a particular sect this can evolve and become a language of its own.
It should be noted though that an entirely new language cannot be formed by people who already speak a certain language. This is mainly attributed to the need for translations and psychological factors. Therefore the language will be based on known languages but can gradually evolve to separate itself.
2)The second scenarios is based on George Orwell’s novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. He writes of a government that manipulates the english language to limit human thinking. This is done by removing certain words and expressions that may cause a rebellion against the government. Religion’s are highly conservative and have only recently come to terms with the free world, nevertheless restrictions of clothings,tattoos and similar lifestyles are received negatively. Language too is somehow regulated in religious institutions with words related to sexual activity, atheism...etc are in a way banned in public. In OP’s situation, it can be said the monks try to create a language to control such factors and prevent the human mind from thinking any thoughts that revolt or oppose religious thoughts. This although would be an extreme case of regulation by the monks but people go to extreme lengths for their faith and beliefs. The monks may not necessarily to govern a set of people but may try to limit their own thoughts in attempt to purify themselves.
Some may argue that the above is impossible but artificial languages have been created before and been used by a set of people. One example is the language of the minions which is claimed to be created by Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin. It is a limited language with an aim of being humorous but I doubt any monks would create a language for humor.
3) Another possible reason is the need for the monks to differentiate themselves from similar religions or other similar factors(Who knows when monks start facing competition from a restaurant dressing their staff similar to the monks-JK). This would still be an extreme measure but it would serve the purpose of separating their identity from the so called competition.
4) The monks can be on a higher level of authority in the religion and might want to signify the importance and level of dedication required to achieve the level of authority. In christianity it can be compared to that of the pope(The pope does not speak a different language). The sam situation can work in a reverse situaion wher trainees in the monk religion are taught a different language to show dedication to the religion.
All the above situations would be almost impossible and unnecessary making the likeliness of such a language existing impossible. If anything like this happens it would give a new insight in th field of linguistics.
[Answer]
Languages aren't usually made up. and if one were, it would be difficult for anyone to know fluently since fluency usually requires learning it as a child and/or immersion. Usually, new languages evolve from other languages when a group of people lives separate enough from another group that speaks the same language for long enough that the language changes (this happens faster for languages that do not have a written component).
The question though is why would they make up a language? Keep in mind that a language is more than a vocabulary, there is grammar as well, syntax, sentence structure, congugations, etc. All of that would be a lot to come up with, learn, remember and teach. What seems more likely is that it would have started with a secret code or short-hand based on one or more existing languages. (Think Yiddish which is a combination of German and Hebrew). Perhaps the religious sect was being persecuted by the mainstream society and had to come up with a code to communicate. Perhaps the persecution lasted long enough that children learned the secret code as their primary language. (again, think Yiddish) Perhaps the persecution is over now but the language that evolved from the secret code persisted. Perhaps those of the religious order have been isolated for so long that what was once the same language everyone else speaks, has evolved into a full-blown different language. If this language has a new writing system, perhaps it started as a form of short-hand they learned for record keeping and evolved from there. Perhaps children are dedicated to the monastary at a very young age and grow up speaking this new language instead of that of their parents or perhaps the whol family is part of the religious order and therefore speaks the language.
The above would have taken generations though. If you want something faster, maybe the language didn't evolve. Maybe it was revealed by one of the gods and the minds of the few faithful monks were all at once enlightened to it so that the god can communicate with them without the traitors or unfaithful of his sect understanding. Maybe it is still to avoid persecution from the followers of a different god. Maybe it is so that god can make the other gods jealous. Or maybe it is for some reason he hasn't revealed yet. Another possibility is that they have discovered an ancient text written in a long forgotten language.
TL;DNR I guess my answer to the question "Why would monks make up a language?" is "They probably wouldn't." But there are other, more natural ways to have a group of monks speak a language than the society around them, such as a language evolving from a secret code or revelation of the gods.
[Answer]
**The Scriptures are written in that language, and can only be understood in that language.**
This is not fantasy, it is exactly the situation with Arabic and Islam (although if course Arabic is not a made-up language). The true Quran exists only in Arabic, and while it may be "translated" into English, to a devout Muslim that isn't the Quran. It's why so many Muslims learn Arabic.
[Answer]
# Boredom
Monks are often very well educated. In the medieval periodic, monastic contributions to the natural sciences, literature, and art are plentiful. Making up languages can be a similar albeit much less useful pasttime. If these monks have a religion that doesn't really care much about societal goods and doesn't prepare them for having a lot of time to themselves it is totally reasonable that they might, upon finding themselves in circumstances where they have to pass a bunch of time in relative solitude, make up a language for fun. Tolkien, for example, did much of his language development for Middle Earth during the Blitz.
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Religions came with all kinds of weird stuff. When gods reveal themselves - or believers get their beliefs from any methods different than revelation - the most spiritual theological truths come often along some practical recipes. Some of them are sensible and some of them are strange but still useful to test the faith and commitment of the faithful.
They usually include things like some moral teachings, some dietary rules or some dressing codes. It would be surprising that for some religion they include some vocabulary, grammar and writing system.
Gods may be weird. Bunches of monks in close connection with gods can be weird, too.
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They may be attempting to employ the "[Sapir-Whorf hypothesis](https://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/sapir.cfm)", a hypothesis that language shapes how we think. If your language has spatial aspects (such as many sign languages), you will receive regular exercise in spatial placement. If your language distinguishes blue and green as colors, you will be better able to differentiate the two colors on sight. If your language has a tense system that requires you to indicate the known truthfulness of your statement, you will show more critical thought in where a particular piece of information comes from.
Similarly, a religion might use its own language to encourage particular trains of thought, perhaps having a more complex gender system to enforce their belief in more than the binary, or a lack of an "object" gender that might make it easier to relegate animals to the status of tools, or human beings of a different race as being less than human. Lastly, aspects of the language might be used to expand one's thinking, say by making the infinite or the infinitesimal part of the language so that there's more than just a distinction between one and many, or to restrict it, say by establishing a firm differentiation between the animate and the inanimate such that anthropomorphizing an object becomes completely wrong rather than a childish affectation.
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[Question]
[
In a society where everyone receives equal education regardless of who they are, why would they all have to go to a boarding school, rather than a public school?
This is at no extra cost to the parents. They are kept in dorms separated by age, and are required to attend from ages 5-16. They are not allowed to just opt out of schooling.
In the case that it helps, the people doing this are dwarves. They are your typical Tolkien ones at this point in development. The children are taught subjects like math, language, history, science, life skills, and physical education along with whichever options they choose. This is also a very fair, equal society.
EDIT: I am judging by plausibility and cost effectiveness.
[Answer]
The dwarven boarding school system is designed for the betterment of dwarven society as a whole and to place dwarves where they are most likely to succeed, with no regard for family values, pedigree, personal choice, individuality, or social status. Incompetent dwarves will not rise due to nepotism, and skilled dwarves will not be smothered by social conventions.
In short, the dwarves love [Plato's Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_(Plato)), or at least some of the hypothetical cities described therein.
---
Among other topics, [Plato discusses](http://www.idph.net/conteudos/ebooks/republic.pdf) how to properly raise children in several hypothetical 'just' societies, and describes systems that fit your scenario pretty well:
>
> **Now early life is very impressible, and children ought not
> to learn what they will have to unlearn when they grow up;** we must therefore
> have a censorship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others.
>
>
> ...
>
>
> The tale must be
> imparted, first to the rulers, then to the soldiers, lastly to the people. **We will inform them that their youth was a dream, and that during the time when they
> seemed to be undergoing their education they were really being fashioned in
> the earth, who sent them up when they were ready;** and that they must protect
> and cherish her whose children they are, and regard each other as brothers and
> sisters.
>
>
> ...
>
>
> These brothers and sisters have different natures, and
> some of them God framed to rule, whom he fashioned of gold; others he made
> of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again to be husbandmen and craftsmen, and
> these were formed by him of brass and iron. But as they are all sprung from
> a common stock, **a golden parent may have a silver son, or a silver parent a
> golden son, and then there must be a change of rank; the son of the rich must
> descend, and the child of the artisan rise**
>
>
>
Since all dwarves are equal then all dwarven children are equal, and they must be removed from their families to receive an equal education in order to continue the dwarven [meritocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy).
If children stay with their parents, then not all children will receive the same education: children of carpenters will learn carpentry, children of bankers will learn banking, etc. Furthermore, this may prevent them from rising to their true potential, as the child of a carpenter may never realize their natural skill at banking, or vice versa.
[Answer]
Efficiency.
With conventional public schools, every locale needs to provide all of the infrastructure for a school system. That's fine for cities, but for sparsely-populated areas, either the cost per student goes up or the amount of focus goes down. An example of the latter is the one-room schoolhouse where one teacher instructs students at several grade levels because there just aren't enough students to divide them by grade level, age, or ability. Everybody still *learns*, but maybe not as much as they would in a larger school system.
So instead, your dwarves ship everybody off to the central school, where economies of scale can take effect. Students can be divided up into groups (classes) based on their abilities and then given focused instructions. While, back home, an exceptional student (at either end of the scale) would be expected to just cope with the median-level education, here at Dwarf U there's a whole *class* full of similar people.
Because your dwarven settlements aren't large, though, you can't do this within easy commuting distance of home. So everybody gets sent to the central school where they stay for the academic year (or other reasonable unit). If you're doing a Republic-style just city you just leave them there until they're "baked"; if you want more interaction between dwarven parents and their children, you send them home periodically.
[Answer]
**It takes a village to raise a child**
This dwarves' society is highly communal. The nuclear family, a foundation block of human society, plays a much lower role, or maybe even doesn't exist at all. This is why children can't stay with the parents for a long time, and the entire community has to bear the responsibility of taking care of their youth. Over time, this process got formalized, with standard regimen, education curriculum and dormitories. "Public schools" in human sense just don't exist. Parents either have to send their children to boarding school, or raise them at home (which would be not common at all).
[Answer]
## Unions
Since typical Tolkienesque dwarves place a high emphasis on trades/crafts skills, it'd be likely for them to unionise. There'd be little reason for the dwarf education profession to not follow suit. With enough centralisation of the school system, boarding schools would likely become the predominant or even the only form of school; public schools would be a minority at best or totally consigned to the history books. Unions or guilds could be the predominant organisation in dwarf society whose authority is second only to that of the king.
As mentioned by Monica this would be more efficient(or at least seen as such). Boarding schools would allow the children to be totally immersed in their community and whichever craft they are studying at the time. As a (probably) unintentional side effect, being separated from the comforts of home for a long time surrounded mainly their peers would also teach the children what a prolonged labour strike is like.
[Answer]
Like you said, **Equality**.
Even if the schools were the same, some Dwarves are rich, and some Dwarves are poor. Some have great advantages due to their home life, others none at all. By enforcing boarding school, it levels the playing field because all Dwarves have, in theory, the same schooling and 'home' life.
Another possible reason is **Social Cohesion**
A great contributor in social cohesion is shared experience. For example, military basic training. The boarding school requirement provides a system that all Dwarves, rich and poor, share. Leading to a tighter knit society, something that is crucial for their survival underground.
(Not sure either of those actually work in the real world, but it may for your Dwarves)
[Answer]
Mandatory boarding schools exist in the real world.
In Canada, the federal government forced all indigenous children in the Northwest Territories to attend [residential schools](https://www.pauktuutit.ca/abuse-prevention/residential-schools/), which were boarding schools.
In the Nordic countries, the governments sent [Sami children to boarding schools](https://www.laits.utexas.edu/sami/dieda/hist/suffer-edu.htm).
Some of the reasons:
* Racism: the belief that the minority “race” needs segregated education because their brains are biologically inferior. In the 1930s, the Sami schools in Sweden did not permit for further education.
* Cultural assimilation: to assimilate the minority culture into the majority. In Canada, Norway, Sweden, and probably elsewhere, speaking the minority language in those schools was prohibited. The system thus attempted to destroy the minority culture.
* A consequence of mandatory schooling: even today, children in Norway are forcibly removed from their parents and sent to boarding schools, because they live so remotely that there is no school in commuting distance. This disproportionally (perhaps exclusively) affects Sami children.
A recent film set in such a Sami boarding school in the 1930s is [Sameblod (2016)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5287168/), set in southern [Sápmi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1pmi) (sometimes erroneously referred to as Lapland).
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I'm going to give this a bit of a dystopian twist.
The thing about families is that they are close ties, and mean that citizens will do things like protect family members who have disloyal opinions. Children will frequently adopt the opinions of their parents. By separating children from their families as young as possible, they minimize those ties and disloyalties, letting ties to the government be relatively strong.
The students most favored are those who are both loyal and are smart, capable leaders. They become the future teachers and leaders of the next generation, perpetuating the system. Under these top students, the kids are segregated early into career paths based on early talents, and recieve an education that best fits those talents. Future work teams basically grow up as brothers and sisters, meaning that as adults, leaving a job would mean leaving their closest social ties behind. Between that and the fact that the government likes the system as is, people generally stay in the same job for a very long time, and when they change, it's usually in a small way, like a promotion within the same company so that they aren't completely separated from their team. The government likes the predictability and stability this provides, and considers that the small loss in flexibility is worthwhile.
For individuals who don't get along with their team or dislike their assigned role, this system is problematic. Leaving your group as an adult isn't illegal, but it's got a very high social cost. Such people are considered "Abandoners", and looked down on heavily for leaving their role. Sometimes they try to form new groups with each other, but it's difficult: how do you form ties as an adult when you've always been shown that the only time to form close ties is in childhood? Additionally, Abandoners can only be hired on for limited roles because no one still in a team, and especially in a position of power, trusts them. Suicide is high in this group.
Mandatory boarding school is a tool of social control, designed to promote a loyal populace under a very strong government.
[Answer]
## Parents should work, not care for their children.
If you let parents host their children at home, then many people will become stay-at-home parents who contribute nothing to the economy. Even those who do decide to do both career and family won't be able to work as hard and flexible as people without children at home. They might insist to go home early when their child is sick or refuse to move to a different city if that would inconvenience their children.
But if all children are in boarding schools, these people have the time to do something more productive. Centralized boarding schools allow a small number of adults to take care of a large number of children.
[Answer]
>
> In a society where everyone receives equal education regardless of who they are, why would they all have to go to a boarding school, rather than a public school?
>
>
>
To train the students in ideas and social norms that many parents disagree with.
[Answer]
Dwarves are made not born.
In the beginning, the god of the Dwarves crafted them from the very stone. The First Smith breathed life into them, and made them flesh.
Dwarves continue this tradition. Each Dwarf is crafted by a master craftsdwarf, either one of the parents, or one who accepts a commission from a parent.
While their craftdwarfship is great, even the finest mortal construct is not alive. So the Dwarven priest asks their god to breathe life into the new Dwarf, and the Dwarf is made flesh.
The Dwarven religion and culture then requires that this new Dwarf undergo quality control. Dwarves are born full size (for a Dwarf) but with rudimentary intelligence and knowledge; letting a full sized child wander around isn't safe for either the child nor the community. The boarding school acts as a quality control on the craft and prayers used to animate each Dwarf, and a safe spot to grow up.
This results in a society that values craftsdwarfship and service to their gods highly. In order to reproduce, you need to have the wealth to hire a craftsdwarf, the skills to construct your own dwarf, and the recognition of their priests to agree to breathe life into your offspring. Having a central boarding school is just one more part of this community-oriented race.
[Answer]
>
> everyone receives equal education regardless of who they are
>
>
>
**Equality** is the sort of prime directive of this educational system. The dwarves believe that the only way this is possible is that the system controls all aspects of the child's education, which is not just limited to school hours.
In those child-neglecting foreign lands, where kids go home to their families after school every day, who knows what their parents are letting the get up to? Sure, *some* parents may keep a close eye on their homework, read to them, take them on educational outings, teach them to better themselves, but the majority probably don't, or don't do it enough! (And even the ones that do: who knows what kind of rubbish and misinformation they're teaching their kids?)
The end result is that there are many poor neglected children just left to watch television (or whatever the Tolkienian equivalent is...) and eat junk food all day.
The fairest possible way to ensure all children get a good education is a standardised - designed and approved by the experts of the time - syllabus which covers all aspects of their lives, during and outside school hours.
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[Question]
[
In Hungarian, there is a new-ish folk-song sung by school-children who dislike school whenever it snows to the tune of Twinkle, twinkle, little star:
>
> Hull a pelyhes dinamit,
>
>
> Robbantsuk fel a sulit!
>
>
> Minden gyerek várva vár,
>
>
> Hogy repüljön a tanár.
>
>
>
[irrelevant verses removed]
It would roughly translate to the following:
>
> The fluffy dynamite is falling,
>
>
> let us blow up the school.
>
>
> Every child can hardly wait
>
>
> for the teacher(s) to go flying.
>
>
>
Now this raises a few questions, like what is wrong with these children, but we aren't talking about that.
**What explosive could potentially end up falling from the sky in a snow-like form?** The less human intervention needed, the better (I mean, you could fly a plane over and dump it, but that's cheating).
It should be powerful enough to blow up a small school with less than a cubic meter of the stuff (a rough estimate of how much a schoolyard full of kids can collect and smuggle in without being apprehended).
Bonus points if you can make "snow"men or "snow"balls out of it. Extra bonus points if the snowballs explode. Even more bonus points if you can go skiing in it without blowing up.
This phenomenon is happening on a planet that looks like Earth, and has humans. So, blue sky, 1G gravity, and inhabitable by humans. If you want, you can put it on another planet, but the teachers need to be taken by surprise, so this is not a regular occurrence.
[Answer]
Triacetone Triperoxide (aka TATP) was made famous several years ago by the "shoe bomber" -- who tried to light his shoes to blow up *the plane he was flying in* after filling them with this material before boarding. It's very easy to make (three easily obtained ingredients), and forms as a snow-like precipitate in the solution. It's a primary explosive -- that is, it doesn't require a detonation to initiate (the way, for instance, ammonium nitrate explosives do), but can be set off by simple ignition, impact, or friction.
It is too sensitive for commercial applications (there are other primary explosives that work as well to initiate a blast and are much safer to handle and store), but has long been a favorite of Internet chat rooms and newsgroups where the inexperienced gather to talk about blowing stuff up.
For this material to form "naturally" and fall from the sky as snow would take a very unusual confluence of conditions -- but I could almost see it happening in the old Soviet Union or late 20th century China.
You'd need an industrial ventilator, like a fume hood, blowing acetone into the air -- air already containing a suitable catalyst (perhaps another industrial pollutant from somewhere that isn't usually upwind) to replace the peroxide and acid catalyst usually used, and prompt the acetone to form is peroxide from atmospheric oxygen (solar UV would probably help here). And you'd need a LOT of both chemicals, to form vapor concentrations high enough to react and produce visible fall of the end product.
Worth noting that the kids are far more likely to blow their own hands or faces off (doing things like packing snowballs), or simply blow up the entire schoolyard with this stuff than to smuggle it inside and blow up the school -- but it wouldn't take anything like a cubic meter to do the job; a few kilograms -- one small snowman -- would be sufficient to level the school I attended from 2nd through 8th grades (concrete block construction, three classrooms and a gym/auditorium).
[Answer]
**DISCLAIMER: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME, SCHOOL OR WHEREVER YOUR YOUNG AGE TAKES YOU**
You are looking for a [dust explosions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_explosion), which can be caused by
>
> grain, flour, starch, sugar, powdered milk, cocoa, coffee, and pollen. Powdered metals (such as aluminum, magnesium, and titanium) can form explosive suspensions in air, if finely divided.
>
>
>
But about dust explosions:
>
> A dust explosion is the rapid combustion of fine particles suspended in the air within an enclosed location. Dust explosions can occur where any dispersed powdered combustible material is present in high-enough concentrations in the atmosphere or other oxidizing gaseous medium, such as pure oxygen. In cases when fuel plays the role of a combustible material, the explosion is known as a fuel-air explosion.
> Dust explosions are a frequent hazard in coal mines, grain elevators, and other industrial environments.
>
>
> There are five necessary conditions for a dust explosion:
>
>
> * A combustible dust
> * The dust is suspended in the air at a sufficiently high concentration
> * There is an oxidant (typically atmospheric oxygen)
> * There is an ignition source
> * The area is confined—a building can be considered an enclosure
>
>
>
Someone dusting a room with a bag of flour and putting a spark/flame (a candle?) in it sounds like the perfect occurrence of the five conditions above.
And any white dust can be confused with snow...
[Answer]
The most popular explosives are already crystallized like snowflakes.
Example:
* **[Nitroglycerin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroglycerin)** - has melting point at 14C, but can easily overcool to negative numbers. It needs shaking to crystallize, but crystallization is not the most probable outcome of shaking nitroglycerin. But if it crystallizes it produces something snow-like, especially if it was sprayed beforehand.
* **[EGDN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene_glycol_dinitrate)** - has much lower melting point (-22C ). Highly explosive and extremely toxic (skin contact is enough to get lethal or almost lethal dose). Much more chemically stable than nitroglycerin (but easier to explode) and is produced by exactly same somewhat simple technology. Thus it is one of the most favorite terrorist explosions (or bomb igniters). If produced "at home" it is also snow-like (dirty-snow like actually). Mix with nitroglycerin is more stable than pure nitroglycerin, less explosive than pure EGDN and freeze at about 0C at some proportion.
So the right mix of this two at near zero temperatures can be (extremely cautiously!) formed into a snowball (with rubber gloves) and thrown. You may also try to ski on it. If you are slow enough (about snail pace) you might survive (friction is one of ignition factors).
Disclaimers:
1. Do not do it at home, at school, etc. - anywhere!
2. I am not a professional chemist, and can be wrong with all this. Correct me if this is the case.
[Answer]
**Guncotton** is a form of nitrocellulose made from cotton wool. It looks white and fluffy. It's historically been used as a propellant rather than a high explosive, but was used for blasting and I think as a teacher-launching substance that's close enough. Jules Verne was a fan, using it in many stories; it was invented around the time he was writing.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ekpcr.jpg)
Picture from Wikipedia, user Fabexplosive. This was the best image I could find with a suitable licence; [other images](http://www.dynamicscience.com.au/tester/solutions1/chemistry/chemicaldemos/guncottondemo.htm) look more snow-like
[Answer]
Well, there's napthalene. AKA mothballs, napthalene is pretty widely available as an insect repellent. It's also explosive, especially when you shave the stuff into flakes. Napthalene bombs are used as pyrotechnics in movies to provide that nice big satisfying fireball.
Only problem is, it's used in the movie biz because it's a lot safer and less damaging than other pyrotechnics, so you can use it around structures you can't actually demolish as part of filming, and closer to people than a propane or gasoline pyrotechnic. So using it to blow up a school, especially one made of reinforced cinder block, might be a bit iffy.
It's also not something that occurs naturally in enough bulk to snow in any universe that also contains humans.
[Answer]
L.Dutch came close with dust explosions. However, none of the materials that typically cause dust explosions could be mistaken for snow.
Lets add a plant. We already have examples of wind-dispersed seeds, this plant takes that to the extreme--the seeds are encased in a **very** lightweight structure to increase their surface area so the wind blows them better. Furthermore, the plant wants to maximize the dispersion--the seeds are encased until the plant is subjected to winds above a certain speed--the threshold being a major storm.
Hence when a big storm comes through every plant releases their seeds--if you have enough plants you have bazillions of seeds all at once and brought by a storm at that. While the support structures aren't dust per se they have the very high surface area to mass that's required, and they're fluffy enough that the oxygen is already there, no need for them to be puffed into the air.
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[Question]
[
Regarding the idea of a generation ship carrying a community of people for thousands of years to another planet:
Is there is any material for an engineered structure or set of systems that will resist oxidation for the many thousands of years required for the journey?
Also, material fatigue and wear caused by the movement of people after just a few hundred years would soon compromise the structure. Almost all other items used daily will not last even one generation. The only way to overcome these problems would be to have a large number of spare de-oxygenated ships in tow to move into.
I'm skeptical about the idea. I think the maintenance store would be too big. The whole thing would be too massive to get up to speed. Has anyone discussed this? Maybe I'm behind on it. It seems to be step 1 in engineering design for a reliable structure. Do we have the materials to withstand the conditions for the duration?
[Answer]
**Titanium**
>
> **Immunity to Environmental Attack**
> Architectural titanium's unsurpassed corrosion resistance results from its stable, highly-adherent, protective surface oxide film. Because the metal is highly reactive and has a strong affinity for oxygen, the beneficial oxide film forms spontaneously when exposed to moisture or air. In fact, a damaged oxide film can generally restore itself instantaneously.
>
>
> **Lowest Thermal Expansion**
> Titanium's coefficient of thermal expansion is half that of stainless steel and copper and one-third that of aluminium. It is virtually equal to that of glass and concrete, making titanium highly compatible with these materials. Consequently, thermal stress on titanium is very low.
>
>
> **Light Weight**
> The specific gravity of titanium is 4.51 g/cm3 - about 60% that of steel, half that of copper and 1.7 times that of aluminium. Being such a lightweight metal, titanium imposes less burden on structure. It is easily fabricated and permits ease of installation.
>
>
> **Environmentally Safe**
> Due this its relative inertness in most atmospheres, titanium is considered environmentally friendly. It is 100% recyclable and the product of a renewable resource.
>
>
> **Greatest Strength**
> In addition to having excellent mechanical strength (comparable to mild steel), titanium is durable and shock resistant. Its modulus of elasticity (a measure of strain rate) is half that of stainless steel. This means titanium is more flexible than other architectural metals during earthquakes and other periods of violent movement.
>
>
>
<https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1299>
You also build thing for ease of repair. Walkway's top most layer is replaceable. Handrails are replaceable. As things wear out, they are taken back, smelted down and recast and reused.
Design everything modular so it can be unbolted and replaced as needed and the old one recycled into new products.
[Answer]
You need to fundamentally abandon the idea of building a generation ship, and sending it off into deep space.
A generation ship needs to be self sustaining, which includes the capability to recycle and manufacture any part of the ship several times over. This kind of manufacturing capability you most likely need anyway when you arrive at your target.
The design criteria will contain some estimates on how good your recycling works, and you will as much spare parts/spare material along as your fuel budget allows, but effectively your crew will spend their journey rebuilding their ship over and over again.
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The key is in the ecosystem you're taking with you.
# Organic tech.
*I contend that it's about an integrated system, not just about one aspect of that system.*
The floor is a [Tapestry Lawn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapestry_lawn):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7gnix.jpg)
*Attribution: grassfreelawns.co.uk*
The various species of bee and other insect that you'll no doubt be wanting to take with you to populate your new world will love it, as will the worms and soil bacteria. (Moles, gophers, well - that's your choice)
* The ivy and other vines and creepers that you decorate the walls with acts as fine self-repairing handholds and homes for insects (a food source for the many birds/bats that are part of your habitat).
* While there might be some large common areas for trees, flowering plants (insects and birds), most of the oxygen production can be from wheat/barley and other food crops in your farming bays.
* Solid human-waste composted with dead plant matter would of course be used as fertilizer, as would urea, trace salts and water from the liquid waste to grow the plants necessary for life. Minerals necessary to re-manufacture metal or ceramic parts could be extracted at this point too.
* Fabrics that the inhabitants need would be made from compostable plant-fiber, faux leather from [bacterial matting](https://inhabitat.com/ecouterre/grow-your-own-microbial-leather-in-your-kitchen-diy-tutorial/), furniture from wood (see [futon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futon)).
* Your aquaculture bays would house and produce fish, oyster, shrimp, algae and various plants, as well as more varied marine habitats for transplantation to the new world - again recycling the O2 and other nutrients.
Many seeds and corms and tubers would be preserved and held in reserve to re-grow after damage. All this would require maintenance by; gardeners, arborealists, microbiologists, chemists, habitat management specialists, waste recycling engineers ... etc. This would provide rich educational opportunities for the future children, helping to maintain hands-on skills throughout the voyage necessary for populating the destination-world.
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> Is there is any material for an engineered structure or set of systems that will resist oxidation for the many thousands of years required for the journey?
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Aluminum, when in contact with oxygen, forms a thin layer of oxide which protects the underlying metal from further oxidation. Moreover, aluminum has a more favorable elasticity to density ratio when compared to iron, so it is already preferred for applications where weight is a concern (yes, aerospace is such an application)
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False. Fatigued metal can be recovered by a proper thermal cycle. You just need some spare parts and a thermal cycling facility.
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# For a long time but not indefinitely.
There is a calculation you'll have to do. Every time someone walks down a corridor, how much of the surface is worn away. Every time someone uses a handrail, how much is worn away. Damage can be repaired, fatigued metal can be heat treated. Wear of non-organic materials is lost to the system and extra must be carried to replace it.
While you can work on replaceable coverings for surfaces, even ones you can develop in your own labs from plants grown on the ship. Little by little the hard surfaces underneath will be worn away and need replacing.
You might be able to drag it out for thousands of years, but sooner or later you'll have to get new materials from the outside. No matter how hard wearing, no matter how carefully you maintain protective coverings, nothing is forever.
# The same is true of your oxygen
While the air and water within a closed system can potentially be recycled forever. That's not true of any leak, any use of an airlock, any time air escapes the ship it will need to be replaced. Again, unless the system is perfectly sealed, which is unlikely, you'll occasionally need to get more air/water in.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S9MiI.jpg)
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Even if you could protect the exposed parts of the ship, things like electronics will degrade. You will need a power source and engines to keep the environment habitable and then slow down at the end of the trip, which also have to last for thousands of years.
The only practical solution is maintenance. As you suggest, keeping spares for such a long journey may be difficult. You could send a second, uninhabited supply ship perhaps. But really you need manufacturing and recycling facilities on-board.
You could consider advanced 3D printers that work at a molecular level, i.e. Star Trek style replicators. You could also consider nano-technology that is able to repair materials on a microscopic scale. But you will still need some industrial processes for things like energy production.
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I think if you make the generational ship large enough, you can incorporate enough redundant and mutually reinforcing systems that they become reasonable.
Steps for creating a generational ship:
* Hollow out a M-type asterroid to use as a shell
* Get resources needed for life from C and S type asteroids as well as icy comets.
* Import Biomass to seed the living chamber (This is arguably the hardest part as all of the seed biomass would have to be imported from preexisting ecosystems intact)
* Use an Orion drive for propulsion, supported by less energetic nuclear propulsion systems for finer control
Ships could be made in size from a couple hundred meters to kilometers in size.
Size would be determined by estimated flight time, minimum viable ecosystem size, material strength, cost, etc...
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**Think Bigger**
Carry extra mass. Build the ship in a huge asteroid or something. I know you objected because it would take too long "to get up to speed", but I disagree. A trip that already takes generations can afford to spend a long time accelerating, so long as you get up to speed quickly *relative to the total length of the journey*.
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> Has anyone discussed this?
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When talking about scifi space concepts, the answer to this question is always Isaac Arthur.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2f0Wd3zNj0>
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Frame challenge: If you have the tech to build a generation ship, why is it taking you thousands of years to reach your destination? This is almost certainly harder than building a ship that can accelerate at 1g (or even some decent fraction thereof) and get you **anywhere** in at most a few hundred years (probably less).
For the math explaining how this works, see this related answer on the sister site Astronomy SE: <https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/14559/how-long-would-it-take-to-reach-the-edge-of-the-reachable-universe/14562#14562>
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No.
Things break. You will lose your oxygen because the recycling system will fail. All machines fail given enough time. You will have to carry many sets of replaceable parts and hope that there is enough parts to get you alive to your destination. But too many parts and the tyranny of the rocket equation will bite you because you will need gigantic amount of propelent to accelerate. Orion drives won't save you: the stress of the nuclear explosions is dangerous and the plate or the shock absorbers can (will) break when you need them the most. Nuclear propulsion won't save you. The exposure to the hot neutrons that both fission and fusion release will damage your machinery.
Also biospheres can break too. I don't know the minimum size that an ecosystem must have to be able to support a human and even if this size is small enough to be placed inside a hollow asteroid biospheres can collapse as the mass extinctions the Earth have shown. A critical species may go extinct, cascading an ecological collapse, for example. Or another species can grow unchecked and destroy the ecosystem, like the algal blooms. And how will you get energy to feed your ecosystem once you go beyond the martian orbit? From machines that will break down once you are in the middle of the voyage?
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Build a large enough 'rocket ship' that it doesn't matter precisely what it's made of as it will drag its own atmosphere with it. A roughly spherical one approximately 13,000km wide would do nicely. Perhaps harvest planets in order to do so. This will be reasonably resistant to wear and tear unless your passengers start doing really stupid things (disclaimer: anecdotal evidence suggests this may be more of a risk than you thought). Provided that doesn't happen, it will last much longer than your typical generation ship would be designed for, so you can move it around the universe much more slowly. You then 'merely' need to solve the problems of how to accelerate it (0.5g will get you most places after a reasonably small number of generations), and how to supply it with energy (A sufficiently large fusion source would work - no need to have one 1.4m km wide, perhaps bury several fusion plants under the surface). Probably wouldn't hurt to make the ship rotate, so make it rotate around a pole, and put the thrusters/engine/whatever at one pole.
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You could have self-replicating, self-recycling maintenance nanobots which work at the molecular level. The only input you then need is some form of energy to keep them (and the rest of the ship) running.
At a larger scale you could rebuild or replace whole parts of the ship. All you need is an almost 100% efficient recycling plant.
In the end you’ll always lose some matter (even black holes do) but if you have an outside energy source (e.g. a star’s radiation) and your ship is really advanced it could turn energy into matter.
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# Get new material after a while
If you can't withstand millenias of wear, then just get new material to replace it. Catch asteroids as you go or make pit stops on planets to get new metal, oxygen and fuel.
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## You have to repair the ship, and the hard part is hanging onto your mass.
A generation ship needs to be fully self-sustaining, and that means having manufacturing and recycling facilities for everything. This is tough if you only have a few hundred people, but if you have a million, plus good automation, it's not that implausible. Generation ships have to be big.
Stopping wear entirely isn't practical, everything wears out, especially when humans and other living things keep growing in it. You have to repair and maintain. Even the dust can be swept up and recycled. It has to be. On Earth, materials that wear away turn into dust and just blow away and become part of the planet, but in space, if you don't dispose of your dust, in a few thousand years your ship will be knee-deep in dust. And if you throw it overboard rather than recycle it, you'll soon run out of supplies and/or ship.
So really, you need to worry about how much of your mass escapes into space. Some of it will be air leaking out when you open an airlock to do maintenance. Some of it will be bits of the hull getting blasted off by micrometeors. Some of it will be garbage that you just can't recycle and have to throw overboard (need to keep that to an extreme minimum!) And some will just be a few atoms slipping out through the seams. But all that adds up.
[Isaac Arthur's video on ark ships](https://youtu.be/25ODAzr6Bbw?t=1456) covers this in more detail. A spacecraft leaking mass effectively has a half-life rather than a linear rate of loss, and the more mass you lose, the shorter the half-life. No matter how much extra material you take with you, hanging onto the mass you have dominates. But eventually it leaks out, and the only way to maintain enough material to last indefinitely is to stop and replenish it every so often, or build your ship big enough that it holds onto mass by gravity rather than by sealing.
Assuming that second option isn't viable, building bigger still helps. Assuming you don't intentionally throw material overboard, leakage is proportional to the surface area of the ship, but total mass is proportional to the volume. Still, endurance of a few tens of thousand years is probably the best you can do. That's good for a couple of hundred light years of range at 1-5% of light speed, so it's viable. But range will still be a problem.
But resupply is practical. Nearly every star system probably has an Oort cloud, and comets are basically made of rocket fuel. Asteroids are pretty much made of spaceship construction material. If you can realistically travel through interstellar space, you by definition have the ability to reach an Oort cloud. All you need is a refinery on board capable of processing a couple of comets into fuel, then you can visit a nearby asteroid and pick up any heavy materials you might happen to need. And then you can continue on your way. Problems in resupplying are more about the delay and inconvenience of having to stop than about any impossibility in the technology. So, over long distances, the better you seal and recycle, the faster you go.
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The best option is probably to just use interstellar asteroids or make long duration comets into generation ships with a little bit of gravitational slingshotting.
It will be faster than anything of similar size we could hope to propel with any engines ever, without the associated cost in energy.
And all we need to transport there is a small colony with the manufacturing capacity to build all its parts and further parts for expansion and replacements. Even the population needed for maintenance and other tasks could be created after a core team created/brought the first parts of the station.
Someone said something about lack of choice in trades: I don't think we should think in terms of medieval guilds. Rather, everyone will learn the basics of many skills and specialise in some that interest them or which no-one else is equally talented in. If a task is very unpopular, people will have to do it in turns until someone starts to like it or can be convinced to take it upon them.
The asteroid just needs an abundance of the most volatile or important materials, some of which can be transported there with rockets in advance, or maybe even by joining 2 or 3 smaller asteroids.
If a large enough asteroid flew by the planet, if would even be possible to cover it in a layer of liquid hydrogen or such. The advantage would be that when something gets set in motion, it won't be able to reach escape velocity due to the resistance. Everything stays in a liquid bubble and can be recycled.
On a side note, well mixed materials (used up resources) can be recycled over the millenia by simply exposing them to heat, wear, gravity, solvents, current, radiation, crystallisation and so on. It takes a while, but time is not the essence on a generation ship.
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Metallic structures can really last centuries. The main problem would be the perishables (food,water, oxygen etc...)
If you imagine 3d printing is advanced enough, you would just need a big enough stockpile of raw materials, metals and stuff for electronics and can manufacture spare parts from that. Maybe you can mine some asteroids on the way to replenish your metal stockpile.
It would be much cheaper and consume less resources to keep everyone in deep hibernation.
Let robots do all the work, maintenance, navigation.
Maybe have a small rotating crew of humans be on duty just in case.
Even better, just carry seeds and "manufacture" humans once you arrive at your destination with artificial wombs. A tiny ship could potentially carry billions of people using this method.
The idea of an "ark" type generation ship where everyone is supposed to live for centuries in a closed space is really the most inefficient method.
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Of course it can, earth is one of these.
I think one way of building this ship is to build a recycling factory that will make the real spaceship out of the prototype parts. So you have proven that you are able to recycle all parts.
Of course the recycling factory should be onboard. The ship so big that all devices are multiple times on it (even the recycling factory).
In fact the only critical device you need is something that takes anything in and sort atoms to get pure material out. This technology is not that far away from us. The basic principle is what happens in a mass spectrometer.
Once you get that the only remaining problem is to keep all material on board so the spaceship does not vanish due to billions of imperceptible collisions.
How and I forgot some kind of energy harvesting system, solar panels ?
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The story situation is that a generation ship is headed to another solar system where there are several planets in the star's habitable zone and once the ship arrives, it will approach these planets one by one and examine them to see whether they're suitable for colonization.
I'm assuming such a ship would have sophisticated antennae and sensory equipment to examine the planet's atmosphere and topography in great detail. So if that's the case and the people of the ship find an intriguing planet and want to examine it more closely before they start the colonization process, is there any reason why they might want to send a manned recon craft rather than an automated one?
I ask because my story idea requires four people to man a recon craft much like they do with the Ranger craft in the movie Interstellar, and I know that that movie had people wondering why they didn't just send unmanned recon craft with robots instead of risking people's lives. Fair question.
I think the reason given in the movie is that humans' fear of death enables them to improvise more than any robot could. I'm not sure, though, that that's a satisfactory answer. So again, given the story situation I outline above, are there any reasons why a generation ship might want to send a manned recon craft to a planet instead of an unmanned one?
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The same reasons we want to send crewed missions towards the planets in our own solar system:
Automated systems can only do so much.
The Apollo 17 mission [brought a geologist with them](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Schmitt) because he was able to pick interesting moon rocks to return. This turned out very well.
The manned Apollo missions were able to move around quite easy and covered a whole lot of ground. If you compare the speed at which a human can safely walk on the moon and the speed at which robotic rovers are driven, you'll easy see that humans can navigate much, much better then robots.
In the 70s, NASA planned a crewed Venus fly-by. Humans are much better at exploration and science. We are better in spotting anomalies and deciding *what* to investigate further and what not to do. An automated mission is much more limited in what it can achieve.
Add to that the delay in communications, and it gets even worse. Communications with neighbouring stars takes years or even decades. The bandwidth is abysmal. So the probes would likely have to return home to relay the data anyways. Having humans on location which are able to decide on demand what things are worth to investigate further will improve any survey mission.
So the question is how far the technology is in your world. If its similar to ours in terms of computing power and radio communications, then a crewed mission has a lot of benefits over a robotic one (or probably a combined crewed / robotic mission, where the crewed mothership orbits the star and sends robotic probes to the planets to gather intel, and then decides which planet to investigate more deeply).
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I'll give it a shot, but my reasoning might cause other plot problems for your story, so apologies in advance!
A generation ship crossing interstellar distance has, presumably, significant velocity and little fuel to use (either because they have none or because they may need it for re-acceleration and dare not use it), so a trajectory is plotted to use encounters with the star and planets to decelerate the ship. This results in a huge elliptical orbit. The ship doesn't just come in and park. Instead, it must pass through the inner system and loop into the outer system and back again, maybe several times. This takes many more years of travel to accomplish. So close, but the physics do not allow them to simply stop on a dime.
If the target planet requires preparation (e.g. terra-forming or the creation of habitation), perhaps this is the reason for deploying a team to the planet in a smaller vessel capable of the necessary deceleration. the team would bring what they need to prepare for the arrival of the generation ship 10's or 100's of years later. They will likely be dead and gone by the time the mother ship arrives to benefit from their work.
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Robotic sensors are reasonably good at detecting the thing they were built to detect. They won't do well at the detection of the *absence* of *unspecified* dangers.
* If the planet is habitable, are there forests, trees, lumber to build huts? Could a robot fell a tree and check the grain of the wood?
* If there are animals, could they find humans tasty, but not robots? (It might well be that humans are indigestible or poisonous to the local wildlife, but that won't help the victim.)
* Last but not least, if there is something unspecified that will be lethal it would be good to find out early. The explorers will open their helmets, if they drop dead after a month that's a bad sign ...
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Ground truth is a term used by geologists in surveying what the structure of a piece is like. Robot probes will be sent, but manned reconnaissance will also be dispatched. Because after several generations in transit to another planetary system it will be necessary to have living humans touch down on a planet to get a sense of what it's like to be on a planet again and how well they adapt to the experience. Readjustment to planetary life will be a major factor.
Plus there will be preparatory work to be done prior to landing more personnel. Things like landing sites, habitats, manufacturing centres, and possibly farms and gardens to feed the settlers.
Also, they may want to do research into any lifeforms on the planets before humans come in and trample the landscape. To survey, record and investigate the pristine environment. If there are any sapient inhabitants somebody has to start talking to them because there will have to a lot of adaptation and accommodation. Possibly, inhabited planets will be forbidden for human settlement. But from the perspective of the native sapients they have to share their planetary system with occupying aliens.
Somebody has to do all this work. We can't let robots have all the fun.
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I guess for me the answer is obvious. You've got a ship full of people who are clearly natural explorers, are clearly willing to take risks, and have been waiting for this moment for a very long time.
So what's the first thing they will all want to do when presented with a potentially suitable planet? Of course, they're all going to want to get out and explore.
You might talk about the fact that sending a robot probe is safer, but you've got a ship full of people who will bite your arm off to get a chance to be the first one on the surface. You'll probably send some robot probes anyway to support them, but you'll definitely be sending a manned lander as well. You'll have a mutiny if you don't!
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**When overpopulation is such that it's cheaper and more acceptable to send a person on a one way ticket than to send a robot.**
OK, so that's harsh, but you don't need to bring probes back, coming back more than doubles the cost and complexity of the mission.
The only real reason to send humans on a recon mission is to drive the plot or if intelligent life is found. Anything else can be done remotely and better by robots. A bot can sit in one place quite happily for years just pumping back data and images, never moaning about potatoes. There's never going to be a panic when you realise the bot is still alive and you have to go back and get it.
Obligatory xkcd: <https://xkcd.com/695/>
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**One does not exclude the other.**
Send a probe first. It will check for air composition and pressure, temperature, presence of liquid water, maybe take nice pictures of the landscape, take soil samples, and other things a probe can do. If the planet is survivable for humans, then send a recon crew. There's no sense in sending people if the probe dies two minutes after it lands.
The recon crew will take a look around for things a robot may not look for. Maybe your robot can't make the difference between good farmland and good building site. Maybe there are dangerous predators that don't have a taste to robots. A human eye might be necessary for a lot of reasons.
Presumably, the recon ship will also be bigger, and can therefore carry bigger instruments. With the manpower that goes with it, that means you can survey for things deeper. Comparatively, if you have a small probe like a Mars rover, you are only going to scrap the surface.
Presumably also, the probe and recon crew will arrive at different times of the year. The probe will also have collected a lot of information on weather patterns and such. So you'll have a better idea of what the conditions are.
If your probe lands in summer, you may think it's a warm planet, and then winter happens and you'll wish you brought a coat with you. Another thing you could look for is pollen. Maybe there's that one tree that blooms at a specific time that you might not catch until months later. Lot of things happens over the course of a year. Temperature changes, weather changes, air quality changes. If you are surveying for long time settlement, that's something you want to know.
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If something unplanned happens, robots would be clueless. If you are sending a ship to another star system, it is more likely than not to have something unplanned. If the technology level of your civilization is not far advanced (having instant communication and mapping exoplanets with perfect accuracy), they are probably will have to plot the course after entering to the star system.
Also see o.m.'s answer about what unplanned things could happen on surface.
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The most obvious advantage is they know that if they survive, then they can state without doubt that humans can definitely live on the planet. They can study the progress (medically speaking) of their own bodies and be able to predict what will happen to the colonists.
This information is far more valuable than any amount of analysis of the atmosphere content and radiation, etc. that a robot might detect.
Just as an example, there may be a deadly mosquito-like species which remains in hiding until it spots a warm-blooded organic living being giving off pheromones of life before it attacks and uses the sweet living juices to multiply like crazy. They would ignore the robot and so the robot would ignore them.
Or the robot might have no way of telling if a particular species of bacteria loves the taste of brains...
Also, they need the expertise and knowledge of decision makers at the scene, since the data transfer will be one-way only. A robot could not receive orders from Earth as it would take years or decades to receive the orders and the same time again to report back on the findings.
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Good answers so far, so I've had to think a little outside the box on this one.
Considering its a generation ship, that suggests it has resource issues that mean sending a probe on a one-way journey that might not result in a habitable planet is a use of a precious resource that they don't want to spend (eg they can't manufacture new microchips, lose your robot probe and you've lost a few that you are not getting back). So you send a crew with the capability to return. That way, you lose only fuel (and perhaps fuel is something that can be replenished during the ship's travel - eg by sending a manned ship to collect water or scooped hydrogen etc)
I assume a robot probe would not have the capability to return, or a probe would not have the ability to land, scout sufficiently and return; or that the risk of losing it is too great compared to crew that will be better able to survive any unexpected factors.
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I'd like to add a slightly different possibility: **politics**.
You send a manned mission to generate public interest and create heroes, thus ensuring public support, political support, and - therefore - additional funding. Get enough people emotionally vested in "the first interstellar expedition" and the rest becomes a lot easier.
How much of the success of the U.S. Apollo missions was due to the availability of funds and political capital due to public interest? We were racing the Soviets (with some implied concerns over threats if we didn't win), so people were willing to throw resources (money, scientists, etc.) into the project.
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Electronics used outside Earth's atmosphere need to be heavily shielded against radiation to prevent bits from being flipped in software instructions. Biological life is in this sense actually more tolerant to radiation than unshielded electronics; humans exposed to radiation might have to deal with cancer and tissue damage in the long term, but with sufficiently advanced medical technology such concerns are minimized.
A human crew could have the simple but important responsibility of reprogramming or rebooting an automated system after its active software instructions have been inevitably corrupted by cosmic radiation.
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Even Captain Kirk sends out a probe before the Away Team.
First, a generation ship with only near-future technology is probably a planetoid so it has plenty of raw materials and reaction mass at hand. Second, in any resource-limited scenario that discovers several planets in a nearby system's goldilocks' zone will send a fast ship with several robot probes on board: one for each candidate planet. (remember that the planetoid must have significant time to make any decision to decel) Then right behind the probe ship it launches a manned scout/recon/shuttle ship that is atmosphere capable but can't do the 6g continuous boost like the probe ship.
The probe ship launches robots to each candidate once in-system and are controlled by the manned ship while en route. By the time the manned ship gets to the system, they have selected the best candidate planet and descend to the surface for detailed exploration.
If you think fear of death has any value in exploration, you have never met a test pilot or astronaut. They are chosen because they have absolutely no fear of injury or death - none.
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THEY NEED TO EXPERIENCE GRAVITY.
Say the generation ship can't produce high gravity, like over .3 gee or whatever. They either don't have or can't repair their high gee centrifuge and everything else simulates a lower gee. Everyone now on the ship has lived their entire lives in low gravity. So they need to send down people to experience this "almost earth like gravity" that they have read about but never been able to experience. Maybe they even fear it. Do they choose a planet with earth like gravity, or one with less (but that has a thinner atmosphere or less water, for example)? Sensor readings from a robot won't help them with this decision.
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In addition to the technology-level dependent answers above, a possible solution (though one that has to be drastically incorporated into the story), is to create some sort of information which robotic sensors can't detect. The most obvious is some telepathic alien race native to the planet in question.
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Right now, the question of whether life, and in particular complex multicellular life, is common in the galaxy has not been answered. But what if it is extremely common?
If the expectation is that a large proportion of planets in the habitable zone will be host to a large and diverse ecology, a large team of scientists would be necessary, not to survey the atmosphere and topography (which could probably be done remotely or with drones) but to evaluate the biological resources and threats.
It may be that life is more common in this particular sector of the galaxy that science would normally predict because humanity is following in the footsteps of earlier alien terraformers...
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**Skip to Info if you can't be bothered reading**
**(Story Plot)**
There are two super powers in a "cold war" scenario. One side decided that nuclear war wasn't the only thing they could use to hurt their enemy. Nicknamed The Wheat Eater Virus, its use was (at first) to destroy the enemy's food supply, mainly wheat and rye, very quickly. The virus doses not harm humans nor animals in any way. So when the first wheat crop would start dying off, the climate would be blamed (like a cold snap or a heat wave). Before anyone could find out, it would be too late.
War broke out between the two nations. The virus, that had been fully tested, had no other side effects that were found. So the virus was released by ballistic missile throughout the enemy's country. Both sides retaliated in the world war that followed, and nuclear bombs were also dropped. A ceasefire was called and the nation started to rebuild.
But a strange thing happened: plants all over the world started to die. Not much was known about it at first, and it was blamed on the fallout from the bombs. In time it got worse and plants of all variety were dying (not just wheat). The panic started to set in when all the crops failed; even newly sown fields did not yield anything. Animals were starving, people were starving and canned food would only last for so long. An investigation led to a discovery — the Wheat Eater Virus had mutated and was now targeting all plant life (hinted that radiation did it). The forest, the desert, and even the sea all were affected by the newly named virus, "Life Eater".
**(Info)**
The Life Eater virus had traits that made it both air and water borne. It would cause total cellular degeneration in the affected plants (the seeds as well) within two days of first infection. The virus is very resistant, withstanding all biomes on earth (snow, desert and water). Upon killing its host, the virus would spread via water and air molecules to affect even more hosts (if it could not find a host it would become dormant). The virus doesn't infect or harm humans or animals in any way. The virus can both live and move in the sea, so plants in the ocean are at risk as well. The world has just come out of a world war (nuclear bombs were used) so the infrastructure is damaged (labs were targets in the war) and attention is not set on looking for a virus. The virus had a few months to spread around the world without detection before it was put on the worlds watch list.
**Question: could a virus like this—one that just kills plants—end up killing us, or could we survive?**
I'm hoping that I didn't write too much for this question. Just doing a short story and wanted to use a virus trait that hasn't been done before (I hope). As always, if you want any more detail don't hesitate to ask.
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# We're boned.
You described a virus that is...
* air, fresh, and saltwater borne
* destroys plants and their seeds in two days
* can survive in all terrestrial environments
* can go dormant, presumably in some sort of spore
* does not affect anything but plants
* has been in the wild for a few months
Normally a virus which kills its host in just two days would burn itself out; it would kill its hosts before they could spread the virus further. But by allowing it to go dormant and be transported by air and water, you give the virus a way to spread after killing all the plants in an area.
If this was caught *very* early, a quarantine could be put in place and the virus could be starved. But in your scenario it's been out for months, and to make matters worse, the Earth's infrastructure has been devastated by a global war, so WHO isn't likely to have the resources nor the cooperation to stamp this out early.
# All food (and a lot of everything else) comes from plants
Human food and technology is reliant on two things: plants and petroleum. They both provide cheap energy and cheap chemicals, but only plants provide food.
Plants are the ultimate source of food for (nearly) all life on Earth. They gather the energy of sunlight and store it as energy rich molecules, sugars, which everything else then consumes. With no plants, with no photosynthesis, everything that relies on plants dies. That's (almost) everything.
It's kind of scary to think that we don't know how to *make* food efficiently without plants. We can transform it with chemistry, heat, and additives. We can feed it to other organisms to make different food. But ultimately we can't make it efficiently without plants. Even [vat-grown meat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat) has to be fed.
# What's a "plant"?
We should define what a "plant" is and how this wheat virus is suddenly able to kill *and reproduce* across all "plants". Remember, a virus is basically a bundle of DNA or RNA and a means to get it inside a cell. Once in there it hijacks the machinery of the host to produce itself. This is very specialized and life is very diverse.
[Archaeplastida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeplastida) are red and green [algae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae) and land plants. This includes sea weed, kelp, and all land plants. It's unlikely that a wheat virus would be able to attack green algae, they're too different.
The [kingdom Plantae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant#Definition) is basically all land plants. This is still an extremely broad group of species that it's unlikely a single virus would mutate to attack them all.
Instead of evolutionary, let's try functional.
A [phototroph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phototroph#Photoautotroph) is any organism that gets its energy from light. This is everything from [cyanobacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria) to a giant redwood tree. It's such a diverse group one virus would not be able to use them all as a host.
Maybe it attacks chlorophyll. We can imagine a virus which causes the host to produce a substance which breaks down [chlorophyll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll) killing the host. There are several slightly different kinds of Chlorophyll used by land plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. This is very bad as it still winds up killing off just about every phototroph on Earth. It leaves just a few inefficient [photosynthetic pigments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_pigment) and [proteins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phycobiliprotein).
However, again, it's unclear how a virus would be able to reproduce across such a diverse range of hosts. So while we have a way to kill all "plants" we don't have a way to reproduce the virus using them.
# It's really a chloroplast virus!
We can imagine a virus that doesn't attack plants, it attacks the chloroplasts inside the plant.
Archaeplastida (algae and plants) do their photosynthesis in a special organelles called a [chloroplast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloroplast). This is really a little cell within a cell. It has its own DNA and its own reproduction cycle. The plant cell protects the chloroplast, and the chloroplast feeds the plant cell.
This gives us a way that our "plant" virus to attack the whole range of land plants and algae. It might even attack cyanobacteria, since they're so closely related to chloroplasts.
The original virus might have only been able to penetrate the outer plant cell of wheat and grasses, but later devised a way to get itself inside any archaeplastida cell. Once inside, it could attack the less diverse chloroplasts.
# What's left?
Any organism which produces its own food is an [autotroph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotroph) and is potentially a source of food for something which can't, the [heterotrophs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotroph). You and I are heterotrophs.
## Non-archaeplastida phototrophs
Basically cyanobacteria. These are found everywhere in the ocean, and on land in a symbiotic relationship with fungi as [lichens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen#Internal_structure_and_growth_forms). There's *a lot* of cyanobacteria, and it's possible to farm it and use it to feed something more edible like fungi.
If you decide the chloroplast virus also attacks cyanobacteria, that's it. No significant photosynthesizers. No food.
## Chemosynthesis
There are [chemo-synthetic organisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemosynthesis) which derive their nutrients from chemicals. This is no where near as efficient as photosynthesis, so they survive where light is not available, and where there is an abundance of chemicals.
On Earth these are mostly clustered around [deep sea vents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent#Black_smokers_and_white_smokers) or live deep inside rock. I doubt they're edible, and I doubt they could sustain a human population.
## Fungi... for a little while
Technically not autotrophs, [fungi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungus) are very good at feeding off other decaying organic matter. And they're edible. For a little while they would have a field day, feeding off all the dead plant matter, but once it was gone they'd also be gone.
# The environment goes completely out of whack
Photosynthesis creates sugars made of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The oxygen and hydrogen come from water. The carbon comes from carbon dioxide. In this way photosynthesis pulls carbon out of the atmosphere and locks it up in plants. This acts as sink for extra atmospheric carbon holding keeping the the greenhouse effect stable, the [carbon cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle).
If all plants die, all that carbon locked up in plant matter is suddenly released leading to an enormous spike in atmospheric carbon. All the worst predictions of climate change come true: acidification of the oceans, rampant global warming, sea level rise, and extreme weather.
Plants also produce oxygen, but there's so much of that humanity will die of starvation long before it runs out of oxygen, so at least they don't have *that* to worry about.
# A chemotrophic world
No plants means no food. No food means everything that relies on plants for food dies. That's bad news for almost everything alive, but great news for the chemotrophs! With the photosynthetic ecosystems wiped out, they would be able to slowly -- very, very, very slowly -- take over their niches.
Humanity would not be able to survive for long. A single MRE contains about 1200 calories, barely starvation rations. A single person living 60 years would need over 20,000 of them to barely survive. As any fan of [Steve MRE](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA) knows, even food specially packed for long term storage spoils in a few decades, less if not carefully stored. So it doesn't matter how much food they have stored, it will eventually spoil.
In this world, humanity has a shelf live.
It's possible a few humans would be able to keep small farms alive in [sealed environments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_ecological_system), but modern biodome experiments have all ended in failure.
The last remaining plants may well be in [sealed ecospheres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosphere_(aquarium)) previously sold as nick-nacks. Even those ecosystems are not stable and will die in a few decades.
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You wouldn't even need to kill *all* the plants, if you just killed *rice* you'd end up doing in most of the human race, a lot through direct starvation but mainly because of the mass migrations and wars that would result. If you [killed all the grasses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass) (sorry your idea is not new) humans would get pretty close to extinction, if you also killed off the [nightshades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanaceae) I wouldn't give humanity much chance at all, that's almost all the non-tree crops we grow.
Incidentally if you killed off enough grasses oxygen could potentially start getting scarce, oceanic oxygen output is somewhat dependent on silica from the dung of grass eating herbivores on the world's major grasslands.
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Assuming that the virus was completely successful in wiping out plants, no, we would have no chance at survival. In reality though, plants are fast adapters and would quickly gain a resistance to the virus. This would happen even more quickly because a large number of insects would also be under intense evolutionary pressure to keep the plants alive. Not only that, but virtually all other plant viruses would be pressured to prevent co-infections! Let's look at a few scenarios:
## The virus mutates rapidly
A virus that attacks a large number of plants would need to be *very* complex. This complexity results in a large genome to incorporate genetic code to attack different plants, and mutations over time would result in the virus diversifying. For example, strains in Sub-Saharan Africa would soon lose their ability to infect the *Cactaceae* family, which are specific to the New World. Additionally, a fast-mutating virus would quickly evolve to be less lethal. The fact is, it's very difficult to completely wipe out a species with a virus. As soon as the number of targets drop, the virus will be pressured to increase the length of its lifecycle, leaving the plants alive for longer.
## The virus has a very low mutation rate
If the virus is engineered to have a very accurate replication in order to prevent it from straying from its original goal, it will quickly become noncompetitive with other viruses and pathogens. If it was the radiation from a nuclear war that caused the mutation that lead it to attack all plants, then as the radiation dies down, mutation rate may drop, after which the primary factor is the accuracy of its replication apparatus. Such a virus would quickly wipe out a large population of plant life, leaving behind resistant plants. The virus' inability to mutate rapidly would lead to it dying off.
## The virus is a retrovirus
A retrovirus contains RNA instead of DNA. When it infects a cell, an enzyme called reverse transcriptase converts the RNA into DNA, and an enzyme called integrase inserts that DNA into nuclear genetic material. The virus can have a long dormant period in the cell's genome, and only activate years down the line. Retroviruses are special because small mutations can sometimes cause them to lose their ability to complete their life cycle, turning them into *retrotransposons* (sometimes called jumping genes). This is so common in evolution that a significant portion of our own DNA comes from such viruses! So what if the virus infects plants in that manner, staying dormant in its genome and allowing it to be passed from generation to generation? While this alone isn't enough to wipe out even close to all plant life, it could easily cause the virus to become virtually impossible to get rid of, and periodic outbreaks could become ubiquitous. That alone would pose an existential risk to humanity, even if all plant species do not go extinct.
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Ash's answer lays out some good ideas for how different plant species dying off would end the world, but I'm not certain that it's possible for a plant virus to *have* the properties you want in the first place. For one thing, they're not usually that deadly. (Tobacco mosaic virus or TMV, a well-studied plant virus, does a tremendous amount of economic damage, but each individual plant is only stunted, not killed. Though expensive, it would be possible to out-produce the losses.) They also have difficulties in transmission vectors. The normal vectors are physical contact between infected plants or through intermediary animals (usually pollinators, grazers, or worms). As far as I can tell, there are no airborne plant viruses - probably fortunately. Since these vectors require plants and animals to be active, it wouldn't be very good at spreading in cold or sparsely-populated areas.
You might want to change the backstory to focus on chemical warfare (chemical toxins won't spread themselves - usually - but once in the ground, they can be devilishly difficult to remove) - or simply say that the plants died and with the world falling into chaos, they never did figure out exactly why.
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No. a "kills all the plants" virus would not necessarily kill all humans just 99.999% of us a group with forewarning and/or sufficient resources and dedication (probably either of the superpowers mentioned) could allow a small group of humans to survive until the virus wipes itself out through over-activity if thoose humans **really** know what they are doing then they could survive this long and then unfuck the planet, at least enough for humanity to live on.
what will this group eat? well there are a few sources:
1. Deep sea fishing, pretty much everything in the very depths of the sea does not depend on sunlight but scavenging from what falls below and on hunting other deep sea life. high pressure fishing submarines (probably robotic) could probably gather a significant amount of food from down their for centuries before even that ecosystem collapses. Even then tube-worms could still be a source of food.
2. Radiotrophic fungi some fungi in chernobyl have shown the ability to survive off only radiation this process is inefficient but a nuclear power could if they so wished dedicate a significant number of resources towards building a "farm"
of these that could feed a significant number of people and last many years. if our survivors have a nuclear reactor (a near certainty if its a government effort) they could even use its vitrified waste to expand theese efforts
3. processed fossil fuels while not necessarily a great addition to the human diet and certainly providing no vitamins/minerals/fibre/protein etc...can be made into edible calories in the form of simple carbohydrates like alcohol. many of the facilities required to do so already exist in petrochemical plants and are simply not being used for this purpose
4. (for the first few years at least) the slowly rotting carcasses of everything else, bone marrow locked away in their skeletons and the remaining canned food. ideally large scale "moving edible stuff to the south pole and burying it in 40 ft of snow" operations would be set up.
5. recycled dietary fibre (no i will not go into more detail) though that obviously won't provide calories.
to clarify these people will not be healthy, they will not be happy, they will most likely be under military rule with little freedom and they might be a tiny bit imbred but they will be alive. but the aim is that at some point conditions will improve and their descendants will carry on the human race.
the biggest problem for such a group would not infact be the the lack of food (that's immensely hard to deal with but not impossible) but the release of almost all of the 4\*10^12 tonnes of carbon in the earths biosphere over the next ten or so years. Comparing that to human CO2 emissions and you're looking at well over three hundred consecutive "2015's" worth of human CO2 emissions being dumped on the planet, this has serious potential of causing a green house effect. there is however a simple solution to this! since you're no longer earth's ecology you can just enter all of earth's nuclear missile silos and detonate the warheads creating a nuclear winter to "cancel out" the green house effects. this is just a short term solution though you'll either need plants to start growing again or some other way of getting rid of those green house gases (I recommend self replicating robots).
fallout from the bombs would likely not be a problem after a hundred years or so. Futhermore any remaining life would likely evolve increased radiation resistance humans would avoid the radiation simply by planting their bombs in the right places, by filtering air and water and by minimising exposure to the 'outside world'. global dimming would be a problem for any remaining plants however it will be minimised by the lack of competition, and abundance of CO2.
there is a good chance that at least one plant survived and will then spread once more other the earth. if not theres always the Svalbard seed vault. a lot of what i've described requires an industrialised society which obviously would be gone by this point however its possible that with sufficient preparation the necessary technologies could be salvaged and its likely that if the lives of all N hundred people left are dependant on their running they will continue to run.
this of course requires a competent government however but in general governments can, in times of crisis, be relied upon to get all their stuff in one sock install somekind of military junta and do what needs to be done. the number of people that could survive is really dependant on how long the virus takes to kill everything and how willing the government in question is to devote valuble manpower into this project. best case scenario the virus takes decades to come to full fruition, all the governments work together, new tech is developed and perhaps a small fraction of the population is saved. worst case scenario its one crazy general who saves a hundred people for a decade or two before everything stops working and mankind dies off for good. if i had to guess? i'd say ten-thousand people could be saved if done right.
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There are several alternative food sources, that could allow for rebuild afterwards.
Mushrooms and fungi can serve as a nutrition source, and hell is there a lot of dead plant matter for them to feed on after the plantopalypse.
Back in the days of yore there were huge fungi on the earth, I imagine the same will happen again with the rich nutrition soil available to them.
Then there are insects. Gods are there insects. Not the nice pollinators, they'll die. Goodbye bees, goodbye butterflies. But the mulch eaters, roaches, woodlice, etc... Fancy a [nice roach burger](http://www.dw.com/en/insect-burgers-and-balls-swiss-supermarket-to-sell-bug-based-food/a-40090398)?
Also, just as the virus has adapted, some plant life will also adapt. It's very very hard to get 100% eradication or success. Hence Monsanto, Bayer and the other poison manufacturers have to keep improving their poisons.
There will be a few hardy plants that'll survive because they're different, get a defense for the virus, that could lead to a rebound in a few hundred/thousand years.
Also, assuming this is seen worldwide as a "Real \*\*\*\*ing problem" that will push aside all differences, and causes worldwide collaboration on fixing the issue.
They identified that it's a virus so they still have viral labs, they'll set quickly on establishing labs finding its weaknesses/attachment proteins and modifying plants that don't have those with worldwide cooperation. I will assume billions of moneys will be spent on making this happen "F.A.S.T."(Find Alternative to Starvation Threat). Because everyone is sick and tired of Roasted mushroom with a woodlice sauce on a bed of cockroaches after a few years.
How would these plant labs operate?
They completely isolate seed vaults with very very strict sanitizing procedures to enter or leave.
All material will be blasted with gamma rays to kill any traces of the virus, the material will only be released when the grass placed with the material in quarantine survives for a week after good air circulation and exposure to the material.
Then they set up their virus manipulation labs near there to modify the precious seeds to survive the virus by eliminating attachment points where the virus can attach.
They'll release these plants in the wild, so they can evolve further in nature to became hardier against the virus. All iterations get tested in the wild and what sticks is allowed to spread further and further, making sure as much of the world gets their "patch of green" to allow it to spread and germinate and adapt as quickly as possible.
So by using mushrooms as alternative food sources, a select few animals can be preserved that can digest them.
Small animals will be bred to be able to eat and digest them, a lot of animals will automatically run to the bountiful mushrooms to start eating them instead of plants. Those that survive will be the basis for the new natural order.
Nature will find animals to fill the abandoned spots in the life cycle.
There will be mass extinction of many species, but a lot of herbivores in moderate climates will survive, especially if human aid is provided by teaching the animals to eat mushrooms.
So with good coordination, and a few smart minds, there is a possibility to survive. Maybe the cows can survive off mushrooms too, with some insects for protein, then we can still have steak!
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[
What would be an effective zombie killing structure that an average person could put together in a typical suburban neighborhood? Previous discussion that touched on the topic often rely upon machinery like wood chippers that would break down after some number of zombies, serendipitous natural structures like rivers to wash away zombie body parts, or mil-spec Fort Knox/Cheyenne mountain type forts that an average person wouldn't have the resources to build.
Key features of the structure include:
* Easy to construct by an average person
* Able to handle being rushed by a horde of zombies
* Method to easily dispose of many zombie bodies (without relying on a convenient river or ocean nearby)
* Durable and low maintenance, ideally self-cleaning
A common answer is the pit or moat, optionally with spikes and alligators. While it's not a bad solution, the downsides of such a structure is it fills up over time and would need to be cleaned out manually, as well as requires a heck of a lot of digging. I'm sure there's a more clever solution out there.
Bonus points if the zombies can be put to work towards their own demise.
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A super low tech alternative approach.
Stairway to heaven.
Build a nice tall stair case going from ground level up a good 5 or 6 floors then hang a birdcage a good 6 or 7 feet off the edge of the top landing. Maybe even hang some shiny bells on the cage. Just need enough noise and motion to keep the zombies motivated.
How does it work?
Well... Zombies climb up the stairs in hopes of devouring whatever is in the cage, get to the top, reach out, and fall to their doom... Even if a zombie is reluctant to take the plunge the backlog of zombies pushing towards the treat will force them off the ledge. It'll take a good while for enough of a pile to form under the drop to cushion the fall, but even if/ when that happens the zombie will likely see the noisy critter in the cage and climb the stairs again.
You may not even need to build stairs. Consider tall buildings and elevator shafts.
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**Burn pit.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HxGlm.jpg)
image from [npr.org](http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/12/18/455350571/u-s-veterans-burn-pits-created-toxic-clouds-that-led-to-ailments)
Not too creative but it would work fine. Burn pits are real. There is no reason you could not get zombies to stumble in. Set up a CD player with a solar charged battery and play New Jersey (Bon Jovi) over and over again. They will show up. Have a floor with a spring and a hinge that tilts down when they walk across and down they go. Or probably not even that - if they are smart enough to stop at the edge the ones behind them will push them in. Haw haw.
/Bonus points if the zombies can be put to work towards their own demise./
Gimme them bonus points. Corpses and therefore zombies are almost completely combustible - maybe a cup of ash remains. The burning zombies will keep it hot for later zombies who fall in.
Suppose a lot of zombies fall in. That is a lot of fuel. It will get hotter. A lot of zombies will burn.
The risk: maybe the fire will go out. Then zombies pile up, do not burn, and come out. The solution: the bottom of the pit is like a charcoal making pile, or one of those coal mine fires. Get a lot of tires (you have tires, I bet) and get them burning at the bottom. Then cover them with dirt. The fire will choke down but it will stay very hot.
from wikipedia [Tire fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_fire):
>
> Tire fires, where tires are stored, dumped, or processed, exist in two
> forms: as fast-burning events, leading to almost immediate loss of
> control, and as slow-burning pyrolysis which can continue for over a
> decade.
>
>
>
Anything on top of that pile for any length of time will itself catch fire and there you go: zombie fire once again. The ash from the zombies will insulate the tires further and keep them from burning out.
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Having given this more thought than a healthy person probably should... I would try to build a few of these:
[](http://battlebots.wikia.com/wiki/Tombstone)
For those that are unfamiliar this was the BattleBots reigning champ for a good while, Tombstone. The beauty of the design was in it's simplicity. Unapologetically just a 69lb remote controlled spinning slab of steel.
Perhaps I would have to go with a slightly larger gas powered version, post apocalypse and all, but I think the design has merit.
And yes it's RC and will probably break down eventually, but it's the zombie apocalypse... I suspect everyone's going to be looking for new hobbies.
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# Zombie Turnstiles
How about a set of bladed zombie turnstiles?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WWH7d.png)
At the opening of two diagonal walls place two bladed overlapping turnstiles. The zombie will push forward into the turnstiles and they will effectively slice themselves apart. The best part is that it would work even better under zombie horde conditions as they would push each other through even faster. Of course you will need watch our for ankle bitters and some clean up would be required, but you really couldn't get a much easier or effective zombie killer.
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Here is my current survival plan...
Find a two story brick building close to a building supply/hardware store, a liqour store and an unlooted supermarket. Fill up the bottom floor with canned
and dry food stuffs from the supermarket, and the entire stock of the liqour store. Then brick up all the ground floor windows and doorways using bricks and concrete from the hardware store.
Also brick up all but one of the windows on the second floor which will now serve as the fortress's main gate. Also make sure that there is a doorway out onto the roof and install several good key-both-side deadbolts and a steel door in this hopefully never to be used escape hatch.
Access to the fortress is through the last remaining second floor window by means of a knotted climbing rope which can be lowered to street level by the building occupants, and hauled inside when not in use.
Now that we have a completely feasible fortress, let's get started killing zombies. This facility has three primary methods for zombie eradication...
* Hitting the street level zombies in the head with empty beer bottles thrown from the fortress roof and last remaining window.
* Missing street level zombies with those same empty beer bottles, which then hit the pavement and shatter, quickly filling the entire surrounding pavement with foot-destroying glass shards. Since all modern corpses are buried barefoot for some reason, this second line of defense should take out all of the first generation zombies.
* The third eradication method is time. When the pile of corpses around your fortress start rising such that the zombies can almost reach your last remaining second floor window, brick that window up, and start living off your canned goods and hard liqour. Zombie apocalypses can't last forever... dead stuff rots. All you need to do is wait out the eventual decay of your enemy into motionless smelly heaps.
When it comes to zombie apocalypses apocali, the best offense is a good defense.
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There are ways and ways. There are a lot of good methods here, so lets put a few together and tweak them a bit.
Start with Some sort of structure that will give you a relatively narrow access point with the outside secured as well as you can. The zombies can only come at you one way. Set up a portcullis that can be closed and opened so you can control the flow of zombies somewhat.
Then dig a series of pits the full width of that narrow bottleneck. As part 2 of this, rig a system to dump quicklime onto both the horde and into the pit Leave some grating type room in the bottom to allow for at least a little airflow. Then get some other kind of combustible fuel source ready.
Rig a noise making lure past the series of pits and entice the horde to you.
As the Zombies advance through the bottlenecks they will fall into the pits after some fall in, drop a little [Qucklime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_oxide) and some water, followed by some fuel (wood, cloth, whatever) The quicklime is very caustic and will do 2 things. It will react with the water and produce enough heat to ignite combustibles, and it will also act as an agent to chemically break down zombie remains.
Now you can, from a safe distance, regulate the flow of zombies in, let the quicklime/burn pit do it's work. You shouldn't need huge amounts of work to get it set up, and it will be mostly self cleaning. If one pit gets full you can rely on the second and third, just in case.
You use the portcullis to let only a dozen or so Z at a time, so that the quicklime will have time to do it;s thing :)
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Spring loaded Weight activated guillotine or smasher.
[Something like this](https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/am8RPMV_460sv.mp4)
So the zombie walk over the platform, the blade or block or whatever goes up and then fall on zombie.
It's easy to build with almost everything (wood, metal, PCV)
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The main problem with any zombie killing method is getting rid of the bodies which pile up. The solution is to site the kill zone next to a fast flowing river.
For killing them you could use a system like a cattle corral with part of it overhanging the river. You can then kill them any way you see fit (pointy sticks to heads? depending on what you have to hand you might be able to make something which works faster, like a bit set of spikes which can be dropped and raised), drop them in the river, then let the next lot through. This method also provides an escape route for you (by boat) should anything get out of hand.
Not much help if you don't have a river nearby, but a cliff or very tall building might work too.
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What about a moat full of alligators? Better yet, a house on an island surrounded by swamp/lake anywhere in the South. Gators aren't picky eaters (their natural method of feeding is to kill something and then hide the body underwater so the corpse will soften up through decay). Gators are pretty much a natural, self-replenishing zombie disposal system.
A similar approach would be to find any large, gator infested body of water (river, lake, retention ponds, canals, etc) in the South and build a dwelling on the shores. Surround everything with high walls except your dock and boom, you have a self-replenishing zombie disposal system. You can have a gate for vehicles or come and go via boat.
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Most proposed methods are complicated and will require lots of work to build and maintain, and are also stationary which is especially difficult if you are frequently relocating.
My (patent pending) zombie eradication method is easy to assemble from available resources and is 100% reusable. It consists of a cinder block (or other heavy, compact, durable material) tied to a length of rope.
Simply find an elevated location, and if needed make some noise. Once the group of zombies have predictably formed under you, drop the block on them. The block contacts a zombies head, utilizing gravity to crush their skull (some aiming may be needed for low numbers of zombies, but for a full hoard it would be hard to miss). Then using the attached rope, you lift the block back up and drop it again, allowing hours of zombie eradicating. **Note:** If block on rope gets stuck don't play tug of war with a zombie, this never ends well; just drop the rope and make a new one.
The beauty of this system is its simplicity and versatility.
Key points:
* Most zombie fortifications have elevated defensive points which could use this tool, but improvised elevated areas would also easily work; up a tree, a second story window, rooftops, on top of a semi-trailer, the applications are endless.
* It can be assembled out of locally improvised materials, and is easily replaced if lost.
* Not automated, but requires very little skill to use.
* If concerned about the build up of corpses: stop dropping the block and relocate to another elevated location (this may involve some preplanning for large hordes).
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My immediate approach would be something akin to Morgan's setup in the Walking Dead--something relying on wooden spikes--granted it's not self-cleaning.
Another approach may be reinforced windows and doors with openings that would allow easy penetration of sharpened objects, and outside, a trapdoor to a spiked pit (deep enough to poke the zombies in the head) for when too many bodies impede the path of the other zombies. Bodies would just have to be removed, and maybe also turned into a dead wall for a bit of extra defense/diversion some distance from the base; sometimes waste can be reduced by not wasting it. Chained zombies may also be of use.
I suspect a hardware store would have the tools necessary to build a ballista-like structure that could be used to launch zombie parts embedded with sharpened objects.
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A moat of acid.
Perhaps not so easy to construct, but it would be extremely low maintenance and extremely durable.
Zombies would just walk/rush in and melt away... Zombie problem gone...
Just have to make sure you don't fall into the moat of acid yourself...
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Very thin and very strong wires strung horizontally at shoulder level.
Relying on pile-up effect to efficiently behead first row using the push from behind.
Several layers at various height to compensate for pile-up.
Carbon nanotube wires could behead without the zombie even noticing, without the need of help from friends.
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A explosive bomb.
Literally the simplest thing a person could do.
Simply put, a person could just stack explosive canisters and a wire with a spark output.
Then, when the # of zombies next to the canisters is appropriate (from a music player like mp3), then use a battery and BOOM! Instant results!
However, this is obviously high maintenance due to explosion, so don't expect to use this unless such circumstances are appropriate.
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**Rat pits.**
Not the cleanest solution, but it can get the job done. Dig a hole, bait it. Rats (and whatever else) shows up to eat. Then zombies fall in. At first you'll have to spear the first few zombie, but when they stop moving, the rats are going to feast. Rats also breed in proportion to the available food. With abundant rotting flesh, you will have hundreds if not thousands of rats eating any zombie that falls into the pit.
So now you have thousands and thousands of rats instead of zombies.....yay
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The setting is in a region of a planet comparable to Earth's California in regards to location. The soil is extremely rich in nutrients and subsurface water. But for the past three million years the planet has been locked in an ice-age. Could 'trees' adapt to grow down through the ice and snow to reach the fertile soil beneath?
If the 'trees' had evolved to collect sunlight energy and convert it into heat energy in its roots would it be able to bore through the ice slowly while also absorbing the liquid water?
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## Lightning trees!
The first law of living in extreme environments is: never expend resources you don’t have to. In your case, why do hard work getting down to the soil if you can get a lightning storm to do it for you?
Assuming that some part of the year, the surface temperature is above freezing (or you can’t have plant life anyways) your glacial plateaus will have lightning storms, with liquid water coming down, to boot.
Ice is a terrible conductor, and your trees are a tall and jutting path to ground. Cue:
“Ah!” but you say, “But then my tree has exploded!”
Well, that’s okay. That’s exactly what your tree wanted! It’s an active pyrophyte.
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrophyte>
So it explodes, and sends chunks of itself skittering around the whole damn surface of the glacier! Maybe like eucalyptus trees, its entire canopy can detach and get blown miles away... where it attracts a second lightning strike, which cracks and melts a path down to the soil beneath, where your pyrophyte seeds happily settle in to grow in newly wet soil.
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Maybe, nature is incredibly inventive, but there are a couple of problems with the basic premise;
1. Glaciers "bulldoze" soil out of the way when they move down valley. If there is any major volume of ice around the pre-freeze soils have been pushed off the slopes.
2. The glaciers aren't going to stop moving for the trees that are growing through them either. The life expectancy of anything growing *through* an active glacier is measured in months; the time between first frost (when the glacier freezes to it's bed for the winter) and the thaw (when it starts to move for the spring and summer months). In temperate areas that can have winter rains it's even worse as winter storms can cause short melt spells, and glacial surges, in the otherwise stable cold months.
3. They don't have to; trees, in fact whole forests, can and do grow *on top of* glaciers, soils often form on the lower sections of ice flows, supporting a variety of plant life. I myself have seen willow and poplar growing on soil covered ice near the toe of Fox Glacier in New Zealand and there are pine forests on the lower lobes of a couple of European glaciers.
As for roots melting through the ice chemical rather than thermal melting is probably easier to explain, salt excreted from the roots could raise the freezing point sufficiently to thaw down through the ice, water absorption would be automatic due to osmotic pressure.
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Maybe seeds isn't the way to go. A seed would be hard-pressed to contain all the nutrients to build deep enough roots.
Instead, how about one of the many forms of asexual reproduction common in plants, such as vegetative propagation. Basically, a branch of the tree hangs low, touched the ice, begins growing roots until it hits the soil, then the linking branch withers, separating the now-complete plant from its parent.
Or, scrap the soil idea entirely. As others have said, under so much ice for so long the soil won't be anything to write home about. Plants with their roots in water exist. Maybe your trees' roots melt the ice chemically and drink that up for water. Ice that formed through layers of snowfall won't have much in the way of nutrients naturally, but if your glacier hosts a rich ecosystem with animals and plants living and dying on its surface, it could work. That poses another problem though: either your microbes have evolved beyond the real arctic ones and can decompose the corpses in the icy cold, or your ice is less 'nutrient-rich water, but solid' and more 'sterile, unforgiving ice with pockets of preserved corpses', at which point your plants spread their roots (via chemical melt) through it to find and chemically digest the corpses - like carnivorous plants that eat with their roots.
That is more of a creeper plant than a tree, though, so you'll need an excuse why the whole bark-tree-thing is needed. And, don't expect them to be pleasant either: the thorns of plants like briars are meant to hook into careless creatures and keep them tangled until they die and fertilise the soil - right where the plant is, not way over there. If the ice tree had to crawl its way through the ice to find ancient corpses that might be there, it would either develop the means to create new ones where they're close and easy to reach, or form a symbiotic relationship with something that does. Your forest floor will be covered in preserved bodies or their husks, mostly those of desperate scavengers that came to feed on the previous ones and proved as unlucky.
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**Up from below.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rI7bj.jpg)
<https://morgan-outdoors.com/?p=1443>
Your glacier trees can take some pages from the playbook of the invasive Japanese knotweed, famous for its ability to break its way up through concrete.
1. Your plants establish on the edge of the glacier. Runoff provides liquid water. The soil is good. Organic nitrogen is in short supply but these plants can fix their own nitrogen.
2. They put down deep roots. Knotweed roots are 5 meters down. The soil next to a glacier facilitates this.
3. They spread out in a clonal patch; if these are trees then like an aspen clone. Plants come up thru the adjacent ice.
4. As new roots are laid down deeper into the ice field, the plant can encroach its way into the ice. Ice is broken as it goes. If this just an ice field, the plant will facilitate the dissolution of the ice. If this is a flowing glacier then it will fight back.
This sidesteps the issue of nitrogen and puts your plants over and under the ice.
Last piece: **slider seeds.**
These are big seeds, like coconut. They have enough resources in each seed to establish a hardy well rooted plant on minimal resources, like the coconut does for a sandy beach. These big seeds have sails and slide or tumble across the ice fields until they hit a low point and lodge. If this is a fissure or a bare patch or somewhere with access to the soil then the tree can get established and start a new clone.
Maybe instead of just seeds, during storms entire trees can break off from the clone and slide across the ice. Knotweed can definitely break off and take root in a new place from loose fragments with associated resources. . With access to water it can cannibalize its parts to grow the deep root needed to establish itself deeper in the ice field.
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Fertile soil is fertile, because it contains nutrients, and nutrients come from decomposed organic matter. If the place is covered in ice for 3mln years, and all organisms which live there live on the top of the glacier, I'm afraid the soil beneath it can't be fertile.
Unless there is something else going on, like for example another ecosystem of organisms living under the ice. But in that case you would need much more than three million years for the evolution to make it work.
Back to your main question: Ice thickness on Antarctica, as well as thickness of glaciers during the most recent ice age, was about 2-4km. Trees growing 2-4km long roots from a single seed would be very difficult to rationalize, since only after touching the fertile soil beneath the tree would be able to get additional resources to build itself.
Maybe you can say that the seed builds a carbon nanotube, drills it through the ice, and then sucks in nutrients and water. But again, three million years is not enough to evolve something like that. To be honest, I don't think any number of years would be enough - your readers will think you're just hand-waving things. Instead, maybe, the "seeds" could in reality be complex nanomechanisms, planted on the planet by an advanced civilization. The trees that grow out of them are real trees in every aspect except for that their own new seeds are really built by nanobots living inside them.
I hope that helps.
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The main issue with roots going all the way through the glacier is that *glaciers move*.
More importantly, they [move through deformation](http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glacier-processes/glacier-flow-2/glacier-flow/). This means that the base of the glacier is moving at a different speed than the surface. A solid object going all the way through the glacier (e.g. root) will get stretched, torn, and destroyed.
Many other answers provide alternatives that would still allow you to have a glacier covered in forest.
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Not all glaciers are sparkling white. Some are dirty, in that they contain a certain amount of soil. The soil could be churned up from the ground the glacier flows over and rises to the top, or it can be deposited by other means, such as wind storms or volcanic eruptions.
This soil could be the source of your nutrients in the same way hydroponics works. Granted, the nutrients won't be in large amounts nor will they be quickly replenished, but you have 3 million years worth of soil buildup as well as old trees dying and decaying.
If there is any fauna, that would add nutrients as well. This would be due to their dragging their own edibles onto the ice, manure, urine, or their own corpse.
Because of the minimal nutrients, you're likely to see longer lived trees rather than massive forests. Even on Earth, there are trees that are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. On this planet, they might be tens of thousands of years old. They may also be really massive, or relatively small for their age. Their growth rings may also be so small as to not really be distinct enough to be rings anymore.
Once a tree dies, it leaves it's nutrients to it's descendants, so maybe there are pockets of trees as well as large individual trees.
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>
> Could trees adapt to grow down through the ice and snow to reach the fertile soil beneath?
>
>
>
Plant, like any other form of life we know on Earth, depend on liquid water to perform their biological functions.
The main issues with a frozen planet surface is that it lacks liquid water, and that the low temperature really slows down biological chemical reactions.
Moreover, I suspect that after 3 million years of ice age the ice sheet would be rather thick, too thick for whatever root to pierce it starting from the top.
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Everyone, consider this: the area is similar to California, the planet is in an ice age, are glacial trees possible? hypothetically YES, and I'll tell you why: assuming we're speculating about a different planet, and it appears we are, life on whatever planet it is could have, and likely would have, taken on much different forms than they did here on Earth. these Trees (if you can call them that) wouldn't be like any trees on Earth, and we deffinately shouldn't assume theyed be bound by the same evolutionary genes. We should in fact assume that they evolved their own set of genes, independently from the trees here on Earth. Therefore, glacial trees are indeed hypothetically possible.
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Suppose an extra-solar object the size and mass of the Earth, travelling at a speed of $26\ \mathrm{km/s}$, the same of ʻOumuamua (the first known interstellar object crossing our solar system), hit the Sun at its equator.
What would be the consequences to the Sun in terms of heating and heliosphere modifications in the minutes immediately following the impact and in the following days/weeks?
What would be the consequences on Earth from this impact?
The Sun photosphere is very thin, with a density of about $3\times10^{-4}\ \mathrm{kg/m^3}$, compared with the object density of $5.5\ \mathrm{t/m^3}$, so the impact with the external layers will be relatively light. Before suffering significant damage the extra-solar object will sink deeply into the Sun, causing damages to the more internal layers, probably smoothing and reducing the effects outside.
I am also interested in understanding the speed at which the phenomena would affect our planet.
**Update**
I did some researches and found a similar event happened in relatively recent time on Jupiter when, in 1994, the Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 hit Jupiter, fragmented due to a previous closer approach to Jupiter in July 1992.
Citing from the [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9): "The largest [impact] coming on July 18 at 07:33 UTC when fragment G struck Jupiter. This impact created a giant dark spot over 12,000 km (7,500 mi) across, and was estimated to have released an energy equivalent to 6,000,000 megatons of TNT (600 times the world's nuclear arsenal)". This fragment of comet was something like 2 Km in diameter.
"Despite published predictions,] astronomers had not expected to see the fireballs from the impacts and did not have any idea in advance how visible the other atmospheric effects of the impacts would be from Earth. Observers soon saw a huge dark spot after the first impact. The spot was visible even in very small telescopes, and was about 6,000 km (3,700 mi) (one Earth radius) across. This and subsequent dark spots were thought to have been caused by debris from the impacts, and were markedly asymmetric, forming crescent shapes in front of the direction of impact."
I think that this impact is very likely to be comparable with the one that could occurr between the Sun and the Earth-like object for the following reasons:
1. Jupiter is a gas giant planet, with density in the upper part of the atmosphere very similar to the Sun.
2. Proportions between the objects are very similar (Jupiter has a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun) and the comet object a diameter that is roughly one-thousandth of the Earth.
3. The impact speed was approximately $60\ \mathrm{km/s}$, that is not so distant from the supposed speed of the Earth-like object.
My very personal conclusion is that on the Sun the effects would be very evident, with a huge spot that expands for several tens of terrestrial diameters, probably followed by a huge plume of incandescent gas.
The consequences would not be so significant for Earth, apart from a terrible electromagnetic storm with probable huge repercussions on telecommunications.
It remains to understand the effects on the average temperature of the sun and the relative temperature changes that the Earth would face.
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*Fzzt*.
The sun is *big*.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vZDjN.jpg)
[Source](https://theplanets.org/the-sun/)
It's not the biggest thing out there by a long shot:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZVbfL.jpg)
... but in our neighborhood, it's the biggest fish in the pond by far.
Heck, the Sun *belches* bigger than us:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6uJwd.jpg)
(credit: jpl.nasa.gov, [ResearchGate link](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Size-of-earth-compared-to-the-sun-and-a-solar-flare-credit-jplnasagov_fig1_327993737))
So, an Earth-size object impacting the Sun would be less visually interesting than a bug zapper. It might produce some interaction with the corona or photosphere that would provide some insight to heliophysicists, but compared to some of the things the Sun does all on its own, it would have a negligible effect.
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**It wouldn't be that much.**
Even at that speed there just isn't enough mass in an earth-like object to transfer enough energy to the sun to make a significant change. You would probably get some really energetic solar flares and/or Coronal Mass Ejection immediately after the collision, but that would be it. The Earth would only be affected if it were directly in the path of a flare or ejection.
Keep in mind also that even at that speed an Earth-like planet isn't likely to collide with the sun as a solid object. The tidal forces of the Sun's gravity are going to turn it into a giant pile of rubble before it gets to the atmosphere, which will just make the process of vaporizing the entire thing that much quicker.
If the impact occurred on the other side of the sun, we could probably see the effects in the form of sunspot activity a couple weeks later when that side of the sun rotated back into our view, but that would be it.
There wouldn't be any effects to either the sun OR the earth that lasted more than a few weeks.
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At 26km/s you'll get nothing. A light show. A scar on the surface that might be visible to solar telescopes for days. Maybe a mass ejection that might effect earth if it's aimed in the right direction.
But, how flexible are you on speed? If the planet is going fast enought you could . . .
## Maybe destroy the sun. Depending on the impact speed. Maybe.
I want you to read [this post](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/how-massive-of-an-object-would-be-be-required.853046/#post-5355543) on "physicsforums.com".
In case you can't reach that post, the takeaway is if an earth-size planet is going ~30% the speed of light it will have about the same kinetic energy as the gravitational binding energy of the sun. That's the amount of energy required to blow the sun to pieces.
The trick is to deliver that energy to the sun. If the planet punches through the star, maybe only a small percentage of the kinetic energy is transferred to the sun. It might have to hit the core directly, it might have to be going much faster.
It might be that a planet going 99% the speed of light would just punch an earth diameter hole through the sun, eject a bunch of material and leave the sun basically unchanged.
It might be that moving a bunch of material around the core will disrupt the constant fusion reaction, causing it to speed up or slow down changing the brightness of the sun for a short time. Or causing the brightness to oscillate for a long time. It's hard to run that experiment.
You have to wonder who would accelerate a planet to those speeds, because it will not happen naturally.
## In summary:
At orbital speeds inside our solar system (~30km/s): Definitely not
At orbital speeds for our galaxy (~200km/s): Probably not
At relativistic speeds that could never happen naturally and could only be achieved by advanced technology operating at an inconceivable scale: Maybe, but not for certain.
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I'm not as sanguine as other responders are. Magnetohydrodynamics is a really tough subject. Might the impact trigger a coronal mass ejection on a scale orders of magnitude greater than the Carrington Event? If that ejection came straight towards Earth ... well, life would probably go on, but civilisation might not. Or not without a lot of serious disruption.
I'm not qualified to say that this would happen, but how many people are qualified to say that it could not? If it's just a frame for some fiction, then almost all possible readers will go along with the premise. It's good enough that suspending disbelief is not hard (unless you are a suitably qualified magnetohydrodynamicist specializing in stellar atmosphere phenomena).
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An Earth-mass planet moving at solar escape velocity will (if I haven't dropped some orders of magnitude) have about 2.5 billion times the amount of energy output by the Sun in a single second, or nearly 100 years of solar output, delivered to the Sun in an extremely short time. If a significant amount of that gets coupled to the upper radiative layers, that would be very noticeable, and potentially apocalyptic, to anything with a view of that part of the Sun. But far more energy than that is contained inside the Sun, so if the energy gets captured further inside, that shouldn't be too terrible. That's about as far as BOTE calculations can get, as someone pointed out upthread the actual impact dynamics would be extremely complex.
(Math: solar output = 4 \* 10^26 joules/s (numerous sources), K.E. of planet = 1/2 (6 \* 10^24 kg) \* (6.2 \* 10^5 m/s)^2 = 1.15 \* 10^36 joules).
I don't see any way you could get an extrasolar planet to impact the Sun at *less* than solar escape velocity, but if you can magically make it slow down to 26 km/s, then it would be delivering only 5 million seconds worth of solar output, or about 2 months of solar output.
I wouldn't want to be on that side of the Sun, to say the least.
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## Probably a lot of interesting things
At minimum impact speed of 617 km/s the energy absorbed by the Sun would be [~$10^{36}$Joules.](https://www.google.fi/search?q=0.5%20*%20mass%20of%20earth%20*%20(617%20km%2Fs)%5E2&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8) This is roughly 3 billion times the energy radiated by the Sun itself in a second (~$3.8\cdot10^{26}$ Watts [from Wiki]) or, in other words, it would take Sun around 100 years to radiate equal amount of energy.
In terms of mass-energy the impact would be equivalent of detonating around $10^{19}$ kg of antimatter: You can think of the event as a large asteroid size antimatter bomb. Or antimatter bomb one thousandth of Moon's mass, if that's more relateble.
At modest velocity of 26 km/s, given in the original post, the energy would be [~$10^{33}$ Joules](https://www.google.fi/search?q=0.5%20*%20mass%20of%20earth%20*%20(26%20km%2Fs)%5E2&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8), or around 6 million times the energy output of the Sun. This, however, equates only to few months of sunshine and mere [Gaspra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/951_Gaspra) sized antimatter bomb.
In either case, the impact would probably cause complete annihilation of life on the surface of Earth as that much energy needs to be shed somewhere. Uncertain whether aquatic life would be spared. Life that survives under few kilometers of rock could probably also survive.
How fast? Now that's a tricky question. Direct radiation could kill in case one, so that's in something like a week? Or few months if it hit the other side. In case two you'd perhaps need a decade or so for climate to turn inhabitable.
Sun itself? Well, besides spectacular flares and temporary (years, decades, centuries?) massive increase in brightness, probably nothing.
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Sun will be more or less unaffected, long-term.
The comparison with solar mass ejections is not very good - the Earth is much denser than those jets of plasma and comparable to some layer of the core.
I am not sure how fast the ablation will be. The object may get well inside, before gets completely evaporated.
Then again, Sun contains a great deal of thermal energy stored in its internal layers and usually well-insulated from the outside. I would expect a serious intermixing in the Sun interiour and a temporary increase of the energy output. It may be less than 1% (we are generally used to this) or way more (say, 50% for a year or two? I wouldn't want to endure that). The oscilations of the output may endure, say, senturies.
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hm .. size-wise in every room dimension about 1:110 - so a volume of ~ 1:1,331,000 , mass-wise 1:330,000 ... going by that I would assume the sun to shake a bit .. then maybe throw out some larger protuberances and coronary ejections .. but not much else
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Sol itself would be largely unaffected. The planets, on the other hand, could experience slight changes in their orbits, albeit nothing dramatic. For Earth's telescopes, it could be a good show.
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You cannot consider such great structure as the Sun as a large sphere of plasma. It is the 19 Century thinking, from the time when physics thought that ass processes are scalable.
It is the same as if you told: "The bullet is only 1/10000 of the man's mass, so it cannot influence him seriously."
Another example: The Coriolis acceleration is roughly 5000 times `~g/(R/T^2)` weaker than the gravity acceleration on the Earth. But Coriolis Effect creates, for example, hills at the right banks of all rivers in the northern hemisphere. (And vice versa).
Let's go further, the pure strength or mass of the solar wind particles are absolutely negligible in comparison to the mass of the Earth. About 10^-18 of the Earth's mass/sec. And their influence changes the climate greatly. Or 10^-10/year. And the Earth is merely 3\*10^-5 of the Sun. What will become on the Earth, if the Solar wind will strengthen 3\*10^4 times for a year? Or 3\*10^12 times for a second? Ad minimum, the total extinction of everything above bacterias.
But the real effect of the Earth falling into the Sun could be even more serious. The Sun is the complex superstructure built on structures, built on structures, built on structures, built on the turbulent streams of plasma(each of them being personally unpredictable). It is much more complex than the Earth atmosphere, due not only to the sheer size but much more due to higher energies. (Notice, here is senseless to count how many times larger or higher, for the effect is not scalable at all). And we don't know the structure, let alone the laws of its reactions.
Yes, for a long time the effect could be negligible. In millions of years, it is possible that the Sun will return to the natural state. But in shorter terms, the behaviour of the turbulent structures is very volatile and nobody(of us, people) can foretell the exact reaction.
For example, the whole convection layer in the Sun is (as every turbulent structure) very unstable, and there were hypotheses that that layer can break (totally by itself, without any external reason) the normal transport of the heat for some short time ( in order of months ). And after the convection restores we'll have many times greater heat during some short period. For example, 3 months of the sleeping Sun, and 10 days of 10x heat. -> The boiled oceans on the Earth. or maybe, even the loss of the atmosphere.
Notice, that temporary break of the transport is normal and often for many stars. Our Sun is uncommonly stable. It would be better not to play with it.
The Earth coming into the Sun layer of the radiance heat transport will definitely break the local transparency of that layer. So, the break in the above lying convection layer is **very probable**.
And about the greater speed, the effect could be **the opposite**. The processes on the Sun are **slow**. So, the Earth slowly flying very closely or into the Sun can cause resonance and thus enlarge the purely mechanical and gravitational effects 10-1000 times. Of course, the planet coming with the speed comparable to 'c', can destroy the star in one blast. But the slow planet is not safe even a little bit.
Also, the Earth consists mostly of heavy elements and the place where it will be evaporated will consist of different nuclei. And for several thousand years until it will be spread, the pattern of convection will be asymmetrical. Again - more than enough to break the dynamic stability of our star.
The mass and even the energy of one spit is negligible in comparison to the mass of a person. Will the effect of spitting at a policeman negligible, too? As with the Sun, you are playing against a **structure**, and its behaviour is not purely mechanical. But the final results for you can be mechanical, too.
Guys, read some serious book on the theme, for example:
Sun physics: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_physics#Further_reading>
Complex structures: Nicolis, G.; Prigogine, I. (1989). Exploring complexity: An introduction. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-1859-6.
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[Question]
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All living things possess a form of spiritual energy called reishi. This energy is used by humans to fuel their magical spells, but is also necessary for life to continue. There is a ritual that removes the reishi from an individual through a human sacrifice. The reishi is drawn from the body and transferred to special containers made to store spirit energy, while the victim's soul passes on.
In some socities, this ritual is reserved for ciminals, slaves or people captured in war. In others, it is a voluntary honor to give your life in order for your energy to be put to future use, and families of the victim are held in high esteem or receive some compensation. My problem with this system is that it can be taken advantage of by the higher standing society members who are likely to promote this to the destitute. People who are looking to get out of debt or poor folks who want to secure stability for their families would look to this as a final solution. Ultimately, it would devolve similarly to indulgences, and seen as a get out of jail free card and remove any integrity of the practice?
Human sacrifice should be an act of honor and not of desperation. I want to design a way that prevents this from being marketed to the disadvantaged, but keeps it as a limited, voluntary honor that regular citizens use. How can I accomplish this?
[Answer]
Your description of mana usage looks a lot like organ donation.
Organ donation is a very sensitive topic in the real world. People are very touchy about their flesh even after they'll never need it anymore. Some find the prospect of giving or receiving gross. Some have religious views that see it as a grave sin. Some think that allowing it freely would create a flesh market where people would be murdered for their transplantables. BEcause of this, public opinion causes it to be heavily regulated everywhere.
Due to the above, there is always a shortage of reusable human flesh. Which (pretend to be surprised now) leads to the existence of black markets. Depending on where you are, [a kidney goes for anywhere between a few hundred dollars](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-pacific-13647438/chinese-teenager-sells-kidney-to-buy-ipad-and-iphone) to [a couple hundred thousand](https://gizmodo.com/5904129/heres-how-much-body-parts-cost-on-the-black-market).
Since mana is as intimate a thing as flesh in your world, just run the same beliefs, tastes and regulations and you get a similar effect.
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The [Mesoamerican ballgame](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame) was played by the Mayans in pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America, and ended in human sacrifice.
Last year, when I was visiting a site containing an ancient ballcourt, the guide, a Mayan himself, told us that the team captain would be decapitated at the end of the game. He then explained that it was the captain of the *winning* team that received this honour.
Perhaps you could create a similar mechanism. It doesn't have to be a physical sport, but does need to be highly competitive.
Achieving the "honour" will require a lot of dedication and hard work for someone to acquire the skills and to work their way to the top. Anyone capable of this would almost certainly be just as capable of working their way out of destitution by other means, so the people involved really *would* have a choice and not see it as the only way out.
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The quantity and quality of the Reishi produced by each individual is directly related to their achievements in life.
A victorious commander will surely have more and better Reishi than a deserter, so the commander will be either be offered as sacrifice from his part or from the enemy, if captured.
Also for criminals, achieving excellence in the field results in the production of more and better Reishi.
In all cases, the less successful a person is, the less attractive is the produced Reishi, directly impacting the outcome of the rituals where the Reishi is used.
Being picked as sacrifice is a mark of success, think of it like the equivalent of a Nobel prize.
[Answer]
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Why use and wait for regular removal system to call you. Be the Captain of your life, take your next life in your hands. Plan what's best for **YOU**.
Sell the procedure as good enough only or the best with the prize that can't be matched. You don't have enough follower in "magixgram" or followers on "MY Tube"? You are not good enough. Grow old and sick while those better than you will play in their new bodies.
*actual new bodies not included, soul transfer is procedure with high risk, newborn people don't speak and they don't remember their previous life. don't ask your doctor of family for consultation, they will only drag you away from this idea because they envy you, you good looking, lucky bastard you*
[Answer]
## Make it a hard ritual to perform
What you don't want is for this ritual to be banal, so all you need is for it to be a difficult thing to accomplish.
Here's a list of simple things that could make this ritual costly and or time consuming:
* It needs a few very powerful mages to be present (like the very elders of the village/kingdom in question);
* Exotic materials (very rare stuff) must be used;
* Specific time dates (eclipses, moon phases, planet alignment, etc);
* True compliance - meaning the person can't be forced to do it (IMO, giving your life to get out of debt is not valid. One must want this almost as a dream come true);
You can elaborate even better reasons than these. But the point is that the sheer amout of time and resources needed make it so that you can't really do this all the time.
If every single time counts big time, there will be anticipation for such a ritual and great interest from the general population. And that's how you build tradition, honor, etc.
[Answer]
Put a practical limit on the number of times someone can be the recipient.
That will mean that even the greediest creditor is not practically able to consistently oppress the destitute. While it could occasionally happen, it is a limited practice in the long run. Those with higher Reishi are going to be preferential targets for this, and they're not likely to be those bumping along the bottom of society unable to pay their debts. On the other hand, if you lend money to a chief and he can't pay his debts...
[Answer]
>
> I want to design a way that... keeps it as a limited, voluntary honor that regular citizens use. How can I accomplish this?
>
>
>
The donors must be willing.
They have to do something to indicate their willingness/agreement as part of the ritual or the ritual fails.
>
> People who are looking to get out of debt or poor folks who want to secure stability for their families would look to this as a final solution.
>
>
>
Let society prevent this, not rules.
Allow it to happen - there are always people who are rule breakers / evil, you world is more believable if you allow it - more 'false' feeling if you prevent it.
[Answer]
## What kind of world and magic is it?
The practitioners need not market it toward the disadvantaged at all. Social pressure may create a harsh reality on its own, just at it does in the real world. However, this harshness may not be endorsed or encouraged by the magicians themselves. Perhaps they believe all sacrifices are purely voluntary, or perhaps they suspect otherwise but continue regardless.
If you can write about a world where this harshness exists, it can add some poignancy to your work. If you do not want to do this, then you must nip the harshness in the bud. But how?
**They cope with the harsh reality just as we do.** If there is an incentive to pressure poor, sick, and disabled people to volunteer, then it is reasonable for the organization performing the rituals to verify the willingness of each volunteer. They could have moral or political reasons for doing so. The verification could involve standard interrogation techniques, or it could involve magic.
**Reality simply does not work that way.** The ritual may require a willing participant; coercion or emotional turmoil will cause it to fail. Whether the magicians know in advance that it will fail is also up to you. If they cannot tell for sure, then it may be in their best interests to weed out not-so-willing volunteers---especially if the ritual is costly in any way: personal effort, monetary cost, politics, etc.
**It is blasphemous.** Donating reishi is more than an honor. It is an act that touches upon the divine. Maybe in truth, or maybe only in the minds of the faithful. Regardless of whether it is truly a divine rite, there is a strong taboo against sullying the practice---especially with selfish motives.
[Answer]
**Make it like military service**
In many cultures people willingly sacrifice themselves (or put their lives on the line) as an honor and duty to serving their country. While to many joining the military is a way to seek a better station or circumstances in life, many also join for duty and honor.
If folks need to donate their reishi for a war or for an end to a drought or some other shared goal, even the wealthy or powerful or famous can feel this desire to sacrifice for the greater good, think Pat Tillman.
In some societies the rulers were almost required to join the military, think England, in order to show that they weren't above doing what they asked of their countrymen.
[Answer]
People can sell blood and organs, but it's not allowed in the United States for exactly the reasons you mention - the poor will be obligated to do so, and the especially desperate (read: addicted) individuals may be more prone to diseases like HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, etc. Since there's no 100% effective test, it's easier to remove the financial incentive and have the act be purely altruistic on the part of the donor.
This could give a few interesting options:
1. "Contaminated" reishi - this could corrupt/alter the effect of the magic. This could be, like HIV/AIDS, a driving factor to better screen the donors.
2. Continue to offer payment, and develop the black market you foresee, and/or
3. Cite the contaminated reishi as an event that happened in the past, that explains the current screening methods/rites/rituals, and that may explain an outcast sect, a particular aspect or region of the world, the current political situation, etc.
And to be clear, I mean "corrupting" a spell as in altering the desired outcome, which doesn't necessarily need to mean evil (though it could). A corrupted rain spell could do anything from rain saltwater (which would ruin farmland for generations) to a flood (which would ruin the current crop) to snow instead of rain, or change the target location or size. Maybe it introduces some feedback effect - maybe the person casting a rain spell begins to drown (pulmonary edema), or they just get wet, or something similar.
*But, to your question* - How can I frame human sacrifice as an honor without marketing it to the disadvantaged? - Again, eliminate the financial incentive, then it becomes a purely altruistic act, like organ and blood donation.
[Answer]
## Virtuous victims provide more reishi.
This is measured objectively (somehow) at the time of transfer, and accounts for that final act of self-sacrifice as well as everything else.
Economically, a desperate person would judge that they don't have a lot to add by their self-sacrifice and would be deterred. A great person would add to his or her honor by bestowing this great gift, and would not feel compelled due on account of his or her wealth and status.
[Answer]
Surround it with ritual. Ritual is capable of setting, and rationalising/normalising almost any arbitrary "rule".
In this case, those performing the ritual want to involve powerful people, which gives their religion power too. So they market it or restrict it to those who have wealth/power, or those who have donated generously to the religion (built temples, paid into their treasury, etc). Likewise a wealthy powerful person knows this is a way to gain fame and renown as a benefactor, long after they die, instead of just being buried, for example their names are constantly read by priests in an ongoing recital.
So it can't devolve to the lower ranks, because these ideas long ago became set in stone.
Nobody with any say has the slightest desire to see donation "diluted" by allowing poor or ordinary street people to donate - the priests want to maintain power and wealth by making it motivating for the rich and powerful, and the rich and powerful certainly don't want millions of ordinary people able to donate, and diluting their historical memory/legacy. (Although they don't think of it in those terms, it's just how it is). So it doesn't happen.
[Answer]
**Wounded Resihi is ineffectual**
An oppressed, cowered, turmoiled, or otherwise physically or mentally wounded individual has wounded Reishi. The wounds manifest differently and significantly hamper the effectiveness of the Reishi. Not only that, the wounds reduce the length of time for which the Reishi remains effective. Also unskilled, untalented individuals contain much less Reishi than a skilled, and talented individual.
Any markets for wounded Reishi would as a consequence be literal meat grinders as the Reishi would need to be produced in large quantities, continuously. No population of humans could survive that sort of de-population. Particularly if the math works out that some 10000+ wounded individuals to 1 successful individual. That does not mean that some elements of society wouldn't try if the price of Reishi was sufficiently high/restrictive, but it would have to be very high.
The problem though is that now there are 10000+ people looking to make a quick return by literally killing the most successful people in the country. That's not going to be a fun blood bath, particularly as the people developing that technology are by definition successful individuals, even if not on the level of Olympic games athletes.
**Limit the Magic**
Only a handful of spells can be cast within a certain amount of time. They conflict with each other when performed too closely vigorously destroying any results, or making things worse. As such only so much Reishi needs to be collected in a given year.
Also as only so much needs to be collected, and the benefits of this magic are relatively universal society desires the most powerful Reishi to be used in their working. This Reishi is only found in individuals of truly God-like achievement.
**Perpetual Magic**
Alternately, Reishi is perpetual. When the spell is cast the Reishi continually works at the task like a Golem. It would be an honour to sacrifice oneself to contribute one's eternal essence to works of prestige and utility, because in a sense it becomes that persons legacy. Obviously the best Reishi can produce the most magnificant works only, where as mediocre Reishi must be pooled to achieve similar feats. Thus great individuals would be more willing as their legacy is clearer, while the more mundane would not (but still might occasionally) as their legacies are less clear.
**Situational modifiers**
The manner in which the Reishi is harvested affects the outcome of the magic.
* Harvested just after skillful achievement the Reishi is invigourated.
* Harvested from an individual truly believing in the spell to be worked aligns it to the goal.
* Harvested from a truly well-composed individual makes the Reishi easier to work allowing more focus to be applied to the spells outcome.
* Harvested from a healthy and whole individual allows the Reishi to be stored for much longer periods of time, perhaps decades/centuries.
[Answer]
Pay reishi in a different currency and require different accounting for it. The real world analogy is food stamps. Cash you can spend on anything, but reishi must be spent on limited needs of the family, and have government accounting. The person who receives food stamps can then go to the govt to get real cash.
[Answer]
Willingness is more rewarded for effect and for victim.
The ritual to extract Reishi is NOT THE SAME for willing and unwilling people.
* The Ritual using willing "victims" is generating more Reishi than the one used on prisoners and unwilling persons, but can only be performed on willing persons
* This Ritual is ensuring that the souls are sent to Heaven (or the equivalent). Willing victims are rewarded in the afterlife (reincarnation, no-reincarnation, heaven etc....)
[Answer]
**It is what people do at the end of life.**
There are lots of examples of persons who choose a dignified exit of their own volition. The movie Soylent Green has a very memorable example\*. One example I like is from Burroughs The Gods of Mars.
<http://barsoom.wikia.com/wiki/River_Iss>
>
> River Iss The sole remaining river upon Mars, for ages green and red
> Martians upon their thousandth year of life would take a pilgrimage to
> the River Iss, they would travel down to the river to what they
> believed was the afterlife.
>
>
>
So too in your world. Persons choose the rite when their time is up. What a fine way to die - finish with dignity and have your energies empower your descendants.
\* what, young Worldbuilder? You have not watched Soylent Green? You have never even heard of it? Remedy this situation at the soonest occasion!
[Answer]
1. Accepting reishi is a shock to the system, your wealthy wouldn't abuse it because their bodies would crumble if they did
2. In order for it to be an act of honor, it would have to be an honorable act, and a real sacrifice. A criminal who will be executed shortly isn't sacrificing much. It would be looked down upon in such situations. There would also be a societal "taint" and/or taboo in accepting any reishi obtained in such a fashion. It should look visibly different as well so that if anyone received it, it would be common knowledge... tainting their auras, making their spells look visually different. Tell tale signs, et cet
3. Less worthy sacrifices would produce lesser reishi. It simply wouldn't be worth it. It would be too much work to extract it, and not much of a yield. Also, if a ritual had a financial (or other) cost to perform to extract the reishi, the net benefit to the one obtaining it would be negligible, or worse, have a real cost to them.
] |
[Question]
[
Consider that I want to let an object to share knowledge to a civilization living in a far future (~10.000 years after today). It can be a book or any object which can store information, must be functional in this future and must be autonomous (it requires no other devices to work or to be read).
This civilization has the same habitabilities as us (vision, touch, same IQ, etc) and the same knowledge as us at the beginning of Writing (they understand that the object gives information and must be decrypted).
Every present languages will have disappeared and unfortunately there is no Rosetta Stone or similar object to help to translation.
Can we make this object and what would it look like?
Edit: This question has been initially asked for the language and communication aspects, but responses concerning the object itself and the way to preserve it are also welcomed.
[Answer]
**A Visual Dictionary**
A visual dictionary would be fantastic to find. Under nearly every word describing a real-world object a picture would be found, along with a written description. The written descriptions would take awhile to work out, but once you have catalogued enough correlations between bolded words and images, you could start to read the descriptions. Then you could begin to read the descriptions for more abstract entries and from there you're off to the races. Including a few children's stories after the dictionary probably be beneficial as well, as they feature simple sentences good for those learning the language.
As a physical relic the book would be ridiculous in size, but luckily it's not likely paper could survive for 10,000 years anyway. You would almost require it to be stored in metal, possibly on a set of one of those archival/permanent CD's ([M-Disc's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC)). How people would read the CD's in 10,000 years of course is another problem, but if you left them a few old CD readers they could probably backwards-engineer the whole thing.
Note: Even M-Disc's have a limited lifespan of around 1,000 years, but if the goal really was to preserve use I'm sure that could be significantly expanded with correct packaging (hermetic sealing, possibly with a vacuum).
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What you want is the [Rosetta Disk](http://rosettaproject.org/disk/concept/) which is part of the Long Now Foundation's [10,000-year library](http://www.longnow.org/about). This disk holds 13,000 pages of language documentation; is a physical, durable object; and requires only optical magnification to read.
The goal of the Rosetta Disk project is to hold a record of human languages, and holds 1,500 languages and descriptions and usages of each, as well as maps for the usage of the languages. Instead of that, you could instead hold two or three languages, and a pictographic bootstrapping to teach those languages. Why not just one language? Depending on how their language is structured, it may be much more difficult for them to learn English than, say, Japanese. So I'd pick 3 very different (structurally) languages and everything completely redundant.
After the pictographic bootstrap that teaches the basic uses of the language and provides a simple dictionary, you could even then strictly replicate the Rosetta Disk data for the language, since it's meant to be a reasonably complete record of the use of that language. After that, you should still have thousands of pages worth of space to transmit whatever data you wanted to this civilization.
[Answer]
**Preservation: Send capsules in space**
**Content: very small pictures in hard material or a Rosetta disk**
An Earth-style planetary environment is pretty corrosive, so if you want to send something 10,000 years into the future it might be best if it didn’t spend that intervening time on the planet at all. Shoot off your hardened message on a rocket that will send it looping through the solar system a few times before it decays and comes back home.
Going to space solves a lot of problems you will otherwise have. Sure you could make a time capsule and fill it with a non-reactive substance and bury that, but your still on the planet. You still are going to have corrosive gasses and liquids hitting the outside of the capsule. You still will have plants and microbes and animals pulling and prying at the outside of the capsule. The capsule might end up in the middle of a lava flow and melted or sucked down a mid sea trench and folded. Being on the planet is dangerous.
10,000 years is, as far as stellar mechanics go, not that long of a time. You just need to make sure your initial setup and orbit is correct to eventually decay at the right time. As for powering it or steering it... you shouldn't need to; if the message is a physical object and the orbit is set correctly, it will drift on its merry way till it has its too-close encounter with the atmosphere again. If your afraid of loosing the one capsule... send ten...or a thousand. You could time them so one attempts to make landfall every hundred or so years.
Your message might get some nicks and dings from micro-meteors and be bathed in some stronger radiation then would be normally comfortable, but besides that there’s not much that’s actually going to corrode your message, so you could send almost anything. If your medium of transition is also hardy, you could expose it to the near hard-vacuum to remove any remaining corrosive gasses or freeze any active chemicals that are accompanying it. You could also send it in a capsule packed with non-reactive gas (such as Argon).
A big enough capsule with a light enough payload could probably aero-break enough to survive reentry even if your parachute is in a sorry state (or maybe it’s designed to smack into the ground with only aero-breaking…to create a sort of a “I’m over here” crater).
How the message makes it down Without burning to a crisp? the same way most other stuff makes it back down; Just think about the shape of the actual pod (probably a sphere [imagine one of those man sized inflatable gerbil balls]) and how much that sphere will weigh (not much.) The upper atmosphere might ablate some or most of its surface as it enters and slows down, but because there is not much mass there, it will slow down fairly quickly.
As for the message itself, you could literally just use pictures; really small ones in monochrome on some sort of material that will retain them; work up to a Latin style (readable, but not really spoken) language from there. Or as per the suggestion by Azuaron; a Rosetta disk [I had forgotten they were a thing].
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In my story idea (never written fully) it is a **sentient robot**. It is dorment in the library cache which was burried for thousands of years (see [*Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia*](https://books.google.com/books/about/Deep_Time.html?id=CXHiNBpbbrwC) by Gregory Benford for the burried vault I have in mind).
Once found, the robot follows the guy back to his village and lives as a child, learning the culture and language. The robot develops rapidly though and “grows up” in a month or two, and then is ready to teach people about their history and serve as a translator for all the knowledge in the vault.
A distinct feature of *my* story is that the robot was very grassile, looking like a sticks coming out of a block for the torso. The idea is that it is deliberatly weak looking so will not be used for labor; and is a “cute” doll toy readily accepted as friendly.
Of course, for complex machinery such as working AI computers and library storage, not to mention the robot body, to function after being left for 10,000 years the storage is not purly passive. The nanotechnology self-repairs like living tissue, and needs a power source. The mothballed machines need to fight back entropy and a radiothermal generator provides a trickle of electricity. (Though how to preserve *whatever* is not part of the question, I mention it for completeness since cybernetics is more delicate than passive artifacts.)
I really reccomend Benford’s book as preliminary research if you are interested in this subject.
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Real-world scientists and linguists have previously debated this.
Pictograms and reference to common physics/maths and elements would likely be a universal place to start, as used aboard the Pioneer space probes.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qkYTY.png)
Whilst this is by no means a complete communication method, it is designed to show Humanity, our location, etc.
A Pictographic method using mathematics would, most likely, be the most language-independent method.
[Answer]
Some sorts of "Rosetta Stone" cannot go out of date for lack of any known language.
The most obvious is an annotated picture, as used for teaching children in elementary schools. All that is needed is for the recipient to form correct associations between the strings of symbols and the entities in the picture. If you are going to be sending to assumed human beings a long way in the future, you could do worse than dump the content of some learn-to-read books for young children into the package, as a backup to a carefully constructed pictorial dictionary for adults.
As for the medium that might survive 10,000 years: the simplest and cheapest is glazed clay. Visit any museum and you'll see that writing and drawing on glazed clay pots and plates can still be read milennia later. In fact, the only degradation is corners where the items have been broken, but if the pieces are not scattered, a future archaeologist will reassemble the pieces and it's unlikely that much will have been lost. If you are trying to send information forwards in time, you'll include multiple copies.
If you have the money the 21st century can do a lot better than simple clay in terms of resilience. But this might backfire. If you create something that becomes unique and "impossible", a future barbarian may destroy it as sorcery, or scatter the found pieces to the winds as gifts. If it's "just" commonplace old broken pottery, he'll likely leave it in the hole in the ground where he found it. Maybe even pre-break your plates?
You can also get a much higher information density stored on a clay plate than can be read with an unaided eye. Think of those [perfectly preserved potters' fingerprints](http://forensicoutreach.com/library/fingerprints-of-the-two-thousand-year-old-man/), and they were not even trying. If your target is a future that has magnifying glasses or microscopes, then you can put a lot of data into what a primitive will think is a patch of random texture in a picture, by a simple process of embossing. This can also create a *lot* of identical copies of the data very easily.
We know more about Sumeria than many (most?) civilisations since, because they wrote on clay tablets which they then threw away. Even some of the un-fired tablets (their ephemera, private letters) have survived the milennia.
[Answer]
This is a real and legitimate problem, which those disposing of radioactive waste have been wrestling with for a long time.
Their problem is a lot simpler, and yet harder: how do you make something look to future archaeologists like they really, REALLY don't want to go digging in there?
You could just try to hide it. But that's not gonna work. People will always find it. And if they think something's buried there, they're gonna want to know what. But the radioactivity symbol won't mean anything to them.
So you need to signpost it. So they spent a million dollars trying to figure out good ways of doing that, and came up with a 351 page report: *Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant* (Sandia National Laboratories report SAND92-1382 / UC-721, p. F-49) <http://downlode.org/Etext/WIPP/>
Basically, your problem is an architectural one. Only something on that scale will have a good chance of lasting thousands of years.
---
It took a million dollars to create a message as simple as "don't dig here", but given enough funds, I suspect a simple dictionary is possible, with diagrams and a simple language.
To ensure survival, though, I'd go for spreading dictionary-plaques throughout the world as building tools, to the point where they become ubiquitous. So, for example, subsidize bricks and concrete slabs and formers to have at least one word or phrase on each, with a simple accompanying diagram to explain it. Subsidized, they will become the cheapest building materials, and every building becomes a dictionary clad in plaster. Hopefully the people will support the movement, and will be happy to do this, though many will of course subvert the idea and put other messages on their bricks, too. But without subsidizing, they won't be so cheap, so won't be so ubiquitous.
Building materials get reused a LOT, and some few constructions last a LONG time, so odds of survival of the message are pretty high.
The danger there is that some other entity with more money decides that their message is more important to preserve, and thus spends more money on subsidies. Say, a church. So your message could get muddied by other signals.
[Answer]
## Language
Plenty of suggestions of Rosetta Stones. The problem with a Rosetta Stone is that it has to go from an unknown language to a known language, and we don't have a known language for the future people. Also we don't really care about sharing our language or languages with them. So previous answers suggesting saying the same thing in several languages are simply wrong.
What you want is a self-starter language books. Show pictures of a person, show them doing things, and apply words to describe the concept. Repeat the same words for different people doing the same action, and you start getting a noun-verb grammar established. Your "known language" is pictures, and we ***can*** (by the OP's question) assume they can understand pictures.
The important thing here is sharing information though, not sharing the language. The language is just the means of sharing information, and you don't really care how you do it. So you want to use a language which has no irregular elements whatsoever and keeps a strict order to its written grammar. English would be a spectacularly bad choice for this. Esperanto is probably your best bet.
You don't necessarily have to provide any context for how words sound, either. "This sequence of marks means 'run'" is enough to start with.
## Maths, physics, chemistry
Maths has been covered already by other answers. The basic concepts will be common to anyone who ever does maths.
Basic physics will generally follow from maths, with diagrams of forces, etc.. These are also universal concepts. Language to describe the concepts may help, but the basic equations and diagrams may be sufficient.
Basic chemistry will probably require a periodic table, diagrams of electron shells, and tables of valences. All universal concepts again.
## Biology and ecology
Teaching language will have to give some illustration of what our idea of a person looks like. Later on, you can start describing variations in what a human being looks like, how our limbs move, and our internal body structure.
This may also be a good place to start talking about the rest of the world, with pictures and descriptions of animals and plants.
## History
Ancient history is full of civilisations who created artifacts and structures but left no record of how they lived. If we've got language sorted, we may want to provide some details of events in human history and the development of our knowledge as a species. It might also be interesting to describe how we lived at various stages of history - aspirationally, this can describe "when you can do this, then you'll be able to live like this too".
History can also help with engineering too. Engineering needs iterative improvements. We can give them lists and descriptions/blueprints of various inventions, in approximate order of mastery, and the crucial concepts needed to master each one.
From human history, we can then step backwards to evolution of species, which is another essential concept. From there, backwards to how the Earth was created, and backwards from there to the start of the universe. Some science knowledge will be needed for this, and this will give a context for taking science a step further.
[Answer]
**Assume that our descendants are not stupid.**
Provide them with lots of material to work with. Don't just give them 1 book, give them a library of information.
Give them basic, easy to decode info.
Numbers are good to lead in with.
```
1
one
•
2
two
••
3
three
•••
```
Etc
once they have numbers include the info from lots of childrens books with pictures.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/utk37.jpg)
Gradually include more advanced info on things like how to make glass and microscopes.
Include in your archive much more dense storage medium that can be read with the instructions from the earlier ones, first microscopes which provide access to instructions on how to build basic computers and the protocols to read stored data in highly durable formats.
At that stage we can give them digital data. you could even include instructions on algorithms and our own cutting edge methods for machine translation. We could include vector maps of all known words in all known languages and their relationships which would immensely help future linguists. Once they have one language we don't need to just give them language, **we can give them methods to translate any language**.
<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/519581/how-google-converted-language-translation-into-a-problem-of-vector-space-mathematics/>
There's the added advantage that at this point you could even include instructions on how to build a speaker and digital data to play the spoken language.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AW4Fo.png)
What would it look like? Like a vacuum sealed time capsule filled with layers of more and more dense and more and more complex information.
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Consider a smallish cube, self powered and capable of projecting interactive holograms. If your far-future race communicates verbally, the cube would be equipped with a language-learning routine, so it would learn the language of the future rather than the inverse. Holographic projection would first allow picto-graph type communication until the cube learned the language and then it could begin to communicate verbally.
Preserve it inside one of those molybdenum aluminum boride mononiths (thanks to Pommerbot for the science!) and make it a "quest" to get inside the monolith with all the associated rewards of solving the quest.
[Answer]
Pictures are good to get started with Math — you could show numbers from 0 to 100 with the appropriate number of blobs with each numbers. Then you can define +, − , =, etc. with examples.
For chemistry, you can use the periodic table. There's only one way to lay it out (not counting reflections, rotations, etc — but with numbers it's obvious).
That gets you names for the elements; with a few pictures you can show what formulae like H₂O mean.
For (rather coarse) timestamps, you could use astronomical data — precession of the celestial pole, and distortion of constellations due to star movement.
For other stuff, the visual dictionary idea mentioned above sounds good.
As to format, check the museums. Ceramics seem to survive better than a lot of metals (although gold would probably work if no one melted it down in the interim). So you could either go for lots of redundant copies so that at least some survive, or go for a big stone monument. Or put a copy on the moon and spray big arrows pointing towards it over the lunar surface :).
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The best way to make something survive around 10000 years would be to create a molybdenum aluminum boride monolith, or the most durable material available. You would need to create a modern (by our terms) Rosetta stone. You would need to carve what you wanted to say into the stone in as many different languages as possible. You might even want to utilize pictures to help explain what you are attempting to leave behind.
If you used something technological than you assume that the future civilization would be able to use the technology. For example, in 100 years very few people would be able to listen to cassettes, because everything would have the newest way to play something. In short, there would BE no cassette players.
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The nuclear industry has done a lot of work for this.
I refer you to the OECD's [Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory Across Generations](https://www.oecd-nea.org/rwm/docs/2011/rwm2011-13.pdf) bibliography. Which contains far more information than I can easily read or summarise.
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I heard of an research that is a silicon disk with visible instructions on how to build a microscope, and then readable though a microscope the instructions on how to build a computer to read the digital data embedded in the disk.
I think we underestimate our power to understand things. We can't give up because we have limited understanding of what happened 1000 years ago. The records of that time was in paper and clay, no much information to work with and most deteriorated so much.
For example, a modern encyclopedia with our writing and pictures will be understandable by context. In the text below each figure there is a Fig X and in the text somewhere has an Fig X... it will not take long for a reader to understand that is a reference and by the text near the pictures get some words out. Coincidences between the text near the reference and the picture caption will help too. A page with lots of pictures of birs and a boldface bird write on it. It probably will take decades to decipher... but it will allow a better understanding of our language than the understanding we have of ancient languages.
Not counting videos. Videos made to this purpose can relate our words (in subtitles and by voice) with objects and actions.
The problem is if this time capsules would be open before its time, stolen or misplaced somehow. To make sure a future civilization reads them... they should be everywhere and therefore should be cheap to make.
Which I think is not a problem, we are entering in the age of small machines and 3d printers. Few decades from now this will be very cheap to do.
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**Prime numbers is a good way to make contact**
Actually if you are ever put in this situation yourself, one of the quickest way to show that you're smart is to display prime numbers. Pick white and black stones, and put a white stone at every prime number :
.xx.x.x...x.x...x.x...x
prime numbers do not depend on the counting basis, if they can count, even if they have 23 fingers, they should understand instantly.
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Is it possible to sabotage a horse-drawn vehicle in such a way that it fails a bit after leaving town? If so, how precise can this delay be and how would it be done?
[Answer]
Compromise the linchpin.
Carriages often used linchpins to hold the wheel to the axle. A failure or loss of that pin would lead to the wheel falling off the carriage, with consequences that would depend a lot on the specifics of the carriage and the wheel—a relatively stable vehicle could simply end up effectively immobilized for a time, while a less stable vehicle could fall on its side at speed and be catastrophically damaged.
How predictable this is depends on a lot of factors; however, one option would be to replace it with something very weak (a dark wax would probably not be noticed on a cursory inspection) on a wheel that you know will be on the inside on a sharp turn heading out of town. Most likely, the wheel would stay on the axle until that turn, when the lateral forces would cause the wax to give way and the wheel to fall off. For a yet-faster failure, remove the linchpin entirely; for a longer delay, use something too weak to do the job but strong enough to last for a little while (eg, replace an iron linchpin with dark-painted pine). The longer the delay, though, the less predictable the failure.
One thing about this method is that, depending on the results of the accident, it might never be discovered as sabotage. If the carriage were basically destroyed, it's plausible that anybody investigating would simply say, "oh, the linchpin broke, what a tragic accident," and not go digging into the axle enough to realize that the "pin" was a fake. If the carriage were intact, though, the ruse would almost certainly be discovered when somebody went to mount a new wheel.
(To give credit where it's due, the idea of a wax linchpin comes to me from the book "The King Must Die", in which the linchpin of Theseus's chariot is replaced by wax, so that the wheel falls off as he rides into battle.)
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The wooden axle can get a V cut of suitable depth and over time it will break, due to the forces given by the road bumps and the carriage load. I don't think this method can be very precise, as it depends on the conditions under which the carriage is operated.
Alternatively, you can sabotage the brake: carriage had a lever operated brake to assist going down steep roads, usually consisting or in a wooden pad directly pushing on the wheel surface or a tensionable leather belt wrapped around the axle.
With the sabotaged brake you are sure the failure will happen at the first steep descent.
Last but not least, you can poison the horses' food, and that will take effect after a certain time from the last time they ate.
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How about something reliable, reasonably timeable, not at all obvious, and using materials available in the timeperiod.
Just rub some Oxalic acid crystals into the grease on the coach's axles.
The stuff is quite inert, *looks* like just some yellow sand/dust, and will sit there completely inert until the coach starts moving at speed. You can apply the acid overnight, it remains to be just a dust covering on the axle until worked in to the grease heated by motion and heated by normal operating friction.
Once the stagecoach is moving, the acid crystals get worked into the grease, warm up, and promptly start eating away at the smooth surfaces of the loadbearing axle metal. Within an hour of staring to move, but no less than about 20 minutes, the coach has rough axles with zero functional grease on them. The coach either brakes to a halt with wheels that refuse to turn, or if the horses are strong the axle overheats, further activating the acid, and completely snaps off.
You have an immobile coach with a simple, obvious case of axle failure. And no obviously visible signs of tampering.
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Maybe far-fetched, requiring some installation but the technology would have existed.
install a gear driven device that advances a piece containing a saw or blade towards the axle that is driven as the axle turns. As the carriage travels, the axle turns, which in turns spins a gear which then turns a worm gear that moves the blade forward.
You can have a ratio of 100 turns of the axle moves the blade 1cm. After 1000 turns the blade could travel 10cm. For a 1m diameter wheel, that means the carriage would have traveled about 3km. If this device is geared and sized right and installed correctly, you could theoretically make this happen.
The math to figure this out, the technology was there and material components have existed for centuries. It just would be a very highly precise piece of machinery, for the time, that would be expensive and not really available to the public.
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**Medieval car bomb**
Plant a small keg of gunpowder somewhere on the cart where it won't be noticed, with a slow-burning fuse. These can be calibrated to burn down in a predictable length of time, up to a certain degree of accuracy.
Alternatively, for a more low-tech no-preparation-required alternative, if the cart has a load of goods packed in straw, simply toss a hot coal from a fireplace or blacksmith's forge into the straw. It can smolder for a while before the straw catches fire, and when it does, it may be too late to stop it, especially if there's no water nearby.
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In addition to the answer by L.Dutch:
* Are the wheels on the axles greased? Remove/adulterate the grease.
* Do the wheels have iron hoops? Replace them with doctored ones.
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If you want to control the exact distance traveled before the breakdown, you might partially cut the axle and mount a coil of rope under the carriage with one end attached to the carriage body and the other to the axle.
When the wheel turns, it coils the rope around the axle and when the rope runs out, it pulls on the compromised axle to break it. Another way is to attach the wagon body side of the rope to a sabotaged fastener under the wagon so the rope pulls the fastener out, causing the sabotaged part to fall off.
You might need to use some thread for the first part of the rope, since you would need about one tenth of the distance-to-failure in thread or rope. So, a few dozen feet of rope attached to the body, with miles of thread attached to the axis.
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I'm surprised that I haven't seen a this as an answer yet; compromise (using a cut partway through) the pole (the bar that keeps the horses equidistant), or the traces (the arms attached to the horse's breeching).
I'd imagine the failure would be certain, though the timing would not be precise.
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Remove the grease from the wheel bearings and clean it. I Believe these are typically brass and steel sleeve bearings. After a while these would eventually seize.
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**A rasp on the axis, with a weighted block below**
Carriage axes were made of wood.
Use a wooden block with a hole for the axis. Actually not a hole, it should be open at the top - a short piece of rasp blade is used to close it.
Make the block just heavy enough that the rasp will eat enough through the axis to break it. "Soon after out of town" sounds reasonable if the rasp is of good quality.
Downside: This will be noisy. A seasoned, attentive coachman may notice because he tends to know how it sounds normally. It might be advisable to make him unavailable, or drowsy, or bored, or have an utterly disinterested one, to make the plan work.
Whatever the saboteurs do, they need to test how fast their mechanism will work, since there's no way to predict that, given that carriages were crafted, not mass-produced, so the axis and other elements would vary slightly and also have pretty different stability depending on how well-maintained they were.
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Working on a D&D campaign. As a physics nerd, I'd like the orbital mechanics of the planet, its sun, and its moons, to follow standard Newtonian/Keplerian mechanics. I'm trying to come up with an interesting set of parameters so that there are neat and tidy alignments at certain times. The system was semi-intelligently designed, and so everything here can be in nice round numbers. That's all mostly just background.
There are two moons, one with a circular orbit and one with a very elliptical orbit. The circular moon has a very short period and the elliptical one a very long period. Here's the thing. I would like the elliptical orbit to have a smaller perigee than the other's altitude, but an apogee several times larger. This means that, if they aren't inclined, their orbits will have to intersect at two points, 90 degrees from the apogee.
I'm not sure if this matters, but I plan for them to have harmonic orbits. Right now the numbers I'm thinking are that the planet has a year of 243 days, the circular moon has a period of 15 days and the elliptical moon has a period of 61 days (seasons, basically). Every 15 orbits/915 days, they align at the apogee and really cool stuff happens.
My question is, with all this, is it possible to say somehow that if these two moons are in the same orbital plane, their orbits intersect at two points, and they both align at the apogee periodically, can it be shown that they either will or will not eventually collide? My rationale for hoping has something to do with the fact that they are harmonic, and at the point 90 degrees around the orbit, where they'd collide, is going to have something to do with pi, so rational and irrational numbers mean they'll never be the same value at the same time. ¯\\_(ツ)\_/¯
If this isn't the case, either if it can be shown that they definitely will collide, or that it can't be shown one way or another, I can work with that.
I know that I can incline one or both orbits as an easy fix, and I know I can ALSO say "yep, magically they never collide" because it's D&D, but it would be super cool if there was a way they could both be in the same plane.
EDIT: This is an aside, in response to Morris' answer, it was getting too long for a comment. Since you mentioned the Dark Crystally-type stuff, there are a few other things going on here, if I may elaborate. :) First, I didn't mention but the planet's year equals its day, as if it were tidally locked. So one half is always baking, the other half is always frozen, and the ring in the middle is roughly habitable. So since the sun never moves and they don't have seasons, they use a lunar calendar. The solar year is 243 days long, the elliptical period is 61 days and the circular period is 15 days. So the elliptical's apogee happens exactly four times a year (1 cycle = 1 "season"), and the circular moon orbits 4 times plus one day for each of the elliptical moon's orbits. So the alignments happen once every 15 of those "seasons", or every 915 days/3.75 years. The alignment happens along the orbital equator at four different points, 90 degrees apart. Each of those four points has an alignment every 60 seasons or 15 years. Very different good/bad things happen depending on which point they overlap. But it works so that every 15 years the planet, sun and moons all align, which is a pretty ominous time.
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Ok, so you say 'Harmonic Orbits', but actual [Space-Talking-Dudes](https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2017/07/13/13-simpsons-apes.w600.h315.2x.jpg) call that '[orbital resonance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_resonance)', and it's the solution to your problem.
We've got an example of something ALMOST exactly like what you're talking about right here in our own solar system with [Pluto and Neptune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto#Relationship_with_Neptune). As puppetsock rightly points out, their orbits don't actually intersect because of Pluto's high inclination, but if they DID intersect, the planets still wouldn't collide because of their 2:3 orbital resonance.
So far so good. At first I was concerned about the alignment possibly creating a problem, but then I realized that ANY two bodies orbiting the same primary are going to align at the convergence of their orbital periods, resonance or not, so now I don't think that's really a problem either.
Now, if you REALLY want to be clever, you'll make the resonant periods of your two satellites harmonic with the planet's orbit around the sun TOO, which means that your alignment will come at the same time of year every time it happens, which is all mystical and stuff and VERY Dark Crystal.
Just don't try to wipe out the Gelflings. It never works.
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You should have a look at [Janus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_(moon)) and [Epimetheus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimetheus_(moon)). They are two moons of Saturn that exchange orbits approximately every four Earth years. This setup is probably not stable for more than a few billion years but it might do for what you want.
>
> Epimetheus orbits closer to Saturn, so has a shorter orbital period
> and eventually approached Janus from behind.
>
>
> As they get closer, they tug on each other gravitationally.
>
>
> The tugging by Epimetheus slows down Janus, which makes it fall toward
> Saturn in its orbit; Janus speeds up Epimetheus, which makes it rise.
> Janus has four times the mass of Epimetheus, so it moves inward by
> less than Epimetheus moves forward.
>
>
> Closer to Saturn, Janus speeds up in its orbit; farther from Saturn,
> Epimetheus slows down. Janus will slowly creep ahead of Epimetheus;
> for years later, they'll do the same dance in reverse.
>
>
>
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NASA recently [discovered](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7540) a very interesting resonant pair in two moons of Neptune, Naiad and Thalassa. Their orbits (nearly <2000km) intersect and have periods of 7 and 7.5hrs respectively. Even though they are quite close at nearest pass (<4000km) they never actually collide because of this ”unprecedented” 69:73 resonance.
This resonance was mathematically shown to be extremely stable, to where it could persist on the order of billions of years.
Unfortunately for these two, as Triton’s retrograde orbit slowly saps their orbital energy they’ll approach their Roche limit in a few million years and shatter into beautiful rings rivaling Saturn’s.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b39eY.gif)
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Oh, maybe *that* is what the magic is about.
Under normal circumstances, you can't have perfect synchronous orbits. Suppose the orbits are, to pick numbers, 1000 hours and 10,000 hours. That's about 40 days and about 400 days.
So whatever is supposed to happen at the first coincidence might be off by some tiny amount. This tiny discrepancy grows for 400 days until the next encounter. So the second encounter is off by a much larger amount.
Say the first encounter has an error of only 1 centimeter per second. After an hour that's 36 meters. After 10,000 hours that's 360 km. So the second encounter winds up being 360 km off target. Which gives a much larger rate of drift for the next encounter. If the moon is only, say, 1000 km across, then it probably misses entirely on the third encounter.
The most probably occurrence is a near miss that massively alters the orbits.
So you would need some way for the encounters to be tuned. That means you would need to be able to detect the motion of the moons to an accuracy of better than 1 cm/s. Much better. Since 1 cm/s produces 360 km after only one orbit. Probably you need something like no more than a few km per orbit. So call it .01 cm/s, or 3.6 km in 400 days. And you'd need some way to give one or both of the moons just the barest little push, presumably by using one moon against the other. Accurately and in the right direction. And you'd need to do that at the correct time, every time the moons encounter.
That sure looks like magic.
By the way, if I did the math right, to move *our* moon by .01 cm/s would require the energy equivalent of 100,000 tonnes of TNT. It *really* starts to look like magic.
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Coincidentally I just watched a Scott Manley video on this topic published in May 2018.
A small asteroid called 2015 BZ509, and a large gas giant named Jupiter have a resonance in their orbits which is self-correcting. Every time they approach, if the smaller body is too fast or too slow (that is, early or late) the influence of the larger body applies a correction.
The video goes into detail of how simulations have been done in reverse to find whether the asteroid was a captured interplanetary body. Upshot is the model is stable over billions of years for multiple possible inputs; that is while it is unusual but not vanishing off toward impossibly-improbable.
An interesting gotcha is that the asteroid is in a retrograde orbit with respect to the planet.
I'm not doing it justice, for great inspiration I suggest you spent 8 minutes watching it.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMLX2W7OAX0>
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I am trying to develop a nomad population of human beings, living in a steppe like environment without modern technology, which for plot reasons don't use fire for keeping their refuges warm.
I was thinking that they could use a bed of mowed grass with suitable thickness, possibly adding new grass when needed, which they would lay on the ground of their refuge and that would develop heat via fermentation.
Through the researches I have made I have found that:
* fermenting non dried hay might result in self-combustion of the said hay
* fermenting dried hay can reach up to 60 C of temperature
* fermenting hay develops asphyxiating gases, like CO2 and methane
Considering that during the cold season drying the grass would be difficult, and that the first and last points are kind of unwanted for a closed environment, is there a way to make this approach feasible?
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Source: growing up on a farm. (Fine, [have a link](https://nasdonline.org/915/d000758/hay-fires-prevention-and-control.html) or [two](https://countryfolks.com/handling-hot-hay/).)
That's an innovative idea. Many a barn have burned down because farmers didn't tedd their hay and let it cure properly before baling and storing it. Things to note, though:
* Hay goes through heating and cooling cycles when it's fresh because respiration is still occurring, and colonies of bacteria are feeding off the by-products. These bacteria thrive in wet environments. You probably don't want damp conditions or large amounts of bacteria inside your shelter.
* Hay has to be relatively fresh to produce real heat- six to eight weeks old max, and even if this method were otherwise problem-free, you can't grow fresh hay in winter.
* Hay heats up enough to cause fires when there's a metric crapton of it in the same place, because there has to be enough insulation around the hottest core to prevent the heat from simply dissipating. A single bale won't get nearly so hot.
* Heat release is rather slow. Putting a bale or two in a room won't make a difference in winter.
* Harmful gas release is directly proportional to heat produced. Venting it means loosing your heated air, but in any case a bale or two of hay won't produce enough to matter.
So, bottom line is that using straw as a heater won't work. *However!* As mentioned in bullet 3, straw is a great insulator- [good enough to be used as modern housing insulation.](https://strawworks.co.uk/straw-bale-in-north-kesteven/) Don't use it as a heater; build walls with it! And though decomposing hay doesn't release heat fast enough to benefit, [humans](http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/stevens1/) produce 100 watts of energy at rest. So when your people hunker down for the winter, keep your spaces small and insulate them very well with that densely-packed hay. That will make them function [like an igloo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igloo), which can be 50 C warmer than the outside air because of body heat alone.
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**Ferment grass inside a large friendly animal.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NBR6p.jpg)
<https://www.boredpanda.com/boy-cow-take-nap-together-mitchell-miner-iowa-state-fair/>
Fermenting grass within a large animal is unlikely to catch fire. Animals give off noxious gases too, but usually in controlled amounts unlikely to be lethal. Large animals full of fermenting grass become quite warm. Most large animals are pretty soft and some are friendly too.
Your people have large animals who like to ferment grass inside them. These animals are also furry and friendly, and they come inside with the humans when it is cold. The animals control the speed of fermentation and release of heat with biological mechanisms evolved over millions of years. Everyone wins!
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An interesting question!
I think another source of information on the process would be to look at **composting**. The composting process breaks down organic material through the action of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms, releasing heat in the process.
Optimal heat is a desired outcome as it sterilizes seeds (including of weeds) and pathogens. Sub-optimal piles also convert the material into compost, but take longer, without much of the sterilizing effect.
The heating effect of compost has been employed to extend the growing season (providing heat in early spring and late fall, keeping plants clear of the first light snowfalls). People in snowy regions also report that compost piles keep clear of snow well into winter, so your idea may not be too far-fetched.
In very broad (rule-of-thumb) terms, an efficient compost pile looks as follows:
1. Dimensions in the order of 1-1.2 meters (1' 3" to 4'). Dimensions meaning a cube with all sides of those sizes, or an upright cylinder with height and diameter of those sizes.
**Rationale:** It has been found through various people's experience that a pile smaller than that produces less heat (sub-optimal composting as mentioned above), while larger piles sometimes spontaneously combust, creating a fire hazard.
2. Material composition is a ratio of 1:1 up to 2:1 of "brown" material:"green" material. "Brown" material is higher in carbon content and is usually dry grass or straw, dry leaves, wood shavings or sawdust; but can also be shredded paper products like newspaper, corrugated cardboard, egg cartons, etc. "Green" material has a (relatively) high nitrogen content in addition to the carbon. This is typically freshly cut green plant material, but can also be kitchen scraps/peelings, various manures, urine, and organic fertilizers like bone meal, blood, fish emulsion, etc. Raw and cooked meat, egg, and dairy, including dead bodies, also provide nitrogen-rich organic material, but are often avoided due to smell and pest attraction potential. (However, others use such materials but just bury them deep into the pile, and claim no adverse effects.)
**Rationale:** the microorganisms require the right amount of nutrients to live and multiply. Carbon (carbohydrates, to be more precise) are necessary for fuel, so a pile with just green material as you propose will not provide optimal fermentation. An overabundance of "green" material favors putrefying organisms, which in practice cause a slimey stinkey goo and a lot of outgassing of ammonia, methane and other noxious gasses - note that these are typically nitrogen-containing volatile compounds, so this is a way for nature to bring the carbon:nitrogen ratio back to more acceptable levels by dumping nitrogen compounds into the atmosphere. Not pleasant for oxygen-breathing bystanders, though.
3. Speaking of oxygen: a well-aerated compost pile is usually the way to go, by "turning" the material every week or two: basically shoveling everything onto a new pile where new air pockets will be included (no compacting). Other methods exist e.g. perforated pipes actively or passively carrying in air. Note that some processes are anaerobic (e.g. Bokashi, silage, animal digestive tract, biogas digesters) but are considered less effective (especially for composting purposes).
**Rationale:** experience has found that a freshly-built compost pile reaches around 60-70°C (140-160°F) within half a day to around 3 days. After temperature peaks, it falls off again. It is then required to "turn" the pile, after which temperature may peak again, but taking longer (a week perhaps) and the temperature may not be as high as the previous time. A heap may need 3 or 4 such "turns" before the material has been composted. With heat buildup and nutrient and oxygen depletion the microorganism population changes in makeup and numbers, so the turning brings in new oxygen, evenly distributes remaining nutrients and sort of "resets" the process (within limits).
4. The composting process also requires water. Again not too much (which will displace oxygen) and not too little: about like a damp sponge when squeezed, will *just* release 1 drop of water.
**Rationale:** microorganisms don't have legs, they need to "swim" where they want to be, and nutrients need to be in soluble form.
(If you need more theoretical knowledge regarding composting, I recommend the [Humanure Handbook](http://humanurehandbook.com/contents.html).)
**On to the practical side:**
I was taught in primary school, many many years ago, that the [San people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_people) of southern Africa would use a similar method than what you propose, by digging a person-sized trench, adding organic material and water, and covering with sand, as protection against the cold desert nights. Not knowing any San, I have no clue how true that is... I've also read an account of a military special operative's pursuits in roughly the same region, who in survival situations would sleep in a similar trench but with hot coals covered by soil. I guess both methods would make cold temperatures bearable rather than comfortable, and wouldn't be suitable much past one night's use...
Other posters have observed the requirement for a fairly good amount of plant material, which I'm worried about too. Then again, as shown above a variety of sources can work (and is even recommended), and one would assume that a nomadic people of animal herders would go where the animals could find sufficient sustenance (and provide at least some of the raw materials). Yeah, nomadic steppe dwellers are not unknown on Earth, so it might be worthwhile to research how they solve the heat problem.
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**Nomads don't stay long enough anywhere to make hay**
Nomads live off the land and what is already there. They are not farmers and they don't have the time or equipment to make hay.
If they start harvesting and building haystacks, they aren't nomads any more, they are farmers. They may as well settle down, build houses and breed cattle.
Nomads? Obviously they cuddle up to their sheep and cattle. Or each other. Or build fires. Or travel with the seasons so they are always in a reasonable climate.
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I think that both problems may be solvable at once. Fermenting hay gets VERY hot - hot enough that it wouldn't be comfortable. To slow the fermentation (which will cool it down and slow the production of CO2 and CH4), you can have the nomads occasionally turn/stir/disturb the hay pile. This is the same thing that folks who are serious about composting will do with their compost piles, and with practice (which will be very much part of the culture) it is possible to fine-tune the amount of heat produced. You can also have the structures have vents that can be opened when the pile is stirred, as this will allow the CH4 and CO2 to escape.
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The only way you and your tribe will get warm without fire is with a lot of clothing. Using it in layers, that's what people in really cold places do. Why I said only with clothing? Because you said "a nomad tribe". If you settle in a place for a long time until you consume all its resources, you are not a nomad. A nomad respects the land and takes care or it, moving with the seasons or food supply and doesn't destroy the area where they settle, so that nature can reclaim it in a short time.
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>
> Through the researches I have made I have found that:
>
>
> * fermenting non dried hay might result in self-combustion of the said
> * hay fermenting dried hay can reach up to 60 C of temperature
> * fermenting hay develops asphyxiating gases, like CO2 and methane
>
>
>
I'm not so sure that these are as big of a problem as you think. Starting a fire is bad but people know how to put out a fire. Getting to 60 C is bad if one is sleeping on it but not so much if used like a central campfire heat source in the "straw igloos" that others here proposed. CO2 building up is bad but humans evolved to know when this happens and with experience have learned how to deal with it.
A bit of extra CO2 isn't an "instant kill" and will wake people up. Assuming a reasonably healthy and able person is among the group in the "igloo" to watch the "fire" then they can all sleep in relative safety and comfort. Or as comfortably one might sleep in a building made of straw. If there's too much CO2 then open up some ventilation. If it gets too hot then stir it up to cool it down.
Are other means to get heat out of the question? Is the time and place on Earth within the last few million years? I ask because this can open up alternatives.
Every so often a fire from oil soaked rags makes the news, so everyone reading this should know that we can get heat from oil and plant material in the proper ratio. There's heat from this that is much like your proposed compost pile heated bed, and carries many of the same risks. I suspect that with experience people should be able to figure out a relatively safe means to get heat from oil and plant material without setting themselves on fire.
The oil for this heating can be animal, vegetable, or mineral. The "rags" can be most any plant material. Coal and charcoal can produce this same self heating effect as they are in many ways not all that different from oil soaked rags. Heating their homes from fire was ruled out but not fire for cooking. The same fuel used for cooking can be used as fuel for heating even if not burned. Oils produced for food, or collected from cooking meat, can be used for nighttime heating of beds without flames.
I ask if this is a setting on Earth in the last few million years because, geologically speaking, it was not that long ago when Earth was more radioactive than today. Geothermal vents and hot springs today are powered by radioactive decay deep in the core of Earth, on a younger Earth these vents and springs would be more common and more powerful than today. A nomadic tribe living where heat basically bubbles from the ground should be able to find ways to exploit it.
With naturally occurring uranium and water we cannot produce a self sustaining fission reaction. A billion or two years ago this happened naturally because the ratio of U-235 to U-238 was different then. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor>
People on a "young Earth" where fuel for fission is far easier to obtain could build a pool type reactor without any real understanding of how or why it works. At first we'd expect them to merely exploit the natural reactors as they occur, then with time, and trial and error, learn to build and maintain their own. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimming_pool_reactor>
Because water is such a great radiation shield the risks of radiation from even a very primitive pool type reactor would be minimal. The people should learn not to swim in the pool or drink from it as that would result in bad outcomes quickly enough to equate contact with the radioactive material with the harm it does. I suspect the water would taste bad enough from the brew of fission products that people would not want to touch it, therefore preventing people from bathing in this radioactive water.
This kind of reactor left unattended would likely see the water needed to sustain the reaction boil and evaporate fairly quickly. Isotopes that "poison" the mix in a modern reactor, like xenon and iodine, would escape into the air and allow the fuel to last far longer in such a primitive reactor than in a modern reactor. To restart the reactor they could divert water into the reactor pool from some river or stream.
A nomadic tribe should be able to build a sod house or log cabin over a pool type reactor to contain the heat. This would take a lot of time and effort to build and so such a tribe would maintain these structures for a long time, coming back to them winter after winter for shelter. The tribe leaving the reactor dry and not operating gives time for the decay of more "fission poisons" that would prevent the reactor from sustaining fission, as well as giving time for most everything that could poison the tribe to decay away. The fuel will have a half-life in the millions or billions of years but the fission products will not, most of them will decay away in months.
Even without building a fission reactor there's heat that can be obtained from naturally occurring radioactive decay. Finding rocks and sands that produce enough decay heat to help hold back the cold winter can be done by looking for places where frost isn't forming when the air temperature is just below freezing. People could collect these rocks and use them to build a bed to sleep on.
Naturally occurring radioactive rocks will have isotopes with a half-life on the order of a hundred million years or a billion years. The rocks richest with these isotopes will be warmer to the touch than other rocks around them. These kinds of rocks won't be a fire hazard, or even a radiation hazard. Long lived isotopes decay predominately with alpha and beta radiation. Alpha radiation will not penetrate the skin. Beta radiation will not penetrate more than a few millimeters of rock. Sleeping on a bed of uranium or thorium sand is not going to be much of a health risk. Not a risk that a primitive nomadic tribe would likely notice as it would take years to develop a small chance of developing some effect. People have lived with naturally occurring radiation for as long as humans have been human, this means people developed means to defend against long term low levels of radiation.
The idea of what is basically paper towels soaked in bacon grease is far more feasible than my other ideas. I want to come back to it though so it's not lost among the lengthier descriptions of utilizing hot springs, a primitive nuclear reactor, or naturally occurring "hot rocks". I spent more time on the more complex heating because it's more complex. Oily rag heat is simple. If there's a potential in the setting for oil to bubble from the ground, or get squeezed out of sand or something, then this can be quite easily done.
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In a (marginally) cursed world rains of blood are an occasional occurrence. The water in the clouds is magically transmuted into blood at the point it starts to coalesce into droplets (no need to worry about how to evaporate blood), and will transform back into water after a short while on the ground (so don't worry about the effects on the ecosystem).
In low temperatures I'm unsure of whether such magically transmuted water will form snowflakes. To the best of my knowledge the water in moist, low temperature air has a short liquid phase before it freezes onto the snowflake proper, but I don't know if magically transmuting it at this point would lead to blood snow or blood hail, as I don't know what the impurities in the water will do to the formation.
For reference the freezing point of this magical blood is ~-2 degrees C.
In freezing temperatures should I expect flurries of blood or hailstorms of blood?
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It's hard to believe but I have some RL experience with freezing blood (cow blood!). It freezes rather well, but at lower temperatures (about -5C). When it freezes blood "essence" (this red-yellow substance) happens to be trapped inside ice crystals.
When it freezes as snow — it is more like thin hailstone, like groats. Normal snow is sometimes like that. Since snow gets its white color from multiple reflections and refraction on/in crystals — this "blood snow" is still white with very light dirty-yellow tint (never eat yellow snow!). When you rub it between your fingers (or fall in it) — it stains fingers (or clothes) with black-red-yellow colors (depending on the frozen blood concentration).
Blood snow would be a very dirty weather phenomenon (but clearer than bloodrain!).
P.S. btw — "true yellow snow” is also yellow because of blood; it gains its color from the process of recycling old blood cells.
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Probably not. Snowflakes - at least the pretty multi-branched ones - take a rather long time to grow, perhaps 25 minutes or so, as they drift down from the upper atmosphere: <https://www.noaa.gov/stories/how-do-snowflakes-form-science-behind-snow>
Unfortunately for your bloodflakes, normal blood takes about 2-8 minutes to clot: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clotting_time> though the time does vary with temperature, and there are anti-clotting agents.
But you have yet another problem. When the water in a solution freezes, it tends to separate into ice crystals and everything else. (Reference putting stuff in your freezer :-)) So you'd likely wind up with ice crystals and freeze-dried blood, which might be handy for vampires on long backpacking trips - "Just add water!" :-)
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Blood is water based solution. As all water based solutions, they don't freeze particularly well, meaning that some sort of separation/precipitation is expected to happen, leaving ice crystals with something else around.
In the case of blood, having red and white cells plus various proteins, I expect them to make some goo around the crystal, producing something akin to dirty snow.
Plus, not being pure water the freezing temperature will be lower than 0 Celsius. Thus, it might even be that you won't get any solid at all.
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# Snowflakes are Crystals
They often have hexagonal symmetry because of the bonding angle and polarity of H2O. Because "blood" is formed of numerous macromolecules, it will not form anything resembling a finely structured crystal. It's like tossing a bunch of bean bags into a pile and hoping they form a rhomboid prism or something. As others have noted, if any crystalline structure emerges from frozen blood, it will actually be due to the water inside the blood cells (or the plasma) freezing and forming crystals. However, there is no reason to believe that the water inside distinct blood cells will freeze into a coherent meta-crystal that is visible at macroscopic scales.
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Snow crystals grow in clouds not from liquid water but from the direct sublimation of water vapour. There is often a supercooled water phase, but the ice crystal that forms as this freezes is very small. It forms the nucleus of the snowflake. It grows as water vapour crystallises out of the air onto the nucleus.
When water droplets freeze you get hailstones, since water has a strong surface tension, it will pull itself into a sphere and not form an externally hexangonal shape.
You can't have "blood vapour" the water can evaporate, but it would leave the non-volatiles behind (probably as a little ball of dark red gunk) If this were to from snow you would get regular water-ice snow, that could then pick up some of the dark red gunk and fall with it. The effect would be mixture of ice crystals and partially frozen bloody gunk.
So your blood clouds can produce blood hail not blood snow. You might get what we used to call "rimestones" (though googling suggests that this was just my family) Small balls of "snow" formed by rime frost coating a nucleus. Not hexagonal, but not hard ice like a hailstone.
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## Your World is Magically Cursed
I only feel comfortable taking this direction because there are so many good science-based answers already. Whether or not it's scientific, I would step back one level and ask myself this question: *what role does the scientific have in the world I'm building? Do I need to explain everything?*
It's a popular trend in fiction to explain magic with science and keep things wholly consistent with a naturalistic world. Thing is, if true magic happens in a universe, natural assumptions go out the window. There *isn't* a natural explanation for when magical things happen, and seeking to explain certain interactions naturally leads you down the rabbit hole of keeping your universe consistent.
You already said the reasons it doesn't have trouble forming in the atmosphere and doesn't harm the environment is magic. Is science really going to stop you from having magical snow? If you want it to snow blood, then let it snow blood. If you need it to hail blood, let it hail blood.
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I think you are making this more complex than needed. You don't need to transmute rain into blood, then back into water. We do have [blood rains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_rain) on Earth (albeit rarely). You can easily copy those explanations and get rid of magic for this rain. It is not important if it is blood, sand or algae, only that your peasants believe it to be blood. Which is a simple conclusion, actually.
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Assuming it would be possible (but not required) to share resources between ships during the journey, but doing so takes minimal (but non-zero) resources.
Is it more fuel/space efficient to have a fleet of generation ships (either several self-contained ships, or specialised ships), or to have one large ship for all functions (self-contained)?
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### It's more *efficient* to send one big one
Running 10 small sewage processing plants uses more power than 1 big one. Same with maintaining 1 big nuclear reactor vs maintaining 10 small ones. Same with Co2 filters, Gyms, Schools, Creche, etc. Are you going to build 10 playgrounds for children? Do you have 10 autopilots, as well as 10 navigation computers, 10 gyroscopes, 10 airlocks? As well as mandatory redundancies for all these systems. Do you have 10 kitchens and 10 dining rooms?
10 small ships also burn through spare parts faster than 1 larger one. Spare parts (storage or manufacturing) will be one of your biggest logistical challenges. 10 ships with 10 x 2-core nuclear reactors (you need a spare when one is being maintained) will burn through parts faster than 1 x 4-core reactor.
For 8 hour shifts, 40 hour weeks, with sick leave and 2 weeks holiday a year, a position that needs 24/7 coverage will need 5 fold staffing to ensure that a post is always manned. So you'll need 5 x 10 = 50 people to ensure that each ship has someone on duty. So 50 people capable of piloting the a ship. 50 trained nuclear techs. 50 police officers (minimum). 1 big ship may need 2 or 3 concurrent police officers on duty at any one time - but you'll only need a staff of 10-15 total officers on the roster in order to get 2-3 on duty at any time. That simplifies your training regime considerably.
If you have shipbuilding facilities that can only build a ship up to a maximum size it may be tempting to build small generation ships for a fleet - to which I'd suggest build the ship in sections and join it together in a vacuum.
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### Is there a middle ground between one big ship catastrophically failing and lots of little ships with totally redundant systems?
I note in the comments ([now moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/116918/discussion-on-answer-by-ash-is-it-more-efficient-to-send-a-fleet-of-generation-s)) there's a discussion about "It's not very efficient if your only ship blows up". So as an aside this can be settled too:
Redundancy vs efficiency is a tricky problem. However there is a middle ground for this problem.
* For everything you're bringing on your journey, every compartment type, facility, station, or piece of equipment, give it a random number between 0 and 1. Eg main engines are 0.423421, hydroponic tomato growing is 0.1267542, storage of toiletries is 0.854223, sewage processing is 0.73323, primary school classrooms are 0.5422, accommodation for families (named A...F) is 0.52321, accommodation for singles (named S...Z) is 0.2214, nuclear reactor is 0.14321, etc. This list should have thousands of entries.
* Build N ships, giving each a number K from 0 to N. Ship K has all the equipment between ((K-2)/N modulo 1) to ((K+2)/N modulo 1). So ship 4 of 10 has everything between 0.2 and 0.6. Ship 0 of 10 (the first) has everything between 0.8-1.0 and 0.0-0.2.
* Get your ships into orbit, rig them together in a strong frame (in a random order - not sequential), build conduits for power/air/water/etc between them that can be disconnected in an emergency, and build hallways between them that can be sealed in an emergency.
* Now you you have one big ship made up of a fleet of smaller ships, where every system is replicated 4 times and no more.
* If one ship has a catastrophic failure and blows up, every system that was lost has 3 other redundancies.
* Now you can lose any 3 ships from your 10 without compromising the mission.
* Losing 4-7 ships may compromise the mission, but it may be possible to finish the mission with every service available with only 3 ships.
* You can tweak N if you want more or less ships. Change the +2 to a bigger or smaller number if you want more or less redundancy.
(For those of you who spend your nights clicking through random Wikipedia pages - this is a [DHT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table))
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As already pointed out in other answers/comment, a single big ship is more efficient BUT will increase the chances that a single, catastrophic failure leads the entire mission to failure.
A reasonable compromise seems then to use a few large ships instead of a single, humongous one. The individual ship will still be big enough to cash on the scale efficiencies, and the redundancy implicit in having two or more of them increase the chances that at least one of them will make it to the destination.
More or less what NASA did when sending out the planetary probes in the 70's, with multiple Pioneer, Voyager and Mariner probes being sent out in very close intervals.
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## If shielding from cosmic radiation is important, big ships are more efficient.
One of the major challenges for crewed interplanetary spaceflight is [the health risk presented by cosmic radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays). This is a big problem even for a 180-day journey to Mars, let alone a multi-generation trip between stars.
The linked Wiki article mentions an indicative figure of about 4 tons shielding per square metre to bring radiation levels on a space station down to roughly earthlike levels. There's a fair bit of uncertainty on that, and requirements for interstellar travel would be different again, but it gives us a ballpark: if you don't have some other way to protect against cosmic radiation, physical shielding is going to be a big part of the weight of your ship.
It's possible to have shielding that's also useful for other purposes, e.g. store the ship's water supply or hydrogen fuel in its skin. But for a generation ship, you probably want near-100% recycling of resources, meaning that the amount of water you'd otherwise need to carry is likely far less than the amount you'd need for shielding. Even if you're using consumables for shielding, you still need enough left over at the end of the trip that you're adequately shielded in the last years, which still means a large increase in the amount you have to carry.
If the weight of shielding is a major design constraint, then your ships are going to look like big balls, because that's the most efficient shape in terms of surface area per volume contained. (Edit: As mentioned in comments, some components can be put outside the shielding, so more like "big balls with stuff hanging off them"). Thanks to the square-cube law, one 200-metre-diameter ship will hold as much payload as eight 100-metre ships of similar shape, but with only half the surface area and hence half the weight of shielding.
(In fact, the big ship requires a bit *less* than half the shielding of eight small ships, because thickness of shielding is likely to be non-negligible, but let's not worry too much about that.)
So, if you're dependent on physical shielding for radiation protection, and you don't have some super-light unobtainium shielding, you probably want to go with a small number of big ships.
Another option might be magnetic shielding. This is a bit more speculative, but the requirements for that will probably still scale roughly with the surface area to be protected, which again makes bigger more efficient.
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### It depends where they start and what values you favor.
If you're launching off of Earth or some planetary object in these ships (like they show at the beginning of Wall-E), I'd recommend smaller ships. But I wouldn't recommend this strategy; either way, launching ships as big as these out of a planet's gravity well is extremely energy expensive. Instead, they should be built in space and then people shuttled up to them.
Now that we've got that out of the way, here are our options:
1. **Send one ship.** Pros: sharing resources is cheaper, can be more fuel efficient if you use less engines/reactors/etc. and therefore less weight (ie big is cheaper), larger community which is probably good for psychological reasons. Cons: If anything breaks, everyone's toast.
2. **Send multiple ships.** Pros: redundancy (ie if anything breaks there are other ships too), easier for each ship to manage their resources (ie no huge bureaucracy). Cons: more wasteful of resources, possible psychological effects with smaller communities
So, what matters more, being cautious about the risks of ship malfunction or saving resources? Also, which makes the better story? There's definitely a lot more tension when the sole ship malfunctions than when one ship of a fleet has problems. On the other hand, if conflicts break out between ships that could also be a story in the making.
So I'd say it comes down to which one you can better build a story out of. There are definitely arguments for each.
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## Frame Challenge
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> Is it more fuel/space efficient to have a fleet of generation ships (either several self-contained ships, or specialised ships), or to have one large ship for all functions (self-contained)?
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Nothing's less efficient than a single giant sphere **which gets destroyed by a passing asteroid**.
That's why fuel and space efficiency are never the sole driving factors. **Especially in space travel!!**
Triple redundancy, over-construction, lots of machine shops and "blank" parts (generic units of material which get machined down to usable parts) will drive the design**s**. (Plural, since one design might have a fatal, unforeseen flaw which destroys all/most of the ships.)
That is why multiple **self-contained** ships launched at different times (for example, three different ships of three different designs -- total of nine ships -- launched at three different times) are the most efficient way to ensure that some people get to the destination.
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### Your enemy is the waste heat.
In space, you have exactly one method available to get rid of heat, and that is to radiate it away. All big spacecraft like the space shuttle and the ISS must include radiators to avoid overheating.
Generation ships have a power consumption that's roughly linear to the amount of people on board, and people on board grow with the volume of the ship ($\approx x^3$). The available surface area for waste heat radiation, however, only grows with the surface of the ship ($\approx x^2$). So, as you scale your generation ships up, you will run out of surface area for heat radiation eventually.
Now, you could say: Oh, well, then I just build huge radiators that reach out far into space. This will work for a while, but eventually you get the problem that you need to transport the waste heat from the core of the ship all the way to the tips of the heat radiators. The longer this trip becomes the less efficient the cooling will be (more energy is expended on pumping, and it becomes harder to isolate the return pipes sufficiently from the environment as they go down into the heart of the ship).
### However, you can still build a huge ship that both has enough radiative surface *and* can withstand destruction of its parts (= the redundancy advantage of a fleet of ships):
Your ship is basically designed as a gigantic space station. It's assembled from modules and hubs that are connected via some standard connector system. Each module is basically a long tube that has its own heat radiators attached, and is connected to one hub at each end. The hubs are designed so that they mate to six modules in a single plane, and to three modules diagonally upwards. Thus one half of the nodes form a single layer of triangles with 2/5 of the modules, the other half of hubs form a second layer with another 2/5 of the modules. These two layers are connected by the last 1/5 of the modules, using the diagonal upwards connections of the hub. This forms many more triangles which are not parallel to the two planes, and thus provide lateral stiffness to the ship.
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> As you may know, triangular constructions are extremely stiff and never produce any bending forces on the individual beams. That's why you see such triangular construction at each and every construction crane.
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You grow this ship simply by adding modules to the edge of the double plane. As such, the effective surface of the ship grows linearly with its usable volume. The mating mechanism between modules and hubs has air locks, valves on all pipes, and electrical switches on all power lines that pass through it. This allows defective modules/hubs to be separated from the ship in any manner that might be necessary. An open connection, however, allows free exchange of whatever the different modules want/need to exchange, allowing the ship to act like a big city.
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One big ship.
The answers on this so far are all much broader than the question calls for. If the question was as broad as people seem to think (i.e. which option is better), then it would be unanswerable without more info.
However, it is very specific and addresses only two things: fuel efficiency and space efficiency. It assumes both options are possible with the engineering capabilities of the world in question and doesn't care about redundancy/safety or the psychological impact or whatever other factors are normally looked at when making this type of decision.
For space efficiency, look at duplication of essential facilities (e.g. toilet/WC/loo, recreational facilities, medical facilities, etc.) as well as outside/surface area versus internal volume of the ship (square-cube law) and how this affects efficient use of space as well as available space as function of amount of construction material used. This clearly shows that the large ship is the more space efficient option as it needs less space to house and transport the same number of people.
As for fuel efficiency, assuming no strange, as yet undiscovered effects happen to larger objects in space, then as long as your ship never takes off or lands from/on a planet, the larger ship will be more fuel efficient as well. You need fuel to accelerate to journey speed and decelerate at the end and small amounts now and then to maintain journey speeds amidst various gravitational pulls. The amount of fuel you need is based on the amount of mass you need to shift, and we've already discussed how you need less material (therefore less mass) to construct one large ship than several smaller ones, so again, the one big ship will be more fuel efficient.
Just for the record, though, and completely outside the scope of the question, I'm an engineer and a firm believer in Murphy's law, so safety factor thinking says send *at least* 3 ships and hope at least one makes it.
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A larger spacecraft will be generally more efficient, all else being equal, with diminishing returns in increased efficiency as scale increases. However, a larger spacecraft is a more difficult construction project, will take more time and resources to build, will result in less efficient utilization of shipyards and other construction infrastructure, and will be less able to make use of the latest technological advances. On a colonization program level, a convoy or series of convoys may well be more efficient, even if the individual ships are less so.
Efficiency of the spacecraft can't be your primary design criteria anyway. There's always going to be a choice between launching and doing something to make the ship slightly more efficient. If you always choose to make the ship more efficient, the result is a generation ship that *never leaves*, but just sits in orbit being upgraded and added to forever...or more likely, gets canceled before completion.
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Redundancy
Redundancy aka strength in numbers, does only hold up against external threads. Meaning a asteroid puncturing your ships can be protected against with lots of little turtle eggs marching to the sea.
A engine-design flaw, can not be protected against with systems that all have the same flaw.To small a resource can not be protected against that way.
The stranded predecessors can be scavenged though, and thus build "a road in the sky".
Redudancy is also possible within a ship, by modular design and self-recover ability. (The traders in the A-Deepness-in-the-sky universe did this). So bulkheads and decentralized command& controlposts.
For a generationship, the most important thing though, would be the capability to self-repair and bootstrap the environment up again in case of catastrophic failure. Like send everyone into storage, while it grazes for raw-material and repairs its eco-system.
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One big ship would be most efficient in operation, as other answers have pointed out. That's only half the equation though.
This massive ship has to be built. It's massive facilities have to be able to handle huge volumes. Giant reactors for power, giant water recycling systems, giant engines to move it, giant everything.
Building large ships is pretty difficult. Parts get so large that they don't fit into existing manufacturing facilities. You can't just bolt smaller ones together; as the whole thing gets larger any joint becomes more and more of a potential weakness as the stresses involved grow too.
So before you cast that giant section of hull you have to build a giant metalworking facility that can produce vast amounts of liquid hot alloy and pour it into a giant mould. You need a kilometre long factory just to contain that extrusion.
This also increases the difficulty of maintaining the ships. Parts are now so big that they require special giant size machines to handle.
You can trade off these issues by having ships that accelerate more gently so they can be made of smaller parts connected together. Ships on Earth do that, the hull is made in sections. But then your journey time is extended, you need more supplies and so on.
Overall smaller, mass produced ships may well be more efficient over the entire lifecycle.
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In general, I think there are a lot of efficiencies that occur with scale, but I question the assertion that it's necessarily true that bigger will always be more efficient. Net efficiencies of scale don't always increase without limit for any given engineering constraint as scale goes up.
The classic example is the square-cubed relationship with surface area vs volume. As you scale one axis, volume increases faster than surface area. This is beneficial when you want to maximize how much stuff you can fit inside the ship, for example, but it's problematic for issues like heat dissipation, which relies on surface area to radiate the heat away. You can mitigate this using radiator arrays to stretch out the surface area, but if you also consider that the total amount of heat you'll need to dissipate will increase with the size of the ship, the total radiating area required might grow rather quickly. If you optimize for just the problem of heat dissipation and 'cost' of radiators, there is probably a sweet spot for this factor of efficiency.
Another example is power generation and power transmission. A large centralized power generator may be more efficient to produce, but now you also require longer distance transmission, which has associated inefficiencies. Here is another place where this a trade-off of considerations and the optimum is likely not toward infinity.
There's also the harder-to-quantify fact that scaling systems up will tend to make them more complicated, which may mean greater odds that they can fail (requiring additional redundancy if you want a safety margin) and likely requiring a larger amount of support equipment and support staff. Larger groups of people introduces a whole new slew of risks and challenges, as managing a large group of people over a long period of time to maintain a complex system creates its own challenges in terms of the required long-term social engineering. Smaller ships means smaller societies, which might be more stable in the long run than a large society sharing a single ship and having to coordinate at large scales over a long period of time to be successful.
In short, it's important to consider efficiencies of scale, but it's equally important to recognize the counterbalancing challenges/inefficiencies that occur as scale increases and weigh these factors when engineering a solution.
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## We don't know, and the question does not supply enough data
Breaking with tradition, I will answer a question which I have downvoted.
The question *cannot be answered*, except by an experienced generation ship designer who has access to data which the question chose not to include.
The point is that there are *always* limits in engineering. Designs work between a minimum size and a maximum size; outside the boundaries, different designs are needed: and the question does not say *how* to build a generation ship, how *big* is big, what are the design *goals*, how is the ship powered, and so on and so on.
Let's take a much more mundane example, and ask ourselves whether it's more efficient to carry containerized cargo from China to Europe using one big ship or a fleet of smaller ships.
* A modern cargo ship at maximum fuel efficiency takes about 35 days to travel from China to western Europe, assuming it fits through the Suez canal. If it is too large for the Suez canal, travel time increases to about 50 days. If it can make use of the Russian North-East Passage, travel time decreases to about 25 days.
* Current [Suezmax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suezmax) limits are length 400 meters, beam 50 meters, draft 20 meters, height above water 70 meters. Guess what? The current [largest container ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ships) are designed to these limits.
* But what if you spoke to the Egyptians and convince them to increase the limits? Well, you will soon run into another limit: the ship needs to be able to load and unload cargo in a port, and ports have limits too.
* But what if you spoke to the port authorities in Antwerp, Rotterdam, Shenzhen and Shanghai to do the needful to increase the limits of their ports? You will run into other limits: for example, you would much prefer to deliveries from China every 10 days or so, and do not want to have to wait up to 70 days for your merchandize to arrive from China.
Overall, the current large container ships, capable of carrying about 24,000 TEU, are at the limit of what is actually possible and economically reasonable. We *could* design a container ship capable of carrying 50,000 TEU, but it would be of no use to anybody. We *do not know* how to design a container ship capable of carrying 500,000 TEU.
Coming back to the generation ship: let's say the current designs top out at ships about 10 km long with a diameter of about 2 km, giving an internal volume of about 31.5 km³. With great increase in cost, designing and building a ship with an internal volume of 100 km³ might be possible. But what if the colonisation effort needs 1,000 km³? Such a ship would exceed design limits, and sending multiple ships would be the only option.
In conclusion, we cannot say that one large ship is more or less efficient than multiple smaller ones unless we know *a lot more* about those ships than what the question says.
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Instead of answering a very open ende question, I ask why not both?
Take a huge block of ice, or an asteroid or comet. Embedded into the mass are several independent habitats and drive units. The asteroid serves as radioation shielding and reaction mass, so upon arrival it will be rather hollow. Two approaches to build such a thing come to mind immediately:
* rockets in the back: Build rocket shaped ships, with drives at the bottom and habitat/produiction areas at the top. These are stuck into the backside of the comet. Upon arrival they fill their internal fuel tank, detach and brake individually to not waste reaction mass on brakeing the rest of the asteroid (resteroid?)
* Drive modules and habitat modules are separated, the drive modules sit on the skin and slowly eat their way in to asteroid, tha habitats are more to the inside but distributed as much as possible
The idea is that the individual modules can help each other, but that each can be fairly self sufficient if the need arises. They should be as far from each other as the space allows so a catastrophic event is unlikely to affect all of them. The close procimity would mean one could essentially take a train from one module to another, so ne need to spend reaction masse.
An interstellar ship will be one part payload, a thousand parts or more reaction mass so you might as well use that mass for shielding and structural purposes.
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As others have pointed out bigger is more efficient, but many ships are more redundant.
A couple of important things with regard to redundancy:
You want redundant design not just copies. What if you design a redundant fleet of ships but all have a design flaw in say all of the main sewerage valves.
There is also the problem (which can be used to create drama to drive the story) of independent evolution on each of the redundant ships. Both of culture of the crews and also of bacteria and viruses. Imagine **Covid2099** slowly developing on one ship. Slowly enough that the crew develop immunity, but when they either arrive at the destination system or during a ship to ship transfer there is the risk of spreading an infection. We all know how problematic that can be...
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Tl;dr: **Huge ships are structurally less stable and have a worse mass ratio.**
At the core of the matter lies the [square-cube law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law). You cannot simply scale up a small model because the strength of its support structures grows only quadratic with size (it essentially depends on the area of the cross-sections of struts and walls) while the mass it is supporting grows with the cube of the size (it only depends on the volume). A ship that's twice as large as another ship will have, *ceteris paribus,* eight times the mass, but the strength of its struts will only be four times the smaller one. **On large ships relatively more mass is needed for structural stability.** At some point this will begin to outweigh the advantage of large ships regarding the lacking usability of an outer shell area, if it exists at all (the area would likely hold supplies anyway).
This assumes that there is no (anti) gravitation mechanism, and that the generation ship will accelerate at the beginning and the end of the journey, which seems unavoidable. It is also likely that it will need to spin for gravity which will create structural stress beyond many potential drives.
[Answer]
**One big ship is more efficient.**
The reason for this is that one ship requires less fuel, less crew, less power, and only one shipyard dock to make.
Basically, the concentration of resources is more efficient than making and sending, a bunch of smaller ships.
**But**
If that one big is *drastically* bigger than the smaller ships, then it's less efficient.
An example of this is the death star. The death star is so expensive and fuel hogging, that it would be much more efficient to send 2 superstar destroyers than one death star. The reason for this is because the death star is so much bigger than the superstar destroyer, that it requires at least 10 times the amount of power, fuel, and crew (and everything required to keep the crew alive and going).
**Another But**
Sending several smaller ships (like a couple of sizes under, like 5 cruisers instead of one capital ship) provides a greater tactical advantage.
Basically, one ship can't do flanking maneuvers, all of its weapons don't point at one target so it can't bring as much firepower to bear, and it's less maneuverable, and if it is taken out, that's it, you've lost the battle.
] |
[Question]
[
Year 2998. December 20. One thousand years ago, there was a big change in the world, called [Euro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_euro), and most Europeans had a radical change in their daily lives (in year 2851, all the world agreed on Earth currency, but that is a different story).
Now, there is another big change: Compact Swallowable Food (Comswaf). The old-fashioned food will be replaced by Comswaf in January 1st, 2999. The food commercials of the past emphasized the *experience* while consuming the product. If pills are what we consume, then we just swallow them with water.
What features of Comswafs are promoted? Why would I pick McTrump's pills over Comswaf King's?
**Some background**
[Mithrandir24601](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/19951/mithrandir24601) also gave some background in his answer.
Conversion to Euro is maybe not a very good metaphor, but the products were being promoted for a long time. They also come as different sizes and hardesses for toddlers. For babies, they can be crushed into powders and mixed with water to get a soft infant formula.
One should keep in mind that not everyone received this type of food very well. There are still communities who protest against compact food. However, there are so few places that you can actually find food (except if you produce your own *fruits*).
**More on background**
There was some debate on this matter a few hundreds of years before. Some thought it was impossible to let go of the old-fashioned food, and some others thought people would not even survive for one thousand years.
Please know your history well. After we colonized on mars in 2042, there was extremely limited oxygen on the red planet and in the night the temparature drops down to [218 Kelvin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Mars), it is really inconvenient to cook food there.
After a few decades, newborns in Mars were already adapted to the compact food (as powder form or syrup form). There were a compact food for every single need of human body. Since people never cooked in mars, there vere no ovens, no stoves, no equipment to cook.
In 2160, the first hotel in Mars was built. After four years, in 2164, the first holiday trip to Mars was available with ultra-high-speed transportation. People who went there for holiday found no food, but only pills. Randy Gamsay, had a brilliant idea to start a bussiness of compact food on Earth.
>
> When you're travelling, buy your compact food from Earth! It is **a lot** cheaper!
>
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The business caught on as more and more people gave up eating traditional food. By the year 2900, the currency on Earth is common, all cultures are mixed up, and resources are limited. After a serious meeting held by world leaders, the process of letting time-consuming, stinky, old-fashioned food go begun.
The taxes on food producers were tripled. The costs of starting a compact food business were halved.
And here we are, year 2999. Not a sudden change, but it happened. No more old-fashioned cooked food.
There are still fruits, vegetables, and animals, though.
[Answer]
These pills (containing a rich source of magic handwavium) are pretty much identical. Let's look for products which are sold by different companies, but the products themselves are more or less the same.
Gasoline. Shell, Esso and so on all sell the same basic product, and there is no real difference between them. So they compete on *price* and *convenience*. They also may offer a *premium* product that contains additives.
So following this analogy:
>
> Buy MacTrump Comswaf. 0.1 dolzenals cheaper than the competition.
>
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>
---
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> Comswaf Kings "Now with added dopamine"
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---
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> Get Amabay Comswaf delivered to life cube by our friendly robot
>
> "If it's not there in 24 seconds, you don't have to pay"
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>
Finally, they can just advertise that their product is "best" without really justifying it. This is the case with a lot of current drug advertising. Look for "Nothing is better..."
>
> Nothing provides your daily nutrition better than AstraZenecaGlaxoSmithKlineMerckSanofiPfizer Comswaf.
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The underlying question is "Why would people change their food". The analogy with the Euro isn't quite perfect, since the currency of a country is decided at national level, whereas the food is an individual one.
[Answer]
Advertising even today doesn't have to have anything to do with the physical product. They often promote the feeling or lifestyle of those consuming the brand. Look at any recent Coca-cola commercial. Does it tell you anything about what Coke tastes like? Does Apple tell you anything about what this new iPhone does for you that the one before doesn't? Do consumers even care about the extra smidgen of screen sensitivity and camera resolution? Probably not. They're investing in a brand.
I'd take this and run with it. Throw in some VR, scents, holograms, etc. How about an "it takes you to another place" analogy for experiencing foreign tastes? Use a recurring color or image associated with the brand, like how Cadbury's uses purple.
The pharmaceutical industry has been selling non-descript pills for decades. Do they show you what the pills look like? Rarely. They have colourful packaging and emphasise what it does that benefits your body. How about a healthy line with fancy 3D graphics and technobabble about how it's good for you or how this new and improved version absorbs better than the competitors? Neurofen sells millions of dollars every year for the exactly same product as generic ibuprofen at a fraction of the price without the technobabble. The brand sells.
[Answer]
## **Promoted Features**
* Nutrition: Comswaf makes more nutritious/more consistently nutritious pills then McTrump (i.e. McTrump's pills might have $x$ amount of vitamin A $\pm 10\%$, while Comswaf has $x \pm 5\%$)
* Cost: McTrump's might be a little cheaper than Comswaf
* Celebrity endorsement: Say a bodybuilder endorses McTrump while a famous CEO of a major company endorses Comswaf, the bodybuilders will have a tendency to go for McTrump, while the business-wannabes buy Comswaf
* **Size of pill:** a smaller pill takes up less space **and is easier to swallow**. For a large number of people, this is what will make the difference
* Smell and taste: Different people like how different things smell and or taste (i.e. flavour) once dissolved in water. Indeed:
* How the pill is taken: some people prefer tablets dissolved in water, which is drank. Others prefer tablets that are taken, before having some water
* Availablity of things like different colours and different packaging: no difference to the product itself, but could have an effect on the psychology of buying that product
* Convenience: emphasis on how little time people have in their lives e.g. video of someone just getting up, late for work. All they have to do is swallow a pill and that's them sorted for the day
* Inconvenience: or lack thereof compared to conventional food and competitors products, such as the frequency of taking pills or reduced need to go to the bathroom.
## **The process**
It's not about 'what makes this product better than the other?', it's about 'how do we make people *believe* that this product is the best?' and 'how do we sell the most?'. In other words, they'll sell it in the same way that they sell everything else - using known marketing tricks and tactics to make people psychologically *want* their product above the others - special offers, free postage if you spend more than $y$, celebrities, packaging, promoting the company instead of the product etc.
[Answer]
I will answer based on one (implicit) premise you indicated:
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> The food commercials of the past emphasized the *experience* while consuming the product.
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In plenty of cases, the experience being emphasized is woefully unrelated to the product. Many advertisements wouldn't change a bit when switching products around, as long as you stay within the same broad category (e.g. swapping one dessert-type food for another).
Rather than a description of the *product*, advertisements are often built upon puns related to the product *name* or its slogan, or center on the mascot associated with the product.
Some practical examples:
* [*Merci*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merci_(candy)) is chocolates, but advertising is heavily based upon the name (French for *thank you*), and almost always relies on scenes where people are grateful to others. Obviously, it wouldn't matter at all whether the product is chocolates, flowers, jewelry, books, or anything else that works well as a gift.
* Ads for drugs such as [*Ratiopharm*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratiopharm) normally just describe the general product category rather than a particular product. Their advertising creates uniqueness by featuring similar settings across all of their commercials (for the aforementioned company, that would be a pair of twins, one of which uses the advertised products, while another one uses a nameless other product). Needless to say, the advertised product turns out "better", but often, no specifics (intrinsic to the product) are given.
* Car ads almost invariably emphasize how the newest car types of the respective company are equipped with modern, future-oriented technology, and how the cars are ready for adventure. Concrete statements about specific features or properties are usually absent.
Therefore, I see no reason why food advertising would work any differently than it does today. Concretely:
>
> What features of Comswafs are promoted? Why would I pick McTrump's pills over Comswaf King's?
>
>
>
Because Comswaf King's packages are adorned with a cute parrot called Pilar, and box art as well as advertisements show little stories of that character, Pilar Parrot. That is something that many consumers like, as opposed to the weird mascot associated with McTrump's pills (a weird talking blonde hairdo-thing with a kilt?).
[Answer]
Comswaf will probably never replace all food. People who have trouble swallowing pills (small children) will not be able to physically ingest the capsules. And who would want to get rid of the awesome experience of enjoying roast apples with vanilla ice cream?
Where Comswaf will probably catch on is, as you already mentioned, the busy working crowd that simply does not have the time to eat (not even when ordering at a home service). For them, your advertisement can be targeted to their values:
* fully nutritional meal in a single capsule with all the trace elements and vitamins you need
* perhaps contains a soft stimulant much better for your digestive system than coffee, but much longer-lasting
* maybe a company that allows you to order your pills for your exact nutritional needs (personalized recipes, depending on what kind of job you are doing, how much sports you are doing, your height and weight and sex, so that you can get your individual needs satisfied)
* if looking thin is still a fashion ideal, you could advertise with 'keeps you full for an entire day and lets you lose weight without the nasty yoyo effect afterwards
* aimed at survival people: keep hundreds of daily rations in a cigarette box, which will never go bad and can save your life if you get lost in the wilderness / an apocalypse happens / you get snowed in / ...
[Answer]
The same thing that they advertise nowadays. Nothing of importance, with the implication that it will somehow make it easier to have sex with an attractive member of whatever gender(s) you prefer.
And then a long, frightening, and borderline bizarre list of potential side-effects.
>
> Synesthesia has been reported with Comswaf. Ingestors experiencing grossly enlarged pinky fingers and toes should stop taking Comswaf.
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[Answer]
* Each comswaf has exactly the right amount of vitamins, vital elements, fat,
carbohydrates, proteins and fibers to be healthy and *predictable*. So if I eat 100 comswafs I have always the right amount for a daily input.
* There are several types for bodybuilders, normal people, people who want to lose weight. You can fine-tune the content to your specific needs.
* There are all types of flavors, even unknown ones in natural food. Comswafs are distributed in machines which allow you to inject thousands of flavors for your comswafs.
* Comswafs are guaranteed to hold practically indefinitely and are absolutely germ-free. You can even drop them on the floor and they are still completely edible. They also do not have environmental poisons.
* Some more expensive comswarfs [are able to actually change in the type of preferred food.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKCYF_w0D8Y) They are still less expensive as normal food.
[Answer]
The commercial would be:
1.
Buy cool drugs from us.
We implant in our pills a special microcapsule that can destroy all drug related content in your system as soon as you enter a health scanning device. No change in your health policy as nothing will be detected!!
2.
Our product will give you the phenomenal experience to give you 3 burbs in a timespan of 10 minutes. You will feel the flavor or the main dish, the sweet after and the full aroma of the coffee as if you had actually consumed these products for real.
3.
You can order from us the world number one food solution. On vacation in a foreign country? Long working hours? No problem, you have to take only one pill, which will last for up to five days without needing to reconsume anything else. And the special part?! Yes, it's true, you can preorder what daily dishes each pill will contain, and in any order you like. We make your life easier, spent more time on things that really matters to you!
[Answer]
These two features will also be promoted in addition to what Mithrandir24601 told:
1. **RTTT** : Required time to toilet(\*)
2. **MTBT** : Mean time between taking pills.
The first one is important for keeping health of digestive system as extended use of such compressed food might be related to some gastrointestinal issues. The second is important for adjusting calorie intake and balance with tradition food.
\*NOTE: Note that time has both two meanings in term of frequency as well as duration.
] |
[Question]
[
My protagonist, let's call her Alice, must acquire a priceless artifact, located deep inside an ancient temple.
If this were a ruin, the exercise would be academic, but the Temple was protected by the ancient and terrible power that built it. The only way in and out of the Innermost Chamber where the the artifact is located is through a vast spiral hallway. **One's innermost thoughts simply reverberate across this long Hall like so many echoes.** The priests protecting the place can hear these thoughts, and a single thought by the priests can activate the large golem army of statues that currently stand immobile across the length of the place.
There are always three priests in the Reverberation Hall listening for stray heretical or otherwise dangerous thoughts, each of which can activate the defenses. Only one pilgrim is allowed to enter at a time, and hall is so vast it takes 10 minutes to walk across the length of it. Along the way there are numerous mural images: admonishments to turn back if not pure of heart and purpose, depictions of thieves (covered in hay for some reason) being crushed by heavy golem fists, pilgrims worshiping the meticulously depicted artifacts in rapturous joy. There are representations of eyes everywhere, and they all seem to follow the pilgrim as she makes her way across the hall.
Now Alice does not have an army to assault the place (and frankly, I doubt the adamantine golems would be much troubled) but she needs to gain control of a particular artifact against the wishes of the priests. Since she has a replica, if she does manage to gain it and walk out, the theft would probably not be noticed for a long time, since the priests do not patrol or (out of respect) listen to the prayers and thoughts in the Innermost Chamber where the artifacts are.
**How do I get Alice to gain the artifact, against the wishes of the priests? How do you avoid thinking that you are a thief, while, well, being a thief?**
*...well, besides the obvious way.* :)
**LATE EDIT**: Thanks everyone for the very ingenious answers! @DanSmolinske had the most creative answer in my view, with the benefit of using elements from [prior steps of Alice's saga](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/11252/how-to-catch-a-dream-thief) as outlined here on Worldbuilding. @WhatRoughBeast's answer will definitely be blended in as well.
[Answer]
She will need to utilize the [Dream Thief](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/11252/how-to-catch-a-dream-thief).
First, Alice will need a confederate (ideally a friend).
Second, using visualization techniques Alice will construct artificial memories. One of these will be being sent to the Dream Thief to retrieve a memory regarding an artifact from the temple. The other will be a memory *from the perspective of her confederate* of stealing the artifact and replacing it with a replica.
Third, Alice will visit the Dream Thief. Using the meditation techniques from Aaru's answers, she will allow her *actual* memories of the situation to be stolen. This will leave her with only the artificial memories.
Fourth, the confederate will confess to Alice, asking that the artifact be returned without the priests being alerted - that she needs to help him correct his wrong.
Now Alice will go to the temple believing that she is not a thief, but is in fact going to return a valuable artifact. She doesn't want the priests to realize what's happening to protect her friend, so she will need to concentrate on the general feeling of correcting a wrong - this should be relatively easy to do though, and she can mask that she's correcting it immediately. Regardless, this should be substantially easier than masking that she's a thief.
After she makes the switch, Alice will return to her friend and be informed of the actual situation. In order to help her believe, she should write down the situation beforehand and sign it with some sort of key that she will recognize as genuine.
Alice may notice inconsistencies in her memories and thoughts, creating doubts. This is why she's creating two artificial memories - the fact that she was sent to the Dream Thief to retrieve these memories (as she believes), should help her rationalize those away as being the result of her second battle.
[Answer]
Alfred Bester raised the same question in "The Demolished Man", where a successful businessman needs to conceal his intent to murder a man from telepaths. His solution is to look up an acquaintance who writes advertising jingles, and ask (apparently innocently) what is the most unforgettable jingle she's ever written, the sort you can't get out of your head.
>
> "Oh. Pepsis, we call 'em."
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> "Why?"
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> "Dunno. They say because the first one was written centuries ago by a character named Pepsi. I don't buy that. I wrote one once..." Duffy winced in recollection. "Hate to think of it even now. Guaranteed to obsess you for a month. It haunted me for a year."
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> "You're rocketting."
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> "Scout's honor, Mr. Reich. It was 'Tenser, Said The Tensor.' I wrote it for that flop show about the crazy mathematician. They wanted nuisance value and they sure got it. People got so sore they had to withdraw it. Lost a fortune."
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> "Let's hear it."
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> "I couldn't do that to you."
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> "Come on, Duffy. I'm really curious."
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> "You'll regret it."
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> "I don't believe you."
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> "All right, pig," she said, and pulled the punch panel toward her. "This pays you back for that no-guts kiss."
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> Her fingers and palm slipped gracefully over the panel. A tune of utter monotony filled the room with agonizing, unforgettable banality. It was the quintessence of every melodic cliché Reich had ever heard. No matter what melody you tried to remember, it invariably led down the path of familiarity to "Tenser, Said The Tensor." Then Duffy began to sing:
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> Eight, sir; seven, sir;
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> Six, sir; five, sir;
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> Four, sir; three, sir;
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> Two, sir; one!
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> Tenser, said the Tensor.
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> Tenser, said the Tensor.
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> Tension, apprehension,
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> And dissension have begun.
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> "Oh my God!" Reich exclaimed.
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> "I have some real gone tricks in that tune," Duffy said, still playing. "Notice the beat after 'one'? That's a semicadence. Then you get another beat after 'begun.' That turns the end of the song into a semi-cadence, too, so you can't ever end it. The beat keeps you running in circles, like: Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun. RIFF. Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun. RIFF. Tension, appre—"
>
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> "You little devil!" Reich started to his feet, pounding his palms on his ears. "I'm accursed. How long is this affliction going to last?"
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> "Not more than a month."
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And it works just fine.
[Answer]
# Overwhelming Thoughts
The other option, besides not thinking about it, is to simply overwhelm the priests with thoughts. This is assuming that these priests can only hear as fast as Alice can think them. If she can think faster than the priests can parse... she could be there and back with the idol before one of the priests get to the "steal the artifact" thought.
She can even think distressing or otherwise distracting thoughts to these priests. Something to keep them off balance while she makes her way through. Should she think of saucy women, philosophical conundrums, or simply rapid fire whatever comes into her mind? This technique is an option, but an exhausting one and somewhat risky one.
# Hide Behind Language / Thought Encoding
She could also hide behind another language. Assuming she knows one the priests don't know. After all, "Tausch das mit dem, Alice" sounds nothing like "Exchange that with this, Alice." She merely needs to encode her thoughts so the priests do not understand her true purpose by simply not understanding her thoughts.
[Answer]
## Thoughts are hard to hide
Dan Smolinske's answer has one fatal flaw: though Alice won't think about stealing the object, she sill surely think about *returning* the object. If the priests are as watchful as they claim, she would immediately be detained, and once it was discovered that she was carrying a fake, the game would be up, and she would be reduced to a viscous fluid.
I make two assumptions: one, that any thought of moving, replacing, or otherwise touching the artifact(s) would trigger a response, and two, that the chamber echoes words in any language, but *only* words, rather than the full imagery of thought.
Alice needs to encode her thoughts, and in a way that the priests cannot decode. If she thinks in another language, there is always the chance that she might slip up, or worse that one of the priests speak that language and catch her red-handed. Red-minded? Anyway.
## Double-speak
Rather than convincing herself (through training, hypnosis, etc.) that she is not stealing the artifact, Alice should convince herself that *words mean something different*. Alice needs to replace words that she may think with other words; replacing 'steal' with 'worship' means that when she thinks, "I'm going to steal that artifact," it comes out, "I'm going to worship that artifact!" Replacing 'thief' with 'sinner' means Alice thinks, "I'm a thief," but the priests hear, "I'm a sinner." Other suspicious words should also be traded out: "I hope they don't catch me" should become "I hope they don't hate me," for instance.
## Verbal Overlap
Alternately, it may be as simple as quoting words from memory. When I speak out loud, my "inner voice" is drowned out; further, since the long passage is from memory, Alice's thoughts will be turned to memory, rather than thieving. She should memorize two passages, each about 15 minutes long, and quote them on her way to and from the Inner Sanctum. Inside, she can take as long as she wants to secure the object, and resume quoting when she exits. She should choose monologues, rather than poetry or songs; poetry can be too simple to remember, due to rhyming. A prepared speech or sermon would be an excellent choice, especially if it has to do with piety; anything to distract the priests from its true purpose.
## Non-verbal language
An acquaintance of mine, fluent in [ASL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Language), underwent a surgery that caused total deafness for about a month. She said that at the end of the month, she often thought in sign language, rather than in English; after she could hear again, her inner voice transitioned back to spoken language within a few days.
Likewise, Alice first needs to learn a language-complete sign language (such as ASL). She also needs to find several contacts in the deaf community; they can help her learn faster. After a month of very hard study, she should have a decent grasp of the language. She then needs to inflict (reversible) deafness on herself, and communicate only with her new deaf friends, to buffer herself against spoken language. If a magical/mystical/technological means of inflicting deafness is not available, cotton or wool stuffed in the ear and wrapped with a bandage works surprisingly well. Thinking in ASL uses similar areas of the brain as thinking in a spoken language; however, it is not actually English. Some words are similar, but many words involve thoughts or relationships that are hard to express in English. After a full month of thinking in ASL and communicating in ASL, she should be prepared.
With her self-enforced deafness and fully sign-language thoughts, she should be able to sail through the hall in complete silence, at least as far as the priests can hear. In fact, if they rely entirely upon hearing thoughts, she may even be invisible to them!
Even better, if they do eventually put two and two together and realize it was Alice that swiped the artifact, they will be looking for a deaf woman, throwing them off the scent entirely.
## All Three
As with any camouflage, more is almost always better. Using ASL to mask thoughts, removing the words "thief," "catch/caught," "kill," etc. from her mind, and quoting long passages can all stack together, resulting in a multi-layer deception that is almost impossible to detect, let alone decipher. Once Alice has learned sign language and tricked he mind into using the 'wrong' words, all she needs to do is sign (that is, use sign language to communicate) a long memorized passage, swipe the artifact, sign a different passage, and retreat with due haste!
[Answer]
Some form of hypnosis? She is not actively aware that she is there to steal the artifact, it is a compulsion buried under acceptable surface thoughts. When she actually comes in contact the artifact in question the compulsion triggers and she replaces it with the duplicate. Once the deed is done the compulsion fades and is replaced by a sense of contentment so that she can make her exit safely.
[Answer]
Alice can achieve this goal with [self hypnosis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hypnosis).
By hypnotising herself, Alice can temporarily make herself believe that the item that she is carrying and the item she is retrieving are equivalent, and that to exchange one for the other is morally neutral, of no more concern than swapping the positions of two bricks in a stack of bricks, or flipping over a pebble on the road.
Then, additionally, she needs to hypnotise herself to be concerned not with the object or replica that she is carrying, that the things she is carrying are as unimportant to her as our clothing is to us when we have other things on our minds, and that she is present only to use the temple for its legitimate purposes.
Thirdly, she needs to hypnotize herself so that when she sees the artefact, she will exchange it for the one she is carrying and then forget that she did so, as well as not performing this task again, so that the item is exchanged once only, and is not exchanged back.
Finally, Alice should hypnotize herself that she will not remember all this hypnosis (only act on it) while she is within the precincts of the temple in question.
When she emerges from the temple, she will have the realisation that she exchanged the replica she took in for the original.
To the priests of the temple, Alice should sound as if she has the thoughts of the typical worshipper, both coming and going, and should not arouse the suspicions of the priests. Alice will not have the thoughts of a thief, since while she is in the temple, she will have no thought that what she is doing or is there for is wrong.
[Answer]
Find someone who creates golems (who presumably don't have thoughts to read), and get them to make you a small one to act like a pilgrim, and perform the switch.
or
Use post-hypnotic suggestion on an unwitting pilgrim. Or on yourself, so you forget what you're really doing, until you get through the hall.
or
Wear a tinfoil helmet, to block the mind-reading.
[Answer]
You can't do it by 'not thinking about it'.
So you purposely think about something else. One possibility is thinking about a dance like movement such as tai-chi, I picked that over more martial arts because it is less likely to 'raise suspicions'. She can 'dance' all the way through absorbed in the movements.
I also used this since she is a 'great martial artist'.
However, she could also pick 1-2 things she is worried about and would in theory 'pray' for if she were actually going there for some purpose other than theft.
Which ever way she goes, she has to plan ahead of time and concentrate on that, 'forgetting' what her purpose is actually to do. Until she is free. She will also have to continue the exercise on the way back out. If she picked the worry/prayer aspect, she will need to switch to a contentment that 'all will be well' now.
[Answer]
Hypnosis is kind of code for "enforced thought control" and language changing seems a bit dubious to stake one's life on... well, yes, if there's a means of compelling things so that innermost thoughts won't leak then that could solve it... but suppose the priests are wise to those, or can detect them?
Do the priests change in shifts? It sounds like only the hall has this special reverberating power, so perhaps outside it, priests can't detect thoughts so clearly, or at all. Can she and 2 friends masquerade as the 3 priests before they reach the hall? Are there times the artefact is removed by the priests themselves (for ceremonies or other events) so it's not protected this way?
I prefer misdirection. She has a replica artefact. She could wait for a (genuine) visitor to leave the Reverberation Hall, and ensure the fake is placed somewhere they will see it. At that point, an entering friend who "sees" the visitor pick up the replica, "screams" (from religious sacrilege shock!) and calls the priests and guards because the artefact has been stolen and removed by the other visitor. In the confusion, the priests will be paying little attention for a while.
If the replica is good, and she is clever, the visitor and priests will be kept busy for some time, outside the Hall's reverberation area. The way is now open to remove the true artefact. As the priests believe there is a thief, the fact that the innermost hall does not contain the artefact when she leaves, will not cause any attention to fall on her.
[Answer]
Let's get really interesting here. If your priests can hear all the thoughts reverberating around the hall, then it's probably true they can hear each other's thoughts. However, the fact that only one pilgrim at a time can enter implies that figuring out who's thinking what is difficult, or even impossible. Thus, if Alice knows enough about these priests, she can think something that one of them might think, in the way they would think it, and they would think one of them thought it.
For instance, she could think "I think these other priests are going to steal the artifact", or even "These other priests are so stupid for thinking I actually want to protect the artifact". With practice, she could think it furtively, just barely letting it slip out like it was an accident. Suddenly, all three priests turn on each other, focusing every ounce of their psychic powers onto each other. Alice can then run in and get the artifact.
Of course, this presupposes a lot of things:
1- The priests are suspicious of one another. I think this is pretty straightforward, if you spend your life as a guard anything could look like a thief.
2 - The confusion will last 20 minutes or more, allowing Alice to get in and out. This is a tough one to support, but as long as she lays the groundwork and gets the priests riled up, she could probably stop masking her thoughts and just let them feed into the confusion. They'd think one of them was thinking about stealing it, and so forth. Still shouldn't take too long, but maybe this is when the floodgates open, and all their suppressed thoughts come out.
3 - None of the priests lock down the building once this starts. I assume they each have the power to undo each other's commands, so they shouldn't worry about it.
It's still a very dangerous plan, but I think if you wanted it to work, you could make it work.
[Answer]
**1) Doesn't know what she is thinking:**
Singing a song over and over, and thinking in a foreign language are both good suggestions. So why not combine them, and take it a step further. Alice should find and memorize the most catchy, annoying, repetitive ear-worm she can find in a language she does not speak, and the priests are not likely to speak either. If confronted, she can honestly say that she does not know what it means, and (less honestly) claim that she is there to pray for it to get out of her head.
**2) Inure them to her thoughts.**
This one will only work if Alice has some time; a month at least. But she could go in, thinking not just about stealing the artifact, but other criminal, dirty, or disturbing thoughts. "I want to kill my boss." "I wonder if they would notice if I walked out of here with the artifact?" "My neighbor's son is cute, I should seduce him before someone else can."
When the priests confront her, she would apologize profusely, and say that she would never do any of those things, but she can't help thinking them. And the Hall only makes it worse. And that is why she needs to pray. Alice would ask them to escort her to the altar to observe her sincerity. Pray, thank them, and leave without doing anything, except think more bad things on the way out.
Repeat every day for two or three weeks, and eventually the priests will expect her, and expect her to think those things. Once they stop paying attention to her, she is free to make the swap.
Then, she should continue it for at least another week, so they don't suspect her. Bonus points for being the one to point out the swap a few days later, and then continuing to pray for a few more days after that.
**3) Distract herself and them. And the reader?**
This one might not work, depending on the tone and target audience of your story. But if Alice was to get herself... *turned on*, shall we say, it would keep both her mind off her true purpose, and distract the priests. Could be played for laughs. And if they do confront her, she can claim religious rapture.
[Answer]
See the short story "Clothes Make the Man" by Henri Duvernois. In it, Tango, the stupidest of a threesome of thieves, is told to stand guard outside a home the other two are robbing, dressed as a police officer.
>
> "All you do is walk up and down the street," Mireault said. "Easy and slow, like a real cop on his beat. Then if anyone hears us working in the house
> they won’t get suspicious, seeing you. Keep walking until we come out, then hang around a few minutes covering us. That's all there is to it.
> We’ll meet back here. Now you understand?"
>
>
>
While doing so,
>
> Tango fell to thinking of how he had looked in the mirror. With the impressive image vivid in his mind, he straightened his shoulders and threw out his chest again. Standing erect, he tried a salute. It felt good. He grinned, oddly pleased, and walked on.
>
>
>
Then,
>
> After a few more trips, he found an old lady hesitating on the corner. He saw her make two or three false starts to get across and each time nervously come back.… Tango held up his other arm majestically, as if halting a horde of roaring trucks. With infinite dignity they crossed to the other side. It was a pretty picture indeed.
>
>
> "Thank you so much, officer!" she said.
>
>
> "Please madam," Tango said, "don’t mention it." He paused. "That’s what we’re here for, you know," he added.
>
>
>
A bit later,
>
> when, halfway down the block, two figures came skimming over the garden wall and landed on the pavement near him, he was in no mood to stop.… While Mireault and the Eel stared at him in sheer paralyzed horror, he stuffed the shiny whistle in his mouth and blew a salvo of blasts loud and long enough to bring all the police in Paris.
>
>
> "Crooks, robbers!" he bellowed. "I arrest you. I arrest you in the name of the law!"
>
>
>
So if you want your character to not have any thoughts that she's a crook, have her pretend to be something else, to the extent that she has herself convinced.
[Answer]
Given adamantine golems suggests D&D world. If so, a direct assault is unlikely but a teleporting maneuver could work. They just had to have used an anti-magic field to defend so.
We're going to need two wands. One with two teleport charges (easy enough), the other with a full load of disjunction prepared by a 20th level mage (expensive).
Procedure: fire burst of disjunction down the corridor to clear out any anti-magic fields, then teleport do artifact. Replace. By this time they've noticed and reset the anti-magic fields so fire another burst back down the corridor and teleport out. Now run like the golems are after you.
[Answer]
There must be a geometric way to solve this problem, if you assume thought-waves are like sound-waves or light-waves, travel in a straight line and obey the laws of reflection. You could probably enter the chamber at a strategic angle so your thoughts would bounce along the walls without hitting any of the points where the priests are standing. Maybe we should redirect this question to the physics forums?
[Answer]
How about she simply focuses her attention on her breath or the sensations her body produces while moving (also called: meditation)?
- No thoughts would be emitted that way (you may get distracted and think of something, depending how good your concentration is)
[Answer]
There is a famous SF story concerning a murder mystery in a society of telepaths. [The Demolished Man](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demolished_Man) won a the first Hugo. You might read that and see what techniques he uses to hide his thoughts; e.g. a "psych song" going over end over in his head obsessively, which was obtained on the pretext of quitting smoking (still a problem in the 24th century!). That's all I remember, since it has been over e0 years since I read it.
Also, read the real *Minority Report* story, not the movie. The purportrator hides his misdeeds by camouflaging against similar crimes that have already been logged and tend to "echo".
In more than one story, a phych-aware barrier or trap was traversed by means of being unconscious— either [knocked out cold](http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_(short_story)) or mesmerized.
And of course if it can be detected and amplified, why not jammed and shielded?
Or why not animate an unthinking tool to go for you? Wind-up toy or gollem or projectile, as befitting the type of story.
] |
[Question]
[
I’m writing a post-apocalyptic [RPG](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_game), but I have a problem when dealing with the reconstruction of the society. The apocalypse left alive only the young people up to 21 years of age.
Even though the event that triggered the apocalypse is over, the effects last over time, so the young are affected (that is, all); once they get to 21 years of age, they stop growing. Death is still possible due to unnatural causes (accidents, murders, etc.) or due natural causes (disease). Aging affects only the brain, so, assuming that a guy manages to get to his 71th age, he could die of "old age" for the deterioration of brain cells.
So, imagine a world populated only by children, teens, and young.
In the first years after the apocalypse the number of survivors will lower a lot, but after a reasonable period of time (five, ten years?) they may create complex societies that seek to restore civilization before the apocalypse.
The problem is basically this: **how would be these societies structured?**
The geographical areas in which I would like to set the game, for now, are Europe, North America, South America and the Far East.
Other information:
* The year of the disaster is 2045.
* The technology is slightly superior to ours. Electric cars have become the norm, no longer exist pesticides based on oil derivatives, there are implants guided by thought, technologies based on renewable energy are more resistant, and digital libraries are widespread.
* Before 2045 there was the [Peak Oil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil). Gasoline and other derivatives are no longer available.
Given the feedback received from the "magical radiation," I changed the apocalypse: nanomachines! These nanomachines are inside the body of the guys and prevent their growth. But beware: they prevent it by the 21 years of age, so children and teenagers continue to grow up to 21 years and then, their growth will stop.
Most Internet-based databases are permanently destroyed. Some military databases are still functioning, as well as some civilians one, but 80% of the Internet and computer media are gone.:
Ok, let’s try to figure out if I’ve understood the situation.
My disaster is one of the worst that humanity can ever face as relief it is not about a single part of the world to its knees, but the entire globe leaking knowledge and primary authority figures simultaneously. Moreover, the current technology in industrialized countries requires an enormous effort of maintenance and a thorough understanding of how it works. This leads to 2.7 billion of young people between 0 and 21 years of age without any practical knowledge on the operation of its technology, without any useful knowledge and without leading figures.
So at the time of the immediate aftermath power grid, water networks, waste, communication networks both by telephone and computer will fall. Maybe some solar panels connected to an autonomous power grid will continue to function and operate the devices connected to them for a while, but after five years they will probably stop working. The power plants, without maintenance, will shut down in a fraction of the time.
At this point, I can choose between two possible routes that humanity can follow.
**Immediate disaster**
Disaster strikes so violently and so quickly humanity, that young people do not have time to be prepared. Adults fail to convey the technical knowledge in time for a generational change. Because Western civilization depends very much on a too complicated technology, the collapse will be extremely violent. Supermarkets and other resources of canned food will be looted by scavengers in the first days after the end of the apocalypse, the crops will die, disease and violence will be rampant, and certainly half of the survivors will die in the first year after the apocalypse. They will be terrible years. Hope will disappear, leaving survivors traumatized, stressed and depressed.
The most widespread form of social gathering in the first year will be gangs, groups of agricultural settlers and religious groups. Most of the survivors will live in this "wild state". The conflict for control of the few remaining resources will be frequent, especially those between the gangs and the farming communities, and among the gang themselves. Many areas would become open battlefields, with warlords, militias and values regression. The technology and its recovery would be secondary to the food and survival needs. Gang will be widespread in these territories, since they are the most resilient form of social organization. It will look the end of humanity.
However, civilization won’t disappear. The military campuses throughout the Western world will be the beacons of hope for all those guys who want to flee from poverty and violence. The students in these fields, trained in the use of violence, discipline, and mutual trust, will organize social life around their campus, recruiting geeks and other survivors as a workforce. These camps will create protected areas for the survivors, where they will start the first forms of industrial production. In addition to the geek, will be sought survivors with manual skills, or knowledge of certain technologies. Rather than restore the computer technology, survivors will try to reactivate the machinery capable of producing electricity from renewable energy, and produce a technology similar to that of the steam era. Agriculture will always be the priority, but after a few years that will be stabilized, these campuses will be able to administer the cities where they are located, creating enclaves of civilization in the midst of barbarism.
At this point you can begin the recovery of the lost knowledge. Some geeks and craftsman will certainly have survived, and there are real stories of kids who, without any technical knowledge, just by reading books, have managed to create wind turbines for their villages, so I think you may have a similar effect in this case. Books rather that Internet will provide survivors the needed capabilities to restart the civilizations. Children born in the meantime (because yes, adolescents and young people left free to themselves will have a lot of sex) will be educated and trained to survive.
At this point, all groups of survivors, both inside and outside of the enclaves will close the "tribal" phase of survival, organizing themselves into groups.
Form of mass communication will never be restored, since the internet is gone, and the restored server will be a few, so the maximum political extension that you will ever achieve is that of a region. The world will never recover completely, at least not for the next 1000 years, and there are always two kinds of survival: that tribal, based on gangs, nomad groups and agricultural commune, and the organized one, with factions, cities and enclaves.
So the point of this scenario are
* Western society heavily rely on technology. Apocalypse would hit hard.
* In the immediate post-apocalypse world collapses. No technology available, all networks collapse. Young people would be politically prepared the event, since they have a slight leadership and work experience ,and they have a more liberal thought, but do not have knowledge gained through experience, and have high rates of technological dependence. Half of the survivors dies for the violence and lowering the quality of life.
* Begins the phase of the immediate aftermath. The survivors gather in small groups similar to the gang, plundering and fighting each other for the few remaining resources.
* No stable organization , no attempt to revitalize the civilization,
the only priority is survival in the short term.
* Begins the tribal phase. Farming grows quickly, simultaneously to the scavenging of other groups of children. Stable social organizations are gangs, and agricultural and religious commune. There will be conflicts, small factions, and agricultural production will begin.
* Meanwhile, the military campus will attract people, organizing the lives of survivors to increase the chances of survival.
* Once resolved the immediate emergency, they will try to restore the technology, starting with the basic things, and dropping the computer technology. Libraries will be important centres of culture, and begin the recovery of lost technologies.
* After many years, the world is divided between tribal societies, and small territories administered with the recovered technologies. With the restoring of small power grids, some data centers are restored, and with them the knowledge within.
**Soft impact**
Adults have the time to organize the generational. The story takes a completely different twist. The technology is slightly worse than ours, but dies only 1/4 of the survivors. There will be power struggles, many enclaves cities will be destroyed by internal and/or external struggles, but eventually the technology will not be lost, and the world will enter a phase of history similar to the Renaissance.
**So, do you think that the story, as written here, is realistic, or at least plausible?**
[Answer]
You would be surprised how long (or better, how short) the electricity grid would work without any adult "supervision". No adults to schedule and run trains to deliver coal to power stations and supervise them. Within days, all technology will collapse, and life would off-the-grid mostly.
Industrial feeding plants growing pigs and chicken would collapse (who would know how to feed 50K pigs? And would that teenager be sober enough to do it?)
**Within few days looters and warring gangs would start taking over shops and food resources.** Without electricity, fresh food will spoil in days, and there would not be anyone to restock the shelves. **Best prepared for such violence (and still alive) would be drug dealers.** So "civilized" parts of the world would be run by drug dealers within a week. Obviously not for long. Those are **not exactly the people interested in long-term planning,** or survival of the community. Those areas would collapse faster.
Better chance for surviving humanity would be in backward agrarian societies using very few technologies, but able to grow their own food. Even if much knowledge would be lost, those communities would be able to survive to the next harvest.
**Military campuses is our best chance in civilized areas**. Young (<21), with experience to efficiently obey orders, and most importantly **skilled in the application of violence** young military is our best chance to fight off gangs and preserve humanity. If geeks in cities will be smart, they would join forces with them. If not, they will lose to gangs.
Also, young military recruits **know each other and trust each other** so they would be much more effective in applying **more effective weapons they already have**, so they do have a chance to preserve humanity in some areas (rest would go down in war between gangs). They also have the training to understand **what is defensible position, how to prepare and hold one, and how important is not to overstretch your forces - all that geeks would have to learn by trial and error (and pay by blood for lessons learned).**
Now, if radiation, a virus, or magic keeps killing those over 21, humanity is almost certainly doomed. If woman's fertility starts at 14 and last to 21, it is not enough to replace population with high mortality (because most knowledge about surviving will be lost), and there is not enough time to pass those little bits of knowledge.
OP edited his question: **kill-everyone-over-21 is one-time affair**
(if virus would keep killing people over 21, simple agrarian societies with big amount of population under 21 (which can recover faster) would be able even to preserve some of the lost knowledge. But it is not the case).
Military training campuses with biggest concentration of the survivors (<21) would create protected areas. They would make some raids to save younger relatives, but likely would realize the futility, and just adopted youngsters from neighborhood without parents. Effective agriculture would have to be developed quickly. **More than geeks, skilled craftsmen and repair technicians would be lured and provided protection.** Because young lack skill and training to use modern technology (and more important **keep it going - making all required maintenance would be impossible with lacking tools and network of supplies** ), they would **re-develop steam-age technology to provide power for agriculture,** and reboot. Would be lots of back-breaking work, because productivity would decrease substantially. First 3-5 years would be the hardest, with huge mortality, especially children (medicine will fall apart).
After some stabilization, in a year or two (when agriculture is established and more productive), such commune might start to think about acquiring and preserving the knowledge. Surviving geeks will be invited (if they have skills), remnants of libraries saved, education established. It will be all printed on paper. People will be asked to write knowledge they recall. If we are lucky, some geeks survive to be able to restart some servers and get wikipedia and other digital resources. Not internet tho - it would not be necessary for small local communes.
I expect having steam-engine level technology within 10 years. With enough increase of productivity that "the elders" (aged 12-21 during the plague) may have time to recall knowledge and teach younger generation. **Now all the surviving geeks will be very valuable**. With printing press found in museums, printing books and learning is popular again. Small local and city/county museums and antique shops, preserving 19th century technology, would be more valuable than Google server farm. Such enclaves will start building city-states and even possible war for resources.
On each continent there would be dozens such enclaves, each around some pre-existing military training facility in a rural area, and some rural areas based on religion (like Mormons). I don't think that police in cities would be as effective in preserving humanity, for few reasons:
* worse neighborhood (drug gangs are closer)
* focus on preserving all (this would be a disadvantage - you have resources to preserve only your own tribe: people whom you trust and who will not betray you)
* less available agricultural resources (you need to start growing your own food, fast)
* with all that non-allied people, it is harder to establish your own protected territory.
But with Marines in charge, and young women not dying (being able to take care of newborn children and educate them), humanity would survive. **Don't aim to revive computer revolution - industrial revolution will be just fine** This time around, it will take less time to get from there to here.
**Some final comments to final edit of original question** (which is rather close to my answer :-)
* Gangs would get established fast but will not last because **gangs are not productive** - they are predatory, cannot produce and create values, **cannot set up fair and just agriculture/manufacturing farm where everyone contributes and benefits.** My bet is on military campuses (colleges and training camps), which also have better weapons.
* Many young people trained in crafts will be able to fix leaking pipes, cars and other simpler technology (not chip manufacturing). At 21 you may have associate degree and 2 years of field experience. Maybe a car with loudspeaker can invite people who want protection and honest work to your protected farm. You also need to design program to evaluate newcomers and even banish freeloaders (and have military protection of your farm). Yes, you may have to **kill other tribes who want to eat from your fields.**
* I don't expect much from theocratic communities. (A) all authority figures would disappear, but mostly (B) it is about solving practical problems of survival, not spiritual: [Maslow's hierarchy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) and if they form, there would be no difference from military: protect your farm from scavengers, only then you can provide care for soul.
* **"Dark Ages" would not last 1000 years.** Smart communities can start steam age technologies within 10 years by scavenging materials (and they don't have to invent unknown stuff, just learn it from books), it is safe to assume reaching current level of technology in the same 300 years or less. In fact, **I expect 1900-level technology within 100 years:** reverse-engineer stuff found in museum or some farm.
* **Within first year there would be rush to save books from local public libraries,** school libraries, universities (protect them from destruction by gangs) and **establish written laws**. Books are more usable than internet, and all that info is on paper which would last some 100 years. Another good resource would be technical museums (if not destroyed by gangs): **good old printing press and steam locomotive**
* Another good resource worth fighting for would be warehouses, especially of **office equipment and supplies like paper** (to preserve knowledge). Food would be looted and/or destroyed/spoils first, before situation stabilized.
* Don't get too obsessed about clean technologies. We have enough coal, and there would be less humans to support and with simpler needs. We need energy.
* **Politics will be established immediately** (you need representatives to self-govern big communities) and even if voting age will decrease to maybe 15, when elders are not dying it will be push to set it back. **Within decade, diplomacy, deceptions and wars will start** (each community protecting own interests) by force if necessary. It's your choice if we keep old constitution or try something new, but you need laws to govern people.
* Worst loss would be in medicine, because by 21 you still know very little, and to be effective you need advanced manufacturing and materials, all requiring lost skills.
[Answer]
Have you ever dreamed of a world with no politicians or lawyers? Well, you just got your wish.
And now the bad news. You also suddenly got a world with almost no police, firefighters, engineers, doctors, surgeons, investigators, garbage collectors, electrical linemen, power plant operators, etc.
You also got rid of generals, presidents, governors, warlords, and mafia dons - simultaneously. All primary authority figures are gone now - and this includes parents of most children over the age of 5 (assuming all kids were had by mothers at 16 - which is not a great assumption).
According to [world census data](http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/broker) as of 2010 (rounded figures), 7 billion people on earth will drop to 600 million children aged 0-4 (some of whom will have a parent or two), 600 million children aged 5-9 most of whom will have no living parents (we'll call this the new "working class"), 600 million children aged 10-14 with no living parents (the new young adults), and another maybe 1 billion 15-21 year olds who are now "the elders". That's more than half the world population gone, and roughly 3 out of 4 people will have no living parents.
Good god, this is going to get ugly. If everyone died quickly with no preparation, forget about trying to rebuild society after a few years - that's when the worst of the pestilence, disease, and starvation will likely start to kick in as preserved foods are used up and everyone tries to figure out how to feed themselves with fishing, farming, and hunting. I hope the few who know how to do that teach others in a hurry.
The good news is when this happens pretty much all wars and armed conflicts in the world will momentarily halt. With no one in charge and the fighting forces surely wanting to return home to take care of their orphan younger children, at least that'll go away for a while.
Say, come to think of it, what kind of organization is really resilient against decapitation - removal of its leaders? This is when things could get really, really bad - street gangs may see their leaders (many in prison) die, but there is always a flush of young ambitious lieutenants who want to take over. With the sudden collapse of most economies, rolling blackouts, and mass failure of communication systems (they'd better have some way more awesome robots and power/communication automation in 2045 than we've discussed), gang life will probably be the new high life.
If history is any judge, with the old leaders gone there could be new waves of intensifying violence as aspiring leaders try to dominate and secure precious resources for their bands - food, guns, ammo, companionship, water, etc.
Elsewhere there will need to be militias that form in communities of survivors to protect themselves from less fortunate raiders and the new rising gangs. As existing resources are used up and any remaining working sources of food/energy production become high prizes, power grabs, desperation, and greed become the new horsemen of the apocalypse. With most advanced medical practitioners gone and new disease and pestilence surely rising in the wake of all this mass death and following destruction, things will go from bad to worse.
Resurrect society in 10 years? I'd be optimistic to think we'd even be able to hope for a state of "not immediately facing death, starvation, and destruction" within 20-100 years. Things would stabilize, but the loss of all formal education, training, parenting, accumulated wealth, societal structure, and institutional knowledge from the apocalypse isn't going to rebuild quickly. Advancement is going to take a lot, lot longer - prioritization means most "we don't need this right now" tech and practices may just be forgotten entirely.
How would such a fledgling new world be structured?
Well, I would suggest we consider what groups would be in a position to function with their established leadership gone. I'd point to tight-knit rural/farming communities who don't rely much on external support anyway and who would form loyal militias the easiest (many of whom are already trained with guns and farm practices anyway), street gangs and similar organized crime syndicates who are highly resilient to disruption as it is nowadays, and various religious groups as they focus so strongly on education/indoctrination and tradition from a very young age.
I'd thus posit the rise of Militias, Gangs, and Theocratic Communities (who'd still have their holy books and memory of their parents traditions, and who don't really rely on specialists all that much) as the sets of people who are most able to gain power and attain stability in this post-apocalyptic world. Politics would immediately press into existence alliances of smaller groups to depend on larger groups, Gangs would often conflict with each other while occasionally negotiating cease-fires and arrangements that would leave them free to expand in other ways, and Theocrats would vary widely in whether they sought to expand or just defend their own existence and driving off outsiders who do not share what will surely become increasingly strange in their unique new orthodoxy's (often driven by necessity to adapt to this new world). Cults may become widespread and may be sources of alternating security/hope and horror/depravity.
Child labor will have to become the norm, as the world simply won't be able to pull so much dead weight with most of the working world just falling over dead. Adjustment will be painful, and subsistence will become most people's primary goal for many years.
I'd be very surprised if after the 60% extinction apocalypse if even half of the remaining young people could make it to the new adulthood. I don't know that there'd be enough food or resources or non-polluted/diseased areas to support them.
For real-world inspiration for how events might unfold, consider the world post World Wars and particularly bad Civil Wars. The problem is that, in all these cases, there were relatively unaffected parts of the world that could help rebuild and modernize the destroyed parts. Consider Sierra Leon for what might begin to happen with no government; consider also the rise of the Ku Klux Klan after the US civil war and reconstruction (these are both excellent examples of militias, new warlords, and the harshness of societal change).
What you posit, though, is a hell of a lot worse than all these past historic events, because it is so evenly and thoroughly horrific and is perhaps ideally constructed to wipe out government, authority, and most existing societal structures. I'd put it on par with mass-extinction events, and you'd be hard-pressed to stretch it into a scenario were spirals of terrible events didn't occur post-apocalypse. Heck, I think the people who'd die from the initial event might be the lucky ones.
If you want something less drastic, I'd recommend something that isn't so quickly lethal. Give the existing 21+ people a chance to realize their inevitable fate and try to attempt some sort of Herculean effort of providing a less sudden hand-off. Give them a time to get their affairs in order, institute a sudden youth-training program, make arrangements for soon-to-be-orphans, attempt to preserve instructions and manuals on how things work, stockpile resources, and put in place a new system of organization and authority. Even a year might be enough to at least stave off some of the worst and most dramatic losses - even if it just could try to limit the loss of utilities, power, communication, food, and accumulated written/video knowledge. Even if things went to hell anyway, major disasters could be avoided like gas explosions, sudden dam failures, nuclear weapon loss/explosions, chemical/biological weapon and disease containment, immediate waves of starvation, etc.
Even then, I'd consider the destabilizing effects of doing mostly the same general thing, but with also a sort of Old World Order (with perhaps military becoming the new police) in some prioritized areas where it was possible to retain order. Things might stay a little more stable for longer, but there is no way such a sudden loss of structure, power, and order isn't going to set off waves of fragmentation eventually. If you can't count on the old government you are going to need to turn to something - crime/gangs, militia/community alliances, religion, etc.
[Answer]
"This is the last time you laugh at me, you wrinkly-faced DEAD man!" cried Havok at the bar-tender who refused him service, before heading home and getting working on his **bio-mimetic nano-machine-fueled revenge**.
In retrospect, historians consider that Linus Gates' decision to release the source-code for the 3D biofabricator freely on the net was "Like, incredibly dumb, you know," and "LFMAO stupid" and "Epic Fail!"
Regardless, in a few weeks Havok had a customized nanovirus, reading telomere length, killing anyone id-ed as over 21, and effectively stopping biological aging for anyone below that age. As historians put it, "Yeah, pretty wicked smart. LULZ." He used his position in a brand new iVRLens factory to sprinkle his deadly dust on the cover of the much-coveted product, just in time for the Christmas sales of 3 billion units.
As all the 21+ adults died horribly on New Year's Eve, the complacent gen ZZ survivors were too high to notice anything happened for a few days. After thoroughly raiding liquor stores around the nation, **nature took its course** and the entitled brats started dying off in their millions, splitting into warring bands and descending into **an adolescent violent fantasy world**.
The survivors **initially looked to the active armed forces**, such as the Marines, but lacking leadership, with an effective surviving strength below 40,000 spread across North America, and without their maintenance engineers and their extensive supply chains, the Marines were slowly on their way to becoming just another (better organized) gang, until thankfully they were recruited by Anonymous (see below).
Eventually, order in the HKTFCONAFTA (Humbly Kow-Towing and Fully Chinese Owned North American Free Trade Area) was restored by the Fraternal Anonymous Coalition, comprising students from a **loose alliance of US Technical and Military colleges**, led by MIT, West Point and Caltech, who **hacked into and took over the sun-powered EyeSky Defensive Drone Grid**. After defeating and exterminating Mara Salvatrucha and other gangs, Anonymous went on to impose a ruthless technocracy that lasted for over 30 years (before the Singularity finally kicked in and Havok's next creation, the aptly named SuperEvilAI killed off all the survivors in the process of turning the planet into paperclips -- just kidding).
---
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:
**Europe**'s population was cut down by 4/5th as the elders clawed futilely at their eyes. Left without water and food supplies, the few unarmed survivors are at the mercy of roaming Albanian, neo-Viking and Roma gangs. 95% of survivors are dead before Spring. By the end of the next year, Europe is a depopulated wasteland, with organized enclaves of survivors in Ireland and the rural areas of France and Eastern Europe.
**South Sudan** As all the tribal elders die, there is a bit of disruption before the eldest surviving sons reestablish firm control. Pastoral life goes on much as before.
**Japan** The Machine Overseer AIs (監督機) detect a sudden drop in their elderly population. They react by reducing GDP allocations to nursing homes to 0, bringing Japan's budget out of deficit for the first time in a half-century. The unemployed robonurses are deployed to safeguard the 1% of the pre-event population under the age of 5. Robo-Police are deployed on the streets to prevent looting or littering, and arrange proper funerals for the 100 million bodies. Electric services, water and whaling continue unabated.
**Kuwait** With the trade system eliminated, the water desalinization plants offline, 99.5% of the initial survivors die of thirst and hunger before the year is out.
**Israel** The dazed Israeli survivors blink once, twice, utter "shlimazel", then proceed to continue to direct their eternal war with Palestine-ISIS from their bunkers, as above ground their respective gamma-ray robots continue the fight over the desolated sun and laser scorched holy land.
[Answer]
It appears that I'm late to the party. I think it would realistically be less optimistic than to allow internet access and the like. Let's answer this question with a few lists:
**General characteristics of people younger than 21**
* Higher propensity for activism
+ Unstable organizations
+ Less hierarchical organizations
* More liberal thought
* The oldest tend to be in charge
* Nobody owns/has owned land
* Little leadership experience
* Little work experience
* High rates of dependence
**Given parameters and parameter effects on the young population**
* All adults die horrific deaths because of fallout
+ High tolerance for death
* 2045 is more technologically advanced than present day
+ High dependence on technology
* (Assumed) People aged 21 and younger are very similar to present day youth
+ Unless the youth can quickly produce a food surplus (improbable in the wake of the technology splurge), most would resort to hunting (and later farming) instead of scholarship at first. This doesn't account for the fact that the youth may just run themselves into the ground looking to technology as an answer.
+ Many details of history (greater than 21 years) would be temporarily forgotten (and may be warped to legend) until things are set straight by scholars years later
* Virtually nobody knows how to run a factory or repair technology.
* People don't outwardly age
**Predictions about the year 2045**
* The US government predicts that the population age 21 and younger will be 2.75 billion people, about the same as the total population of the year 1950 [(Source)](http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/broker)
* Technology dependence greater than today
* Non-intelligent machines
* Before the technological singularity (Machines won't repair themselves)
Now let's run these lists against what we think we know about the progression of society and imagine a working scenario:
**Year 1 - Post-apocalyptic**
* Most of the infrastructure is down, and possible broken (plumbing, electricity, roads)
* There is no organized government
* Much of the remaining population dies from hunger and disease. For arguments sake, let's say half is gone
+ There are 2-3 bodies per remaining person, and only a small fragment will be disposed correctly. This would cause a lot of disease for those remaining.
+ The food on the shelves will be gone in weeks, and most crops will be dead without anyone that knows how to tend them. **Think of the dust bowl**
* The only thing that would remain are gangs
* The 21 year olds are freaking out about dying
* High infant mortality rates mean few new babies are being born
**Year 10 - Tribal**
* The oldest may have realized they don't age, and now they think they're immortal
* "Tribes" of people are formed with primitive leadership out of necessity for food and protection from gangs
* Bartering common
* High rate of uprising
* Some agriculture, but mostly scavenging and hunting
* Most "tribes" would have at least one person that figured out technology and machinery
**Year 30 - Agricultural**
* + The actual age of the surviving population is around 40 years old, so young families will be common (baby boom)
* It may be a little generous, but with access to all of the information in all of the libraries, I think that the civilization would be able to farm moderately using electric machinery (Solar powered).
* Many of the tribes have joined to form villages and small cities. This would allow for government and infrastructure.
* People have now started to trust each other enough to build infrastructure
* Time not seen as a resource because nobody has died of old-age and everyone looks young
* There will be primitive understanding of electronics as a whole
* Unable to use readily accessible fossil fuels, old clean energy sources will have been rebooted to start manufacturing new energy sources
**Year 100 - Industrial and Technological**
* When people realize that brains get old and people die, things will progress again.
* Clean-energy factories will be built (probably out of old buildings
* The general surplus of food allows cities to be built
* The youngest survivors from Year 1 will die of old age
* Ageism will be a thing of the past (Especially for those age 21 and older)
This will probably never be read, but I had fun answering it.
[Answer]
First off, please please please choose something other than a "special type of radiation" from an "unstable nuclear reactor prototype" that caused a "sympathetic detonation" of all nuclear power plants. I almost stopped reading after that point... then realized the whole point of this forum is to give useful feedback.
My guess is that your point isn't so much "radiation kills adults" as it is "nobody lives to be an adult," in which case I'd recommend having a bio-electrical nanobot accident that targets people whose is the perfect breeding ground but doesn't develop to the right maturity until a certain age.
One more note is that you say the internet still works but phones don't. Firstly, they run on nearly the same systems nowadays, so really that's not an issue. However, since the nuclear power plants died, many data centers are going to be offline (after their local backups fail). When those die, any other servers relying on them will start to stray and soon die. Keep in mind that the internet isn't a thing you can set up and forget - it requires varying levels of maintenance by every individual organization on the internet. It WILL start failing fairly quickly. Not to mention that, when the adults died, they took with them the passwords to get into the various servers and server rooms to do maintenance.
But to get to your real question... In the near term, you'll have issues with procreation since young people are more at risk of having issues than people in their 20s. You'll also have the hormone-induced interpersonal drama without any adults to help temper it, so you'll likely quickly have factions form, some of which potentially going to war. It won't be until age 26 or so that the less-aggressive ones can start coming back together.
Since their bodies aren't aging, they'll need some way to distinguish their age (or, as they'll perceive it, their intelligence/seniority), which may be in the form of ranks or shirts with their age written on it.
In the end, though, society would revert to the old-west era of America until the adults' wisdom is recaptured. Except that they'd have a lot more technology that they don't understand and can't fix.
[Answer]
Most likely, it would be highschool, but the world, at least in the beginning, the first 2 or 3 years. You would have almost tribal societies fighting for control of whatever resources there were left, with those in power struggling to maintain control over groups of forever hormonal and unstable people until everyone either came to terms with the fact that society before was gone or was dead. Communication networks and systems would be down, but because of renewable energy, vehicles would be able to continue function. Farming would grow quickly as a source of food with small groups out scavenging for canned goods and other resources. Communities would also be attacked by groups of roaming teenagers for resources or just simply for the fun of it. The population would grow quickly as well, because we all know what happens when you leave teenagers alone in a house for a few hours. Imagine after they're traumatized, extremely stressed, depressed, and there's no one to say "no."
After that they would form, small factions, clans, and so and so, and they would slowly keep growing, until they built large trade networks among themselves. The trade networks would then require communication networks to function properly. This would mean digital libraries and stuff like that would basically become priceless, and become the equivalent to the legends of hidden caves filled with treasure. Basically, these now large factions would have groups of people researching what data they've found and groups of people hunting for old computers. Just because the internet is down, that doesn't mean the data can't be accessed physically. Those nomadic groups would either become huge or be killed off quickly. Leaders would also have to be elected to control these factions. As resources became more scarce, you would have wars breaking out for control of scavenging grounds, digital libraries, communication systems, and farm land. This would be about 10 to 15 years in.
After that, these trade networks would slowly combine factions into become nation-states, like Ancient Greece, with a central form of government. These would become more and more powerful as time went on, with those ever-present and annoying bands of nomads raiding small cities for supplies and providing mercenary services for fighting states. Among the states that had alliances, communications networks and solar/wind farms would be restored by small groups who would reside at the top of the hierarchy, just under government officials. As communication is restored, there would be a boom in trade as safer transport routes were implemented and civilians could travel more easily between cities. At this point, it's 20 to 25 years in, and everyone from the original incident has reached their 21 year old "cap."
From there, communications between nation-states would be implemented. Nomad attacks would be rare. Farming would be industrialized, with whole cities dedicated to farming and feeding people. Digital libraries would decrease in value.
If you're looking for more information on how the social dynamic might look in the beginning few years, read the "Quarantine" trilogy by Lex Thomas and "The Enemy" trilogy by Charlie Higson.
If you're looking for more info on how rebuilding society might work and the timeline, read "The White Flag Of The Dead" series by Joseph Talluto.
And in my opinion, if you're looking to make a good action RPG, I'd set it within the 10 to 15 year range, where you could build an interesting dynamic and watch as the cities developed into nation-states. You can fit a lot of action into fighting for resources and knowledge, and a great story line into watching as nation-states grew.
Hope this helps! :)
[Answer]
First problem, phones and internet work on the same systems. If one doesn't work the other won't either. And both need people to keep them running, power sources and maintenance etc.
Peak oil only means that there is not as much oil able to be produced to meet the demand. This does not mean we've run out.
Radiation that kills would most likely be much more damaging to the young and growing than to the older people.
Blowing up all the nuclear plants on the planet (even sympathetically...) would not have near the juice needed to kill even the vast majority of the people living on the planet. I'm guessing the death toll in the millions, not even the billions. This is already ignoring your magic 'sympathy' and 'special radiation'.
Now if you are just wanting ideas about a society run by the young, you have the Lord of the Flies, and there is a Star Trek episode where a virus slows aging until puberty and then it accelerates and they die shortly after.
You also have things like Logan's Run where people are 'elevated' when they turn 30 (killed off for population control)
The biggest would be we would lose lots of experience, knowledge and wisdom that would take decades to get back.
[Answer]
**DISCLAIMER**: I'm here because [This Question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/82799/everybody-over-the-age-of-15-suddenly-dies-what-happens) was marked as duplicate of this; I do not agree because there are several differences, including "max age" and "transient effect" that may impact significantly, so I'm not fully sure my Answer will be significant here.
I am not going to give a detailed outline of what it may happen after everybody over 15 suddenly dies, just some food for thought:
* As @Serban Tanasa pointed out the effect will be profoundly different depending on culture and economic model; Technologically advanced nations will be impacted most (I do not think Japan will manage to continue working in fully automated way; see next point), while pastoral/agricultural(old-style, non intensive) will fare way better, after all 15-year-old boys are considered adult there.
* Electricity will be gone world-wide in matter of hours (or less). Given the current status of grid and plants at the first non-corrected anomaly some central would get overuse and thus go in emergency power-down, this would reflect negatively on other neighboring plants till the whole grid is down (it really happened a few years ago in Italy, they were without power for over a day in the whole nation before they could *begin* to restore power). Power restore will not happen automatically.
* Even with reduced population food reserves in large cities would last just a few weeks. Consider that no electrical power means no refrigerators. There would be scavenging, but that won't last long.
* No adults (in a sudden catastrophe) means virtually no transportation (underdeveloped countries might fare better, for several reasons).
* Food production tends to be concentrated in relatively small spots and food industry relies heavily on transportation.
* Even if youngsters manage to keep some of the farms going (and to defend them) they are in for some nasty surprises: in most places seed won't germinate, since a vast majority of seeds come from seed-industries and those seed will *not* produce fertile plants.
* No electricity means no computers and too many youngsters simply do not know how to dig information from printed paper (no stackexchange.com, sorry!). In this case underdeveloped countries would fare worse than "technological" ones.
* Drugs and medication (contrary to common knowledge) are useful long after their expiration date and thus could last much longer, but there will be virtually none knowing how to use them.
* In the "sudden death" of all adults scenario there would be a lot of corpses to dispose of, especially in large cities. Diseases during the transition would be terrible.
* Mortality for youngest (<5y) children would be very high.
* Most of our machinery is not built to last long and often cannot be repaired at all. Even if some island manages somehow to retain power (I think some real island outfitted with wind + photo voltaic generators like I saw in some of the smaller Aegean islands) they would have very hard time to keep things going for medium-long period. Again underdeveloped countries, being the dump of "old" technology, would fare much better.
* In few months there would be a population drop down to medieval level (rough estimate is no more than 20% of the people surviving the "catastrophe" would be alive after a year).
* Residual population will need to regroup in small communities inevitably around a "strong man" of some sort. None will be in condition to survive alone or in small groups.
* Some groups could form around some kind of "natural resources" (e.g.: large stashes of food, military bases, plants of some sort, isolated farms, etc.). Some of this could try to preserve knowledge, taking the place of medieval Monasteries. In that context finding a copy of the original "Encyclopédie" would be very interesting.
* It would be a lot of years before the survivors would feel sure enough to try to restore technology; at that point lot will depend on what has been preserved in the meantime, both as machinery and as materials. The latter are particularly important because all natural sources readily available are depleted since decades, if not centuries (we still mine copper... 600meters underground, oil is not much easier to reach; it is better with coal, in some regions).
* Firearms and weapons will be still very easy to find and, generally, in good shape... for people who will learn to spare ammo, which will be, for a long period, a non renewable resource.
* Wildlife would flourish, but biodiversity will be limited and striking a "natural balance" might be problematic. Most of domesticated animals are simply unfit to live without human help. In this case the underdeveloped countries would probably be better equipped to exterminate the local fauna before dropping to a sustainable number.
* As said possible restoration of "civilization" in general and transportation in particular will depend heavily on how long the struggle not to become extinct will prolong and how much is preserved through it. First long distance commerce might well be via caravans.
* Knowledge would not be lost, since it is copied in too many places, even in paper form. Missing materials and tools will be the challenge, possibly shaping a very different "technology".
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[Question]
[
A spacecraft designed for interstellar travel is discovered 100 million years later. What pieces of it still work, what parts would be easily repairable, and what would still be even vaguely recognizably intact? Alternatively, if nothing would work, what percentage of the ship would even be left (after sublimation to the vacuum, bombardment of micrometeorites, etc.)?
Key pieces I'm wondering about:
* The hull (how intact would it be?)
* Macro-electronic components such as sensors, lasers, or other instruments
* Micro-electronic components, such as CPUs, RAM
* Digital data storage (reasonably shielded optical storage)
* Physical data storage (printed signage, physical books, engraved plaques)
* Thrusters ([antimatter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_rocket) or [ion thrusters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster))
**Assumptions**
* This spaceship is designed with a technology level several hundred years in advance of what we have now (advanced enough to be able to do interstellar travel). In order to avoid the answer being "it depends on what your technology looks like", I'll make the known incorrect assumption that technology of the future looks like the present but with more energy efficiency, energy density, and precision manufacturing. So fusion power works, electronics have the same principles but are smaller, any material that we can make now at enormous expense (including moderate quantities of anti-matter) can be made fairly cheaply, etc.
* The spaceship is adrift in interstellar space. It doesn't crash into anything large, but will go through a nebula at some point. A [recent projection](https://www.space.com/predicting-voyager-golden-records-distant-future) of the courses of the voyager spacecraft indicate they are won't crash into things for at least 5 billion years, and that the golden records will still be somewhat playable after that time, so I expect the ship to still be intact, but there will be a lot of contact with lose particles and whatever energies and radiation the ship is exposed to.
* The spaceship was designed for interstellar travel and a 100-year service life but did not have any particular types of [longevity engineering](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RagnarokProofing).
* All electronics have reasonable degrees of magnetic shielding and durability to meet the intended 100-year interstellar service life of the ship. Their digital storage would be a material that combines the durability of optical storage with the read/write speed of solid state storage.
* The people discovering this spaceship are willing to put a lot of effort into getting it working again.
* The ship ran out of power slowly and in a non-hazardous manner (ex. no antimatter containment breach).
* The spaceship is vaguely cylindrical, 1km long and 100m in diameter.
* The spaceship doesn't have crew for most (if not almost all) of the intervening time interval.
[Answer]
I think almost all of the spaceship will survive.
If it is travelling for a hundred million years at 1% of light speed it can get half the way to the Andromeda galaxy. Most of its flight will be spent far from any risk of micrometeorites. It will only meet the occasional hydrogen atom per cubic centimetre. Intergalactic space has to be pretty empty for us to see all the way back to the early universe.
The materials may degrade. However, we look at rocks that are 4 billion years old and try and deduce things from tiny features within them. Materials do degrade slowly at room temperature, but once the spaceship is in deep space, it will cool to the background temperature of 2.7 Kelvin. Almost nothing happens to materials at that temperature.
If it is not dead, the spacecraft may want to know where it is going. It might use could have a computer based on Josephson junction logic. This could operate happily at 2.7 Kelvin. The memory would be based on flux quanta, so would not degrade like normal magnetic memory either. It could use solar power using a telescope. This would be enough for the tiny amounts of power it might need to keep a clock running while it waited to get somewhere.
There might be a tiny amount of wear on exposed surfaces. If it had a camera, it would probably stow it so the optics kept their exact surface. The ship might lose a tiny amount of matter from the atoms it meets: the atoms are probably going quite fast relative to it, and this might sputter away a small amount of material in the large times.
[Answer]
**Time is relative.**
You may simply assume that the spaceship flew close to the speed of light (relative to the planets your people are living on) through a rather empty part of the universe (so it won't collide with anything) when suddenly everyone aboard died (or for some reason left the ship).
Afterwards, with no control inputs, the ship may simply have continued to fly in the same direction for some decades (shipboard time) and then, after some time, for some reason, an autopilot may have intervened, sending the ship back from whence it came, again at nearly the speed of light, making it fly back for some decades (proper time on the planets).
When the ship was back about where it started its journey, the autopilot may have decelerated it to slow speeds with respect to the planets your people are on, so your people can capture it.
Because the situation isn't symmetrical - the ship accelerates and decelerates, the planets don't - the amounts of time that passed on the ship and the planets (proper time) can differ, and just like in the twin paradox, the proper time having passed on the ship actually is far less than the proper time having passed on your planets, **so while hundreds of millions of years passed on the planets, only decades passed on the ship, leaving it fully functional.**
However, you'll have to explain how the ship manages to accelerate to such high speeds (which costs humongous amounts of energy), to which I would answer **antimatter as fuel** (which can be converted to light, which can theoretically as "exhaust" at the speed of light bring a ship as close to the speed of light as needed).
Some estimates for the actual numbers:
(Working in the frame of the planets, and using $m$ for the frame invariant [mass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HlCfwEduqA))
Computing the speed (relative to the planets) neccessary:
$\frac{\Delta t}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}=10^7\Delta t$
(So we expect time to be $10^7$ times slower on the spaceship relative to time on the planets.)
Thus equivalently:
$\gamma:=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}=10^{7}$
($\gamma$ is a quantity known as the relativistic factor, see for example [here](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-physics/chapter/28-5-relativistic-momentum/))
We have for the total energy (relative to the reference frame of the planets, by the formulas [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93momentum_relation) and [here](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-physics/chapter/28-5-relativistic-momentum/)):
$E=\sqrt{(pc)^2+(mc^2)^2}=\sqrt{(\gamma m v c)^2+(mc^2)^2}\approx\sqrt{(10^7 m c^2)^2+(mc^2)^2}\approx 10^7mc^2=10^7E\_0$
Thus, even when working with antimatter, the spaceship would have to "convert" at least $10^7$ times its (empty) rest mass of matter and antimatter 100% efficiently to momentum in order to reach that required speed once, and at least $10^{14}$ times as much in order to reach it twice, because the fuel for the second acceleration has to be accelerated too. Decelerations might be a problem, too, although one might be able to use huge sail-like structures capturing blueshifted background radiation or hydrogen atoms or something similar to decelerate at such high speeds (working out how that would function is left as an exercise to the reader).
This means by far most of the spaceships mass has to be fuel.
Thus does not necessarily tell you that much about the volume, because some "types" of matter (e.g. [neutronium](https://www.google.com/search?q=neutronium%20density)) have much larger densities than others.
Actually $1cm^3$ neutronium already weighs about as much as $10^{14}cm^3$ of water.
[Answer]
100 million years? I think the spacecraft would be non-existent.
Why?
So, the primary drivers of corrosion are oxygen and water - and okay these don't exist in space...
But let's consider the 2 scenarios for your craft:
1. It's drifting through space *or*
2. It's in a stable orbit around something
In both of those scenarios, the 3 biggest factors that would (over such a long time frame) cause issues will be:
* Unfiltered radiation. Without an atmosphere, all those ionizing particles given off by stars and other cosmic phenomena would slowly eat away at the hull. Think of how plastics break down when exposed to sunlight, only 10x worse (no atmosphere) and over that 100 million year timeframe.
* micrometeorites. Think specks of dust travelling very fast - they hit the hull, they might only knock off a few atoms - but run that process multiple times a day, for 100 million years - that's 36.5 billion days. Over that much time they will weaken the hull to the point it fails
* Metal fatigue from extreme temperature gradients. If we are in orbit around a planet or a star or we are just drifting casually, when we encounter something hot, the metal will expand, then it will cool down, it will contract - this is a major cause of metal fatigue in the real world and 100 million years is a long time for that to happen again and again and again and eventually fail.
That said...
If we drop our timeframes down a bit to something more reasonable (maybe 10-100 thousand years) and we place the spacecraft somewhere where it's relatively stable, shielded from radiation, not subject to any massive temperature changes (so not near a star) and has probably in orbit around a very large heavenly body that would shield it from most of the dust/meteorites etc. - then so long as the hull remains *mostly* intact (it doesn't even need to remain pressurized) - then I think you've got a good chance at having most major systems repairable - but once the hull goes, you're not going to have much luck.
[Answer]
Earth is a spaceship, isn't it?
As far as we know, it works pretty well and it is already well past 100 million years of age.
In short, if intended, the spaceship can be made to survive this long. It is a matter of resources and an ability of dynamic self-repair (any big project implies the latter anyway).
On the other hand, if the particular piece of work is NOT intended to last this long (e.g. like modern cars or airplanes whose intended lifespan is in sync with the technology advance that makes them obsolete), there will be no much parts in working order.
In regard to nebulae:
The spacecraft will probably slow down in the nebula, probably to the point of becoming at rest in respect to the surrounding matter.
Depending on the initial conditions, it may:
* completely disintegrate (high initial speed). A strong enough shock wave may even trigger a star formation.
* survive relatively intact, in which case it will start to aggregate the surrounding nebula particles. Depending on conditions, it may become an asteroid, a rogue planet or a star.
[Answer]
**No parts will survive 100 million years**
Others have mentioned micrometeors, radiation and thermal drift. But on such a long time-scales there is another issue: radioactive decay. It is practically impossible to produce any element with only one isotope, so all those radioactive isotopes will decay in 100 million years. And even some (small) parts of non-radioactive elements will decay. Half life of those isotopes is suppose to be of the order of 10^25, which is a lot. But 100 million years is a long time, and a spaceship is massive. So some atoms will decay, probably into something radioactive, which will decay further. That will wreak havoc on any complex mechanism, and possibly compromise hull itself (which would make previously external hazards worse).
[Answer]
## Frame Challenge 1: You don't really need 100,000,000 years
For the sake of your story, is there any particular reason that drives the number of 100 million? What you probably mean is "long enough for the civilization that built it to be dead and gone," or some other *qualitative* measure. Human civilization could **easily** have been wiped out with the nuclear weapons in the Cold War era. We could be wiped out tomorrow, and Voyager would be less than 40 years old. Imho, letting the POV cast (and reader) know that "the ship is ancient, and this is what works" is sufficient. **Use a qualitative measure of time, not a quantitative one.**
## Frame Challenge 2: The parts (probably) don't actually need to work
Unless you need to get your people off a doomed planet in a matter of months (my apologies if this is the case), it's not necessary that any part of the ship is truly functional. Even if not fully replicable, the bits of technology in good enough shape to reverse engineer would provide hundreds of years of technological advance in a few short years. There might be a couple of key hints today that are barely holding back quantum computing, or efficient anti-matter generation. **The important thing is what can be learned.** To that end, resilient [diamond data storage](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-use-diamonds-store-data-180960932/) containing technical and scientific encyclopedias could be the most useful thing your characters find, if all else is unsalvageable.
A parting encouragement: Don't let the impulse to have all technical details correct get in the way of writing the story you want to tell. Let some things go and enjoy the ride :)
[Answer]
Two options: build the spacecraft from [unobtainium](https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/unobtainium), which will last as long as your story requires; or make the spacecraft a living thing, which builds copies of itself as often as needed. Of course you'll get mutations, which could fit into your story.
[Answer]
Given your constrains of:
* ship was designed to last 100 years with crew;
* ship was not designed to replicate sensitive parts of itself;
* tech level is several hundred years forward, with fusion available but no *onboard* antimatter production;
* a non-destructive disaster that the ship's crew could not handle;
and assuming that the crew did not go into "salvage a part of the ship to escape imminent death", while probably suffering of other issues...
**Only the hull woulld remain in working condition**
As said in other answers, any nanomaterial would suffer thermal drift and destructurize, also random exposition to black hole jets, quasars, supernovae and even the normal starlight would degrade both outside and inside structure and fill. Thus, all plastics would decay, all foam would collapse, all resin and other sealing material would also lose quality, all gasses would get released, the fusion reactor would get depressurised if still working and perform a thermal explosion causing loss of power, any capacitors or batteries would meld into unusable and possibly indiscernible pieces of metal agglomerate, etc etc. Yet, hardened steel, monolithic structures made of titanium or probably some other solid materials would not deform beyond recognition. Yes, any micrometeorites would cause dents, cracks or breaches in the hull, a contact with a nebula would either cause the ship to slightly melt on the outside, or if it had breaches, also on the inside, possibly destroying traces of interior elements, still I think a single gas cloud collision would not be enough to cause major hull deterioration.
Exterior elements, such as engines, might retain overall structure yet also might get bent or pierced by space matter, although not into becoming completely indiscernible. The interior mechanisms such as pumps and intra-nozzle fuel channels might undergo chemical damage and also get melded with thermal drift AKA diffusion. Inside, any doors and hatches would also get sealed, but would remain discernible ("hey look, this should be a door" type), and whoever would explore the ship would still find most of the structure elements not deformed.
About plaques made of gold - not enough data, whether any dented markings would lose discernibility over that long but in a relatively sealed environment and zero gravity/microgravity. I think that if there would be a plaque made of bent/stamped steel of more than 1 mm thickness, like a car number, its contents would survive but it would lose all the paint that could be applied to its surface. So, the future explorers have a chance to find a decent amount of everyday words inscribed on its walls, including any markings that the desperate crew could etch. They might also find the reactor's ID together with some specs on such a plaque, like say on [this one](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Georgetown_PowerPlant_Museum_GE_Curtis_Steam_Turbine_plaque.jpg), such plaques were designed to withstand quite a lot of time.
And that is pretty much all that would have left on the ship that spent 100 million years in the interstellar space. In intergalactic space the damage expected would be a tad less, yet anything that's not dependent on impacts would still be applied.
[Answer]
My ship would be nearly 100% intact after 100 million years.
Here's how:
1. Redundancies like a 3 level hull.
2. Drones/internal sensors scan the hull every day
3. People/AI for repair
Part 1
Team or system capable of harvesting raw materials from outer space. This includes radar for locating the needed resources. Smaller robots like a shuttle craft to mine and return the resources to the ship.
In 100 years metal 3d printers will be common if not everywhere.
Banks of metal 3d printers will be churning out spare parts.
Parts will be rated for criticality to determine there replacement cycle. Every part of the ship would be proactively replaced say every 5 years.
The crew/AI will be constantly doing research analyzing the parts for damage. It will try making new materials, and gradually it will come up with ways of improving everything.
A hole forms in the outer hull, no problem it is the 3rd outer hull send someone/robot to the 2nd hull pull down the old piece, and put up a new piece. The old piece is melted down and recycled.
Air locks to keep the whole ship from depressurizing. Portable air tanks for any crew long enough to make it to the nearest safe compartment.
You would need to be able to manufacture your own computer chips, and you would have repair bots to keep everything maintained.
Outer space has abundances of raw materials if your in the right place.
Even in the worst case, the 3d printers could print a brand new ship 1 component at a time. The 3d printers would of course print there own spare parts.
The AI could even redesign the ship to accommodate future needs.
The ship would probably look totally different after a few 1000 years of R&D.
[Answer]
Unless we're presuming Clarkian tech-as-magic, you can presume that you're going to lose anything with molecular resolution below about a millimeter. All speculation is based on modern materials, but the concepts are applicable to any materials that aren't specifically designed to survive cryogenic conditions. 300 years is WAY too long a time in the future to reasonably speculate.
You can't reasonably keep something like that warm. Even presuming fusion or fission, you couldn't reasonably carry enough fuel to counter 10^8 years of bleeding heat off, so everything's going to drop to about 3 Kelvin. The differential expansion/contraction of materials will delaminate damn near everything.
Circuit boards, for instance, are multiple layers thick, and silicon would crack in a billion places. The crystalline configuration of most materials would shift, breaking connections. Things like human-scale wires and conduits would be fine, but the insulation around them would likely shatter. Anything that remained powered as it cooled off would be susceptible to changes in resistance and other properties, resulting in whatever passes for a "short circuit" in the year 2300.
If that isn't enough, you'd have to deal with cosmic radiation. These are super-high-energy particles that are constantly shooting through space. If you think you can keep things safe by encasing them in a few meters of iron, think again. Cosmic rays make it deep into mines.
They aren't frequent enough to upset most macro-scale processes because we have massive redundancy keeping everything ok by the laws of averages. They're known to flip bits on computers on a regular basis, and we have to build error checking into our computation processes to compensate.
In a frozen environment, they'll cause individual atoms to migrate, basically diffusing materials through each other. This means that complex systems that aren't destroyed by freezing would eventually be wiped out by radiation.
[Answer]
A million years is absolutely doable. Throw in some AI and lots of self repairing/replicating parts and the thing could have been active right up to within a few thousand or hundred years of being found by your salvagers. It's total mass might have dropped a bit, but that shouldn't be a problem.
I am pretty sure we're already mounting ION plasma shields on some tanks, so a few hundred years from now, I'd expect those to be more sophisticated. We're also making meta materials that bend light today, so active EMR shielding is on the horizon, if not already deployed. Stopping relativistic nuclei is probably hard for low mass ships, but if you're building something that has to last a very long time, you need a lot of spare mass, and most of that can be incorporated into the hull of the ship.
That pretty much just leaves explaining how the energy supply lasted as long as it did It's possible to send a large fleet of fuel tankers to accompany the ship, as well as ahead of it. Based on similar technologies, but without the need for life support of any kind, they could refuel the main ship along the way, then disassembled and incorporated into the hull of the main ship. It's also possible they all receive beamed energy for tens or hundreds of thousands of years as well.
It might have been partially stripped down as its occupants entered smaller vehicles to ascend into one or more solar systems along the way, but having expended most of their fuel and getting to their destination(s) and the fact their home world stopped beaming energy at them, they might not have been able to slow their main ship, so it was left drifting in space. Maybe the occupants had become so attached to their beloved AI, they just couldn't bear to shut it down, and they left it operational, so it might have survived on its own for a very long time after it was abandoned.
They might even have continued using it as a remote probe. Perhaps they spotted your civilization and knowing the ship would soon exhaust the power supply keeping the AI alive, they suggested it should exhaust the last of its propellants, trying to slow enough that your race of scavengers would have a chance to find and revive it?
I am pretty sure we already have the capability to make things that last a million year, but we just don't bother expending the resources to do it. Under the right circumstances, perhaps 500 million years from now when the Sun is threatening to fry us all, we'll build such ships?
You really don't need to have a million year old ship at the end of a million year journey either. If the ship and it's supporting supplies are launched by a solar system scale gun, then you could easily have enough supplies nearby to build new ships every few hundred years. That also solves your long range energy supply problems. You could launch a million times more mass than the main ship, so lots of fuel for whatever kind of reactors you get your power from.
Technology doesn't stop advancing the minute the ship is launched. If it's a large collection of habitats travelling in close enough proximity, with enough brains and AI's, they continue to evolve their technology. After a few hundred thousand years, it would progress quite a lot, or they would likely all die. There's no way they could think of everything from the start, so adversity will bread adaptation. Perhaps this ship was abandoned because they simply didn't need it's antique technology and found better ways to make new materials?
So I'd ask, what parts of the ship you need to work in order to fit your story line? It's easy to explain how those could be still be repairable.
] |
[Question]
[
I've got an intelligent humanoid species living on a planet very similar to Earth's. However, on this planet, rainstorms are more frequent and slightly... different. Each raindrop is at least an inch in diameter, making rainstorms more intense and creating some interesting design problems for the inhabitants.
**How can I justify these raindrops being so much larger than the ones we find on Earth?**
I'm looking for environmental or engineered conditions that can cause this, without manipulating universal constants like hydrogen-bond length. The surface of the planet is essentially identical to our own, with trees, animals, and an Earth-like landscape. It orbits within the star's habitable zone, but I haven't yet decided what the size/density/composition of the planet should be, so that's open to manipulation. The atmosphere density and composition are almost entirely mutable, but I'd like to keep the O2 concentration at about 20% to maintain my Earth-like lifeforms. All raindrops that reach the surface are in liquid or liquid-like form (no hail) and are larger than an inch in diameter. Typical rainfall during storms is highly variable, ranging between 5mm and 500mm per storm.
[Answer]
**Decrease Gravity**
**Explanation:**
The water droplets we experience on earth are mostly so small because of gravity: when a water droplet becomes too big, gravity rips it apart before it can get bigger (like when you're not quite closing a tap, the only reason it doesn't get bigger is because the mass of the droplet is bigger than the force "gluing" the water to the tap).
So when you decrease the gravity, the droplets in the clouds can get bigger without raining down on your planet. The reason why water can even stay up in clouds is because the mass of a water droplet increases by the $\frac{4}3\cdot \pi\cdot d^3$ of its diameter while the surface only by $\pi \cdot d^2$. (d = diameter), so at some point the mass and volume has decreased so much that the updraft from the [air is enough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjByja9ejTQ). [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qj2N7.png) Here you can see how the blue line($\frac{4}3\cdot \pi\cdot d^3$) is increasing faster than orange line ($ \pi \cdot d^2$)
Which is why less gravity is key.
[Answer]
Pollution will do the trick for you.
For the record, Brazil has the largest raindrops on Earth, in its northern region - right where people burn a soccer field area worth of forest per day to make room for farming lands. Some scientists such as Peter Hobbs think that the smoke causes water to condense onto raindrops of up to 1 centimeter in length.
Source: [Geophyisical Research Letters, Volume 31, issue 13](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2004GL020167)
Everywhere else on Earth, raindrops tend to split if they grow larger than 4 or 5 millimeters.
[Answer]
The upper size of raindrops is set by the strength of surface tension compared to the forces that batter them, mostly wind due to falling(\*). This is hard to scale up indefinitely, so [under terrestrial conditions they will likely remain less than 8.8 mm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_(liquid)#Size).
Another solution is to do something like [Hal Clement's classic sf novel *Close to critical* (1964)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_to_Critical) where the atmosphere is mostly water close to the critical point: during night water droplets several meters in size condense out and fall slowly (since the density of the droplets is close to the "air"). This might be a bit too alien for you, since it requires a high-temperature high-pressure atmosphere. But it does have huge droplets.
(\* If the droplet has radius $r$ the total surface tension energy is $E=4\pi\gamma r^2$. If it falls at terminal velocity the drag force is equal to the gravitational force, and we can guess that the wind shaking it will have a force of the same size $F\approx (4\pi g \rho/3) r^3$. Here we assume zero density air; thicker air like the Clement story would use $\rho\_{fluid}-\rho\_{air}$. To split the droplet this force has to work along the distance $2r$ to overcome the surface tension energy, giving us $F(2r)=(8\pi g \rho/3) r^4=E$, or $r\approx \sqrt{ 3 \gamma / 2g \rho }$. So unless water becomes lighter or gets a higher surface tension the only way of increasing the droplet size is to lower gravity. And the effect looks relatively minor.)
[Answer]
Rain drops form in the upper atmosphere when air humidity condenses around condensation nuclei.
As soon as their weight overcomes the sum of buoyancy and updraft, they fall down to the ground.
Here is the trick for you to increase the droplet size. You cannot substantially increase the buoyancy, but if you have stronger updraft, due to a stronger ascending current, the droplets will have to grow bigger before their weight is great enough to fall.
This is a version on steroids of what already happens on Earth: low clouds in calm air result in a fine mist or drizzle, while cumulonimbus with strong winds give bigger drops.
[Answer]
If you thicken the atmosphere you will get the effects you are looking for. Increase the Troposphere from the Earth normal ~12km average to 18 or 24km thick. This won't materially change the surface conditions but will greatly increase the amount of weather that can happen above you. If you have ever encountered monsoon conditions then you know how much heavier tropical rain can be where the Troposphere is thicker compared to temperate or Artic rain where the Troposphere is thinner.
---- Update ----
According to the USGS (<https://water.usgs.gov/edu/raindropsizes.html> ) raindrop size is directly related to the number of other raindrops encountered, with an upper limit in earth normal conditions of around 5mm. A thicker atmosphere encourages more encounters and hence larger raindrops. A typical 'soft' Irish day may have drops of 0.1mm or smaller; you are not aware of being rained on, just the feeling of becoming increasingly damp. Contrast that with an Equatorial coastal Monsoon burst where drops of 5mm or more will physically hurt you as they strike.
[Answer]
Without going into details (most of which are already covered by other posts in depth) You would want a combination of decreased gravity, increased updrafts, and increased water surface tension. Each individually could be relatively small changes, but when acting together they may provide the cumulative effect you're looking for.
[Answer]
'Invent' a trace element that makes water have a higher surface tension, or make the water molecules stick more to each other because of the trace element.
The element will likely have to blow up from the planet surface, like dessert dust blows into clouds on our planet, which in turn allows you to design where the rain will have the bigger drops. You can select a smaller area or a bigger area, or even planet wide, by describing where the dust ends up. Or you can leave it open to the readers to work it out.
It is also open to you whether the element still works when the rain has hit the surface. If you let it sink faster than the water you can have the surface of the water normal.
If such an element is not known on earth it can still be on your planet.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm writing about a setting where the people have some advanced theoretical knowledge, but as yet limited manufacturing ability; in particular, they do not yet have metallurgy, but they are trying to make some fairly complex machines such as spinning wheels, wheelbarrows, pottery wheels and watermills, that require precise moving parts that can withstand significant stress; in our world, these had to wait until they could be made from metal.
But one thing they do have access to is a magical power to shape stone. That eliminates the usual disadvantage of stone for such purposes, that it cannot easily be worked into precise, complex shapes.
There is still the problem that, while some kinds of stone (e.g. flint) are hard and resistant to wear, stone always has poor tensile strength. For some applications, this might be overcome simply by using a sufficient thickness of it, but gears need to fit in the machinery they are driving, and wheels and axles cannot be arbitrarily heavy and still move around.
Given the ability to shape any kind of stone into arbitrarily precise, complex shapes, could the above artifacts be made to work?
My current best guess is that medium-duty things like pottery wheels can work, just by making all the moving parts thick enough to withstand the relatively light stresses placed on them; a pottery wheel doesn't have to withstand forces above a few hundred newtons, I think. But a watermill? It seems to me that the gears connecting the mill to the load it drives, need to withstand enormous force, such that if they were made of stone, the gear teeth would quickly break off; for that application, there is no alternative to using metal, because you need both hardness and tensile strength.
Is that estimate correct, or am I missing something? Is there an easy way to do quantitative estimates for this?
[Answer]
Actually, in history everything you mention was made of wood, especially any large wheels like the machinery of watermills or windmills. Pottery wheels were completely wood as well. The only metal you may find in historical waterwheel could be nails helping to hold it together... but even those may be replaced with proper wooden pegs.
In fact, you do not want large wheels made of stone. they would be much more difficult to turn (being much, much heavier) and so would require way more energy applied.
Plus, there would be massive problem of obtaining and transporting those huge slabs you want to make wheels from - waterwheels were as large as 8-10m diameter! Those were made from wooden framing... imagine this made from stone - I doubt you will find a material for the axle (as the wheel has to hang on a central axle). Traditionally axles were made from wood.
I'm not sure (I'm not material engineer) but I believe wood is actually more resilient in such applications than stone. After all, roof constructions were made entirely of wood even in stone buildings (remember the oak roof of Notre Dame of Paris that burned down in 2019?)
Windmill machinery example: <https://www.alamy.com/the-netherlands-internal-mechanism-of-a-traditional-windmill-close-up-image216205468.html>
[Answer]
## If you can magically shape it, then yes
Let's take limestone for example... it is a very common kind of stone that can be found all over the world; so, your people are pretty much guaranteed access to large amounts of it. Despite its normally soft nature, certain limestones can have very similar tensile properties to aluminum despite its lower Modulus of Rupture.
High-Density Limestone:
* **Elastic (Young's, Tensile) Modulus:** 77 GPa
* **Shear Modulus:** 30 GPa
* **Ultimate Tensile Strength:** 100 MPa
Aluminum alloy:
* **Elastic (Young's, Tensile) Modulus:** 69 GPa
* **Shear Modulus:** 30 GPa
* **Ultimate Tensile Strength:** 110 MPa
However, part of why its Modulus of Rupture is so much lower is because of the natural imperfections as explained in ([David R's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/206297/57832)), but if you can magically shape stone, then it means that you can shape these imperfections out of it making it much stronger than natural stone. Since limestone is made mostly out of calcium carbonate, it means that once it is properly shaped and compressed, it would have about the same material properties as snail shell or homogenized synthetic marble... which are both by comparison very tough.
So with a little bit of magic and experimentation, it is likely that your people could turn even humble limestone into viable gears. Your gears might need to be a slightly bulkier than their metallic counterparts, but for their weight they should perform just fine.
Part of why this will be fine is that metal gears or belt drives were not preferred for things like grain mills or potter's wheels until the late industrial era, but they were necessary for a wide range of other ancient inventions where you needed more rigidity than wood or linen could supply. So instead of worrying about how to replace large scale metal gears with stone, your chief concern will be replacing the kinds of smaller gears you would have seen in various time-keeping devices, odometers, calculating machines, windlasses and ratchets, certain textile machines, certain water lifting machines, and automata. For most of these, you need stiff a lot more than your need strong.
So actually needing something as tough as metal will not be common, but it will still be available when needed in the form of [Sapphire](http://www.mt-berlin.com/frames_cryst/descriptions/sapphire.htm). Sapphire has a flexural strength of 350 to 390 MPa compared to [bronze which ranges from 65-700MPa](https://www.azom.com/properties.aspx?ArticleID=62). That said, these figures are based on modern bronze alloys, not historical bronze which would have likely all been in the lower range of this spectrum. Also, 350 to 390 is only as good as natural sapphire is. If you can shape out the impurities, then you could get something closer to [synthetic sapphire can which can reach 1090 MPa](https://www.makeitfrom.com/material-properties/Synthetic-Sapphire).
*Sources:*
* <https://www.makeitfrom.com/material-properties/Limestone>
* <https://www.azom.com/properties.aspx?ArticleID=1446>,
* <https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/young-modulus-d_417.html>
[Answer]
Speaking from a sculpture perspective: when working with stone, a lot of thought has to go into thinking about how to get the shape without cracking the stone. A lot of stone has hidden cracks in it. Imperfections and included other materials weaken the stone unexpectedly. A lot of stone has grain along which it breaks easier. Thus, when you look at old sculpture, there are very few unsupported parts. Legs have other things like tree trunks, little kids, fauns, etc. next to them to give more support. Arms are held close to the body so that they won't break off. Old Greek and Roman sculpture had the arms made from separate blocks and attached with internal bars or some other banding. Other male parts that stick out were also made from separate blocks and attached. It is only recent sculpture made via grinding where you can find unsupported stone and those are much more fragile and have to be kept in protected environments so that accidents don't break them.
In short, gearing which is all points sticking out, is not good for stone. The probability is very strong that the points will break off.
[Answer]
## Use belts and pulleys.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jaeqq.jpg)
<https://studentlesson.com/belt-pulley-definiton-functions-types-parts-working/>
Depicted: metal pulley wheels. Stone would be fine for this use. A stone pulley wheel would experience only compressive forces, from the belt. It is easy to replace broken belts. It is easy to increase the tackiness of the stone wheel with the belt using belt dressings.
---
But: I was not able to find a pulley driven millstone! Either there is some serious advantage to gears or drawback to pulleys and belts, or my google fu is letting me down.
[Answer]
Using stone made gears would be problematic.
The first problem is wear. The stone would easily wear away. The second problem is stone is strong in compression but weak in tension and bending. Gear teeth experience a lot a bending stresses. The gear teeth will most likely fail very easily and very early.
[Answer]
In addition to the static weakness of stone in tension, you also have the issue of [crack propogation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_mechanics). Repeated impacts will cause cracks to develop and grow over time.
[Answer]
**Tensile strengths:**
* **Silica: [4,000 MPa](https://web.archive.org/web/20110725032937/http://www.fols.org/fols_library/white_papers/documents/Fiber%20Myths%20White%20Paper%20final.pdf) to [7,000 MPa](https://www.heraeus.com/en/hca/fused_silica_quartz_knowledge_base_1/properties_1/properties_hca.html#tabs-608478-6)**
* High-density polyethylene: ~30 MPa
* PA-11 Nylon: ~50 MPa
* PA-6 Nylon (fiber): ~600 MPa
* Aluminium alloy 2014-T6: ~450 MPa
* SAE 304 Stainless Steel: ~600 MPa
* Ti-6Al-4V Titanium alloy: ~900 MPa
---
Usually we can rarely get glass to be that strong, because any small cracks and imperfections in it will grow under strain until it either cracks or shatters. An atom-perfect perfect window pane is basically indestructible to bulk forces until it gets scratched, and only then does it become as fragile as glass usually is.
But "given the ability to shape any kind of stone into arbitrarily precise, complex shapes"? Sand is just lots of small pieces of rock, and most of those are silica. You could make a packed [cotton-like material](https://www.elementalmicroanalysis.com/product_details.php?product=B1167) of super-fine glass fibres, or a single solid slab, or a lattice akin to [metal foam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_foam), and then you could fill it with something soft like soapstone and cover it with something hard like granite to keep it from ever getting scratched.
**Forget about making gears: You could turn the beach into a single massive [fibreglass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiberglass) arcology stretching all the way to the edge of the sky.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zIumZm.png)[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yTUT5m.jpg)
*Larger sizes: <https://i.stack.imgur.com/zIumZ.png>, <https://i.stack.imgur.com/yTUT5.jpg>*
*Art source: <https://www.artstation.com/artwork/g2QNG>*
[Answer]
>
> if they were made of stone, the gear teeth would quickly break off
>
>
>
The constant friction would grind down the teeth until they're too small to fit in the gears.
] |
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